First Blessings

I did not watch the televised coverage of the recent parade celebrating the 250th anniversary of the United States Army. But, in the few clips I have seen on the television or online, I have been heartened by one thing: how sloppy our service men and women looked in procession by comparison to their Russian, Chinese, or North Korean counterparts. These other nations know how to parade: perfect goose-stepping synchronization, arms swinging in perfect unison, spit shine on every boot. Our soldiers just kind of ambled down the street in the same general direction with no grand sense of purpose or polish. You can see a better procession most Sundays in many Anglican churches. And for that, I am grateful; it gives me hope. It means that our military is not practiced in parading its might for show. We don’t beat our chests before the world or crow about our lethality. We may on occasion have to exercise power, but we don’t boast of it. At least we didn’t used to.

As I thought about this I remembered the first episode of the Aaron Sorkin HBO series The Newsroom, which premiered on 24 June 2012.

The opening sequence is profane in language but profoundly good in writing. The character played by Jeff Daniels, a washed up and jaded news anchor, is sitting on a panel — I think on a college campus — when he and the other panelists are asked by a twenty-something girl, “Can you say in one sentence or less, what makes America the greatest country in the world?” He tries to sidestep the question, but, when pressed he blurts out, “It’s not. It’s not the greatest country in the world.” After justifying his position he then says:

We sure used to be. We stood up for what was right! We fought for moral reasons, we passed and struck down laws for moral reasons. We waged wars on poverty, not poor people. We sacrificed, we cared about our neighbors, we put our money where our mouths were, and we never beat our chest. We built great big things, made ungodly technological advances, explored the universe, cured diseases, and cultivated the world’s greatest artists and the world’s greatest economy. We reached for the stars, and we acted like men. We aspired to intelligence; we didn’t belittle it; it didn’t make us feel inferior. We didn’t identify ourselves by who we voted for in the last election, and we didn’t scare so easy. And we were able to be all these things and do all these things because we were informed. By great men, men who were revered. The first step in solving any problem is recognizing there is one—America is not the greatest country in the world anymore (Aaron Sorkin, The Newsroom, HBO (24 June 2012)).

To be clear, I don’t believe in some long ago American utopia. For this reason, in principle I don’t believe in MAGA, in some long lost or squandered period of greatness to which we must claw our way back. When might that have been? During the Gilded Age when robber barons ruled supreme? During either of the World Wars or the Korean War or the Vietnam War or the various Gulf War conflicts? During Jim Crow and segregation? During Watergate or any of the various “Gates” since? When was America’s moment of greatness to which MAGA would return us? Every moment has its greatness and its squalor, the present moment included.

But we can, I believe despite all the evidence to the contrary, by the grace of God be a good people; we have it within us even though our politicians — on both sides of the aisle — do not demonstrate it themselves or call it forth from their constituents. Our congressmen and senators, our judges, our president and his cabinet should engrave upon their hearts and minds the vision of good, righteous government extolled in Psalm 72. And so should all those who vote. For Christians, this — not fifty-one percent of the thirty-five percent who actually vote — is the only godly electoral mandate. It is to this that all democratically elected officials — and perhaps those who elect them — must answer to God.

Psalm 72

1 Give the King your judgments, O God, *
and your righteousness to the King’s son.

2 Then shall he judge your people with righteousness *
and defend the poor with justice.

3 The mountains also shall bring peace, *
and the little hills righteousness to the people.

4 He shall vindicate the poor among the people, *
defend the children of the poor, and punish the wrongdoer.

5 They shall fear you as long as the sun and moon endure, *
from one generation to another.

6 He shall come down like the rain upon the mown grass, *
even as showers that water the earth.

7 In his time shall the righteous flourish, *
even an abundance of peace, so long as the moon endures.

8 His dominion shall be also from one sea to the other, *
and from the river unto the world’s end.

9 Those who dwell in the wilderness shall kneel before him; *
his enemies shall lick the dust.

10 The kings of Tarshish and of the isles shall give presents; *
the kings of Arabia and Seba shall bring gifts.

11 All kings shall fall down before him; *
all nations shall do him service.

12 For he shall deliver the poor when he cries, *
the needy also, and the one that has no helper.

13 He shall be favorable to the lowly and needy, *
and shall preserve the lives of the poor.

14 He shall deliver them from falsehood and wrong, *
and dear shall their blood be in his sight.

15 Long may he live! And unto him shall be given the gold of Arabia; *prayer shall ever be made unto him, and daily shall he be blessed.

16 There shall be an abundance of grain on the earth, thick upon the hilltops; *
its fruit shall flourish like Lebanon, its grain like the grass upon the earth.

17 His Name shall endure for ever; his Name shall remain as long as the sun. *
All the nations shall be blessed through him and shall call him blessed.

18 Blessed be the Lᴏʀᴅ God, even the God of Israel, *
who alone does wondrous things;

19 And blessed be the Name of his majesty for ever; *
and all the earth shall be filled with his majesty. Amen, Amen (BCP 2019).

To borrow from Sorkin’s words: We’re not. We’re not this anymore, if we ever were. But we sure could be.

THERE BUT FOR THE GRACE OF GOD

A recent episode of the Unbelievable? podcast features a frank and respectful discussion between two psychiatrists and colleagues, Dr. Claire Brickell and Dr. Brandon Unruh, both of whom specialize in treatment of severe personality disorders such as Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) and Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). Dr. Brickell is a secular materialist who sees no need or room for God in life or therapy; Dr. Unruh is a Christian who brings that worldview to his therapy, not necessarily overtly, but as the foundation of his own understanding of meaning and health. Theirs is an interesting collaboration and it is an interesting conversation.

At one point the discussion turned to the humility of recognizing that the patient-doctor roles could have easily been reversed, that the doctor might well have been the one suffering from a mental health issue. The following dialogue is from the podcast transcript. It begins with Dr. Unruh, who introduces the notion of grace, and alternates thereafter between Drs. Brickell and Unruh.

“Because of course, I really, hopefully, I mean, I pray that I really share your humility and the sense of the power in, well, the sense of there but for the grace of God go I is how I would say it. You know, I both know it just could be us at any time on the other side of the couch, so to speak.”

“But why would God grace you and not them?”

“That’s a deep question.”

“Because I feel better about it being just luck. Because then there isn’t like an entity, a supposedly all-powerful and all-knowing and all-loving entity that is gracing some more than others.”

“That’s where I think it’s a little dicey, because from my perspective, I don’t think I can say who God has graced more than anyone else, actually. And this goes to the problem of ego. Difficult to say sort of how much blessing or grace is there for one person at any one particular moment in their lives. What’s God doing through suffering and tragedy? So, that maybe is a whole other conversation, but I agree, it’s not a question that’s answered easily. I take the point.”

The phrase “there but for the grace of God go I” caught my attention. Christians — all people, but I am particularly interested in Christians at this moment — use cliches rather thoughtlessly. I appreciate that Dr. Brickell did not let this one pass without challenge: “But why would God grace you and not them?”

It seems that both Drs. Unruh and Brickell, while having very different views on God, share a common notion of grace, specifically that the patient has been denied it to a significant degree and that the doctor has received it in abundance. Now, to be fair, Dr. Brickell does not believe in grace; she sees it simply as lucky. The patient has been unlucky; she has been luckier. So, the issue of why God would grace one more than another is not really her issue, except, perhaps, as an argument against the Christian concept of a good, fair, and just God. It simply is not a question that a materialist has to answer as does a Christian.

Dr. Unruh makes a good move toward an answer but doesn’t have the time to develop it, particularly since it is tangential to the topic of the podcast. So, I would like to take it a bit further.

First, we must move beyond a simplistic and false notion of grace as tangible blessings as the conversation seemed to imply: mental and physical health, economic security, satisfying emotional relationships. These are great blessings, yes, but they are not synonymous with grace. Grace is God present and active in the life of a person to sanctify that person, to make that person God’s very own, and to bring that person to the fullness of salvation. Grace is an inner working that is not always visibly manifested. To assume that the patient struggling with a personality disorder has been “less graced” by God than the doctor who is not similarly struggling is not humility — in fact, in can mask pride — but rather a deep misunderstanding of grace. I am simply not given to know what God is doing in the heart — used in the patristic sense — of another, of how grace abounds there. That is true not just in the case of psychiatric patients but also of those with dementia or those in a coma. It is true for us all, though from time to time God may grant us glimpses of his presence in the life of another.

The other issue is the very limited, temporal nature of our understanding. The fact is that, in the age to come, the patient struggling now may well be revealed as a great and glorious saint whose brightness outshines ten thousand like me who considered themselves more graced in the days of our mortal life. God makes saints as he will, but there seems to be a correlation between suffering and purification. Jesus did, after all, tell us to take up a cross and follow him.

There is something in this discussion that puts me in mind of the Holy Fools for Christ seen frequently in the Russian Orthodox tradition, men and women whose behavior and lives are so bizarre, so countercultural, so apparently poor and disordered, that they are rejected by polite society as hopeless cases. And yet, these are the saints in the making, saints in disguise, men and women who looking at the rest of us merely normal people might be thinking, “There but for the grace of God go I.”

From Unbelievable?: Can therapy alone heal the soul? Two Psychiatrists Treating BPD & NPD Explore the Search for Meaning, Jun 6, 2025
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/unbelievable/id267142101?i=1000711867410
This material may be protected by copyright.

ACHAN

The Old Testament lesson for Morning Prayer today — Joshua 7, the cleansing of Israel’s sin by the stoning of Achan — is brutal in every sense of the world: disobedience, death, and destruction enough to go around. How are we to read such a text? What are we to make of it? What are we to “do” with it?

The Church Fathers teach us four senses of Scripture, four interpretive lens through which Scripture may — and must — be read: literal, allegorical/typological, tropological, and anagogical.

The literal sense of Scripture is the most fundamental of the four; we must start there as the primary, foundational meaning of Scripture. This requires rightly viewing scripture according to its genre of literature. If the text is a historical narrative, as is Joshua 7, then we approach it as a historian might, with a historian’s questions: What happened and why? What were the precursor events and what followed subsequently? How does this event fit in with the overall historical narrative? If the text is poetry, as are the Psalms, then we read them with a poet’s heart and asking a poet’s questions of the text. We ask why God might have chosen to express a particular truth through song or proverb. The literal sense of Scripture takes the text seriously as literature.

The allegorical/typological sense of Scripture looks for sign posts in the Old Testament pointing toward their fulfillment in the life of Christ and in the life of the Church. When St. Peter compares the purifying effects of the great flood to the waters of baptism, that is an allegorical reading. St. Paul reads covenant theology allegorically when he compares the Law (the old covenant) to Hagar and faith (the new covenant) to Sarah.

The tropological sense of Scripture is its moral sense. It considers how this text points toward right living. It is Scripture read in the ethical imperative mode: now, go and do likewise.

The anagogical sense looks toward last things. What does this text say about the age to come, and perhaps how we should understand and live in this age in which the Kingdom of God is inaugurated but not yet here in its fullness?

So, how do we read Joshua 7. All four senses might well be present and useful, but I am drawn to a tropological reading of it. This text speaks of the danger of hidden sin and of the need to root it out step-by-step and to utterly destroy it when it is found. It demands a thorough, honest to God, self-examination, bringing forth every aspect of my life tribe by tribe, clan by clan, family by family, person by person until my sin lies exposed before God (and perhaps before a priest in confession). And when that sin is rightly and fully identified, when repentance is evident, then I must move to amendment of life, to the utter repudiation and elimination of that sin. I must stone it, burn it with fire, and stone it again until all that remains is a heap of charred rocks. Little sins winked at become large sins which destroy us. We must ruthlessly root them out and destroy them first. If you try to take Ai without cleansing the sins of Jericho from your life, if you try to move ahead carrying with you those things devoted to destruction, disaster lies ahead. When we read this text literally, we speak of the sin of Achan. When we read it tropologically, we speak of Achan as our sin which must be eliminated.

The Feast of the Ascension
(Acts 1:1-11, Ps 47, Ephesians 1:15-23, Mark 16:9-20)

Present in Power and Dominion

God has gone up with a shout of triumph,*
the Lord with the sound of the trumpet (Ps 47:5, BCP 2019).

Brothers and Sisters, the Word of God to us on this Feast of the Ascension is simple and true. The powers-that-be, the rulers and kingdoms of this world furiously rage against it, stand up and take counsel together to oppose it. But the Lord laughs; he holds them in derision. The wise of this world, the philosophers and debaters of this age consider it folly and scoff at it. No matter: the Lord has chosen the foolish things, the weak things through which to demonstrate his wisdom and his strength. The Church sometimes seems to doubt it or forget it or ignore it. My own hardened heart too often seems impervious to it. But, Brothers and Sisters, the Word of God to us on this Feast of the Ascension is simple and true. This one sentence is sufficient to speak it:

The message of the Ascension is not Christ in absentia — not Christ gone away and distant — but Christ in authority, present with us in power and dominion.

We proclaim that message in our liturgy as we worship our Lord not from afar but in intimate Communion with him.

Yours, O Lord, is the greatness, and the power, and the glory, and the victory and the majesty.
For everything in heaven and on earth is yours;

Yours is the kingdom, O Lord,
And you are exalted as Head above all.

The message of the Ascension is not Christ in absentia — not Christ gone away and distant — but Christ in authority, present with us in power and dominion.

Is that not what our Lord told us on the Mount of Ascension when he spoke to his disciples?

“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:18b-20, ESV unless otherwise noted).

All authority. With you always. So I say again — not I but Christ:

The message of the Ascension is not Christ in absentia — not Christ gone away and distant — but Christ in authority, present with us in power and dominion.

Is this not what our Lord told us in the Upper Room when he spoke to his disciples?

15 “If you love me, you will keep my commandments. 16 And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, 17 even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you.

18 “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. 19 Yet a little while and the world will see me no more, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. 20 In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. 21 Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him” (John 14:15-21).

This Helper, this Spirit of truth, is the Holy Spirit, whom Scripture calls the Spirit of Jesus Christ (Phil 1:19), the Spirit of Jesus (Acts 16:7), the Spirit of [God’s] Son (Gal 4:6). Let’s save the great depths of trinitarian theology for Pentecost and Trinity Sunday, two and three Sundays hence. But, whatever else we can and must say about such matters, this much is clear: this Helper, this Spirit of Truth, this Holy Spirit makes Jesus present with us, in us, and through us, now and unto the ages of ages. Jesus is not absent from us, not gone away and distant, but is present with us in power and dominion in the person of the Holy Spirit.

Where is Christ present today? He is present in his Church, so much so that, writing to the Church in Corinth, St. Paul equates the Church with the very body of Christ, saying:

27 Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it (1 Cor 12:27).

Each of the faithful gathered here, having been washed in the water of baptism and sealed with the Holy Spirit as Christ’s own forever, is a member of Christ’s body: you, me, each one of us. In our unity with one another we comprise the body of Christ in this place. In our unity with our brothers and sisters across the world, we comprise the body of Christ throughout space. In our unity with our brothers and sisters across the generations, we comprise the body of Christ throughout time. Where is Christ present today? Look around this room. Look in the mirror. Christ is present in his Church. He always has been; he always will be.

Where is Christ present today? He is present, sacramentally, in the Eucharist, in Holy Communion.

16 The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? 17 Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread (1 Cor 10:16-17).

We need not linger long over precisely how we participate in the body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist to know him present when we do so. “Take, eat, this is my body,” our Lord said, not “Take, understand, and if you do, this is my body.” Christ is present with us when we gather at Table with him. Christ is present with us when we feast upon the sacrifice of his body and blood in the bread and wine of the Eucharist. Where is Christ present today? Come to the altar; taste and see that the Lord is good.

Where is Christ present today? The English poet and Jesuit priest Gerard Manley Hopkins writes that:

Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men’s faces (As Kingfishers Catch Fire).

Christ is present in ten thousand places in men’s faces that are not his and yet are his, but not always lovely in limbs and eyes and features.

Where is Christ present today in those ten thousand places? Christ is present in the hungry, in the thirsty, in the stranger, in the naked, in the sick, in the prisoner — in the least of these he calls his brothers: Christ present, as Mother Teresa was wont to say, in the most distressing disguise of the poor. Christ is also present in those who give them — who give Him — something to eat and something to drink, who welcome them and welcome him, who clothe them and clothe him, who care for them and care for him, who visit them and visit him. For in as much as we do it to the least of these his brothers, we do it to him. Where is Christ present today? Who needs you? Help him, help her, and you will find Christ present there. Refuse to help him, refuse to help her and you will miss the presence of Christ there.

The message of the Ascension is not Christ in absentia — not Christ gone away and distant — but Christ in authority, present with us in power and dominion.

Yes, Christ is present: in all the baptized faithful, in the Church, in the Sacrament of Holy Eucharist, in the least of these our brothers, and in ten thousands other ways and places some of which we know and some of which we have yet to discover. But what of Christ’s authority? What of his power and dominion? How is that exercised? Where is it manifest?

Let’s begin with Jesus’ own words to his disciples just before his ascension.

14 Afterward he appeared to the eleven themselves as they were reclining at table, and he rebuked them for their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they had not believed those who saw him after he had risen. 15 And he said to them, “Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation. 16 Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned. 17 And these signs will accompany those who believe: in my name they will cast out demons; they will speak in new tongues; 18 they will pick up serpents with their hands; and if they drink any deadly poison, it will not hurt them; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover.”

19 So then the Lord Jesus, after he had spoken to them, was taken up into heaven and sat down at the right hand of God. 20 And they went out and preached everywhere, while the Lord worked with them and confirmed the message by accompanying signs (Mark 16:14-20).

Yes, I know that this text is not present in the oldest manuscripts of St. Mark’s Gospel. Some would exclude it from consideration because of that; some would exclude it, I suspect, because they are scandalized by it: demons and tongues and serpents and poison and healing and such like. Who but the most credulous, backwoods residents of southern Appalachia could embrace such a thing? Well, I do, for one, though you might consider me a credulous, backwoods resident of southern Appalachia. You might be right. Even so, there is enough similar language present in the best of manuscripts to legitimize this text, and it is in the canon of Scripture we have received from the Church. So let me suggest this reading of the text: Christ’s authority is demonstrated, he is present in power and dominion, whenever a demonic stronghold is breached, whenever the Gospel is proclaimed in a way that renders it truly heard anew, whenever the fangs of that ancient foe — that serpent in the Garden — are broken, whenever the poison of sin is rendered harmless by grace, whenever the sick — no, let’s say more — whenever the dead are raised to new life in Christ.

Demonic strongholds abound. There are dark, demonic powers behind and instantiated in all the structures of power, passion, and greed that corrupt and destroy the creatures of God: in every war that mocks the innocence of children and desecrates the sanctity of all human life; in every economic system that preys on the poor so that the luxury of the wealthy might increase; in every government that cares more for power than for justice and mercy; in every business and industry that treats human beings as cogs in the great machine of profit; in an all-pervasive plague of pornography that views every single person involved in it as an object to be used up and discarded. And on and on it goes. But with every baptismal renunciation, in every serious renewal of vows, demons are cast out and Christ’s authority is manifest. Every time peace is waged instead of war — on a personal level and on the international stage — demons are cast out and Christ’s power is demonstrated. Every time government power lust is exposed and repudiated and justice is demanded, demons are cast out and the dominion of Christ is witnessed. Whenever a Christian overtips a server in the name of Christ or gives money to the beggar on the Cedar Bluff exit ramp, whenever a captive is freed from pornography or drugs or alcohol, whenever any blow is struck anywhere in any way against the principalities and powers and structures that stand athwart the will of God and stand against his people, demons are cast out. Brothers and sisters, by your baptism, by your filling with the Holy Spirit, you are engaged in the battle against demonic strongholds; you are the frontline exorcists of the Church, the ones who act in the authority of Christ to make his power and dominion known.

Christ’s authority is demonstrated when his disciples speak in new tongues. In a world filled with lies, the truth is new tongue. In a culture hopelessly muddled about what it means to be an image bearer of God, about the meaning of human life, about what is good and true and beautiful, a discerning and godly word is a new tongue. In a relationship desecrated with bitterness and slander and envy and enmity and hurt enough to go around, “I’m sorry — please forgive me,” is a new tongue. Wherever God is forgotten or ignored, the Gospel is a new tongue. Brothers and sisters, not all of us have the spiritual gift of tongues. But we have all been commissioned to speak a new tongue. Open your mouth and speak in Christ’s name; that is a new tongue, a Pentecostal moment. Speak with the authority of Christ.

Do you want to take snakes in hand and drink poison without harm? The snake — the serpent — is none other than the satan, the accuser of the brethren, and his poison is the lies he tells, the passions he stirs, the sin he incites. You need not fear the serpent nor his poison. The head of the ancient serpent has been crushed under the heel of the Son of Eve, the Son of Mary, the Son of God. The serpent has no power but what we yield to it. We strip the serpent of its power, we neutralize its poisonous venom, we show the authority of Christ and his power over the serpent by fixing our eyes on the cross, by guarding our thoughts, by filling our hearts and minds with prayer and praise, by refusing to be an accuser of our brothers and sisters before God, and by getting up again and again every time we fall. We fall and we rise, we fall and we rise, we fall and we rise through confession, godly counsel, and absolution. We rise again through the authority, power, and dominion of Jesus Christ who himself defeated the serpent in the wilderness, in the Garden, on the cross, and in hell itself. We rise through him, and when do, Christ’s authority is on clear display.

The great adventure that is the book of Acts starts with this commission from Jesus:

6 So when they had come together, they asked him, “Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” 7 He said to them, “It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority. 8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:6-8).

There it is again: presence — the Holy Spirit — and power. And notice that the presence and power are missional: when you have received power, when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, you will be witnesses. Witnesses are those who have seen things and heard things and know things and who then testify to the truth of what they have experienced. And that is what we see throughout Acts. Not just the Apostles, but deacons and prophetesses, a soldier and a business woman, a foreign court official and a jailer, tentmakers and “ordinary” folk witness Jesus and witness to Jesus and make Christ present in authority and power. They turn the world upside down. And so may we. We don’t have to be eloquent. We don’t need to be intellectual. We simply need to witness to what we have seen and heard and known of Jesus, and the Lord will be present with us in authority and power.

Acts gives us one more lesson, one more example of where Jesus is present in authority and power. When his witnesses are arrested and jailed, when his witnesses are beaten and stoned, when his witnesses are falsely accused and excluded, when his witnesses are bound and shipwrecked, when his witnesses are misunderstood and humiliated, when his witnesses join him in the fellowship of suffering for his sake, Jesus is present in authority and power.

Having recounted the suffering and hardship he had born for Christ and his prayer to be released from a particular thorn in the flesh, St. Paul concludes with this:

8 Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. 9 But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. 10 For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong (2 Cor 12:8-10).

Where is Christ present with us? Where is his authority and power manifest to us and to the world? In weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. In all the sufferings of this world born with and for Christ. It is a strange way to manifest authority and power, but so was the cross.

So, there you have it, brothers and sisters. I started with this, and I will end with this. The Word of God to us on this Feast of the Ascension is simple and true.

The message of the Ascension is not Christ in absentia — not Christ gone away and distant — but Christ in authority, present with us in power and dominion.

God has gone up with a shout of triumph,*
the Lord with the sound of the trumpet (Ps 47:5, BCP 2019).

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Creation and Sabbath: A Rogation Day Reflection
(Ecclesiasticus 43, Psalm 107:1-9, 1 Cor 3:10-14, Matt 6:19-24)

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

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

On this last of the three Rogation Days, I’d like to think with you about the relationship between the Gospel and the natural order — the creation.

Earlier this month — on the first Sunday — I went for an afternoon walk at Lakeshore Park just a matter of minutes from my house. I used to walk there often, but somehow I’ve gotten out of the habit; it has been maybe two years since I was last there. You may know the property. From 1886 to 1976 it was the campus of the East Tennessee Hospital for the Insane, and it was, frankly, a dismal and disturbing place. In 1976 the name was changed to Lakeshore Mental Health Institute. Whether anything else about it was changed, I don’t know. The Institute is closed now — since 2013 — and all the land is owned by the City of Knoxville who, along with the non-profit Lakeshore Park Conservancy has worked to create a public park complex of walking trails, ball fields, playgrounds, and pavilions. It is a “beauty from ashes” story.

As I walked this recent Sunday, I was delighted to see that the Conservancy is returning a significant portion of the developed land to wild native meadowland: grasses, trees, and wildflowers. There are fields full of clover — both white and pink — and there are gold and purple flowers I can’t name. I spent an hour or so just leisurely walking and looking and enjoying.

But that whole time I had the feeling that something was wrong, something was missing. And then it dawned on me. Not a single honeybee was to be seen, not a single butterfly. I saw one, and only one, bumblebee — other than that, no large pollinators. As a child, I could not have walked barefoot through a meadow like that, or even through my own small yard, for fear of stepping on and being stung by the bees that seemed to be on every clover. They were everywhere; now they are nowhere. Say what you will, but in the short geological span of sixty years, something has changed, and that something is not for the good.

Our weather is different now than when I was young. The TVA&I Fair has always started early in September, generally the first Friday. And we always had to wear sweaters when I was a teenager; it was cool to cold in the evenings. Now it’s t-shirts and shorts at the fair. Now I have to pay Glenn to mow my yard into November. Now we have more devastating floods and tornadoes than I ever remember. The heat is making some southwestern cities — think Phoenix — dangerous in the summer months, especially for those who are homeless or for the working poor who cannot afford the electric bill for air conditioning.

The landscape is different now than when I was young, too. There is far more development and far less farm land. Much more is paved over now, which increases runoff and localized flooding and elevates temperatures in the summer months. Forests are shrinking along with the glaciers and ice shelf. The ocean level is rising, and some inhabited islands will soon be under water.

Are we the cause of all this? Partly — particularly those of us in the developed and developing nations who monopolize resources and commodify nature. Some of the changes may be natural cycles of weather variation that human population and demands increase and that consumption has exacerbated. We may not be the whole problem, but we are part of it; I am part of it.

All of this was on my mind during and after my walk at Lakeshore Park. And I wondered: what is the appropriate Christian response to this? Pope Francis — of blessed memory — published an Encyclical Letter on Christian responsibility vis à vis the environment, on care for our common home. Laudato Si’ — Praise be to you — he titled it, quoting his namesake St. Francis of Assisi:

“Laudato Si’, mi’ Signore”… “Praise be to you, my Lord, through our Sister, Mother Earth, who sustains and governs us, and who produces various fruit with coloured flowers and herbs” (Encyclical Letter Laudato Si’ of the Holy Father Francis: On Care for our Common Home, 1).

Pope Francis continued:

This sister now cries out to us because of the harm we have inflicted on her by our irresponsible use and abuse of the goods with which God has endowed her. We have come to see ourselves as her lords and masters, entitled to plunder her at will. The violence present in our hearts, wounded by sin, is also reflected in the symptoms of sickness evident in the soil, in the water, in the air and in all forms of life. This is why the earth herself, burdened and laid waste, is among the most abandoned and maltreated of our poor; she “groans in travail” (Rom 8:22). We have forgotten that we ourselves are dust of the earth (cf Gen 2:7); our very bodies are made up of her elements, we breathe her air and we receive life and refreshment from her waters (ibid, 2).

This Encyclical was not received with universal acclaim. Some — not a few — voiced their opposition to it, encouraging Pope Francis to stick to Church business — to get his own house in order and to get about the work of saving souls — and to leave the environment to the scientists and politicians. But that won’t do. The Gospel is good news for all creation, or it’s not the Gospel at all. It is the proclamation that all things are being and will be healed and restored. As Isaiah sees it:

6 The wolf shall dwell with the lamb,
and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat,
and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together;
and a little child shall lead them.

7 The cow and the bear shall graze;
their young shall lie down together;
and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.

8 The nursing child shall play over the hole of the cobra,
and the weaned child shall put his hand on the adder’s den.

9 They shall not hurt or destroy
in all my holy mountain;
for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord
as the waters cover the sea (Isa 11:6-9, ESV throughout unless otherwise noted).

And St. Paul links humanity, creation, and the Gospel in his Epistle to the Romans:

19 For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. 20 For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope 21 that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. 22 For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. 23 And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. 24 For in this hope we were saved (Rom 8:19-24a).

This text points beyond what we will experience or realize in our lifetime, but what we do now — if we are to be faithful to the Gospel and to Christ’s command to proclaim it — has to point toward that ultimate release of creation from futility. We have to ease creation’s groaning and serve as midwife to its new birth. So, it just won’t do to say the Church needs to get about the business of saving souls and leave all the environmental “stuff” to the “experts” — the scientists and politicians. How we treat creation is a spiritual matter, a matter of creation and redemption.

This is true, in part, because creation — the natural order — is presented as an entity that worships God, not least through declaring God’s glory. We see that theme throughout the Psalms.

Psalm 19

1 The heavens declare the glory of ‘God,*
and the firmament shows his ‘handiwork.
2 One day speaks to an’other,*
and one night gives knowledge to an’other.
3 There is neither speech nor ‘language,*
and their voices are not ‘heard;
4 But their sound has gone out into all ‘lands*
and their words to the ends of the ‘world (Ps 19:1-4, BCP 2019, p. 289).

Psalm 98

5 Show yourselves joyful in the Lord, all you ‘lands;*
sing, rejoice, and give ‘thanks.
6 Praise the Lord with the ‘harp;*
sing with the harp a psalm of thanks’giving.
7 With trumpets also and ‘horns,*
O show yourselves joyful before the Lord, the ‘King.
8 Let the sea make a noise, and all that is ‘in it,*
the round world, and those who dwell there’in.
9 Let the rivers clap their hands, and let the hills be joyful together before the ‘Lord,*
for he has come to judge the ‘earth (Ps 98:5-9, BCP 2019, p. 397).

The heavens declaring the glory of God, the sea making a noise of praise, the rivers clapping their hands in worship, the hills joyful before the Lord: and why? Because the Lord has come to judge the earth, that is, to judge in favor of the earth by restoring all creation and by freeing it to worship fully once again.

This notion of the earth — of all the natural order — being a worshiping entity is at the heart of the Law, the Torah, as well. Do you remember the fourth commandment?

Remember the Sabbath Day and keep it holy.

To whom does that commandment apply?

It applies to all Israelites, to their slaves — foreign or domestic — and to their animals. Then, by implication, it must also apply to the land. No one may work the land on the Sabbath. No one may treat the land as a tool or commodity. On the Sabbath it is recognized as gift, as belonging to God, as an entity that too must be given a day of rest to worship God in its unique way. But it is not a day only. Every seventh year the land must be given a sabbath — a full year in which to rest, to lie fallow, to produce only what the agency of God calls forth.

25:1 The Lord spoke to Moses on Mount Sinai, saying, 2 “Speak to the people of Israel and say to them, When you come into the land that I give you, the land shall keep a Sabbath to the Lord. 3 For six years you shall sow your field, and for six years you shall prune your vineyard and gather in its fruits, 4 but in the seventh year there shall be a Sabbath of solemn rest for the land, a Sabbath to the Lord. You shall not sow your field or prune your vineyard. 5 You shall not reap what grows of itself in your harvest, or gather the grapes of your undressed vine. It shall be a year of solemn rest for the land. 6 The Sabbath of the land shall provide food for you, for yourself and for your male and female slaves and for your hired worker and the sojourner who lives with you, 7 and for your cattle and for the wild animals that are in your land: all its yield shall be for food (Lev 25:1-7).

This was the Lord’s command, but there is no indication that Israel ever took it seriously. In fact, there is evidence to the contrary. Listen to Jeremiah’s prophecy of the coming exile of Judah.

11 This whole land shall become a ruin and a waste, and these nations shall serve the king of Babylon seventy years. 12 Then after seventy years are completed, I will punish the king of Babylon and that nation, the land of the Chaldeans, for their iniquity, declares the Lord, making the land an everlasting waste (2 Chron 25:11-12).

Seventy years of exile. Why seventy years? Listen to the explanation from 2 Chronicles.

20 He took into exile in Babylon those who had escaped from the sword, and they became servants to him and to his sons until the establishment of the kingdom of Persia, 21 to fulfill the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah, until the land had enjoyed its Sabbaths. All the days that it lay desolate it kept Sabbath, to fulfill seventy years (2 Chron 36:20-21).

The length of exile was determined by the number of years Judah had failed to allow the land to keep the sabbath. They had failed to allow the land to rest and worship for seventy sabbath years. That means they had been disobedient — they had treated the land as their own, as a commodity to be exploited rather than as a gift from God — for four hundred ninety years — seventy sabbath year cycles.

Now, to wrap this up, we turn to Daniel in exile, nearing the end of the seventy years.

9:1 In the first year of Darius the son of Ahasuerus, by descent a Mede, who was made king over the realm of the Chaldeans— 2 in the first year of his reign, I, Daniel, perceived in the books the number of years that, according to the word of the Lord to Jeremiah the prophet, must pass before the end of the desolations of Jerusalem, namely, seventy years (Dan 9:1-2).

Daniel knew the prophecy of the seventy years. And he is reminding God, in the prayer that follows, that Judah’s sentence has been served, that the land has enjoyed its sabbaths these past seventy years, that it is time for God to act to bring his people home. The answer, delivered by the Archangel Gabriel is, in one way, not good news at all. In another sense, it is pure Gospel:

24 “Seventy weeks are decreed about your people and your holy city, to finish the transgression, to put an end to sin, and to atone for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal both vision and prophet, and to anoint a most holy place (Dan 9:24).

Not seventy years, but seventy weeks of years — four hundred ninety years — will be required to atone and to bring in everlasting righteousness: one year of exile for every year in the seventy sabbath cycles of disobedience that precipitated the exile. Count forward four hundred ninety years from Daniel; the Archangel Gabriel is there again, bringing another message, this one to a young virgin in Nazareth — a message that she will be anointed by the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit, that her womb will become a most holy place, and that her son will be the Son of the Most High.

I’ve traced this story from Torah to Psalms, from prophesy to history simply to show that how we treat the land — how we treat the entire created order — matters greatly to God because God’s creation is not our commodity to be used and exploited as we please. To defile nature, to keep it from worshiping God in its own way, is to sin greatly before the Lord and to deny the Gospel message of the renewal of all things.

That is why it made my spirit sing to see the meadow restored to Lakeshore Park. That small act of conservation is, when seen through eyes of faith, an in-breaking of the Kingdom of God and a signpost pointing toward the new heavens and the new earth. It is, in its own way, a proclamation of the Gospel.

Let us pray:

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

APOSTLES ANGLICAN CHURCH
Fr. John A. Roop

The Book of Common Prayer: Introduction

The Lord be with you.
And with your spirit.
Let us pray.

76. FOR GUIDANCE (p. 669)

Go before us, O Lord, in all our doings with your most gracious favor, and further us with your continual help; that in all our works begun, continued, and ended in you, we may glorify your holy Name, and finally, through your mercy, obtain everlasting life; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

RECENTLY, I LISTENED to an episode of the Lord of Spirits podcast co-hosted by two Orthodox priests. One of them, in passing, expressed his conviction that all Christians should be Orthodox, that is, that all Christians should be members of the Orthodox Church. I have thought about that statement frequently since then; I’m still thinking about it as you can see. Here’s the question the podcast raised for me: As an Anglican priest, is it my conviction that all Christians should be Anglican? My answer is no. I stand with St. Paul here. He speaks of the Corinthian Church — or churches — as one body whose many members bring a variety of spiritual gifts to enrich the whole. To say that every bodily sense organ should be an ear, is to blind the body, to diminish it. I think the same holds true for the catholic/universal Church. To say that every Christian should be Orthodox or Roman Catholic or Anglican — or anything else — would be to deprive the Church of those distinctive spiritual gifts given to the various expressions of the one, holy, catholic, and Apostolic Church. My conviction is that Anglicanism brings some spiritual gifts and graces to the table that other expressions of the faith do not, or do not in the way and to the degree that Anglicanism does: likewise with Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism. Each of these communions — each of these expressions of the faith — has the essential fullness of faith and practice, but has a different culture/ethos and expresses that faith somewhat different. Each has riches that the others lack. Each has errors that the others challenge. We need each other.

So, what does Anglicanism bring to the table? What is most distinctive or unique about Anglicanism? Let me approach this question backwards: What is not unique about Anglicanism? What do we share in common with the catholic/universal Church? Let’s return to the Book of Common Prayer (BCP 2019), specifically to the Fundamental Declarations of the Province, on pages 766. Consider the introductory paragraph and declarations 1 through 5.

[Review the Introduction and elements 1-5]

The introductory paragraph and the first five commitments of the Declarations may be summarized by a statement from Richard Hooker (1554-1600), one of the greatest classical Anglican theologians:

Anglicanism has no unique theology.

He meant by this, in the words of St. Vincent of Lerins (died c. 445), that we Anglicans believe that which has been believed “everywhere, always, and by all,” a faith given in the Scriptures, the Creeds, the Councils; a faith birthed and nurtured in the Sacraments of Holy Baptism and Holy Communion; a faith preserved and defended by godly Bishops. God forbid that we are novel in our doctrine. We hold to that faith, as Jude said, delivered once for all to the saints (Jude 1:3).

Now, back to the original question: If we have no unique theology, what, if anything, is distinctive about Anglicanism? Elements 6-7 of the Declarations answer that. We’ll read them as presented, and then I will summarize them.

6. the Book of Common Prayer (BCP) which embodies, and expresses as prayer and worship, the doctrine and discipline of the Anglican Church, and

7. the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion which resolve certain controverted doctrines by returning to the faith of the ancient Church, thereby eliminating certain medieval distortions and additions.

If you want to know what Anglicanism is about — what Anglicans believe, how Anglicans worship, in what manner Anglicans are formed — there is no better place to start — in fact, there is no other real place to start— than with the Book of Common Prayer. Ideally you would start with the Prayer Book as it is used in worship, through fellowship with an Anglican parish, which, of course, you are doing. For Anglicans, the BCP is second in importance only to Scripture and has been described as Scripture organized for prayer. It is God’s gift to the one, holy, catholic and Apostolic Church through the Anglican Communion. It is used by many Christians who are not and who never will be Anglicans.

What is the Book of Common Prayer? Let’s return to the the beginnings of the Church, to worship in the wake of Pentecost.

Acts 2:41–44 (ESV): 41 So those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls.

42 And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. 43 And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. 44 And all who believed were together and had all things in common.

Notice the content and structure of apostolic worship: apostles’ teaching, fellowship, breaking of bread, and prayers. The earliest Christians gathered, listened to the Word of God through the Apostles, celebrated the Eucharist, and prayed. Does that pattern sound familiar? It is the service of Word and Table observed in Anglican churches worldwide each Sunday.

This Scripture gives us a normative pattern for worship — a structure — but not a detailed form or content. In the early days of the Church, such an outline was enough. The Apostles, and their direct disciples, were present to ensure consistency and orthodoxy among the churches. But, as the Church spread, it became more important to flesh out this outline, to put words and practices down in writing to preserve the one faith of the Church. By the second century, liturgies for baptism and Eucharist had been formalized and by the fourth century they were widespread. The undivided Church was a liturgical Church; in that way, faith and practice were preserved and passed down.

But, as typically happens, things became more, not less, complex — read that as needlessly complicated — with time. In the Roman church just before the Reformation began, the worship of the church required at least four large and costly books:

Breviary: Daily Office texts (seven or eight periods of prayer daily)

Missal: Eucharistic texts

Manual: Occasional Services texts (baptism, marriage, burial, etc.)

Pontifical: Episcopal (led by bishops) texts (ordination, confirmation, etc.)

Not only were these volumes too expensive for the masses, they were also complicated to use and written in Latin, a language few but clergy knew. So practically, the worship that should have been common to all God’s people had become the sole domain of clergy (the Eucharist) and monastics (the Daily Office). The people attended and watched worship, but did not understand or participate in it.

The Reformers, and especially the English Reformer Thomas Cranmer, saw this as a violation of biblical principles, namely that worship is the work of the people (liturgy), all the people. His great life’s work was the reclamation of worship for the people of God, and his solution to this problem was the Book of Common Prayer.

Take the four volumes required for worship in the Roman church, simplify them and purify them of medieval errors (restore ancient faith and practice), translate them into English, get them into the hands of the people: these are the ideas behind the Book of Common Prayer.

The Book of Common Prayer ensures that we are worshipping as the Church has done since its birth, but in a language and style appropriate for our culture and easily adaptable to other cultures without sacrificing orthodox faith and practice.

For more about this, and for an excellent historical overview of the Book of Common Prayer, I commend the Preface, pages 1-5, in the BCP 2019.

But, the Book of Common Prayer does even more than what we’ve mentioned. It functions as a regula — a rule of life — that structures and sanctifies our days, our weeks, our years, and the whole of our lives. Let’s turn to the Table of Contents. Look at the way this book helps sanctify our lives on every scale.

Daily: The Daily Office (Morning and Evening Prayer, Midday Prayer and Compline)

Weekly: Holy Eucharist

Yearly: Seasonal Greetings, Collects, and Special Liturgies, Calendar and Holy Days, Lectionaries

Life: Baptism, Confirmation, Matrimony, Birth/Adoption, Confession, Sickness and Recovery, Death

The Book of Common Prayer is a comprehensive guide and companion to the whole of life that teaches us how to live intentionally in the presence of God and in fellowship with our neighbors.

So, why the Book of Common Prayer?

It preserves and hands down the ancient and normative pattern of the worship in the Church, the liturgy: the Apostles’ teaching, the fellowship, the breaking of bread, and the prayers. It ensures order and consistency and truth in our worship.

It provides a rule of life — a companion and guide in our faith journey — that sanctifies our lives daily, weekly, monthly, and throughout the whole of life.

It forms us in the Word and in prayer by leading us substantially through the whole of Scripture each year and through the Psalter each month or bi-monthly, and by teaching us to pray the prayers of the Church.

The normative BCP dates from 1662. While it serves as the authoritative standard reference for our Province, few parishes actually use it for worship. In fact, there have been two major revisions of the BCP 1662 in the United States, one in 1928 and another in 1979. Our Province, the ACNA, published yet another revision in 2019, which raises questions: Why a new revision to the Book of Common Prayer? Why did the ACNA decide to publish a unique provincial BCP, instead of using an existing book?

There are several answers to these questions, and any complete answer would take more time than it’s worth in this class. So just a few, brief ideas will have to suffice.

Our Province spans North America: the United States and Canada. In the U.S. alone, there are several different prayer books in use: BCP 1928 (traditional Anglican), BCP 1979 (contemporary ecumenical), REC BCP, and even, rarely, the BCP 1662 (the standard for the Anglican tradition of worship). Canada has its own book, the BCP 1962. The hope is that the BCP 2019 will be so well accepted that it may become a standard for our province and bring us more substantially together around a single prayer book. No one is required to use this new revision, but Archbishop Duncan, the chair of the Liturgy Task Force which produced the revision, has said that one goal was to make the revision so beautiful that parishes would want to use it.

There was also the desire to produce a prayer book in keeping with the structure and traditional Anglican forms of the BCP 1662 (our provincial standard for classical Anglican faith and practice), but in contemporary language.

These are primary reasons for the revision.

Now to the book itself. Let’s turn to page 6, Concerning The Divine Service of The Church. Looking at this section will help us understand the actual layout/design of the BCP 2019. We will also refer to the Table of Contents.

The first paragraph defines the regular services of the church, those services which occur on a regular basis and which are for everyone: the Daily Office (Morning and Evening Prayer), the Great Litany, Holy Communion, Baptism, and Confirmation. If you look at the Table of Contents you will notice that these are the first services presented in the BCP, the most commonly used services right up front in the book. The Liturgy Task Force gave considerable thought to the physical layout of the BCP 2019 to make it logical and convenient to use.

The following four paragraphs give additional directions on how these regular services are used: part theology and part instructions.

The sixth paragraph mentions occasional services. As you might imagine, these are services that do not occur on a regular schedule, but rather on an as-needed basis. And some of them apply only to specific people, not to everyone. These are identified in the Table of Contents as Pastoral Rites and Episcopal Services. You can see that they follow the regular services in the layout of the book.

The Psalms are central to all our services; the Psalter is the prayer book and hymn book of Israel and thus of the Church. It seems fitting, then, that the Psalter is in the center of the physical layout of the BCP 2019.

Following the Psalter are the Episcopal Services, the services that are reserved to and conducted by the Bishop. The Bishop ordains, institutes the rector of a parish, consecrates a place of worship and dedicates many of its furnishings. You will have no need of these services unless you attend one of them. But, I still recommend reading through them; they contain important elements of Anglican theology.

Next come the Special Liturgies of Lent & Holy Week, services we use only once each year. They are placed toward the back of the back of the BCP.

Near the end of the BCP 2019 — where they are easy to find — are two sections you will use daily, if you regularly pray the Daily Office: Collects & Occasional Prayers and Calendars & Lectionaries.

Let’s begin with The Calendar of the Christian Year, on page 687. This section tells us what to do when, and how the church year is organized. [Review each section briefly and then the Calendar, p. 691 ff.]

The next major section is Sunday, Holy Day, and Commemoration Lectionary, p. 716 ff. Here are tables that provide the lectionary readings for each Sunday, Holy Day, and optional Commemoration. Paragraph two orients us to the table.

Next comes the Daily Office Lectionary, p. 734 ff, which, as the name implies, you will use every day is you pray the Daily Office. This section begins with instructions for the Psalter. There are two established patterns for praying the Psalter: a 30 day option (p. 735) and a 60 day option (p. 738 ff). [Explain the two options.]

The instructions for the Daily Office Readings begin on page 736. I recommend reading the two page introduction, pages 736-737, to understand the history and rationale for this lectionary. Again, there are two defined options for the Daily Office Readings: a one year cycle and a two year cycle. The second and the last paragraphs in the instructions define these two patterns. [Review these paragraphs.]

The tables of readings begin on page 738. [Demonstrate how this works by using today’s date.]

The final section in the BCP 2019 is Documentary Foundations, those documents which define the boundaries of our faith and practice. [Review the documents in this section.]

If you return to the Table of Contents you might notice that we have skipped one very important section in the Prayer Book: Collects & Occasional Prayers. We will address this section next week when we take a more detailed look at the regular services of the Church, particularly the Daily Office and Holy Eucharist.

Perhaps more than any other resource, the Book of Common Prayer defines both what the Anglican Church shares with other expressions of the Christian faith and what is distinctive about Anglicanism. It is Anglicanism’s unique gift to the Church universal. It is a treasure that will bring those who use it regularly and fully deeper and deeper into the heart of the faith: through participation with a parish; through Scripture, worship, Sacraments, prayer, and theology.

If you have questions about the BCP or about how to use it fully, please talk with one of our priests. We are always delighted to share this resource with others.

APOSTLES ANGLICAN CHURCH
Fr. John A. Roop

Anglican Identity

The Lord be with you.
And with your spirit.
Let us pray.

A Prayer of Self-Dedication
Almighty and eternal God, so draw our hearts to you, so guide our minds, so fill our imaginations, so control our wills, that we may be wholly yours, utterly dedicated to you; and then use us, we pray, as you will, and always to your glory and the welfare of your people; through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

Introduction: An Exploration of Anglican Identity

Who are we as Anglicans? While that would seem to be a simple question, it is, in reality, anything but simple. We are a diverse group in terms of nationality, culture, and expressions of faith. But, we are held together by historical bonds of association and affection, by common prayer and worship, and, until recently, by a common understanding of the essentials of our faith.

So, out of this complex question, we will look at three areas of Anglican Identity: (1) the historical development of Anglicanism and the Anglican Communion, (2) the theology and structure of the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA), the province to which we belong, and (3) the nature of Apostles Anglican Church.

History

The Church in England and The Anglican Communion: Historical Considerations

Let’s begin with a “trick” question: Where, when, and by whom did the Anglican Church originate? I know that the most obvious answer is (1) in England, (2) in the early 16th century, (3) by Henry VIII, but that is not actually the case — at least not fully the case.

The Church in England began in Galilee sometime around 30-33 AD by the authority of Jesus Christ.

16Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. 17And when they saw him they worshiped him, but some doubted. 18And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age (Mt 28:16-20).

This, the Great Commission, is where Anglican identity starts, because it is where the mission of the one, holy, catholic and Apostolic church starts. There is only one Church with many expressions of the faith. Anglicans are and always have been part of the one, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church. From here the apostles and disciples tarried in Jerusalem for ten more days until, on Pentecost, they received the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit to accomplish this mission. Then, they began to make disciples – to baptize and to teach – first in Jerusalem, then in Judea and Samaria, and then to the uttermost parts of the world. Thomas headed east, carrying the Gospel to India. Mark went southwest to Egypt where he founded a thriving and influential Christian community in Alexandria, a community that produced some of the greatest theologians in the early church. Paul went – well, Paul went everywhere throughout Asia Minor, into Europe, and perhaps as far west as Spain. Tradition tells us that both he and Peter were martyred in Rome around 65 AD. The Roman church gained a particular prominence, as did its bishops in succession after Peter, due to its association with both Peter and Paul. The relationship between the church at Rome and other prominent historic churches – Jerusalem, Antioch, Alexandria, and Constantinople – is best described as “first among equals.”

It wasn’t just the Apostles who carried the Gospel throughout the world; the word was spread naturally and organically by those who had received it. It accompanied soldiers on their marches and travelers in their journeys, and it was carried by merchants along with their wares. The history of this “ordinary” evangelism was not recorded, so we usually have no details of precisely when and how the Gospel reached a particular region or people. Britain is a case in point. Was it Roman soldiers or tin merchants who brought the Gospel to the isles? And, when was Christ first preached there? We simply do not know. But, we do have some notion on when the faith arrived in Britain.

The Church in Britain

Some church fathers and historians claim a very early arrival of the church in Britain. In his defense of the faith, Tertullian (d. 222) writes:

The extremities of Spain, the various parts of Gaul, the regions of Britain which have never been penetrated by Roman arms have received the religion of Christ.

Eusebius, a 4th century church historian, even claims apostolic evangelization of Britain:

The Apostles passed beyond the ocean to the isles called the Britannic Isles (Demonstratio Evangelica).

Perhaps. But what we can say with certainty is that the church was well established in England by 314. In that year, at the Emperor Constantine’s directive, representatives of the church met in the town of Arles to address the heresy of Donatism. Documents from the council record the presence of three British bishops: Eborius of York, Restitutus of London, and Adelphius, whose episcopal see is uncertain. If there were British bishops, there were British clergy and churches. While the church was present in Britain at this time, it was not widespread in geographical scope or influence, both of which waxed and waned for centuries, almost disappearing entirely during the Saxon conquest (5th-6th centuries).

Synod of Whitby: Roman Jurisdiction

What follows is an abbreviated and simplified summary of English church history; volumes have been written if you are interested. But, for our purposes, this abstract should suffice.

By the 7th century, there were two distinct forms of Christianity practiced in the British kingdom of Northumbria: Celtic and Roman. Celtic Christianity entered the kingdom through the Abbey of Iona – an abbey founded on the Scottish island of Iona by the Irish monk Columba. Roman Christianity was likely introduced by missionaries sent by Pope Gregory the Great expressly to convert the Anglo-Saxons. There were differences in these two forms of the faith in such areas as organization and liturgy: Celtic Christianity was ordered around a monastic model governed by abbots and monks while Roman Christianity was governed hierarchically by Pope, bishops, and priests. The liturgies and calendar the two forms used varied somewhat – particularly calculations of the date for Easter. They shared one, common faith – the faith once for all delivered to the saints, as Jude writes – but they expressed it in different forms and with different governing structures.

Each form cycled into and out of dominance at the preference of successive kings, and tension between them grew. In 664, King Oswiu of Northumbria convened a synod at Whitby – a gathering of officials from both the Celtic and Roman churches – to determine which form of Christianity his kingdom would practice. Each side presented its case. Ultimately King Oswiu decided in favor of Roman practice, based largely upon Peter’s position as chief of the Apostles and his association with the church at Rome. At this point, the church in Britain came under the jurisdiction of the Roman Catholic Church.

Anglican History Summary

Why bother with all this history? Two important points emerge from it that shape our Anglican identity. First, there was a church in Britain, in England – part of the one, holy, catholic, and Apostolic Church established by Christ and built through the mission of the Apostles and their successors – before that church was under the jurisdiction of Rome; there was nothing essentially Roman about the English church. Second, coming under the jurisdiction of Rome was a political decision made by the King of Northumbria. The decision could have been otherwise, favoring the Celtic church.

The English Church and the Reformation

Let’s now fast-forward some eight centuries. By the 15th century a reformation movement was growing in some quarters of the Roman Catholic Church. Since this is an introduction to Anglican Identity, I will speak of this as an Anglican, as part of this reformation movement. (Talk to a Roman Catholic apologist and you will get a very different picture.)

In the intervening years between the Synod of Whitby and the beginning of the English Reformation, the Roman Church had departed in some significant ways from the purity of the Apostolic faith. It had amassed great political power and – when it didn’t overextend itself – great wealth. Many of the clerics were political or patronage appointments and were ill-trained and ill-suited for their roles. Good preaching and accurate knowledge of Scripture were minimal and the Communion – the Mass – was conducted by the priests on behalf of the people in a language the people could not understand. Doctrine was overlaid with traditions created whole cloth, largely to bolster the power of the church and to enrich its coffers. We could spend a long time listing the complaints of the Reformers, but these give you a sense of the problems.

A movement began to reform the Church, initiated and led by men such as Jan Hus, John Wycliffe, Martin Luther, John Calvin, and Huldrych Zwingli. Each of these men and movements differed in particulars, but were united in their desire to return to the purity of the Gospel message of salvation by faith through grace – and not of works. They were united in their emphasis on the centrality of the Word of God, the Scriptures, and upon its central and essential role in establishing doctrine and governing the Church.

England had its own reformation underway – partly political and partly religious. You probably know the politics: Henry VIII needed a male heir to continue his dynasty and his present wife was apparently unable to produce a male offspring. Henry needed an annulment which could be granted only by the Pope – the Bishop of Rome. When it was not forthcoming — again, largely for political reasons — Henry challenged the right of the Pope to interfere with the political affairs of a sovereign nation, England. He ultimately disavowed the Pope and severed the relationship between the English Church and the Roman Church. In some sense, Henry VIII returned England to the independence it had before the Synod of Whitby. There had been an English Church not under Roman authority before, and now there was again. It’s not quite fair to say that the Church of England began with Henry VIII; it is fair to say that the church returned to English autonomy under Henry VIII.

Henry chose Thomas Cranmer as the first English Archbishop of Canterbury. In some sense, it was Cranmer who created a unique Anglican identity through his reformation of English liturgy (the creation of The Book of Common Prayer), his expression of doctrine (The Articles of Religion), and his book of homilies (required sermons in the Church of England). Others had major influence in nuancing Anglican Identity both in the beginning and throughout its history, but none more so than Thomas Cranmer.

I will spare you the ins-and-outs of the development of the Church of England – the Anglican Church – over the next several generations; it is not pretty. Needless to say, there were various factions in the Church striving for dominance: the Evangelicals who sought to identify with and emulate the Continental Reform movements of Luther and Calvin more closely; the Puritans who wanted to out-reform the Reformers and to strip everything from the faith that was not specifically commanded in Scripture; and the Anglo-Catholics who felt the Reformation had gone a bit far and wanted to reintroduce many aspects of Catholicism – minus the Pope – into Anglicanism. These factions have existed from the beginning of the Anglican Church and are still present in various forms; frankly, this diversity is as much a part of the Anglican identity as is our common faith. Anglican is “messy faithfulness.”

Expansion and Contraction

England grew as a world power and established colonies across the globe. It was said that the “sun never sets on the British Empire,” a testimony to the breadth and scope of the global British control and influence. As colonies were established, so were parishes of the Church of England. In this way, Anglicanism was exported globally. In its best moments, the church evangelized the indigenous populations; sometimes, however, it was insular and existed solely for the benefits of the colonists. Each of these colonial churches was part of the Church of England – the Anglican Church – and looked to the King or Queen of England as its political monarch and to the Archbishop of Canterbury as its spiritual head (under the authority of the Supreme Head of the Church, the reigning monarch).

One of these colonies was a little thing we like to call the United States of America. Many of our settlers and Founding Fathers were Anglicans of one stripe or another and the Church of England exerted significant spiritual influence in the States.

As England’s power waned, colonies became independent either by choice of England or, in our case, by armed revolt. As England withdrew governmentally, it remained spirituality; the Church of England stayed in the former colonies and the colonists and indigenous people assumed leadership. These churches were no longer quite the Church of England, but they did originate there and they did feel strong connections to the faith, practice, and polity of the Anglican Church. They now formed a communion of churches all of which looked to the Church of England and the Archbishop of Canterbury as their home and titular head. This is the Anglican Communion: a global confederation of churches originating historically in the Church of England or choosing to affiliate with the Church of England, and bound together by common faith and practice.

As you can imagine, the American Revolution stressed the relationship between the American colonial church and the Church of England. All clerics – priests and bishops – had to subscribe to the supremacy of the English monarch, which simply wouldn’t do. “Back door” ways were found around this, and an American episcopacy – body of bishops – was established so the American church could function independently of England. This uniquely American version of the Anglican Church called itself the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States, or simply, The Episcopal Church. Soon, it reestablished ties with the Church of England and took its place – a prominent place – in the global Anglican Communion.

TEC

In the last half of the twentieth century, the Episcopal Church began to move away from traditional orthodox understanding of faith, practice, and church discipline. One of the early issues was the unauthorized ordination of women to the priesthood. Another issue — and one most people consider far more serious — was a change in standards of human sexuality and an acceptance of same sex relationships and civil unions/marriages. Additionally, the Episcopal Church consecrated as Bishop an openly gay man living with his same sex partner. All of this was in opposition to the standards of the worldwide Anglican Communion.

Even more disturbing to many was the drift of the Episcopal Church away from the centrality of Christ. A former Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, Katherine Jefferts Schori made statements indicating Jesus was a way to God, but not necessarily the only way to God; and this trend has only intensified. There were and are tendencies in the Episcopal Church to deny such fundamental tenets of the faith as the virgin birth, the bodily resurrection of Christ, and his divinity.

Reverse Missions

Reform movements developed within the Episcopal Church to recall it to the true faith, but these were largely unsuccessful. There came a point when many orthodox Christians felt they could no longer stay in the Episcopal Church. At this same time, other provinces – national churches – in the Anglican Communion were growing concerned about the theological drift of the Episcopal Church and determined to launch missionary efforts to the United States. These provinces – largely from Africa and the Southern Cone – offered shelter and episcopal oversight to disaffected Episcopalians. Several groups were formed to allow these Episcopalians to worship as Anglicans – to maintain ties with the Anglican Communion – apart from the Episcopal Church.

This was a confusing and messy time, and I will not (cannot) go into all the details. But, out of this “mess” emerged strong leadership in the form of GAFCON – the Global Anglican Futures Conference – a conference of orthodox primates (leaders of provinces in the Anglican Communion) representing the majority of Anglicans worldwide and functioning somewhat as an orthodox communion within the Anglican Communion. These primates supported the formation of an autonomous Anglican province in North America as an alternative to the Episcopal Church. With their support, the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) was formed. It is this province to which Apostles Anglican Church belongs. The ACNA is recognized as a province within the Anglican Communion by the majority of Anglicans worldwide, though it is not recognized formally by the Archbishop of Canterbury. The second Primate of the ACNA was Archbishop Foley Beach, who also serves as our diocesan bishop in the Anglican Diocese of the South.

This is a brief(!) summary of our historical Anglican Identity. Now, let’s focus on our specific identity within the Anglican Church in North America. Who is the ACNA? What does it stand for? We begin with one of the founding documents of the ACNA, the Theological Statement which is part of the ACNA Constitution and Canons.

Theological Statement (of the Anglican Church in North America)

We believe and confess Jesus Christ to be the Way, the Truth, and the Life: no one comes to the Father but by Him. Therefore, the Anglican Church in North America identifies the following seven elements as characteristic of the Anglican Way, and essential for membership:

1. We confess the canonical books of the Old and New Testaments to be the inspired Word of God, containing all things necessary for salvation, and to be the final authority and unchangeable standard for Christian faith and life.

2. We confess Baptism and the Supper of the Lord to be Sacraments ordained by Christ Himself in the Gospel, and thus to be ministered with unfailing use of His words of institution and of the elements ordained by Him.

3. We confess the godly historic Episcopate as an inherent part of the apostolic faith and practice, and therefore as integral to the fullness and unity of the Body of Christ.

4. We confess as proved by most certain warrants of Holy Scripture the historic faith of the undivided church as declared in the three Catholic Creeds: the Apostles’, the Nicene, and the Athanasian.

5. Concerning the seven Councils of the undivided Church, we affirm the teaching of the first four Councils and the Christological clarifications of the fifth, sixth and seventh Councils, in so far as they are agreeable to the Holy Scriptures.

6. We receive The Book of Common Prayer as set forth by the Church of England in 1662, together with the Ordinal attached to the same, as a standard for Anglican doctrine and discipline, and, with the Books which preceded it, as the standard for the Anglican tradition of worship.

7. We receive the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion of 1562, taken in their literal and grammatical sense, as expressing the Anglican response to certain doctrinal issues controverted at that time, and as expressing the fundamental principles of authentic Anglican belief.

In all these things, the Anglican Church in North America is determined by the help of God to hold and maintain as the Anglican Way has received them the doctrine, discipline and worship of Christ.

What does this statement say about Anglican identity?

Anglican identity is (1) Christ centered, (2) Biblical, (3) sacramental, (4) episcopal, (5) creedal, (6) conciliar, (7) prayerful, and (8) doctrinal.

Excursus: The First Four Ecumenical Councils

Nicea (325)

Christ is one being with the Father and co-eternal.

Constantinople (381)

The Holy Spirit is the third person of the Trinity, of one being and co-eternal with the Father and the Son.

Ephesus (481)

Mary is rightly called the Theotokos (God bearer) since Jesus is God incarnate from conception.

Chalcedon (451)

Christ is one person with two natures — fully human and fully divine — and those two natures are neither separated nor confused.

In addition, the ACNA subscribes to The Jerusalem Declaration, a statement of fundamental theological, doctrinal, and ecclesiastical principles formulated by GAFCON. This document may be found on pages 791-793 in the BCP 2019. Of special significance are articles 8, 10, 11, and 13.

Three Streams of Anglican Identity

When ++Foley Beach was selected as the second Archbishop and Primate of the ACNA he was asked in an interview to discuss his concept of Anglican identity. Following is the question and his response.

Q: How would you define the Anglican identity”? What does ACNA distinctively have to offer both Christians and non-Christians in America? Should Anglicans have more of a “confessional” identity? Is the new catechism an attempt to develop a more confessional identity, especially given Dr. Packer’s recommendation to teach it in ACNA parishes at the Provincial Assembly?

Abp. Beach: Let me answer that last question first. I think a lot of us get in trouble when we think we have the Anglican identity, because we’re a diverse lot. From our formation days back in the Reformation, we’ve been a diverse group. Currently—and this is something I think that’s very distinctive about who we are— we are a group that is Anglo-Catholic, Evangelical, and Charismatic. Some call that the ‘Three Streams,’ and that’s a simple way of explaining it. But, even some of our most Anglo-Catholic folks would be more charismatic than I am. All of us tend to have those three streams somewhere in our mix.

I think that’s very unique for American Christianity today. All of us have our core; my core would be evangelical. Although I have the other two pieces, my core or default is evangelical. But, these streams enable us to bring the richness of the breadth of Christianity, and it’s truly powerful when these streams are together.

Three streams, one river: that is how Anglican identity as understood by and practiced in the ACNA is often described. What are the characteristics of these three streams: evangelical, charismatic, and Ango-Catholic?

Evangelical: the centrality of Scripture, the preaching of the Gospel, the necessity of a personal commitment to Jesus Christ

Charismatic: the presence and work of the Holy Spirit, the spiritual empowerment of the priesthood of all believers, the continuation of spiritual gifts

Anglo-Catholic: the centrality of the sacraments, the emphasis on history and tradition, the focus on true and beautiful worship

Different parishes in the ACNA emphasize different streams. There are evangelical parishes. When Archbishop Foley Beach was rector at Holy Cross Anglican Church, it would have been described as evangelical, because that is his core identity. There are charismatic and Anglo-Catholic parishes. And, within each parish, there are individuals who are more comfortable with one stream or another. But, we need one another for balance, and we need to appreciate the vital contributions of each of these streams to our faith and identity – not just Anglican faith and identity, but Christian faith and identity.

Anglican Ethos

Via Media (middle way)

• Not compromise, but finding a way to live together

• Both/And versus Either/Or

• Unity (and strength) in Diversity

• In essentials unity, in non-essentials liberty, in all things charity

Authority (three legged stool)

• SCRIPTURE

• Tradition — Vincentian Canon: Always, Everywhere, By All

• Reason

Worship

• Trinitarian — “By him, and with him, and in him, in the unity of the Holy Spirit all honor and glory is yours, Almighty Father, now and for ever:” to God, through Christ, in the Holy Spirit.

• Sacramental

• Ordered and Beautiful

Spiritual Formation

• Three-fold regula: Daily Office, Weekly Eucharist, Personal Piety

• Classical disciplines: prayer, fasting, almsgiving

Summary

• Generous orthodoxy

• A way (Anglicanism) but not the Way (Christ)

• Holistic

• Broad, deep, rich

Apostles Anglican Church

I will just briefly mention how our parish identity reflects the broader identity of the Anglican Church.

We are a diverse group, by background, worship style, temperament, and more . We have cradle Episcopalians and some who have never attended an Episcopal church. We have former Presbyterians, Baptists, Methodists, and members from other denominations and from nondenominational churches. We have high church and low church, those who raise their hands during worship and those who sit on their hands, those who delight in incense and those who choke on it. We have closet Puritans and closet Eastern Orthodox. We are activists and contemplatives: we love St. Francis and St. Benedict and some are quite fond of St. Ignatius. We have all three streams of Anglicanism represented. The question that has intrigued me from my earliest days at Apostles is how this diverse group stays together. It is simply because the Lord has called us together to serve him in this place, because we all love the Lord Jesus, and because the Holy Spirit unifies us. It is because we are Christians first and Anglicans second. And that is expressed in the genuine love we have for one another. In all this, Apostles Anglican Church represents a microcosm of the Anglican identity.

Apostles Anglican Church
Fr. John A. Roop

The Priesthood of the Laity for Women
A presentation for Women of the Word
10 May 2025

The Lord be with you.
And with your spirit.
Let us pray.

Almighty and everlasting God, by whose Spirit the whole body of your faithful people is governed and sanctified: Receive our supplications and prayers, which we offer before you for all members of your holy Church, that in their vocation and ministry they may truly and devoutly serve you, through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God now and forever. Amen (BCP 1979, pp. 256-257).

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

PART ONE: THE PRIESTHOOD OF THE LAITY

SOMETIMES, things that seem simple on their surface turn out to be surprisingly complex. Plumbing is that way for me. A “simple,” five minute job always takes me at least several hours and three trips to Ace Hardware in Rocky Hill. What seems simple — and should be — turns out to be complex, given my very limited knowledge and skill. And, take marriage, as a more substantive example. Two people meet, find they have much in common, experience a physical and emotional attraction to one another that seems to grow with time spent together. What could be more natural then, what could be simpler, than their marriage? To which I want to reply, almost anything else; almost anything else could be simpler than their marriage. Here, I am speaking of Christian marriage; I let non-Christians speak for themselves. Christian marriage is so complex and difficult that it should only be attempted by a man and a woman committed to martyrdom for the sake of Christ, and, in Christ’s name, martyrdom for the sake of one another. Much in the life of each person must die — must be put to death — so that the new life of the one married flesh might be born and flourish. What appears to be simple on the surface turns out to be surprisingly complex.

The same is true for the topic Deacon Michelle and I have been asked to address today: The Priesthood of the Laity for Women. That brief title — a title that seems, on its surface, so simple — poses three questions, all of which turn out to be quite complex.

1. What is the nature of the Christian priesthood? There are follow-up questions attendant to this: (a) What is the purpose and function of the priesthood? (b) How does one enter the priesthood: by calling, through choice, or in some other way? (c) Is priesthood for the few or for the many?

2. What is the relationship between the priesthood and the laity? In the Catechism from the Book of Common Prayer 1979, there is this question and answer:

Q. Who are the ministers of the Church?

A. The ministers of the Church are lay persons, bishops, priests, and deacons.

This seems to imply that there are two general categories of ministers — the laity and the clergy — and that the priesthood belongs to and within the latter category of clergy. So, what is the relationship between the laity and the priesthood as delineated there?

3. What does being a woman have to do with any of this? If we are saying that there is, in some sense, a priesthood proper to the laity, are we also saying that there is within that lay priesthood a unique priesthood proper to women — that lay women are different in their priesthood than are lay men? Gasp! Are we actually saying that men and women are different, after all, and that those differences might affect how each group is called to serve Christ, his Church, and the world?

The Priesthood of the Laity for Women:so, do you see now how complex this seemingly simple topic actually is? It is a theological and sociological minefield. I dare to step into it, to try to weave my way through it, only because I am amongst my family in Christ here, only because we love one another, only because we believe the best about one another, only because we trust one another. As always, I want to engage this topic in conversation with Scripture and with the mind of the Church.

Where to start? Priesthood is a theme running throughout the whole of Scripture. It is relatively common among the current generation of Biblical scholars and theologians to say that the Edenic human vocation — the commission God gave to Adam and Eve and intended for all their offspring — was a threefold ministry: King, Prophet, and Priest. What might that Edenic priesthood have entailed? Primarily, Adam and Eve and their offspring would have led all creation in worship of the Creator. Isaiah gives a tantalizing picture of creation’s worship:

12 “For you shall go out in joy
and be led forth in peace;
the mountains and the hills before you
shall break forth into singing,
and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands (Isa 55:12, ESV).

The same theme runs through the Psalms, with Psalm 98 being typical:

Let the sea make a noise, and all that is in it,*
the round world, and those that dwell therein.
Let the rivers clap their hands, and let the hills be joyful
together before the Lord,*
for he has come to judge the earth (BCP 2019, p. 85).

Mountains and hills singing, the sea and the trees clapping their hands, creation worshipping as humans (in this passage redeemed Israel) go out in joy and peace leading the procession and the worship. We see the same image in our canticle Benedicite, Omnia Opera Domini (A Song of Creation, BCP 2019, pp. 87-88). It begins with a holistic invocation, the human priests of God calling to all creation: Glorify the Lord, all you works of the Lord. Then the priests address three orders of creation specifically: the cosmic order — spiritual powers and the heavenly aspects of creation; the earth and its creatures; and finally, the people of God, calling all these orders to glorify the Lord — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — and to praise him and highly exalt him for ever.

With the various falls of man — the disobedience in Eden, the murder of Abel, the apostasy and division of the nations at Babel — the Edenic priesthood changed. No longer was priesthood a general human vocation. It was restricted, narrowed down and focused on a single family — the family of Abraham — and the people, Israel, who would come from that family. Within Israel, the priesthood was first exercised by the patriarchs of families and clans. Later, during and following the Exodus, the priesthood was restricted even further, to a particular tribe, Levi, and to a particular family within that tribe, the household of Aaron.

What did this Aaronic priesthood entail? It was a messy business: the slaughtering, butchering, and offering of animal sacrifices for purification. The priests stood between a sinful people and a holy God to protect the people from God, to purify them with blood so that God might live in their midst without his holiness breaking out in destructive force against the people. The priests also led Israel in worship: in feasts and fasts, in processions and festivals, in all the religious rites and rituals mandated by God. The priests proclaimed and taught the people the testimonies and commandments of the Lord. The goal of the priesthood was to make God’s people holy so that God might dwell among them and so that Israel itself might be a light to the nations to reveal the glory of the one, true God, drawing all nations to Him.

But, the priests and the people failed in this mission. As a consequence, the priesthood was once again restricted, narrowed down, and focused not on a single family this time, but upon a single person: Jesus of Nazareth, who came to be both the great High Priest and the great Sacrifice for the purification and redemption not just of Israel, but of the whole world.

Notice how, in successive stages, the priesthood has narrowed down: from all humanity; to a particular people; to a multitude of patriarchs in a multitude of clans within that people; to one specific family within one specific tribe; to one person, Jesus. The priesthood has narrowed to a single point. What next: with Jesus does it then collapse even further and disappear altogether? No; to the contrary, the priesthood opens out again to encompass all the redeemed. Jesus is the great High Priest and all his people derive their priesthood in and through him. Once again, we articulate the praise of all creation and present it to the Lord our God and to Christ the Lamb, as our canticle Dignus Es (A Song to the Lamb, BCP 2019, p. 84) proclaims. Let’s chant this together from the handout.

Splendor and honor and kingly ‘power*
are yours by right, O Lord our ‘God,

For you created everything that is,*
and by your will they were created and have their ‘being;

And yours by right, O Lamb that was ‘slain,*
for with your blood you have redeemed for ‘God,

From every family, language, people, and ‘nation,*
a kingdom of priests to serve our ‘God.

And so, to him who sits upon the ‘throne,*
and to Christ the ‘Lamb,

Be worship and praise, dominion and ‘splendor,*
for ever and for evermore. A’men.

So, yes, there is a Christian priesthood that all those in Christ are called to; we might call it the baptismal priesthood, since it is inherent in one’s new baptismal identity. And that baptismal priesthood recapitulates — it sums up — the Biblical priesthood in all its different forms and stages: it leads all creation in worship and articulates the praise of all creation; it purifies the world by its presence and its redemptive ministry; it serves as a light to those still in darkness, revealing the glory of the one true God manifest in the Lord Jesus Christ.

St. Peter makes this common, baptismal priesthood central to the pastoral theology of his first epistle; the whole letter works out the practical implications of that priesthood, and it is best read whole through that focal lens of priesthood, which, of course, we can’t do today, but which I commend to you. This central image of the baptismal priesthood is introduced in chapter 2, and we will mainly spend our time there, with brief forays into other portions of the text. As you hear these words (1 Peter 2:1-10), notice when and how St. Peter speaks of the priesthood. You might open your Bibles to 1 Peter 2 and follow along.

2:1 So put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander. 2 Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation— 3 if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.

4 As you come to him, a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious, 5 you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. 6 For it stands in Scripture:

“Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone,
a cornerstone chosen and precious,
and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.”

7 So the honor is for you who believe, but for those who do not believe,

“The stone that the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone,”

8 and

“A stone of stumbling,
and a rock of offense.”

They stumble because they disobey the word, as they were destined to do.

9 But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. 10 Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy (1 Peter 2:1-10).

Notice that St. Peter refers to these saints as newborn infants (vs 2). What is the sacramental imagery he is invoking there? Baptism: we become newborn infants in Christ in the water of baptism. So, he roots our priesthood in our baptism. Then the apostle encourages them to long for the pure spiritual milk, to taste that the Lord is good, and so to grow up in their salvation. What of tasting the Lord? What is the sacramental imagery there? That is Eucharistic imagery, tasting God. We are born in baptism, and we grow in and through the Eucharist. These Sacraments are the sources of all priesthood, whether lay or ordained: no baptism, no priesthood; no Eucharist, no priesthood.

Now, in discussing the implications of these Sacraments, St. Peter mixes metaphors in an interesting way, as if one way of thinking about it were not enough — and, of course, it’s not. What does he liken us to first in verse 5? We are living stones, laid upon the cornerstone of Jesus himself — a precious and chosen cornerstone — being built into a spiritual house. When you think of a spiritual house in Scripture, what comes to mind? The tabernacle first, then the temple. What is so special about the temple? What is its function? The temple is the place where heaven and earth intersect, the place where God dwells among his people, the place where God is worshipped. And remember — back to the creation account — the temple was not first a building, but a garden. Heaven and earth intersected there; man and God dwelt together there; God was worshipped there. And, Adam and Eve were to expand that paradise to encompass the whole world. What they failed to do, Jesus has done in his incarnation, death, resurrection, ascension, and sending of the Holy Spirit. There is a new temple now, not a garden and not a building but the people of God in whom the Holy Spirit dwells through the sacrament of baptism.

But the temple — be it building or people — needs something else to function properly. An empty temple won’t do. This is where St. Peter changes metaphors: not only are we living stones being built on Christ to be a spiritual house (temple), but we are also the priesthood in/of that temple (vs 5). Notice how St. Peter describes this priesthood in verse 5: holy priesthood. He uses the word άγιος for holy, and that word has a range of meanings and possible translations: purified, set apart for sacred use, saintly. A “holy priesthood” means a people purified by the blood of Christ and set apart for God’s use — no longer common but saintly.

So, here we are, a holy priesthood and a living temple in which God dwells in the Person of the Holy Spirit. Now, what are we to do as priests? According to verse 5, what kind of service does this priesthood render? According to St. Peter, we are “to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.” What does that mean? What kind of spiritual sacrifices are we to offer? Here we might turn to the Eucharistic Liturgy for answers; of course, the liturgy simply expresses and presents the truth of God’s word in the context of worship. So, the liturgical answers are the biblical answers. Here is the two-fold answer the Anglican Standard Text gives for our question: What kind of spiritual sacrifices are we to offer?

And we earnestly desire your fatherly goodness mercifully to accept this, our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving (emphasis added); asking you to grant that, by the merits and death of your Son Jesus Christ, and through faith in his Blood, we and your whole Church may obtain forgiveness of our sins, and all other benefits of his passion (BCP 2019, p. 117).

A primary sacrifice of our baptismal priesthood is the Eucharist itself, which is a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving. This sacrifice is unique to the Church; no other priesthood does or can offer the Eucharist. The Eucharist is the pinnacle of our praise and thanksgiving, but every other act of praise and thanksgiving is a sacrificial act flowing from it. Every expression of praise we offer, every moment of thanksgiving is in partial fulfillment of our priestly duties. And that raises the question: How can we incorporate praise and thanksgiving into our lives? What are some practical, tangible, and daily disciplines of praise and thanksgiving we can incorporate?

Our liturgy provides another answer to the question: What kind of spiritual sacrifices are we to offer?

And here we offer and present to you, O Lord, ourselves, our souls and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy, and living sacrifice (emphasis added). We humbly pray that all who partake of this Holy Communion may worthily receive the most precious Body and Blood of your Son Jesus Christ, be filled with your grace and heavenly benediction, and be made one body with him, that he may dwell in us, and we in him (ibid).

This goes right back to Jesus who was/is our great High Priest. What sacrifice did he offer? Himself, his soul and body, as a reasonably, holy, and living sacrifice. And, he asks us to do the same: first, to offer ourselves fully to him, but then to offer ourselves to one another — note the emphasis on being made one body — and even to the world (though that emphasis is not present until The Dismissal: “Let us go forth into the world, rejoicing in the power of the Holy Spirit.”).

Let’s keep going with this idea of our baptismal priesthood of self-sacrifice. What does that look like with flesh on? In what concrete ways do we sacrifice ourselves, our souls and bodies, to the Lord? That’s the question St. Peter explores throughout the remainder of his epistle; we will simply skim it for now and note some high points, some bullet points.

Abstain from passions of the flesh (2:11).

Be subject to authority, even if the authority is not always just (2:13-25).

Wives, be subject to your husbands, i.e., respectful and of pure conduct (3:1-6).

Husbands, be understanding and gentle toward your wives (3:7).

Have unity of mind, sympathy, brotherly love, a tender heart, and a humble mind toward one another (3:8).

Do not curse, but bless one another (3:9); be an advocate and not an accuser.

Suffer for the sake of Christ as Christ suffered for us (4:1, 12-16).

Love one another earnestly, show hospitality, and share the gifts you have been given (4:8-10).

These are all sacrificial acts because they all cost us something, not least our pride and our autonomy (having our own way). And that kind of sacrifice is inherent in our baptismal priesthood. Priests are those who sacrifice, who first and foremost sacrifice themselves.

But, there is more to priesthood than sacrifice. Verse 9 gives another function of our priesthood. What else — other than sacrifice — are we to do as priests? In St. Peter’s own words, we are to “proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.” Proclamation, along with sacrifice, is an essential part of our priesthood. Think how this plays out on a liturgical level, in our common worship. An Anglican service is comprised of two parts which we call Word and Table. That is sacrifice and proclamation. We gather to hear the Word of God proclaimed: through our readings, in the Psalms and hymns we sing, in the preaching, in the Creed. We proclaim to one another — because we all take some part in this — the excellencies of God. Then we meet at the Table to participate in the sacrifice of Christ and to offer ourselves as living sacrifices. Every Eucharist is an exercise of our baptismal priesthood and is forming us in the two essential elements of it, proclamation and sacrifice, and strengthening us to exercise our priesthood in the world.

At the end of each Eucharist we are sent out into the world to love and serve the Lord, to do the work he has given us to do, to be the priests he has called us to be, because our priesthood is ultimately for the sake of the world. We have explored what sacrifice looks like in the world, but what about proclamation. What does proclamation look like in the world?

Let me suggest another aspect of proclamation that we would rather not embrace. A bit further on in his first epistle, St. Peter encourages the saints who are facing suffering.

14 But even if you should suffer for righteousness’ sake, you will be blessed. Have no fear of them, nor be troubled, 15 but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect, 16 having a good conscience, so that, when you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame. 17 For it is better to suffer for doing good, if that should be God’s will, than for doing evil (1 Peter 3:14-17).

There is something subtle in this text, but really important for our priestly proclamation. All people are called to suffer sooner or later. In addition to the human suffering common to all of us, Christians may now and then and here and there experience a unique kind of suffering specific to the sake of Christ, peculiar to our priestly vocation. That is what St. Peter envisions. I would go so far as to say that all faithful Christians experience that kind of suffering simply because we are called to live differently than others. We are called to forgive and to turn the other cheek in a way that others are not. And forgiving is often painful, a real kind of suffering. We are called to pray for our enemies and to take upon ourselves the burdens of others in prayer and service. These actions are often painful. We are called to submit our will to the will of God and sometimes to submit to the will of those in rightful authority over us. Any loss of autonomy is a form of suffering. And so on. It is no exaggeration to say that if you have not suffered for the sake of Christ, it is not the full Christian life that you are living. Christ instructed us to take the cross daily and follow him; that is a life of suffering and martyrdom.

But notice that St. Peter’s emphasis is not on the suffering; that is simply the assumed backdrop of the Christian life. What is St. Peter’s emphasis for the Christian in the midst of suffering?

You will be blessed.

You need not fear.

You need not be troubled.

You will honor Christ.

And then there is this: be prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you. Now, let’s put all of this together. How would you describe the state of the world right now — both the external world and people’s interior worlds? In the midst of chaos, conflict, confusion, distrust, the crumbling of the established order, the questioning of fundamental truths — in the midst of all of this, we, as part of our baptismal priesthood, are called to live without fear, without turmoil. We are to live as those who are blessed. We are to honor Christ. In short, we are to live with hope. Living that way is itself proclamation. St. Francis of Assisi is quoted as saying, “It is no use walking anywhere to preach unless our walking is our preaching.” The way we walk, the way we live our lives, is a proclamation of something; St. Peter says it should be a proclamation of Christ.

But, when we proclaim Christ by the hope that is within us, it may — it should — prompt questions from those around us: how can you maintain hope in the midst of this…whatever trouble or disaster or suffering is current at the moment? Then we have the opportunity to present, in words, a defense for our hope; we have the chance to proclaim the Gospel with both our lips and our lives.

One more note before leaving this text from St. Peter. In verse 5, he calls us a holy priesthood: purified, set apart for God’s purposes. How does he describe the priesthood in verse 9? He characterizes it as a royal priesthood. Now, for a “trick” question: who were the royal priests in Israel, i.e., what Jewish priests were also kings? There were none; the two offices were separate. From David’s reign onward, the kings of Judah were from the tribe of Judah, but the priests, from the time of the Exodus, were always from the tribe of Levi. So, in Israel, royal priest is an oxymoron, a contradiction. Now, for a tricky question: where must we go in Scripture to find a royal priest? One notable royal priest was Melchizedek, who is described in Genesis 14 as the king of Salem and as a priest of God Most High. The writer of Hebrews makes much of this (cf Heb 5, 7, 8), that Jesus is a priest after the order of Melchizedek. Since Jesus is also the ruler of all creation, he is the great royal High Priest. Our baptismal priesthood is both holy and royal because it inheres in Jesus’ priesthood.

But, let’s keep following this trail. There was a royal priest before Melchizedek, two in fact. Can you name them? Adam and Eve were royal priests. We have spoken earlier of their priesthood, of representing God to creation and creation to God, of leading all creation in worship, and of articulating the praises of creation. But Adam and Eve were also royal in the sense of being given dominion over and care for all creation. This means that being royal priests was always part of the human vocation and calling. That calling was “derailed” temporarily by sin and death. But those have been vanquished by Jesus — whom Paul describes as the new Adam — so that humans, in Christ, can once again assume the vocation of the holy, royal priesthood.

We have gone some way in answering two of our three questions: (1) What is the nature of the Christian priesthood? and (2) What is the relationship between that priesthood and the laity? The remaining question is perhaps the one most interesting to this group: What does being a woman have to do with any of this? Is there some unique female priesthood within the baptismal priesthood of the laity? It is to that question that we will now turn our attention. But I think a brief time for Q&A followed by a break might be in order first.

PART TWO: THE BAPTISMAL PRIESTHOOD FOR WOMEN

The Lord be with you.
And with your spirit.
Let us pray.

We give thanks to you, O Lord our God, for all your servants and witnesses of time past: for Abraham, the father of believers, and Sarah his wife; for Moses, the lawgiver, and Aaron, the priest; for Miriam and Joshua, Deborah and Gideon, and Samuel with Hannah his mother; for David, King over Israel; for Isaiah and all the prophets; for Mary, the mother of our Lord; for Peter and Paul and all the apostles; for Mary and Martha, and Mary Magdalene; for Stephen, the first martyr, and all the martyrs and saints in every age and in every land. In your mercy, O Lord our God, give us, as you gave to them, the hope of salvation and the promise of eternal life; through Jesus Christ our Lord, the first-born of many from the dead. Amen.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

So, the question before us in this session is this: What does being a woman have to do with this baptismal priesthood we have been discussing?

I start with this: it would be a theological and pastoral error to say that there is a unique female baptismal priesthood, to say that the common priesthood isn’t common after all, but rather is divided by gender. But I think it is both theologically and pastorally faithful to say that there are charisms characteristic of women — spiritual gifts — that make their exercise of the common baptismal priesthood different in character than that of men. In saying that, I’m saying nothing more than what Genesis says: that men and women are human in distinctive ways, that the genders are not interchangeable, and that each brings something unique and precious to the vocation of the common baptismal priesthood. I know this is a heretical position in a culture that says that gender is fluid, independent of biology, and solely a matter of choice. But the position I’m taking is mere Christian orthodoxy, and I assume I don’t have to give an apology for it here. Men and women are different, and not just biologically. To be clear, most of these differences are not absolute, but are a matter of degree: not always “either-or,” but instead “more or less.” Generally speaking — that is, on average —women are smaller than men and are not as strong physically as men. That being said, there are women who are both large and incredibly strong and men who are small and relatively weak. These exceptions are just that — exceptions to the general case. So, we have to keep this spectrum in mind as we talk, but present in the back of our minds. We allow for the spectrum, for the exceptions; but we don’t allow them to derail the general discussion. Men and women are different; thanks be to God.

Now a word about language. Having said that there is no unique female baptismal priesthood, for ease of communication I will nevertheless use the phrase “female priesthood” as a shorthand to mean “the common baptismal priesthood exercised by women and enriched by the distinctive charisms women offer.” You see why we need that shorthand!

Recall what we said in the first session about the fundamental nature of the priesthood: priests offer sacrifices — not least by offering themselves sacrificially — and they proclaim the Gospel, not only with their lips, but in their lives, by giving up themselves to the Lord’s service and by walking before him in holiness and righteousness all their days. There is more to the priesthood than just those two functions; there is mediation between God and man and man and God. There is leadership in worship that enables all creation to praise the Lord. We include all this and more under the general description of sacrifice and proclamation.

As we move into this second session I would like us to engage directly with Scripture and in discussion with one another, both small group and whole group. I want to begin with a question for the whole group — not rhetorical; I would like us to discuss this: What unique gifts/characteristics do you think women bring to the exercise of the baptismal priesthood? Remember that this may be a matter of degree and not of kind: not either-or but more or less. These gifts are not necessarily exclusive to women; men may share some of these gifts, but typically to a lesser degree than women. So, what do women especially bring to the baptismal priesthood?

[Allow time for discussion.]

Now, having thought about some of the gifts with which God blesses and equips the baptismal priesthood particularly through women, I would like us to consider how those and others, are manifested in Scripture, in the lives of particular women. We are moving from the general and abstract to the specific and actual. How did these women, in particular, exercise a priestly role? What can they tell us about doing so? Let’s break up — as you will — into smaller groups for this discussion. You will not be able to consider all the women on the list; I suggest perhaps three in the time we have (30-45 minutes). Please agree on someone to speak for your group when we gather again for a general discussion. In addition to this, I’d like you to consider a woman in your life who has exercised the baptismal priesthood particularly well and tell her story to your small group. Time permitting, we will share some of those with the whole group.

Mary (Luke 1:26-38; 2:22-35; John 2:1-5)

Anna (Luke 2:36-38)

Mary and Martha of Bethany (Luke 10:38-42; John 11:1-28)

Photini, the Samaritan Woman (John 4)

Myrrh-Bearing Women (Mark 16:1-8)

Dorcas/Tabitha (Acts 9:36-43)

Lydia (Acts 16:11-15)

Priscilla (Acts 18:1-4, 24-28)

“Romans” Women (Romans 16:1-16)

Conclusion

In these two sessions we have moved from theology to example. There is still one important step to take: incarnation, personal application and engagement. How can you — how will you — enflesh your unique spiritual gifts — your loves, your abilities, your opportunities, your life experience, your calling — to exercise the baptismal priesthood? Of course, each of you is already doing so. But, from time to time, a prayerful reflection on one’s life and ministry is warranted and helpful. What does the Lord want you to do now, in this stage of life? Who is he calling you to be? How would he have you fulfill your baptismal priesthood in this moment? These are good questions. Ask him. He will direct you. Toward that end, I would like to close with this Collect for Guidance:

The Lord be with you.
And with your spirit.
Let us pray.

Go before us, O Lord, in all our doings with your most gracious favor, and further us with your continual help; that in all our works begun, continued, and ended in you, we may glorify your holy Name, and finally, through your mercy, obtain everlasting life; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.