And with thy Spirit

The substitute priest, so the story goes, was leading the service in an unfamiliar church.  The microphone didn’t seem to be working right, so he paused, looked down toward the contraption and asked, "Is this thing on?"

Hearing no response, he fiddled with the buttons, finally shouting, "Something is wrong with this mic!" In unison, the congregation replies: "And also with you!"

The joke, of course, is based on a truism that regular Sunday worshipers will know well.  If the priest turns to say something to you and you’re not quite sure how to answer, the right response is usually “and also with you”--or maybe, at Saint Francis, “and with thy spirit.”

The 'least worst explanation'

“He will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine. St. John 16:14-15”

In the first year of seminary, my classmates and I were sent out a few Sundays to preach in local congregations.  I drew the short straw, and was assigned to a Family Service in a rural Cotswolds village on Trinity Sunday.  The assignment was to say something orthodox and meaningful in about five minutes, and the core audience was a dozen elementary school children.  Well, I mustered my full energies, and most of what I was learning in my class on the church fathers, and put together a plan, which involved a circle dance and some half-digested fifth century Greek theology. 

I was feeling rather confident about my impending oration, and on the Saturday before Trinity Sunday, over breakfast after Mass, I announced to the congregation at Pusey House Chapel that I’d happened upon a way to explain the Trinity to kids.  Father Philip frowned over his teacup, looked me directly in the eyes and said bluntly: “If you think you have explained the Holy Trinity, young man, then clearly you’ve got it wrong.”

The Witness of Love

“Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another."  St. John 13:34-35

It is good to be back with you this morning.  As some of you will know, I have been in central Africa for the last few weeks.  I have spent a little of my time watching magnificent wild animals, and a little of it eating delicious wild animals, and a little of it explaining to bewildered Zambian taxi cab drivers how it can possibly be that Donald Trump is doing so well in the primaries.

But most of my time has been spent attending and writing stories about an important meeting of the worldwide Anglican Communion.  I was sent to Africa as a reporter for The Living Church, a magazine and website that serves the Episcopal Church, to report on the meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council that was being held in the Cathedral in Lusaka, Zambia.  If you want to read a few of my articles that summarized what was happening, you find them on The Living Church website. 

Applause for a Notion

From The Living Church, 8 Apr. 2016

LUSAKA, Zambia — The first day of the 16th Anglican Consultative Council focused on “establishing the ACC Community,” with discussion of the recent Primates’ Gathering, a dramatic reading of the Book of Ruth, and the joyful song of a local church choir.

“The cathedral and diocese have been praying for you; not just for this conference, but for unity in the church,” said the Very Rev. Charles Thomas, dean of the Cathedral of the Holy Cross in Lusaka. “The world is watching. The world is waiting.”

I believe in the Catholic Church

“Now there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven… and each one heard them speaking in his own language.  And they were amazed and wondered, saying, “How is it that...we hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God." Acts 2:5-6, 11

Theologian Brian McLaren wrote a noted book a few years ago with this very wordy subtitle: “Why I am a missional, evangelical, post/protestant, liberal/conservative, mystical/poetic, biblical, charismatic/contemplative, fundamentalist/calvinist, anabaptist/anglican, methodist, catholic, green, incarnational, depressed-yet-hopeful, emergent, unfinished Christian.”[1]  He’s not schizophrenic, I think.  And I don’t think that he had a particularly checkered history of joining different churches.  He was just trying to make a point about how the truth about God and Christ often transcends the divisions and labels we like to use.  I think he could have saved plenty of ink if he had just titled his book, “why I am a Catholic Christian.” 

If he had used that subtitle, though, plenty of people would have misunderstood him.  They would have expected chapters on the pope and prayer to the saints and purgatory and all sorts of other things that he wasn’t prepared to discuss in his book.  In the minds of many people, Catholic means only one branch of the church, the branch more properly called “The Holy Roman Church.” 

I believe in One Church

Jesus said, "I do not pray for these only, but also for those who believe in me through their word, that they may all be one; even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that thou hast sent me.” John 17:20-21

I am grateful that so many of you have gathered today to listen and reflect and pray about this theme of being Christ’s Church, “One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic.”  Lent is a traditional time for returning to the basic teachings of our faith.  Since the early Church, it has been a time of catechesis: instruction and training of candidates preparing for Baptism at the great feast of Easter.  Most of us were baptized long ago, but those statements of faith we professed or that were professed for us at our Baptisms still define the life we live through Jesus Christ.  The Creeds tell the story of the God whom we love, and owning them for ourselves is part of that deep loyalty that we should have for God who has blessed us so richly. 

This Lent we will be focusing on one phrase from the Nicene Creed, that creed we have said so many times, Sunday after Sunday at the Eucharist: “We believe in one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church.”  The phrase has been with us for a very long time, since 381, when it was added to the original creed of Nicaea by a major church council at Constantinople.  This phrase is an ancient one, rooted, as we will see, in the even older descriptions from Scripture of the church and its relationship to Jesus. 

Ponder: "the binding is love"

"All of us here need a body that is mutually supportive, that loves one another, that stoops to lift the fallen and kneels to bind the wounds of the injured. Without each other we are deeply weakened, because we have a mission that is only sustainable when we conform to the image of Christ, which is first to love one another. The idea is often put forward that truth and unity are in conflict, or in tension. That is not true. Disunity presents to the world an untrue image of Jesus Christ. Lack of truth corrodes and destroys unity. They are bound together, but the binding is love. In a world of war, of rapid communications, of instant hearing and misunderstanding where the response is only hatred and separation, the Holy Spirit whose creative and sustaining gifting of the church is done in diversity, demands that diversity of history, culture, gift, vision be expressed in a unity of love. That is what a Spirit filled church looks like."

Archbishop Justin Welby, Archbishop's Address to the Primates' Meeting, 11 Jan. 2016.

For Meditation: Unity is Not Achieved Without Mutual Sacrifice

"The agreement forged required mutual submission to the conscience of the other within the mixed-economy of the Jewish-Gentile church. Jewish Christians had to trust that the Gentiles were living according to the standards of the community in which they were inaugurated by baptism, and they had to forego their strict standards of absolute assurance regarding kosher purity. Gentiles, on the other hand, had to forego a freedom that was available in Christ, but was not conducive to united fellowship. Paul’s command that Spirit-filled members of a mixed-economy church would “submit to one another out of reverence for Christ” (Eph. 5:21) served as an ongoing reminder that ecclesial unity is not achieved without mutual sacrifice.
Paul Wheatley, Boundaries, Blessings and Hope for the Future.

"In His Glory"--Sermon for Easter 7

“All mine are thine, and thine are mine, and I am glorified in them.”  St. John 17:10

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

“She was in her glory today.”  That’s what my father would say when he was describing my grandmother at a family reunion, carrying out the groaning platters, a baby cradled in one arm, beaming for all the world to see.  It’s how he described my brother that time the bases were loaded and he sent the ball over the left field wall.  I remember him teasing my mother, returning home from a day shopping with her friends.  There were a few more bags in the back seat than he had been expecting, and that’s what he said—“well, I can see you were in your glory today.”   I think it’s a rather old-fashioned expression these days, but we still know what it means.

To be one’s glory means to feel deep happiness, a sense of fulfillment.  We are in our glory when we are doing that thing we are truly made to do, when our distinctive talents are put to use, and others respond to us with respect and admiration.  We smile when we are in our glory.  A kind of light seems to shine from our faces.