Luminous Darkness

I have been spending a few weeks in Charleston, WV and whilst driving around the city I noticed that there was a very large Orthodox cathedral downtown, Saint George’s. I decided that I would definitely want to pay a visit, and ended up there this evening for Divine Liturgy in celebration of the Feast of the Transfiguration. The service was wonderful; celebrated fully in English with a quite decent choir and a celebrant with a spectacular singing voice. His delivery of the gospel lesson sent chills up and down my spine.

This is a centrally important feast in the Orthodox tradition, and perhaps is accorded a greater place in the liturgical year there than in any church in the West. This is largely due to the Orthodox understanding of this life and the next as a process of deification or theosis, where we become closer to and more like God.

During his sermon, the priest reminded us all that the whole point of the Transfiguration event was not so that Jesus could simply prove yet again that he was the Son of God, although it did certainly accomplish that. Rather, in that experience, Jesus shows the three disciples who he brings up the mountain what is possible for us as human beings. Everything that Jesus does in his life is to build us up and human beings, and this is no exception. Jesus’ transfigured body is what our bodies can be. What Jesus has by his divine nature we can have by grace. Most of us will not literally shine with divine energy in this life (although the saints have shown that it is possible), but it is something to begin to work towards now, knowing that our infinite approach towards the divine continues in the next life. The priest also noted that living a holy life is not just about morals and ‘doing the right thing’, but encompasses every aspect of our being, following the example set by Jesus.

For anyone who was wondering about the messages that I posted over the days from 16-23 December, you can read about them at this Wikipedia page describing the Great O Antiphons. They are a series of prayers celebrating some of the attributes of Christ mentioned in scripture, and are believed to have been used since the early days of the Church. The hymn O Come, O Come, Emmanuel is a paraphrase of them.

Since becoming a Companion to the Oratory of the Good Shepherd, one of the ways that I am living out the required Rule of Life is by saying the Daily Office of Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer (or at least Compline if I do not get back early enough in the evening). I have found it to be an extremely valuable discipline, and one that puts focus to my life that is usually busy and filled with many other things. I’m certainly not perfect at saying it every day, but I do make a pretty significant attempt, and that is rewarding as well.

There is a great post over at the Daily Episcopalian asking why at least one Episcopal Church in most major locations around the country couldn’t offer this as a congregational service. As someone who travels about seventy-five percent of the time to different parts of the United States, I know well the frustration of trying to locate a church that offers regular public worship services of any kind. The author of the article also makes the good point that most weekday services are offered at times when working people would not be able to attend. Whilst I have no problem with saying the Office by myself, having the option to say it within the context of a a worshiping community would be something that I would definitely make an effort to attend.

Perhaps ought to mention this to my own rector…

After having been told off this morning at church for not ‘friending’ someone as quickly as apparently I should have on Facebook, I was reminded of a discussion at the World Council of Churches General Assembly that I attended last year in Brazil.*

A group of us was talking about the role of technology in the future of the church, especially with regards to ‘young people’ who, in the terms of the World Council, was anyone under the age of 35. The conversation turned to the question of sacraments, and whether or not they would be valid if performed over the internet.

Now, the knee-jerk reaction of many would be to say, no, of course not, and in same cases I think I would agree. One definition of a sacrament would describe how it needs to have both words and a physical act together in order to be properly celebrated. One can see this is the combination of liturgical words and actions present in baptism and the Eucharist. In baptism, the words “I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit” are said while water is poured over the candidate’s head. In the Eucharist, the words of Jesus at the last supper are repeated while bread and wine are held up in a reflection of that event, and these elements are then shared with the congregation.

One could see some inherent difficulties in sharing these kinds of activities electronically, although perhaps we should not preclude the idea of some future technology that would allow in the sharing of ‘virtual’ elements. Personally, I think that part of the gospel message to our modern world needs to be that we should be more grounded in the real, physical world and not loose ourselves inside our technology (which real, physical sacraments might help with), but I also would certainly never want to discount what God might do through what we have created.

On the other hand, a sacrament such as reconciliation (or confession of you prefer) does not necessarily have a physical act associated with it. In some traditions it might entail a laying on of hands, but not always. Similarly, although prayers for the sick might involve anointing with oil, they needn’t necessarily. There are numerous websites where you can ask for prayers for yourself or another, or ask to be forgiven for your sins. Some will even allow you to chat in real time with another person, perhaps a ‘confessor’ or a ‘prayer partner’. Are these valid only as potentially helpful spiritual encounters or are they sacramental acts? I think that the boundary is much more gray here. In one sense, the physical act of being with another person is an important part of our relationships with other human beings and collectively in our relationship with God. But in another sense, some would certainly believe in the transformative and healing power of prayer that may or may not be occurring in the same physical space as those being prayed for.

What is clear to me above all else is that these and future technologies will continue to impact the Church in real and meaningful ways, and we should embrace them rather than running away to hide because we don’t understand them or we don’t like the implications of what they might mean. This is not to say that there is not a place for a theological understanding of what role technology should have in society, but that any such understanding needs to be grounded in a reality that is fully experienced and explored.

*For anyone who does not know, Facebook is an website where you can network with your friends, and by extension their friends, to build online communities. The key is that you have to ask permission to be added as a ‘friend’ to somebody’s list, and so you send them a ‘friend request’. If they approve you, you are then permitted to look at their profile, or whatever portion of it they choose to show you, so that you can get to know them better and discover connections with others in similar communities.

Since today is the Feast of St. Andrew, I attended the noon Eucharist in the cathedral downtown here in Pittsburgh. I am not sure who the priest was that took the service, but his sermon was a fascinating dismissal of the entire decision-making process that has been in place throughout the history of the Church. He began by saying that in our American culture today we feel that we can only accept something once we have discussed it at great length and then voted on it. For him, the impact of this is that we do not fully accept any idea or proposition, but rather constantly ask for more proof and more evidence.

He then went on to say that this is also the way that the ‘modern’ Church makes decisions about doctrine, that is, by voting on them, and that this is wrong and goes against true Christian practice and belief. He held up St. Andrew as someone who simply followed what Jesus told him to do, and said that we should do the same. Of course, he didn’t mention what we should do when faced with a problem that Jesus didn’t discuss.

He pointed to the Episcopal Church’s General Convention, which, he helpfully reminded us, is the largest legislative body in the United States with its ‘900 members’ (i.e. those in the House of Lay and Clerical Deputies — I guess that the House of Bishops and its 300 members is not really relevant somehow), as a body which makes doctrinal decisions by voting on them.

In all of this, he failed to mention that our form of ecclesiastical decision-making in the Episcopal Church was set up in the 18th century after the American Revolutionary War on purpose, to differentiate us from the state-run Church of England. To this day, the Queen of England appoints bishops and Parliament must sign off on any major doctrinal or liturgical changes, such as any revisions to the Book of Common Prayer. The Episcopal Church believes that this democratic process is the best way we have come up with to discern the teaching of the Holy Spirit in contemporary society. Through discussion, debate, and an eventual vote, we are able to try and see what new things God is telling us.

I would certainly not say that the system is perfect. At my first General Convention, I was partly amazed but also partly horrified at some of the ridiculous debates that wasted time, energy, and money. In addition, my experience at the World Council of Churches led me to an understanding that perhaps there is some value to the idea of consensus decision-making rather than straight up-or-down voting.

Now, the other piece of the Church’s history that this sermon failed to discuss are all of the councils that have been held throughout the centuries. In particular, the early Ecumenical Councils, recognized by all mainline Christian bodies as doctrinally unique and centrally important, were, in fact, voting assemblies of bishops from throughout early church. Texts such as the Nicene Creed (which, strangely, we did not say during the Eucharist — perhaps there was no room to fit it in after the lengthly sermon) were created out of these debates and discussions which, in fact, were fairly politically motivated. For example, the Roman emperor Constantine called the Council of Nicea in 314 C.E. in order to calm down the fighting factions in the Church of his day, but the main benefit that he was hoping for was political stability throughout the empire.

This idea of democratically-based doctrinal decision-making is not new at all, but, in many ways, forms the basis for the entire Christian theological tradition and points to the idea of continuing revelation — that God is still speaking to us today.

On Sunday I had the opportunity to worship at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida. I was there in part to reconnect with an old friend of our family whose son was a close friend of mine in elementary school. She is currently priest-in-charge at the parish, and although I had not seen her in fifteen years, we had a very nice visit and shared our stories. The service was what I would call ‘relaxed Anglo-Catholic’ worship, by which I mean that many catholic elements were present, but not in a particularly focused or directive way. The worship space was fairly modern, but done in a clean, simple way that made one feel very welcome in the sanctuary.

On the other hand, one place where I did not feel particularly welcome was in the coffee hour after the service. I walked around, looking somewhat ‘new’, for about fifteen minutes before anyone said anything to me. Now, I should make a brief confession here. During the service, newcomers and visitors were invited to take a ‘newcomers’ bag. I chose not to do that, and so did not mark myself out obviously as someone who should be officially ‘talked to’. With that said, though, I was surprised that nobody in coffee hour seemed to notice me in the least. Now, I am fairly self-sufficient, and not particularly bothered about introducing myself to people, but I decided in this case to see what would happen if I just sort of hung around looking lost. Eventually, a very nice man did come up to me and ask if I wanted a newcomers bag, and when I explained that I was just visiting for the day, we had a pleasant, although brief, conversation.*

This issue being welcoming is something that I wish to write about for a bit. I think that we are called to welcome each other in Christ, for example in Paul’s letter to the Romans, chapter fifteen, verse seven:

Welcome one another, therefore, just as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God.

This can be our ideal, but what does it mean in practice? Simply put, our churches should be welcoming to all, especially to strangers.

Now, I am certainly aware that, for many people, even for those with the best best intentions at heart, it can be very difficult to actually make that initial move. For example, you might be worried about not knowing if the person you want to talk to is actually ‘new’ or is in fact someone who has been at the parish for some time that you have simply don’t know! Or, perhaps you are afraid that by saying something, you might get dragged into a long and involved conversation with someone who needs to tell their story. Perhaps you simply aren’t very extroverted and can’t bring yourself to talk to a complete stranger. All of these reasons are perfectly valid in my opinion, and there is nothing wrong with feeling that way.

Despite them, though, we still have that biblical instruction to welcome one another. How can we make this process easier so that people don’t get left behind and never come back to visit again? One suggestion that I made at St. Mark’s was based on the fact that they had several tables in the middle of their parish hall at coffee hour. There were a few people at each whilst I was wandering around the room, and I suggested that one easy way to get around the difficulty in being welcoming was to simply invite someone to sit down at your table. There is no implication in that statement that they are a ‘new’ person or an ‘old’ person, and in either case, you have opened the door for them to introduce themselves.

This just one suggestion, and I’m not going to go on at length about others, but being welcoming in our churches is ever more important at the current time. We face a secular culture that perceives Christians as an exclusivist group of people who have no interest or desire in encountering anyone other than ourselves. In order to work towards changing that perception, I believe that we must take the first step of being more welcoming to the people who actually walk in our doors. It is not easy for anyone, but it is part of our calling in Christ.

* I should add that when I pointed out this lack of welcome to some of the clergy and vestry members at St. Mark’s, they were very welcoming of my comments, and really gave some serious thought to ways to improve this part of their parish life.

I have been in Miami, Florida this week with my job, conducting a planning study for a school here. Tonight, I attended a Requiem Mass for the Feast of All Souls’ at St. Thomas Episcopal Parish in Coral Gables, a neighborhood in Miami. It was a particularly interesting service, not because the music, Fauré’s Requiem, was splendidly sung (it was), or because the liturgy was beautifully Anglo-Catholic (it was), but because the congregation consisted of ten people. In his sermon, the rector mentioned that people had been asking him why they do this service every year (I got the impression that tonight’s attendance is not unusual), and his answer was refreshing and hopeful. He said:

This church tonight is not empty. It is packed; there is not an empty seat. Tonight’s service is about worship, and we are joined here in our worship by that great cloud of witnesses who have gone ahead of us into the Kingdom of God. This church tonight is packed — standing room only.*

I think that he is absolutely right, and certainly I experienced plenty of empty churches during the time that I was in England. In fact, I remember several occasions during Evensong at my college in Cambridge where I was the only member of the congregation! (I do have to say that it did rather feel like I had my own private chapel and chapel choir singing Evensong just for me, which was kind of nice.)

I learned a very important lesson during those services which is that the worship of God goes on everywhere and at all times. Whenever we worship, even if it is reading the daily office alone in the privacy of our own room, we are partaking of, and joining in with, the worship of the saints that goes on without end in heaven. In the words of one of the hymns that we sang this evening:

They stand, those halls of Zion,
Conjubilant with song,
And bright with many an angel
And all the martyr throng.
And they who, with their Leader,
Have conquered in the fight,
Forever and forever
Are clad in robes of white.**

The church is indeed never empty. Even when it looks full with those whom we can see, it is packed even more fully with our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ who worship at the foot of the throne of God and of the Lamb.

* My apologies to Father Tobin for paraphrasing his excellent sermon.

** From ‘Jerusalem the Golden’. I have taken the liberty of using the original translation by J.M. Neale, rather than the one in the Episcopal Hymnal 1982, mostly because I really like the word conjubilant.