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Hello again, long time.| | apologia pro vultus penitus
9-30-07
Greetings to all, it has been a long time since I have posted any rants on here, mostly due to busyness, but also due to fright at the fact that what I say can be used against me by people I don’t know, which sounds very paranoid and unlike myself were it not for the fact that people close to me have had recent negative experiences with gossiping and the like. So who knows.
Please bear with the length, I know it does not reward our short attention spans nowadays-not the least mine, who has been wanting to write this for a few weeks now.
Sooo, long story short: during my sophomore year at OBU, I took an English class based in London for two weeks. At one point we visited Canterbury Cathedral (go read Chaucer if you wonder what this has to do with English) and attended Eucharist there. Being barely familiar (more like Romantically inspired), I took Communion and though very clueless to the whole ceremony I did sense the Holy Spirit.
Fast forward to about a few months ago, I began to attend Sunday morning Eucharist at St. Paul’s Episcopal Cathedral in downtown OKC, after combining it’s closeness to my house with my environmental and neighborhood idealisms. Becca and I both have been three Sundays now, and three Thursdays, and have enjoyed the process though things are very new to both of us, though I speak for myself here.
The desire to do so rests with the long-trendy respect of liturgy that has been prevalent in non-liturgical churches for probably ten years now. It is very fashionable to some extent to have elements if not some sort of full liturgy at points in the year for contemporary-looking churches, usually non-denominational or similar. I have been boiling in the desire to gather under the Sacraments since my trip to Canterbury, though I have not save an odd Christmas Eve Mass at St. John’s in Edmond or two. So instead of paying lip service to it, I wanted to honestly approve it.
So I dove in, reading a lot to learn about the little idioms that the Episcopal Church speaks (the EPUSA being the wing of the Anglican Church in the US), including the Book of Common Prayer, and the various rituals of a Eucharist service (bowing, antiphony, hymns, crossing, etc.). I watch the people around me to learn when to do various motions, none of which are mandatory, but most of which fall into somewhat of a pattern or specific place in the liturgy.
I imagine the ideal personal church situation to be a combination of Sunday or some Sundays/Holy Days spent in liturgy and the rest at housechurch/non-denominational church based things. I don’t pretend that the earliest churches looked anything like cathedrals, but I feel very strongly that a: we are not in first century Palestine/Roman Empire, and b: our disposable church buildings and pieties of drabness make anything contemporary churches do more righteous. And I won’t begin to talk about churches that look like malls or movie theaters. Aesthetics and stewardship are not zero-sum issues.
Part of what has drawn me to take part in the Sacramental church to some degree, is recent events that have estranged close friends from close friends, from my home church. It has little to do with me, and I have not been censured in any way, lest some gossips find fuel. Though I sin daily (probably hourly is more like it), I have no grievous issue with any local church.
Anyways, things have transpired to make me feel watched out for, because of my middle position between parties, some of whom have an unspoken, and thus very pernicious suspicion that I am somehow corrupted by one side or the other. So I have driven into the bread and wine, the long-forming and formed prayers of the Anglican Church, as a refuge of sorts, among a people whose desire (at least idealistically if not really) is to allow constant meditation on Sacraments and prayer, Scripture and history, Spirit and current issues, coming from the act of Communion and prayers of the Church year, with readings from the Hebrew Scriptures, New Testament, and Gospels.
While the Episcopal church is hardly a serene place in the macro view, walking into St. Nicholas’ chapel, or to the main cathedral for physical worship-crossing myself to seal the prayers, kneeling, standing, singing, speaking, eating, drinking, all together with other believers-this is a peaceful respite from several things I constantly carry in daily life;
-traveling that prevents any sort of normal schedule
-visiting hundreds of churches a year, most great, some saddening
-dealing with people speaking ill of friends-to an egregious degree, and obvious lies at that
-personality driven worship
-emotion driven worship and sense of Holy Spirit (emotion engaging=healthy, emotion driven=temporary)
Since I have been attending Eucharist, not with intent on confirmation or any sort of membership at the time, I have caught suspicion from many places, and I speak openly here because I probably speak to mostly friends. Suddenly I think gays should take over the Church, I have no emotional content to worship, I worship idols, rituals, books, there is no Scripture in the church, there is no worship in the church (worship=contemporary music), etc.
Let me quickly address these. I offer my basic assumptions: the Church of Jesus Christ is an extension of the elect people of God, chosen as the nation of Israel, the Jewish people, not only the political state (see Romans, Torah). The Roman Church is the mother church of the three main threads: Roman Catholicism (and its many orders), Eastern Orthodoxy (many threads under there), and the Protestant Churches (myriad forms here). All three of these are full and valid manifestations of God’s people, included in His promise through His Son (see Ephesians 2). I know these might be controversial, sorry. I believe Jesus is the true revelation of God, and if not the only, then the only full sacrifice to the one God for sin and relationship. I affirm both the Apostles and Nicene Creeds.
Some day I will post some thoughts on homosexuality but here is where I stop right now: it is not a defining issue for the Church. Christians are not people who aren’t gay. This is getting ridiculous, and downright evil, because it sneaks in the door of purity and becomes bigotry and exclusion. The Church over the years has been shamefully ignorant and exclusive of homosexuals who deal with a confusing sexuality and who have many decadent cultures to choose from (as do most straight believers who are decadent in other more socially acceptable ways like wasting hours on television and the Earth on giant homes and cars). The Church is here for good news, that is what Gospel is. Dealing with sexuality is very complex and embarrassing, and the Church has only exacerbated this. The Episcopal and Anglican church has taken some leadership (though it is variegated among each diocese and even each parish) in the messy act of compassion. Most churches in OKC would prefer to not have to deal with something so messy and welcoming gay believers, of which there are many, no less or more welcomed by Jesus than selfish believers, violent believers, bored ones, dishonest ones, gluttonous ones, hypocritical ones, etc.
The Episcopal church has languished under the messy act of compassion, and made some mistakes, which no churches are immune from remind yourself. They are to be helped and not shunned, shame on those who do for such an attempt at the same mercy that brought us into God’s fold, who were once aliens-foreigners to His promise.
Enough of this-homosexuality is not a centre piece of the Church, in any fashion. It has been blown out of proportion again and again by both sides of the coin. Jesus said no words about it, none. He said many about mercy, many about self-righteousness. Nor should we ignore it, but looking back, the brave men and women who stopped bigotry against Jews, women, blacks, etc. are the heirs of the inheritance of the same man who stopped bigotry against us-non-elect become heirs of God’s promises. I have few gay friends and I am ashamed of this, not proud. I hope I can be less hypocritical as well as many of us.
As for the Holy Spirit being present in liturgy, where things are set, done in a pattern, and not individually, let us peek at a few assumptions non-liturgical churches generally have about one another. When I left HHBC for Bridgeway, I carried memories of being slightly cautioned in my new place of more charismatic (read:disorderly, flighty) worship. The long strand of denominational authority does not exist on most non-denom churches, and this makes nervous the denominational ones.
Now as I simply engage the Anglican church (not leaving Bway in any sense mind you, it is family and home), I am cautioned that things are too ordered.
Notwithstanding the occasional anti-intellectualism of my home church and Baptist background (birthed from dualism, old dualism…), where my skepticism is apparently supposed to be cured by disengaging my mind (as if it velcros off my body somehow), or the occasionally fluctuating forms of worship (somehow denoting authentic Holy Spirit movement as if God has ADHD), or the occasional lack of exegetical Scriptural study, the occasional judgment of Holy Spirit anemia because of lack of charismatic gifts (that I fully embrace but rarely manifest), notwithstanding those, the Sacraments are somehow viewed as dry and weak in comparison to fully extemporaneous church activity. ( I emphasize occasional because it is only that, and I fully defend and love Bway church, it is home, please don’t misread me).
All of these above issues are addressed well inside the Anglican/Epis church, though often the excitement and freedom of non-denom or other low churches is missing in the history and makeup. I do not ignore this, and I think at this point the church is incomplete on both sides due to this.
However, it is a truly anemic soul that sees not the Holy Spirit in the liturgy, in the 400 year old creeds and prayers of the Book of Common Prayer (also some newer prayers from 1928 and 1979), in the hymns and refrains showing the story of the Eucharist in full detail and glory, in the communal kneeling and standing and antiphonal readings where individualistic Western Enlightenment Deist worship is snuffed out! There is no pull yourself up and worship God how YOU want to worship God-it is impossible! The communion of all of God’s people is what happens, irregardless of your individualistic notions, not ignoring them, but consuming them in Jesus’ story. It is not how YOU worship God but how HE compels you and gives you a way to worship Him.
The rituals of crossing oneself-sealing with a simple act the prayers and names and blessings you recite, receive, and remember. It is only empty form if it is emptied by you.
The tasting of the “gifts of God for the people of God,” the bread and wine, our holiest act of worship in the history and present of the Church, terribly demoted and made cursory by some, worshipped idolatrously by others. The whole service is a story that finds its pinnacle in the communion of the Sacraments.
Please know I do not go to visit this parish because I am running away from any negative thing. I merely am beginning to notice the positive things given by such an unfamiliar form of worship. It will probably never supplant a humble housechurch based congregation, but I also think I might not be without some sort of Sacramental worship either, especially as someone with little rhythm to spiritual and church life.
Likewise I abhor the idea of church-shopping, it is the same individualistic slop so many of us fall into with church, myself included.
I don’t know why I say all of this, recently a good friend was hurt by gossip among Baptist ministers. Gossip I would go on record as reminding everyone it is not even remotely true. It is a terrible sin. More dangerous than the main sins we so easily rattle off because it infects from the inside, it damages our intratextual fabric, it becomes immunodeficiency syndrome within us. When people gossip of my compatriots and myself, I can live with it, I know my self and my friends and revenge or ill-will only creates a Middle East of our social groupings, eye for an eye, etc.
Yet when my friends begin to be dishonored, I will not stand for it, and call upon the ages of Amos, Hosea, Ezekiel, and the like to render truth and honesty to them. Not behind the back underhanded gossip.
Nor will I stand for the disposed of the Church (read:homosexuals) to be constantly battered away from our doors, our tables, while we increase our wastefulness and getting of more things, confirmed by our self-rightousness.
Nor can we allow those who go to the front lines of ministry to be snubbed by the Church, like the Episcopal Church.
Nor can ignorance of other’s rituals be allowed to create bigotry within our own Church! This is serious, when we love one another little-how can we love anyone else!? Does anyone think that Bway, LifeChurch, HHBC, St. Paul’s, First Methodist, First Pres, St John’s, etc does not have distinctives that are extra-Scriptural, not really essential but treated as such? Every church does, and little good does it do to disparage one another. We can learn and be pointed in our critical thinking, but not hateful or bigoted denominationally, how ridiculous can we get?
I would love comments and questions, but please no hatred of your own or another’s congregation posted on here, I will remove it. If I have done so in my above words, I am misread then, and I apologize and will repent and redraw my words if I must.
“If the hunters danced whenever they chose, then the days would all just be alike, and I’d have no holiday at all.” –The fox, The Little Prince
| | | Posted 9/30/2007 11:43 PM - 67 Views - 16 eProps - 15 comments
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