Why This Is
Why would someone who left the Episcopal Church for the Orthodox Church be using the Episcopal Lectionary to write what one thinks are terribly liberal (unorthodox) meditations on the Bible?
That’s a fair question, one that deserves an answer. Many of the things I ran away from in ECUSA are present in Orthodoxy too. They are not as widespread. But they are here. Clearly those things are not a problem for Orthodoxy. It wasn’t very healthy or Christian of me to run away from them in the first place but they are openly present in ECUSA and not so in Orthodoxy so, it’s actually more healthy to deal with’em openly in ECUSA than dysfunctionally in Orthodoxy.
Using a lectionary is better than not. It’s not good to just surf around and pick whatever passages one might want. The “bible in a year” sort of plans don’t break the Bible up into stories which is how the Bible was intended to be experienced: as “read to me” stories. The old Anglican lectionary (from the 1600s) used whole chapters and covered the entire bible in a year, but the chapters and verses are intended not as ways to break up the reading, but rather as ways to track the reading. They are not intended as like “chapters” in a modern book. They are simply a way to say “you are here” on the map. So a lectionary was needed. The Orthodox one doesn’t use the Old Testament - which robs the New Testament of all it’s context - and the readings are generally sequential and unconnected with each other or with the season of the year or, sometimes, even with the saint or festival of the day. All Marian festivals, for example, use either the reading of “Busy Martha and Meditative Mary talk to Jesus” or else the passage of the visitation.
But I don’t know if I want to be ECUSA either. Revolution Church makes sense to me, perhaps even the model discussed in the hypothetical Praxis church conversation on my blog: a church model that is egalitarian and non-hierarchical in its structure, sacramental and communitarian in its theology, free-formed semi-liturgical in its meetings and missional in its hallmark of hospitality.
But we’ll start with a Bible study and see where it goes.
My meditations are my own. They are intended to spark yours - not fix yours. You don’t have to think my way, you just have to think. Remeber Jacob wrestling with the Angel. Or, if that doesn’t work, think of Prior Walter wrestling with his angel in Angels in American. That’s the way we need to grab hold of the biblical texts and not let go until you bless me. It’s not enough to say to St Paul, “I disagree” and walk away. Neither is it enough to meekly assent and shut up. As we gather around the room, each with our own skills and interests and researches, we discuss and debate, minority and majority opinions form, communion in the midst of diversity is affirmed. Christ is present, even here in cyberspace. That’s what we do.