The
Church's ID
One
might call it a tragic necessity that a religion must organize.
But there is no possibility that any
religion may live, without
organization. Inevitably it has something to say as to
its identity and its
tenets. It needs to know who are its adherents, and who
are not. Whoever
says he does
not believe in organized religion probably has many
justified criticisms of the ones he knows; but he will not likely find
one that is not organized.
The Episcopal Church believes a Church is fully catholic if it has the Bible,
Creeds, Sacraments, and the Apostolic Ministry of bishops,
priests, and deacons. But the Episcopal Church is
also protestant, in that
it
recognizes virtually all other Christian bodies, and welcomes all baptized
Christians to its celebrations of the Holy Eucharist. E.g., I would
never want to give up any of the four features mentioned above, and
known as the Lambeth Quadrilateral. But I see them not as absolutes that
exclude from fellowship with God anyone who does not accept them;
but rather as guidelines of indispensable value, which the whole Church
needs in all its branches.
Neither the Anglican Communion nor
the Eastern Orthodox Churches believe the
Roman Papacy was a part of
the original Catholicism of the Church. The Episcopal
Church in the
USA further sees, as the rest of its self-definition, that, while it is
self-governing, it is vital to
remain in full communion with the See of Canterbury in England. I think probably
all the Churches of the
Anglican Communion
are founding members of the World Council of
Churches.
The Archbishop of Canterbury was the presiding officer when
the WCC was
founded in 1948. When the present Archbishop of
Canterbury
visited the WCC headquarters at Geneva in late 1992, he
said he felt he had just come home.
From
the beginning, the Church had Apostolic leadership; and celebrated the Last
Supper, the Eucharist. The Apostles' Creed took
form
a couple of centuries later. Out of a plethora of gospels, letters, and
apocalypses
(literature about the end of the world), the final selection of
New
Testament literature was settled just before 400 AD. Likewise the Nicene Creed
was formulated in the 4th century. These decisions were forced
upon the Church by challenges from within and without.
So
the full Catholic substance (Bible, creeds, sacraments, ministry)
belongs in the Church; and we believe the Book of Common
Prayer expresses them faithfully. And also
the Protestant spirit belongs in the Church, ever bringing its criticism
upon absolute claims, exclusive
teachings,
narrow doctrines, rigid, moralistic judgments, and
complacency,
all of which produce the hypocrisies that Jesus denounced.
Eschatology
This
5-cylinder word comes from a Greek word, eschaton,
which
means
the END. Not the sense of the final finish; but in the sense of the
completion,
the final fulfillment. The Christian Faith does not believe
that
history will ever reach perfection. We do not see the culmination-of-it-all
occurring within time and space. As long as human life on this
planet
continues, there will be problems. The "In Spite Of section
indicates
that every effort to make life better for somebody else is well
worth
the trying, whether it succeeds or fails. This is a word of comfort
to
every parent and counselor, to every president, general, CEO, and
demonstrator.
What
about the end result? The Christian Faith declares that God
has given us a glimpse:
It
Is Great, Beyond All Imagining!!!
This
is not a promise for selfish persons. The Christian
Universalists believe that—in the last
analysis—God overcomes
everybody's shortcomings, and brings absolutely everybody
into His Heaven. Most of us do not see how this can be, without emptying the
seriousness out of Jesus' teachings and out of ethical responsibility in
general.
Is the meaning of Judgment finally dissolved? Tillich suggests
the
fate of those who persist in resisting God (resisting Church
membership
may not mean resisting God) is nonbeing. Hell means to be
out of the
picture when all is said and done. I find this acceptable, though difficult.
Could we really say, "Nothing matters"? My own
feeling about the Last Judgment parable (Matthew 25 at the end) is not
that
if you ever once failed to offer food for the hungry, you are damned;
but
that if ever the worst of persons did some sort of caring act oven
once,
maybe that is remembered in heaven, and makes all the difference.
We
had better leave that to God! Our assurance is that every one of us is important
to God. (Remember now what was said above regarding
symbolic language.) He calls us each by name,
and He is not about to let us go. Everything that is meaningful to us in life is
secure. It is not going
to be lost. It will rather be fulfilled. In the hands of this God
Who is really God, we cannot lose. We can't imagine what it means, but it
remains true that "eye has not seen, ear has not heard, neither has it
entered
into the human heart what God has in store for those who love
Him".
We
should note that, at the end of his famous chapter (1
Corinthians
15) on the meaning of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, Paul
winds
up with the exclamation that THEREFORE, we can carry on with our lives and our
work, in the victorious confidence that "our work is not
in
vain". Now that is something! We are saved from the dreaded agony
of
despair. Indeed, says Paul, "we are more than conquerors!" (See the
closing
verses of Romans 8 for the finest expression of the Christian
message.)
Our God is such a wonderful,
wonderful God! He loves you, with everlasting love. He calls you by name. He will
never abandon you. You and I are His prodigal children. But He is Our Father,
longing, waiting for us, rejoicing when we
first come into sight, on our way Home.
Epilogue
How
do writers of books finally stop and say, "That's it"?
The
Virgin Mary holds a prominent, sometimes predominant place in popular piety.
Maybe I have missed something. Mary was doubtless a
good and pious Jew. No doubt (in my mind) she
was impregnated by her
husband, Joseph, after their marriage, giving birth to
Jesus, the first of at
least
seven children. His brief career was obviously puzzling to her,
probably
frightening. He said his true followers were his real family, not
his
blood relations. He denied that Mary was blessed just because she
was his
mother. I want to believe that she did find salvation through
him,
and became a member of the Church. A younger brother, James,
did,
becoming the bishop of Jerusalem - and yet James never quite "got
it."
The
whole Bible shows us that persons whom the world, and/or
they themselves, consider to be
important are usually a disappointment
to God; and that the ultimate objectives of the Kingdom of God in
history
are best served by men and women who in their obscurity grow
wheat,
study birds, teach kids, advance technology, entertain, buy and
sell,
write letters, fly planes, police cities... with gratitude to God and respect
for people.
The most dangerous people in the world, the kind who wanted Jesus
dead, are those good people who are so fanatically
committed to what is
true and right (as they see it) that they regard
themselves
as the defenders of all that is holy. They are quick to call any agent of
change, like Jesus or those in any age who think following him
means calling for change, an agent of Satan. They soon take action, and
craftily
carry the crowds. They are called right-wing and conservative,
though
they commonly despise conservationists. Church members of
this
leaning make idols of Prayer Books and moral laws and traditions.
But
Jesus and the prophets represent the cutting edge of change. How can a genuine
Christian give unqualified support to any status quo, as,
though this were already the Kingdom? How can a genuine Christian
avoid
such concerns as the present world dubs "left-wing" or
"liberal"?
Everybody
makes value-judgments. Kindness is right; cruelty is
wrong. But why so? What about Islam's practice of
cutting off a thief’s
hand? Every value-judgment implies a
presupposition, a norm which is
assumed to be beyond question. If B is better
than C, presumably that is
because it is closer to A. Then what is A? 'A person
should know, when pressed, someone may reply, "Well, that's what I
think." This is a weak
and
untenable position. It also, I believe, is the weakness of the
Unitarian
position (I admire their values, but by what criterion do they
recognize
truth?). For adherents of any religion, the ethical criterion is
given
in the revelatory event. We deplore racial slurs, harassment, and
prejudice
because this violates the Spirit of Jesus as the Christ. That
Spirit
is the Spirit that is Holy, so we believe. As Christians, we know
where
we stand is to our ultimate criterion: Jesus the Christ.
Living amongst
the ambiguities of history, we should be clearly conscious of
this
criterion; and we should guard against the idolatrous temptation of identifying
our favored position on issues (like birth control, pacifism,
homosexuality)
as inherent within the criterion itself, and hence absolute
and
decisive. Unless we are pretentious, we must acknowledge a certain
embarrassment
in deciding. Maybe there are no "Christian" positions
that
are absolute for all times and circumstances. My Church held one
on
divorce; and had to abandon it. So it is becoming to us to assert our
positions
as to what is right with just a touch of tentativeness, at least
before
God. But then we must dare to act, bearing the responsibility and
the
risk.
I
entered seminary believing, like many green converts, that I knew
Jesus better than the "organized
Church" did. My second conversion
(completing the distorted first one) left me
far humbler, my
perfectionism
gone, and wishing to belong to a Church that knew it
knew Jesus better than I did, though that meant it also had to be open
for new truth.
I have been very
grateful for the Episcopal Church, with its
rich, almost unique, melding of the catholic and Protestant traditions,
its deep sense of history, its music, and its ecumenical outreach. Its
fellowship
embraces a vast variety of viewpoints. Its tradition is so rich, probably no one
person and no one parish ever experiences or expresses
the
fullness of it. It is only fitting and tolerable that our structure gives
voice
and power to all geographical parts of the Church, and to the laity,
to
the parish priests and to the bishops.
Of course, nothing is perfect this
side
of Heaven.
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