Counter-Reformation

We think, and rightly so, that we have a lot to teach our young people. But just as often, as our wonderful St. John’s youth leaders will tell you, the wisdom flows the other way around.

The photo shows eight-year-old Sierra Schwarz at a recent meeting of the St. John’s Parish Council, on which her mother, Bishop’s Committee member Erin Schwarz, serves. Sierra just happened to be reading a biography of Elizabeth the Great, founder of the Anglican Church and royal protector of the Book of Common Prayer, which unites Episcopalians to this day.

In a just few years, Sierra will be eligible for youth group – whose middle and high schoolers recently gave me a lesson of their own in Anglican theology.

For a couple of years, I’ve experimented with a deconstructed Holy Eucharist service that puts enormous emphasis on congregational participation. I first used it when Thom’s, Orange County’s so-called emergent community, worshiped at St. John’s. For the 2013-14 year, I adapted it for our monthly Youth Eucharist services.

If you listen carefully to the Eucharistic prayer on Wednesday, Saturday, or Sunday, you’ll hear the whole history of human experience. The wording varies from rite to rite, but the story’s always the same. God’s creation began in unity and love and fell into disunity and sin, to be called back to oneness in Christ.

During my deconstructed service – you might have called it a messy mass -- I closed Elizabeth’s prayer book and invited worshipers to retell the creation story in their own words. They took turns elevating the bread and wine, and we said the prayer of consecration together. By your Holy Spirit, make this bread and wine into your body and blood. (Don’t worry. I had a bishop’s permission!)

I thought that by stepping back from the familiar liturgy and celebrant’s role, I was giving people a renewed sense of ownership and individual involvement in a powerful sacrament that Jesus Christ gave not to the church but to the whole people of God. Hoping to attract a younger generation of skeptical seekers, many churches are experimenting with this kind of liturgical democratization, giving congregations a larger voice in worship, deemphasizing the ordained orders, and setting aside the old prayers and music.

But as it turns out, my experiment wasn’t that popular with the new generation at St. John’s. During their postmortem meeting at the beginning of the summer, our young people said they wanted the old service back.

Don’t get me wrong: Before last year’s experiment, Youth Euch was hardly the drill from Sunday morning. Using music and other means, I did my best each month to vary the first part of the service, the Ministry of the Word, when we hear scripture, share a homily, and pray for our needs and those of others.

But when it comes to the second half, the young people missed the solemnity, piety, and predictability of the prayer book mass, the words we all know and the traditional roles we play. Whatever we’ve experienced in the course of our day, whatever sadness or joy, we come together and bind ourselves to Christ and one another just as we have for 2,000 years. The Lord be with you. And also with you.

Patti Peebles, our chaplain and youth leader, put it best when she gave me the kids’ verdict on my messy mass. “They’re Episcopalians,” she said.

Elizabeth would be proud. And so am I. 

This post first appeared in the Vaya Con Dios, the newsletter of St. John's Episcopal Church.

"Be The Bread"

Jesus saying he's the bread of life ("They who come to me never will hunger") always strikes me as a riddle. Do we ever feel permanently fed by our spiritual experiences? If we have to come back each week for a Eucharistic or doctrinal tuneup (and the church definitely hopes we will), where's the permanence in that? How's what God's serving any different from In-N-Out Burger? Fr. Tom Herbts and his brother Franciscans suggested one answer. In what St. Bonaventure called "the furnace of love," we become the bread and make of our lives and world what Fr. Tom called the very substance of heaven. My sermon for the 11th Sunday after Pentecost is here.

Massive Question

Those who think that anything goes in The Episcopal Church should read Mary Frances Schjonberg's coverage (supported by my Diocese of Los Angeles colleague, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist the Rev. Pat McCaughan) of the painstaking debate about open communion that took place at our recently concluded General Convention in Indianapolis.

According to our national church's canons [I. 17. 7], only baptized persons are eligible to receive the consecrated body and blood of Christ. Feeling that the canonical requirement might impede the movement of the Holy Spirit in a spiritual searcher's life, some priests and parishes invite everyone to come to the table, baptized or not.

No one checks congregants' baptism IDs at the altar rail. The question is whether priests err by failing to articulate the rule or by flying in the face of it.

In Indianapolis, the Rev. Anna Carmichael, rector of St. Mark's in Hood River, Oregon, was part of an unsuccessful effort to persuade General Convention to abandon the requirement altogether. Her reasoning, as Schjonberg and her colleagues reported:

“While I understand that as a priest I have taken a vow to uphold the rubrics of the prayer book, I feel that sometimes pastoral care and pastoral sensitivity are equally as important as our theology behind what we do,” she said, adding that the Episcopal Church is always striving to extend its welcome to all people “and I hope that at some point our welcome will include unbaptized at the communion rail.”

In the end, the convention preserved the requirement. It even turned aside a resolution containing this sentence: “We also acknowledge that in various local contexts there is the exercise of pastoral sensitivity with those who are not yet baptized.” Opponents of the wording argued that while priests always reserve the right to make pastoral judgment calls, being that explicit would have amounted to a proclamation of open communion. At the core of the debate is TEC's passion for baptism as the first and greatest sacrament, the irreducible outward sign of membership in Christ. Some fear diluting its power by eliminating it as a condition for participating in Holy Eucharist.

Yet I'm sure most priests have a story about someone who probably wouldn't have decided to be baptized without first being welcomed to the table. At St. John's, the wording in our Sunday bulletin (inspired by another LA Diocese colleague, the Very Rev. Canon Michael Bamberger; that's he above, celebrating mass for us pilgrims last month at Emmaus-Nicopolis in Israel) probably wouldn't pass muster with the canonical cops:

Episcopalians consider all baptized persons to be members of Christ's Church. Wherever you are on your journey of faith, you are invited to come to the Lord's table and receive the Lord Jesus Christ in the consecrated Bread (or Host) and Wine.

The first sentence is designed to do two things. Roman Catholics and members of other denominations often come to an Episcopal parish wondering if they're allowed to receive. We want to be sure to tell them yes. It also implies that membership has its altar privileges, while the second sentence creates ambiguity by implying that membership doesn't matter when it comes to Holy Communion. Folks have asked me about the ambiguity and ended up baptized, marked as Christ's own forever, as a result. The more traditional approach, of course, is to honor baptism by refusing Holy Eucharist to the unbaptized. That's the way my Roman Catholic wife and fellow St. John's minister, Kathy O'Connor, grew up.

Even though TEC doesn't require it, some families prefer to wait until their baptized children are old enough to understand the significance of Holy Eucharist. For such families at St. John's, Randall and Kristen Lanham offer wonderful early communion classes each spring, the Episcopal equivalent of the first communion process in Roman Catholic parishes.

If parents are willing, I and most priests will give communion to anyone old enough to exhibit the curiosity and a tooth or two. We figure that people are more likely to make a habit of church attendance if they can't remember a time when they weren't welcome at the Lord's table. And welcome is the operative word. In an era of mounting skepticism about the institutional church, it's unwise for any denomination or parish to fail to make hospitality a core value.

Besides, if we should stick slavishly to I. 17. 7 and try to keep the unbaptized from the communion rail, our Roman Catholic brothers and sisters may have done us one better. Many have had the experience of being told one has to be a baptized Roman Catholic to receive communion. God bless those priests, especially at funerals, who make a point of saying that all are welcome, even though by doing so they're violating Vatican rules. That's why I never ask for the sacrament in a Catholic church when there's a chance that the priest knows I'm not one of his own. Why force my brother either to deny me the body of Christ or violate canon law?

For whatever reason, in late June we St. John's pilgrims didn't have to display that kind of sensitivity during an early-morning mass in the grotto at the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. We stood a few steps from the traditional place of Jesus's birth as a Franciscan priest from Italy served us each Holy Communion. The photo at right above shows pilgrim Christian Kassoff being communicated.

The priest may have thought we were Roman. He may not have cared. But when I blogged about the experience, my friend Charles Frazee, a specialist in church history and his Roman Catholic church, wanted to be sure I understood that no Catholic priest is permitted to deny the sacrament to someone who seeks it, baptized Catholic or not, unless the person is known to be guilty of a grave sin (being Episcopalian isn't included). TEC doesn't have that kind of universal access stipulation in our canons. So, um, are we really stricter than the pope?

Unity And Alienation And Unity

If you go to a Roman Catholic church in Anaheim, but you're not a Roman Catholic, the priest might not want to serve you Holy Communion. While he's not allowed to refuse if you insist, it's technically against canon law. And yet on Saturday in Bethlehem, all we St. John's pilgrims, though most are Episcopalian, were communicated without any hesitation by an Italian priest during a solemn early-morning mass in the grotto associated with Christ's birth that is sheltered by the Church of the Nativity -- a moment of unity in Christ that felt, at least to me, every bit as powerful as the first Pentecost.

The church is one of three constructed in fourth-century Palestine under the direction of Helena, mother of Constantine the Great. You can still see her workers' beautiful mosaics preserved a meter or two beneath the church's modern floor. Today Roman Catholic and Greek and Armenian Orthodox Christians share its care and administration. It's generally in the news when people are shooting at each other or on Christmas. We St. John's pilgrims celebrated our Christmas early by singing "O Come All Ye Faithful" in the St. Joseph Chapel near the grotto, where pilgrim Damian had a contemplative moment.

Then thanks to our friend Iyad Qumri's peerless contacts, the Franciscans, Rome's traditional stewards in the Holy Land, invited us to attend mass with some pilgrims from Italy. The priest (was he visiting, or based here? I don't know. I didn't ask. This is the Middle East) celebrated in Italian, but the forms of the Holy Eucharist liturgy are familiar enough that we could follow along and say the responses in English. We weren't sure about the gospel reading until the priest said, "Non vi preoccupat (don't be worried)," when we realized we were hearing Jesus's teaching in Matthew 6 about the lilies of the field. Pilgrim Mike, whose fluency in Spanish gives him a good feel for Italian, could tell the first reading, which a nun proclaimed as pilgrims Alexendra and Brenna looked on, was from 2 Corinthians. So we all understood God's saving word, each in our own language. Did the priest know we weren't Catholic? Did he care? What would Benedict XVI think? I don't know. I didn't ask. This is the Middle East!

After the closing prayers, we each touched the star in the floor that stands for the Birth and Incarnation and creation's radical unity under God's perfect, evil-destroying love. This unforgettable moment of Christian unity happened in a town whose Christian population has dwindled to as little as 20% owing to falling birth rates, the second Palestinian intifada in 2000-04, and diminished economic opportunities. God's love may defy alienation, but the region's politics sometimes appear to defy God's love. Edward Tabash, an Arab Catholic merchant whose family have been Bethlehemites for centuries, told me that Israel's separation wall (shown here surrounding and cutting off a single Palestinian home) has devastated the local economy and driven thousands of Bethlehem's ablest, best-educated people to greener pastures, often abroad. So in one morning we experienced the chasm between what God wants and what we deliver. But that's okay, because after our meal in the grotto, we were invested with the power to move mountains and even walls.

Safekeeping

After a solemn service of Holy Eucharist on Maundy Thursday, when we remember the last supper, Jesus's commissioning his disciples to love one another, and his agony in the Garden of Gesthemane, some ministers strip the altar bare while others take what remains of the consecrated bread and wine to an altar of repose elsewhere in the church. This remnant is used for Holy Communion on Good Friday. Andy Guilford of St. John's Church took this photo early Friday morning during an all-night prayer vigil.

When Both Roads Lead Home

Steve Bruce, the facilitator of our St. John's Episcopal Church men's retreat this weekend, began by explaining the difference between decision and discernment. Do we want Chevy or Ford, blue or red, steak or fish? Decision. Move your parents into your house or assisted living? Move your family to another state to be closer to loved ones? Accept a promotion when you really love the job you have? These are choices ripe for discernment -- a process of finding the outcome that moves us closer to God and our neighbor, the choice that matches our estimation of what God wants for us.

The right answer can end up being different from what we thought we wanted, at least at first. As Steve described it to us 15 seekers gathered in a circle at a golf resort in suburban San Diego, discernment is different from making a moral choice because we're usually choosing not between right or wrong but between two goods. It's also different from the classic lone-wolf model of American male decision-making, because by definition we can't do discernment by ourselves. God's part of the conversation, of course, but so's the community. Discernment entails putting as much stock in how others see us and our dilemmas as we do ourselves.

AAs (who often are the most spiritually sophisticated among us, since a mature relationship with God has become a requisite of survival) understand this as a willingness to submit themselves to a higher power as well as to regular accountability in a group setting where questions and observations can be severe (if also, usually, loving). Asking for and accepting others' judgment and insights can be scary. It can also be freeing, once we release ourselves to the belief that God and the Holy Spirit have us and all things (even our anxieties, fears, illnesses, broken relationships, joblessness, bankruptcies) well in hand.

We had teaching and discussion sessions Friday night and Saturday morning and evening, and we'll share Holy Eucharist together Sunday morning before heading home. From this summary you may have discerned that Saturday afternoon was set aside for what used to appear on the schedule of overachieving secret napper Richard Nixon as "staff time." I asked a buddy in his 40s when he'd last had a weekend afternoon off. "You mean, just for me?" he said. "I think it was when I was in graduate school."

Meeting up again before dinner, we enjoyed comparing notes on our sabbath time. Four played golf. Others hiked, worked out, played guitar, read, watched football. Several mentioned naps. I bought a bottle of water and followed the magic blue dot on my phone up Penasquitos, through wafts of afternoon BBQing and past houses already ready for Halloween, to a dead-end street called Avenida Maria (guide me, Holy Mother!), where I found a gate leading into the Black Mountain Open Space Park. The hike up a steep, rocky trail through chaparral and fragrant sage liked to kill me. I hoped for an ocean view, but not quite. But I could smell the sea, as you almost always can in San Diego. On the ridge line, I captured this image of discernment -- a fork in the trail, lying before a man with time to kill. Two good choices, surely.

I took the path that led back down to Albertson's, where I bought a loaf of sourdough bread which, standing for the last time in our sacred circle tomorrow morning, we'll consecrate as Jesus Christ's body. Thinking of ourselves as having that authority, freedom, and unity, and resisting the prevailing worldly illusions of scarcity and constraint, may be the most daring discernment of all.

"Four Christs": Sermon For 12 Pentecost

Some of Jesus's followers fled when he said they'd have to eat his flesh and drink his blood to be saved. Perhaps they were terrified by the sheer intimacy of the suggestion. Talk about violating boundaries! And yet our God in Christ does seek an intimacy with us, in one way or another. Christians who participate in Holy Eucharist (aka communion or the mass) find meaning in the ultimate mystery of humankind joining with the divine, evangelical Christians in individual salvation, progressive Christians in accountability and interdependence among members of the body of Christ. If God has made a difference in our hearts, the precise details may not matter as much. Most of us probably borrow from all three. We St. John's pilgrims also encountered a fourth Jesus, the Jesus of history, in water lapping along the Sea of Galilee (where we celebrated Holy Eucharist ourselves one day; thanks to Andy Guilford for the photo), hillside homes in Nazareth, even shards of pottery that Kathy excavated at Sepphoris. However we find him, he takes delight. My Sunday sermon is here. Canny listeners will note the error about Solomon building the Second Temple. Can I still blame jet lag?

Worry Not About What You Are To Drink

The Washington Post reassures those coming to the altar rail in the midst of swine flu anxiety:

Clay Morris, the Episcopal Church USA's program officer for worship and spirituality, said research shows that the practice of sharing the common cup at Eucharist generally carries a very low risk of infection. But the practice of dipping the wafer, called intinction, may carry a higher risk since fingers are also often dipped into the wine.

One reason it's safe to sip is that the real presence, Episcopal Church-style, features real wine. The main reason: God won't permit it!

Christ Has Died

Celebrating Holy Eucharist on Maundy Thursday (which I had the blessing of doing twice this year, in the morning at St. John's School and in the evening with our church congregation) has exceptional poignancy. While every mass is a somewhat mysterious evocation of the Last Supper, according to the powerful symbolism of the church calendar, Holy Eucharist on the Thursday in Holy Week has additional profundity as an anticipation of the light going out of the world on Good Friday. Mass isn't said again until Easter celebrations begin Saturday evening. To say one yesterday for the L'Aquila earthquake's 205 victims, priests needed a dispensation from the Pope.

At St. John's, we consecrated enough bread and wine Thursday night to serve those who came for Good Friday services last night. Afterward, the Altar Guild destroyed what was left. We'll have Holy Eucharist tonight at the Easter Vigil, after 12 young people and adults have been baptized. But between now and then, there's not a single blessed wafer to be had in our church. I have a few in the car, in the kit I use for home and hospital visitations, but that's it.

We know tonight's going to come. The sun will set, the light will be carried into the church, we will proclaim the Resurrection, and Easter morning will dawn. Of course, we know. But according to the church, for a few hours, Christ has died and been put away, wrapped in linen in a borrowed tomb after being harassed and killed by an impromptu coalition of ambitious, misled, frightened, and venal people. Whether you count him as blessed savior or wise teacher, he was the best there was, and because of the flaws and crimes of people like us, he has gone. It does help us count our blessings (and examine our lives) a little more diligently.

Not Quite An Historic First

David Abromowitz is understandably moved that there was a Passover Seder meal at the White House this week. In fact, he says that there's been nothing like it before:

[A]s anyone who has participated in a Passover Seder (literally, "order") knows, it is an experience of a different kind, an ordered retelling of the passage from slavery to freedom unfolding through symbolic reminders of every individual's responsibility to carry forward the freedom we inherited from prior generations.

Of course, that's also a pretty good definition of the Christian mass, or Holy Eucharist, which has indeed been celebrated at the White House. But it was about time for a Seder meal as well.

So Much In Common

Faith Goldman, who attends St. John's with her beloved (and my godson), Harry Elliott, grew up watching her grandfather preside at her family's Passover Seder. He positioned a gold chalice on the table from which no one ever apparently drank, and yet by the end of the meal, it was always empty. Faith was a young woman before she realized that, when she and the other children had been sent outside to look for Elijah (whose return would presage the coming of the Messiah), grandpa would quickly gulp down the wine, like mom and dad consuming the goodies that kids leave out for Santa Claus.

Faith revealed these and other mysteries during an hour-long teaching for 35 of us tonight at St. John's. It's an apt subject for any Christian community. Jesus Christ was probably presiding at a Seder on the evening of his betrayal and arrest. The ancient ritual, always conducted at home rather than at temple or in a synagogue, has many correlations with Holy Eucharist (aka the mass) -- candles, ritual hand-washing, the common cup of wine, the breaking of bread. When the middle matzo is broken, wrapped in linen, and hidden until being brought out again for dessert, Christians naturally think of Jesus's broken body laid in the tomb until Easter. As Faith read the ancient prayers, just as her grandfather had year after year, we heard the source of other familiar themes in our worship -- creation, forgiveness, trust, blessing, deliverance, God's abundant love, and above all thanksgiving. So much in common, we people of faith. Thanks, Faith!