+Z’ev

Today’s assigned readings:

2 Chronicles 6:32-7:7, James 2:1-13, Mark 14:53-65

My brothers and sisters, do you with your acts of favoritism really believe in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ? …Have you not made distinctions among yourselves, and become judges with evil thoughts? …You do well if you really fulfill the royal law according to the scripture, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” But if you show partiality, you commit sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors. For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it.
James 2:1, 4, 8-10

James is telling us not to indulge in judging a book by its cover - but he goes further through the course of the reading. He urges us to “really fulfill the royal law according to the scripture, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’” Loving everyone should be easy if we don’t make “distinctions among yourselves”. Does he mean only among rich and poor? No: for he carries the discussion over into all parts of the law. He guides us away from becoming “judges with evil thoughts”

That phrase, “evil thoughts” is also translated “evil imaginations”. In Greek, the phrase is διαλογισμων μονερων dialogismon moneron. It refers specifically to the dialogue within your head - that internal coffee klatch you always have going on.

In the Eastern Orthodox tradition prayers at most every service ask God to defend us from “powers of the devil, and from vain thoughts and from evil imaginations”. While the earlier two are pretty clear, the last one - evil imaginations - is (for me) very applicable. It’s doubly appropriate as a lesson on the internet.

Scripture counsels us that we should not judge others. We are told “judge not lest ye be judged.” This not-judging part is the hardest for me… I catch myself doing it most all the time. On street corners (”UGH! She is a total mess…”) at the office (”OMG! Not him again!”) to Church (”Oops, they just made a major faux pas.”) I make judging folks my hobby and my life: like everything is some kind of beauty pageant and I’ve got a vacation in Rio to give away or something. One night in confession with the late Fr Victor Sokolov, I mentioned my consistent habiit of judging folks for things I only imagine them to have done to me. Father chuckled and said this is called “Evil Imaginations” and I think he gave it a term in Russian as well.

Even knowing I do it - and I can come up with a whole lot of reasons why I do it: insecurity, fear, shyness - even knowing I do, I have trouble stopping it. In a great big way, it’s pride, of course: I’m so much better than you. But I can disguise it as most anything.

I decide you don’t like me because of my _____. So I get angry with you. But you don’t even know what you did. Of course, my side of this hypothetical story sounds perfectly logical. Until you realize I’m imagining things - perhaps with some small, good reason, but most often not even then.

I begin to see, very slowly, the wisdom in treating myself as the most sinful and the cause of all the bad things I imagine. Especially if I imagine them, I am the cause.

In a totally parallel conversation, an old friend noted to me that my stress is energy sent out. It’s bound to manifest in exactly what I’m stressing over, even if that’s just something in my own imagination. Evil Imaginations, indeed.

If “Evil Imaginations” is the habit of imputing thoughts and motives to others and then judging them for those presumed reasons (or even if this is only part of the definition) then I am quite guilty of succumbing to E.I. over and over again.

When I see someone attractive or interesting that I’d like to get to know better but they refuse the overtures, I can make assumptions about why I was turned away. They think I’m ugly or not good enough! Then I react to those assumptions.

If you refuse a request I make I can make assumptions about why. Clearly, you’re to good to help me. Again, I can judge you based on these assumptions.

If you make a decision (as in politics or while driving on the highway) or if you cut in front of me at the supermarket, I can decide I know your whole personality based on that one point. I can like or dislike you based on that one point of fact or event. Especially if you’re someone whose life overlaps mine - I can make those judgements every time I see you.

I’ve cribbed parts of this post from two essays I wrote back in 2003, one whilst flying from San Francisco to North Carolina. In the middle of the essay a brief story develops. I’ve included it “as it happens” in the blockquotes that follow:

As I write, a person has sat next to me on this airplane. Based on my location (San Francisco) as well as my judgments of her person (comfortable shoes, short cropped hair, basically unisex clothing) I have decided almost before I realized it that she was a lesbian, a feminist, a liberal and most likely that she wouldn’t like me. So I pre-decided not to like her back.

I do it all the time. I have spent a lot of time amazed at how much of my life is based on “knowing” all about others in exactly the same manner and acting on what I “know”. This is an important tool of business, of advertising, of government. I am taught to do it - or subjected to it - at nearly every turn.

James and Paul counsel us to show no partiality among persons, neither rich nor poor. Yet I know who I’d rather party with. Peter teaches that God is no respecter of persons. In all these cases, the Greek word that is rendered as “person” indicates a mask or outward appearance such as one might “wear” when performing a role in a play.

God cares not what I look like, or even what I think I look like. God cares not what others think I look like or even what I think others think I look like. And God expects me to treat you that way too.

Each Human being is created in the Image of God. The outward aspect of race, gender, clothing, culture, accent, education, wealth, health, beauty, age, orientation, sex appeal, fame, etc… each one of these and all together or apart are to mean no more to me than should the color of your car or choice of web browser or housing exterior. And yes, I often judge people on their choice of web browser. Based on all of those things or the absence of them, or specific combinations, I assume I know you - or certainly I know enough about you to label you, box you up and set you on a shelf. But what do I miss when I do that?

The woman sitting next to me on the flight has just offered to share her almonds with me and has set the bag on the seat between us.

Communion is the quality of being. To be human - at all - is to be in communion: with God, with other human beings. To the extent that one is in communion one is being human. To be in communion with other human beings is to be - collectively - in the image of God, the Holy Trinity, the Perfect Communion of Persons. The only Full Communion is to be found in the Kingdom of God, the Church (not just one ecclesial community but the entire Church), the Body of Christ, a communion of human persons and God, growing in communion with each other in and through God’s action in each life. Every act of life should become a reflection of that Holy Communion which is, of course, prefigured and furthered in the Holy Eucharist - but must be expanded beyond that. Every act of human-to-human being can be an act conveying salvation or wholeness no matter how imperfect, no matter how far it happens from “the Creed” or dogmas of Christianity. Or it can be the reverse: every act of discord, of disharmony, of judgment, is an attempt to cut the Other off from the source of being - but also serves to cut me off - by limiting communion even if it happens right at the altar table between two who claim to be “devout”. (Think Constantinople 1054.)

So much of Internet Drama is the same - feuds on mailing lists and blog wars even my own internal dialogue about my relationship with my Boyfriend - who lives 800 miles away. One assumes a purpose or a tone or a meaning behind some words in text and then makes a leap of judgement based on that assumption of tone. I can judge you based not only on what I imagine to be your “bad” qualities, but also by what I imagine (or see) to be your “good” qualities and the ways I imagine I might make use of them - or that I imagine you might make use of them.

The thing is those things - good or bad - that I see and focus on become the only things I see until I am shaken out of it. I can just as easily focus on your African ancestry and so imagine that you hate me as I can focus on your Irish ancestry and so imagine that you and I are about to be best of friends. Either way, I have focused on something that is only the smallest physical part of you and used my evil imaginations to fill in the rest of you. If I choose to focus on how unattractive I find you I may never know that you love me. If I choose to focus on how attractive I find you - if I lust after your body - I may never notice anything else. If I know how you voted in recent elections, I might instantly love or loathe you.

Every action denying communion is a denial not only of the image of God present in you, but also of that same image in me. The action denies the Image I carry of an all loving God just as surly as it tears us apart and bonds me only to myself, surrounded by mirrors and walls. Without entering into communion with you I can not enter into communion at all.

Father Victor said that Evil Imagination rises when Jesus is not the center of my life. When I’m attempting to be “in charge”, trying to run it all, things vie for my attention and I am swamped with demands. I am called to make judgment calls on everything and everyone. My internal dialogue is all with myself. (This is the definition of Hell.) Evil Imaginations becomes a logical defense in this mode. Pre-make some choices. When Jesus is the center I am no longer in charge. My internal dialogue is with Jesus. It becomes an act of prayer. The choices are not mine to make. The other things are not even visible any more. They are kept in their proper place and order. When I am focused on Jesus instead of others I no longer see those things which divide us. When focused on Jesus one can see the difference between Him and oneself is so very great that even the greatest difference between any two humans becomes as naught.

When I focus on us, I can see what divides us. When I focus on Christ I can see what unites us - and our unity in Christ is so much greater than any merely human division. When I focus on Christ I can “love another as myself”.

When the world is left in my hands, I am left to complain about things that don’t go my way - that includes you, if I am honest. But I need to note there are two “levels” of judgment going on here: I can judge you for things you do or things you are. This is a sin because I thereby usurp God prerogative. Or, I can deny that you even exist: you become a statistic, a racial stereotype, a highly pixilated yet flat image of a human being. Either way you are worthless to me: but at least the former way leaves you with the ability to choose another way. With my Evil Imagination in full swing, nothing you do matters: you do not exist.

Much love,

Huw

Today’s assigned readings:

AM Exodus 24:12-18, 2 Corinthians 4:1-6

PM Daniel 7:9-10,13-14, John 12:27-36a

As I watched in the night visions, I saw one like a human being coming with the clouds of heaven. And he came to the Ancient One and was presented before him. To him was given dominion and glory and kingship, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that shall not pass away, and his kingship is one that shall never be destroyed.
Daniel 7:13-14

In preaching this feast, it is a half-century tradition to mention the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the only atomic bombs to be used in war… There are peace vigils, and anti-war protests that are traditional on this day. It is right, as well, that one of the great sins of humanity against humanity be noted every year.

But look at the readings for today: a human being - the traditional text says “Son of Man” - and it means “human being” in the same way that CS Lewis used “Son of Adam” and “Daughter of Eve”. This human being is presented to God, “The Ancient One”, and to him is given all “dominion and glory and kingship”. Generally, this is seen as Jesus - I’m down with that - and generally this feast of the Transfiguration is seen as the revelation of his dominion and glory and kingship. I’m down with that.

But God gives that kingship to a human being - a son of Adam. It’s the restoration of humanity’s rightful place in the created order. Like it or not, as stewards of the Created Order, we have a lot of responsibility.

And we fail in that responsibility over and over - just as certainly as the stories in Genesis. We have a whole history and mythology around those failures. Wars, sins, tragedies and disasters, stretching from “the fall of man” in Genesis, through the fall of Troy, to the Fall of Constantinople and Rome, and right on up to the fall of the Bridge in Minneapolis last week. But even though the problem is ours we keep asking “Where was God” in this? We indulge this through over and over.

I blogged on Saturday about one pastor whose entire comment on God’s love for us was (in my thought) totally blown out of the water by allowing his daughter, Talitha to think God let the bridge fall:

Talitha said, “Maybe he let it fall because he wanted all the people of Minneapolis to fear him.” “Yes, Talitha,” I said, “I am sure that is one of the reasons God let the bridge fall.”

But we don’t live in a world where God “turns on” earthquakes or “turns off” the support for bridges. We live in a world that we have screwed up. The Transfiguration shows us humanity as God intended us to be: conversing with people long “dead and gone” because they are not gone at all; glowing with the light of God with whom we are in full communion at all time; living on mountain tops. Instead we have a world of valleys and lost communion: without God and without each other we walk alone through the world.

At an interfaith prayer service in Minneapolis, yesterday, Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty sayid, “It takes a lot of faith to live in a world where tragedy, accidents, illness and injustice do their worst to the people we love,” he said. “We’re here to affirm in prayer our hope in comfort for the grieving, health for the injured and repair and recovery for our city and state.”

Pawlenty has hit on the truth: it takes a lot of faith…

It’s really easy to get distracted. In fact, all of the stories today are about ways God gets someone’s undivided attention - usually by getting them up above everyone else: on a mountain or in a vision. (The reading from Romans is, in fact, about people whose attention God can’t get.) But I noted yesterday that the only way to really get in touch with God is in the sound of silence. Why does God condescend to what Ed Sullivan would call a “rilly big shoe”?

And is it not the Really Big Show that moves us all to doubt the whole thing when the Really Big Tragedy takes over?

Here’s one of my favourite scenes in The Greatest Story Ever Told: when Jesus (Max Von Sydow) raises Lazarus. After some really occult hand gestures on the part of the actor, the camera pans back and you see Jesus standing, small and white, at the foot of a really huge cliff face. “Lazarus! Come!… Foooorthhhhh!…. And the voices echoes around the cliff and there is thunder! and lightening! And Angelic SINGING!!!!!! And then everyone prostrates as the Lord of Life calls his friend from beyond the grave.

But in the Gospel? Jesus cries. Opens the tomb. Prays and calls. Lazarus come out.

Is that enough for us to hold on to, or do we need thunder and lighting and angelic singing and prostrations? And if that’s what it takes to get us to imagine God acting, how scary must it be when God “lets” a bridge fall?

We built the bridge. We did the science. We made the cement and the steal and the bolts and the struts. God made it fall down?

What a petty deity we have made up in our head. Why?

In the stories that are true, even if not historical, God set us up in charge of everything - and we messed up. We tried blaming each other for messing up, and a snake for making us mess up, and then God for making the snake that made someone else mess up. Then God found a way to bring us back, to set everything right.

We just keep messing up.

There seems to have been between 5 and 13 dead. A bridge collapses. 800+ cars bumper to bumper in the middle of rush hour. 8 lanes of traffic including a school bus filled with kids.

A possible max total of only 13 dead?

Glory to God for all things!

And to hear the stories of people helping people, of ordinary folks and rescue workers leaping to save others… actions that bring “comfort for the grieving, health for the injured” we can see the feast of the Transfiguration foreshadowed. God who is love, living in us, present to each other… full communion.

The Transfiguration reminds us of what we’re supposed to be, shining glorious and in full communion with God and all of life. It’s painful to see how far we’ve fallen. But we need to know we did it ourselves else we’re doomed only to keep going down.

Today’s assigned readings:

2 Samuel 6:12-23, Romans 4:7-12, John 1:43-51

Eve of the Transfiguration:
1 Kings 19:1-12, 2 Corinthians 3:1-9,18

Jesus answered, “Do you believe because I told you that I saw you under the fig tree? You will see greater things than these.” And he said to him, “Very truly, I tell you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.”
John 1:50-51

He said, “Go out and stand on the mountain before the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.” Now there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of sheer silence.
1 Kings 19:11-12

First, a comment on the NRSV translation of 1 Kings 19:12 - we’re used to reading “still small voice” or some version thereof. The Hebrew could mean “the silent voice” or “the voice of silence”. In the Hebrew text one can be reminded of Simon and Garfunkle’s The Sound of Silence and I fear that, perhaps, that’s where the translation committee found its phrase. They are not alone, however, in the lack of a voice: the (very conservative) Douay-Rheimes version says “a whistling of a gentle air” and the LXX says “sound of a gentle breeze”. It appears it is the KJV (et al) who add the voice in…

A bridge fell down this week. Many are dead in Iraq, many are dead elsewhere around the world. We look for the hand of God to explain these actions: and we ask, “How Could You Allow This!?!?!?”

And there is nothing in response but the sound of silence.

I love emotional religious experiences: dancing, laughing, weeping (my favourite!). I’m swept up into awe-filled wonder during Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor - especially played in a large, acoustic space. I love to get swept up into mob scenes, like Harry Potter (major disappointment) or the Triumphant Parades that followed the Mets’ World Series victory in the 1980s. I love loud music and the emotions it can stir. I love making out to thumping base techno. I love to weep to the final movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.

But where I honestly turn to God, there is nothing in response but the sound of silence.

Jesus is amused at Nathan’s response to his (Jesus’) powers of soul discernment - and Jesus promises some fabulous visions. And the disciples saw the dead rising, the blind sighted, the deaf hearing and the lame leaping.

But in the end, there was only the sound of silence… and corpse on a cross… an empty tomb.

One of the things hardest for me to do is sit in Zen silence: my mind fights, demanding to say something. But in the end, God is in the Sound of Silence and when I can still my mind - chanting a mantra like the Jesus prayer, the Ave Maria or just by breathing - that still mind becomes tuned to God. It’s not the still small voice - as one might think of a child’s prayer - but rather the sound of silence.

So much of our religions are dedicated to words. I love words! I have prayer books and chant tapes from several different traditions. I’ve used prayer books from Judaism, Catholicism, Orthodoxy, Methodism and Anglicanism. I’ve written a Wiccan prayer book. I invented a series of magical invocations based on the works of Aleister Crowley. The Gnostic Order in which I was ordained is perhaps the most-attuned to words - its liturgies being as verbose as a book by J. K. Rowling. Perhaps most evidently, I love words so much that I have two blogs. Icons are referred to as “written”; a simple mistranslation of the Greek word for “paint”, but it highlights our attachment to words. There are lectures and talks, podcasts, internet radio. You’ll even hear modern teachers insist that the Jesus prayer or the Ave Maria isn’t a “mantra” but “really a prayer” as if there were a difference. We are so hung up on words that we can miss the Word: Jesus, himself, love incarnate. He is the only thing said in the sound of silence.

We might see great things, but we will hear nothing.

Much love,

Huw

Today’s assigned readings:

AM: Zephaniah 3:14-20, Mark 15:37-16:7
PM: Exodus 15:19-21, 2 Corinthians 1:3-7

Sing aloud, O daughter Zion; shout, O Israel! Rejoice and exult with all your heart, O daughter Jerusalem! The Lord has taken away the judgments against you, he has turned away your enemies.
Zephaniah 3:14-15

First, some liturgical geekery: In the “high church” understanding, today’s feast is transferred from yesterday because Sundays, as feasts of the Resurrection, get priority seating in the Anglican tradition. A couple of possible exceptions: if you’re a church named for a given saint or has a special devotion, then the feast doesn’t get transferred.

But I know a number of places that define “special devotion” in such a way to transfer this feast (or others) “backwards” to the closest Sunday - so that a given feast always gets the sort of importance that Sunday always brings. To my mind this makes more sense than letting Sunday “bump” a feast because most communities don’t have the time to pull off a huge party in the middle of the week. Some view this as decline in devotion. Bah.

Now… onwards.

Most Mary Magdalen sermons today start out with a list of “what she is not.” She’s not a prostitute, she’s not the woman caught in adultery, she’s not Jesus’ wife. She’s not… she’s not… she’s not… I’m down with all of that. The problem is that what she is is very scary.

I learned what she is from St Gregory of Nyssa parish where, every year when this feast is celebrated, this poem by Janet Morley is read as a lesson. One year it was a dramatic dance… a weeping and mourning image draped in too many veils swirling in the midst of the congregation, revealing her face and its joy in the midst of the final line: “I have a gospel to proclaim.” At that point it was revealed to me (I was new in the parish at the time, I assume this was well known by the others) that the dancer was male…

Mary is important because if it were not for her we’d now know about the Resurrection. I mean this.

I answered a series of questions claimed to tell “where people who say that they are Christian believers fall on a left-to-right theological spectrum”. The first question is Are the biblical accounts of the resurrection of Jesus accurate? Did this event really happen? My reply, in part, is: “There are no accounts of Jesus’ resurrection in the Bible. There are only accounts of people finding an empty tomb.”

We often miss that point - there no stories of the Resurrection. There’s only an earthquake and then some visions. Mary has, really, the only vision of Jesus on that Easter Morning and he gives her a command (in other stories, this command comes from Angels). The command is “Go and tell the others.” Mary is called, by some “the Apostle to the Apostles” but, in reality, she is the first Apostle - the first one sent (meaning of “apostle) with news of the Resurrection.

In a male-dominated culture where “goddesses” had lost a lot of their power, becomign mostly about sex and fertility, this woman who, seemingly, owns her own business and caries her own name (no husband is ever mentioned) is oddly powerful. And she becomes the first one sent with news: certainly she has a Gospel to proclaim! It’s ironic, then, and sad that the mostly-male church relegates her to a second class seat, bumping her feast off a Sunday when there would be no Sunday at all save for her.

Knowing what we know about how we hear of the Resurrection, we rush to the local congregation in joy to celebrate and discover the dancer is really a man.

We have 2000 years of justification for that male dominance and the appeal is usually to tradition: this means “we’ve done it this way for 2000 years because we’ve done it this way for 2000 years.”

Even the Infallible Pope of Rome says he can’t change this (despite the fact that he’s changed a number of things, recently - whatever their justification).

I’m thankful that some ecclesial communities have broken away on this. If we have a gospel to proclaim at all, it must be one that transcends culture. Completely. It must also be one that transforms it.. revolutionises it. Mary is the first person to bear the promises of Zephaniah:

I will deal with all your oppressors at that time. And I will save the lame and gather the outcast, and I will change their shame into praise and renown in all the earth.

Sadly, for most of 2000 years, we’ve sat down and turned into oppressors ourselves. We’ve created our own brands of outcasts, our own brands of shame to inflict on folks. Mary calls us out of that, beyond what the culture expects of us.

If the wedding feast of Cana is, despite the sense of grasping at straws, Jesus’ blessing on “the sacrament of marriage”; then here is Jesus blessing on strong women who are not “subservient” to men.

Let us celebrate the sacrament of Mary Magdalen! In Russian - and in the Orthodox Tradition - for any feast where you want to celebrate joy, “S’praznikum!” is the festal shout: A Happy Feast!

Christians have another one to announce the revolution:

Christ is risen!

Today’s assigned readings:

Sirach 45:6-16, 2 Corinthians 12:11-21, Luke 19:41-48

He made an everlasting covenant with him, and gave him the priesthood of the people.
Sirach 45:7

I continue to struggle with the idea or question of “What is my vocation in the Church?” I wrote to my friend, Donald, that the big question is “what now?” “Now” being that I’m nearly 43 and feeling totally stranded. I’m so very used to the idea that I’m supposed to be doing this - church, Bible, mystery. Every other job - and I’ve had a lot of them - seems like simply paying the bills. This is what I do and this is what feeds me as I do it.

Late Thursday evening as I sat down to write this I picked up a voice mail from my boss asking me to consider a change in my schedule. The change would, basically, take away all the freedom I’ve recently found to continue to explore vocation. I know my vocation is not being on the lowers rung of the drug-rehab industry. But that pays the bills. But if I can’t be doing this - Bible, Church, Mystery - all the rest is rather useless. I’d continue doing this for free. It’s my life.

Who are the ministers of the Church? I wrote yesterday “if we look with unbiased eyes at Church history there was a lot more diversity than we like to admit: congregational, presbyterian and episcopal governance were all present.” This is true of the earliest days of the Church, gathered in Jerusalem and we see it throughout the book of Acts and the Epistles. By some lights we see it in the Gospels, too, although I admit to being confused by that.

No matter how you slice church history, however, there is a sense that something changed. This verse from Sirach - this entire passage, in fact - is no longer true. The covenant with Aaron and his sons was not everlasting. It ended sometime around the appearance of the Archangel to the priest, Zachary, the father of John the Baptist. While it is true that “Before Aaron such beautiful things did not exist.” It is not true, as it says following, “No outsider ever put them on, but only his sons and his descendants in perpetuity.”

My friend, Susan, and I have been having an extended email conversation about, among other things, lay presidency at the Eucharist. This is ironic for those who know me, because I tend to have a very “high” theology of Sacramental things. Baptism really saves one, the Eucharist really is the Body and Blood of Christ (God save me, I had to edit out “Blog of Christ”) and ordination really puts an ontological mark on your soul.

Or does it?

I don’t know my answer to that any more. During my time as a non-Christian I learned a lot of things. Among them was that anyone can lead a service if they have the right skills. Later I had time to learn this very same thing at St Gregory of Nyssa Church, functioning as a liturgical deacon even though I was not ordained. But was I? This is really the source of the question. Is a Christian priest (or pastor) ordained to speak before God instead of the people, or is the pastor (or priest) ordained to speak for the sake of order: because having 50 or 100 voices all babbling together might be unseemly and chaotic?

Is a priest or deacon (or bishop or verger or any other Church Title you might pick) simply a function of the congregation, something that is done to make things happen “decently and in order”, or are Holy Orders part of the magic of the Church? I’m mindful of two phases of Methodism (in which tradition I was raised). On the one hand, at its very beginning, the Methodist societies had no ordination. When they wanted sacraments (as for once a month communion) they visited the local Anglican church). Later, John Wesley began ordaining presbyters himself because of necessity, feeling that the Methodists needed someone empowered to administer the sacraments. He did this after he had rejected any idea of Apostolic Succession… so he was simply empowering laymen to do the function within the community. There was no “magic” involved.

Also feeding into the conversation is my contact with modern Judaism: among its many streams, traditions and denominations, one increasingly finds egalitarian structures where services are conducted not by the Ordained but by the community and those the community names as having the right skills for the job. The same is true in parts of what is called the Emergent Church movement.

While I do not doubt that an ordained clergy has been a part of Christian tradition for nearly all of the last 2000 years, it was not always so in all parts of Christendom. Nor, I think, need it always be going forward. So who are the ministers of the Church?

In her book Leaving Church, Barbara Brown Taylor realises that her ordination keeps her apart from the very people with whom she worships God. She speaks of being at a pool party with her parishioners. Various persons are getting dunked in the pool fully clothed but no one is coming near her - The Priest™. Finally someone takes pity on her and throws her in as well and from within the pool, people laughing, she looks around in love:

If being ordained meant being set apart from them, then I did not want to be ordained anymore. I wanted to be human. I wanted to spit food and let snot run down my chin. I wanted to confess being as lost and found as anyone else without caring that my underwear showed through my wet clothes. Bobbing in that healing pool with all those other flawed beings of light, I looked around and saw them as I had never seen them before, while some of them looked at me the same way. The long wait had come to an end. I was in the water at last.

In his review of the book, Adam says the following (after hearing the author speak on the same topic):

At the lunch, she always shared what her ideal church would be. She said it would consist of 52 people, and it would be a community of pastors, in that all of the leadership would be shared. Hopefully they would be a community of social activists, a community of leaders, and they would never own a building - because she said as soon as you have a building, then the problems begin.

Adam says these are, “Some interesting thoughts for would-be emerging church planters.” I think they are interesting thoughts for all of us who are Christians living today. How do we do Church? Why do we do it the way we do? Is it simply because “that’s the way it was being done with I got here”? Is it possible that’s not the best way to look at things? Or, more to the point, is it possible that what’s “always” been done isn’t “always” the right answer?

Aaron’s sacrifices shall be wholly burned twice every day continually. Moses ordained him, and anointed him with holy oil; it was an everlasting covenant for him and for his descendants as long as the heavens endure, to minister to the Lord and serve as priest and bless his people in his name.

Continually until things change.

The Community always assumes continuity. Of course Israel’s sacrifices will continue forever (even speaking - as the writer is - after a time when they had been interrupted).

The Community always assumes changelessness. History will show the evolution of the Eastern Rite liturgy - but people still say “it never changes.” the same is true of the “traditional Latin Mass” which grew and evolved right up until it was discontinued in 1967. It will return to it’s evolutionary track after B16 takes it out of storage and releases it to the wider Church later this year. History will show the evolution of even the most modern things: the 3 or 4 very different liturgies that developed over the last 25 or 30 years at St Gregory of Nyssa, for example. But some folks, even when I was there, wanted to lock them away in a kind of liturgical Tupperware. Nothing stays fresh for long without the Holy Spirit’s winds of change blowing through. Nothing keeps out freshness like Tupperware.

We see Jesus driving out the moneychangers in today’s Gospels. The money changers and animal sellers were all there doing the work of the Mosaic law. You could not sacrifice animals that had not been approved by the priest - better to get them pre-approved in lots than risk having some turned away at the altar. But you couldn’t bring images of pagan gods into the temple - such as were on the Roman coins. So, change your Roman coins for kosher gelt, then buy a sacrifice. Jesus’ action overthrows not just any injustice that might be present, but the entire sacrificial and sacerdotal system by disrupting its purpose and function.

And Christians set up a new one a couple of centuries later. Who are the ministers of the Church? (As the Episcopal Catechism asks):

A friend wrote a little thing and shared with me. (He said then that he’d deny he wrote it 15+ years ago when he hired me at the Episcopal Church Centre. I wonder how he feels now?) Of course, I don’t have the full text memorised, I only saw it the one time, but here is the gist of it:

Who are the ministers of the Church?

We are all called to be evangelists. We have this sacred meal we are all called to shared with everyone. We have the Risen Lord who gave us this meal - that we are called to share and somehow, by sharing this meal we share Him.

We are all called to be evangelists - but some of us fail at this.

God is merciful however, and has appointed a place for those of us who fail at being evangelists. He allows them to be waiters at his Holy Table. And so they are - they carry the napkins and lead us to our seats, they direct us in our actions and our words and they bring us the food that we eat at God’s dinner party. The Christian community functions better thus with dinner guests/evangelists and waiters.

Some of us fail at these jobs, however, but God is still merciful. He allows those who fail at being waiters to be Maitre D’s. They get to be the sort of dinner directors. They speak in the assembly. They hold forth. But their only purpose is to help feed the evangelists - which they do with the aid of the waiters. The community functions really well, thus - with Dinner Guests/Evangelists, Waiters and Maitre D’s.

Some of us, however, continue to fail - even with a job spectrum so wide. God is merciful, however, and has a job even for these triple failures.

From the earliest days of the Church those who went to this dinner party were persecuted for various reasons: the Waiters were stoned, the Maitre D’s were crucified. The Evangelists were driven out of town on the rails. The idea of a dinner party wherein everyone was welcomed and no one - male female, slave free, Jew or Gentile - was turned away usually managed to offend someone: at first, the Free Male Jews (even the ones who claimed to follow Jesus) - later we found cognates for them in every society.

So God in his wisdom found a way to help protect the dinner party: he created the office of Decoy. He dressed the decoy up with a lot of finery and put a big hat on his head. He sat the decoy up in the middle of any room where the dinner party was happening and, sure enough, they began to attract attention. It keeps the heat off the people doing the real work of Evangelism.

And the community works very well with its sacred ministers:
Evangelists
Waiters
Maitre D’s
and
Decoys.

One last thought. Before entering the sanctuary to serve liturgy with the people, the “vested party” at St Greogry’s Church reads the following. Based on Aaron, it was written as a meditation for an Anglican Priest to read before service (by George Herbert, an Anglican Priest). But read by everyone about to lead a liturgy - choir director, cantor, lay readers, etc - it becomes a profound statement of the priesthood of all of us. Who are the ministers of the Church? Us.

Aaron

Holinesse on the head,
Light and perfections on the breast,
Harmonious bells below, raising the dead
To leade them unto life and rest.
Thus are true Aarons drest.

Profanenesse in my head,
Defects and darknesse in my breast,
A noise of passions ringing me for dead
Unto a place where is no rest.
Poore priest thus am I drest.

Onely another head
I have, another heart and breast,
Another musick, making live not dead,
Without whom I could have no rest:
In him I am well drest.

Christ is my onely head,
My alone onely heart and breast,
My onely musick, striking me ev’n dead;
That to the old man I may rest,
And be in him new drest.

So holy in my head,
Perfect and light in my deare breast,
My doctrine tun’d by Christ, (who is not dead,
But lives in me while I do rest)
Come people Aaron’s drest.