Unity/Community/Numbers

Unity/Community/Numbers

Well, the time seems to be near at hand when what we have called “The Anglican Communion” will change its nature. With my ear to the ground, I hear moaning and joy; I hear moaning and despair; I also hear (when I strain my ears) rejoicing and excitement.

Among the things that I hear are cries that “Unity is impaired,” and its corollary,”Unity is of ultimate importance.” Coupled with that are statements about “Community” and its alter ego, “Communion.” And, hidden under it all, is the concern about “numbers.” “The parish will lose members.” “The Anglican Communion will lose maybe its largest segment.” “Or, if you are on another page, “The Anglican Communion will cut out its cancerous members.” “That part of the Catholic Church outside Roman and Orthodoxy will be diminished.” (Diminished, in this instance, ususally means “made smaller.”)

My friends, whenever we come to what appears to be a fundamental change (in anything) the very first thing we need to do is determine “original purpose.”

Why is there an Anglican Communion? Why is there a Catholic Church? Why is there a Way of the Messiah? (or “of Christ?”) Why is there a Gospel? Why is there a Chosen People? Why is there a Creation? Why is there Reality?

Often these are questions we choose to duck. It is easier to “quack” on about other issues, and avoid these fundamentals. But if we fail to see the totality and the ultimate purpose behind it all, we cannot begin to see what is needed now.

It is the purpose of this writing to try to contribute to the understanding of Ultimate Reality.

UNITY

The first thing to note about “unity” is that it is a noun, not a verb. That is, unity is static, not active. And in Hebrew, it has a huge variety of meaning. (It needs to be noted, however, that the word translated by the English word “unity” in the Hebrew Bible appears only three times: once in Psalm 133 and twice in Zechariah: it is best transliterated by chabal.) In the psalm, the word means, union, all together. But when dealing with Hebrew, we MUST bear in mind that while we can choose one or another of the “meanings,” to the Hebrew, the totality of all the possible meanings of the word are right there together. Chabal, in its essential meaning, has to do with ‘binding,’ ‘tying.’ Thus the KJV uses the word “band(s)” in the two Zechariah citations. It is easy to see, then, how this can be translated not only “one” or “unity” but also “promise” or “pledge.” What a full search of the meanings comes up with, however, is that the word also can mean “spoil,” “corrupt,” “destroy,” AND ALSO “bring forth” and “travail” (as in child birth!)

Perhaps we need to be very careful about how we use words to “prove” points.

COMMUNITY

Because most of us do not fully understand how English is spelled the way it is, the vast majority of us, I suspect, think that the world “community” is directly related to the word “unity.” If it were related to the word “unitas” (unity – also a noun), it would be spelled with only one “m.” Because it is spelled with two “m”s it’s derivation is from “com” and the verb “munio.” This Latin verb has two meanings: “to build (with) walls, to surround with walls, to fortify, to make secure.” The other meaning is “to pave, to build a road, to prepare a way for.” A “community” was often build on a hill. This way, the inhabitants could see around them, and keep themselves secure. BUT it also can mean that they “making a way for” the coming of the messiah/kingdom of God.

Thus it can mean that the inhabitants are both secure and engaged in a task. Again, we need to be careful how we use words.

NUMBERS

One of the most important issues for most institutions is that there needs to be a means for perpetuation of the institution. Successful businesses need not only workers, but they also need to encourage others to want to come to work for them: the business must continue. The same is true – in an even stronger way – with institutions that do not reward its members with money. Into this category are clubs and associations and so-called non-profits. The reward for these institutions is found in providing a service for those outside the organization, either by a membership provided service, or by fund raising events (that the members enjoy doing) that provide funds to provide the service. Often times (in second and subsequent generations) the service provided becomes less important than the means by which the funds are raised.

All too often churches are part of this last group.

And it is this that I detect in many of the statements that I hear. At the local level, especially. Even among those who want to provide the greatest incusiveness.

Now, each of these three words is of great importance to the Church – but not always in the way the church understands them.

When we ask the original series of questions, and try to fathom their meaning, I think we will find three things we need to keep before us.

Whatever creation is, and whatever God is, we can never fully comprehend it all at once. It is a unity created in a manner we think we can begin to understand, in terms of the mathematics and physics and philosophy and poetry we have developed, each in our own language. Our study of this REALITY fills us with awe and wonder and joy, and, ultimately, peace. It also fills us with an energy and a desire to share the awe and wonder and joy and peace. And this (clearly to me anyway) is why we are. And this awesome, wondrous, joyous and peaceful REALITY is also clearly seen as a unity – a living, active and vital entity. Thus this unity is active and changing and developing. The task of each and all of us is to share our own experience of it with others. It is the human task – and, in bible language, it is called “love.” The other part of our task is to receive the sharings of others – just as we share ours with them. One without the other is not sharing or loving, but forcing – often, when used in connection with the word “love,” called “rape.”

UNITY, then, is vital, active, generous, loving and inclusive.

COMMUNITY – as I see it – is a gathering of those who are filled with awe, wonder, joy and peace, AND share their understandings with each other. Living and shining brightly on top of the hill, they can look out and see the needs where they exist. They act to share their love – expressed in their meal of joyous fellowship – with any who will share with them. It is, then, a function of the community (parish??) to live in awe and wonder and joy and peace. They work together to develop their own understandings and how they can share them with those who do not understand awe and wonder and who may even be jealous of joy and peace.

NUMBERS are not a real concern. Just as there is (today) no christian witness in the town of Nicea, so it is unimportant where a community is located, or of what size it will be. God, we believe, will provide all that is needed: the lamb for the sacrifice, the food for the crowds.

It is NOT the purpose of the church to make everyone in the world a christian. It IS the purpose of the church to help everyone it reaches experience the awe, the wonder, the joy and the peace that makes the creation beautiful, sublime and loving. Success in doing this will provide the numbers needed to accomplish the task the Gospel places before us.

Maybe this is what is needed for the Gospel to succeed. Since the church became an institution – at Constantine’s behest – numbers, conformity and obedience have been its marks. Maybe by becoming leaner, the church will be able to see more clearly the awe, the wonder, the joy and the peace which it enjoys: and seeing, it will more easily do its task of sharing.

Messy Liturgy

Messy Liturgy

Those of you who know me are aware that I date from the Tridentine Anglican period of our history. We were very precise in the way in which the altar party acted at the Liturgy – even to the point of the angle the fingers touched the altar, and the distance between the out stretched hands. And, I confess, some of that still remains with me. (Indeed, I am certain that I could, without any rehearsal, “do” a pretty close to perfect mass (solemn or said) in that style.)

Also, I have been a very strong encourager for reform of the Liturgy. The first time I read The Shape of the Liturgy, by Dom Gregory Dix, I was in High School. That began my involvement with Liturgy and all that it means, and I have been all my life long one who advocates change in the Liturgy. I tend to clarify, clean up and simplify, using models from the past – often the very ancient past. (Pastorally, it is easier to explain changes in worship as restorations from the past, than to present them as new ways cut off from the historic traditions of the past.)

I have been active in Prayer Book Reform since the early 1960s when the General Convention first approved using translations other than the Authorized (King James) Version. (We began to use The Jerusalem Bible the very next Sunday!)

One of the key issues in the Prayer Book Study programs that led to the 1979 Book of Common Prayer was the attempt to clarify and simplify what was happening at the Eucharist. It is often forgotten that the Official Reason for prayer book reform was an effort to increase Missionary Activity in the Church.

As the People of God was created – in the Body of Christ – at the Eucharist, so their function was priestly and Christly. They came to the Eucharist to fulfill their Baptismal promises – they became the Body of Christ. They were dismissed at the end to go forth and be Jesus wherever they were. In the Prayer Book Catechism the Laity were added to the ministry; and no provision was made for a “final” hymn – so that after giving post communion thanks (and, if needed, also blessed) the People of God would go out to begin to do their “task.”

While there is much more that can be said at this point, that is not where I wish to go in this note. An un-published – except to a tiny congregation – series entitled From the beginning . . . deals with these things in greater detail, and I will probably present them in some way in this context.

One of the things that the Prayer Book Revision Commission did was to adopt much of Dix’s premises – as did other groups, including the Roman Catholic Church. What is normally done on Sunday Morning in most parishes is a Liturgy (remember, it means People’s work) that is composed of two traditions. One is the Synagogue Service and the other is the Temple Sacrifice.

The Synagogue Service developed during the Great Exile to Babylon in 586 BC. It was in Babylon that the great Hebrew traditions that we so honor today took their “modern” form. Here the Jews “discovered” the Babylonian Epic of Creation, and rewrote this myth as the first chapter of Genesis. From this flowed a second major restructuring of the entire presentation of Hebrew religion. This addition was placed on top of the Deuteronomic and Prophetic restructuring during the time of Josiah in the previous century. It is interesting to note that during this particular time frame, the Greeks were just beginning to develop philosophy and science – indeed, all humanity throughout the planet was making major steps toward what we now call “civilization” and “learning.”

For the Jews, the Synagogue Service developed as the Hebrew equivalent of Greek philosophy. This language of concreteness, with an inability to think in abstracts, used poetry and historical interpretation and prophetic proclamation to fire up the emotions of the Jewish people, so that they could see and act upon their mission as the People of – the only God there is. They saw that through the worship of , they were bound to Utter Reality, and that full participation in the life of that Utter Reality is the way to peace and justice and freedom and compassion and acceptance among all humans. They thus began the original diaspora – an act of mission and joy.

Their worship began with acclamation of joy to ; it continued with readings from the past – in order to emphasize that their mission was based on the Acts of ! Preaching followed, and their worship concluded with prayer, generated from the Readings and the preaching.

It was THIS that the Commission intended us to find in the Liturgy of the Word. Preaching is only one of the instruments used to help us understand who we are, and what our true function is in God’s plan. Preaching is NOT a time for generalized pastoral counseling, nor is it really a time for explaining moral decisions. It is a time for reminding the People of God what God has done, and how they fit into God’s plan to bring peace, justice, freedom, compassion and acceptance to God’s world and universe.

For us Christians, this Service ends with the Greeting of Peace. (Those of us who worked closely with the Commission tried – and failed – to keep reformation religion in the form of the General Confession out of the Sunday Eucharist. When General Convention made it clear that was not admissible we tried to get it placed at the very beginning of the Liturgy, but it just didn’t catch on.)

In most parishes, after the Greeting, comes the Announcements. Often these go on and on and on, sometimes even developing into another sermon that sometimes improves on the “official” one. In any case, they are a major distraction and take away from the importance of what has just been done in the Liturgy of the Word. And they can also trivialize what is to follow, especially . . .

The Second part of the Eucharistic Liturgy is the Temple Sacrificial worship. As Thomas Aquinas says in his great hymn, “Types and shadows have their ending, for the newer rite is here.” This is the idealization of the Sacrifice on the Cross from the Fourth Gospel and the climax of Luke’s Gospel at Emmaus. The Commission accepted from Dix’s study that this is a Four Fold Action. AND, of the two parts of the Sunday Liturgy, this is the more important. For it is here, at this worship, that the Body of Christ is constructed from its birth (baptismal) parts. It is here that the People of God respond to the Synagogue service.

It is important – Liturgically and Dramatically – that it is very clear that this is a different Liturgy, and that the People of God act differently. Here it is more in action than in words – important as they are – that the Body of Christ comes alive.

If it is possible, there should be nothing at all (other, perhaps, than candles) on the altar until the Celebrant goes to the altar and reads the offertory sentence with which this Liturgy begins.

How many times the beginning of the most important Liturgy that Church has is started with a sentence from Scripture, used as a means to end the all important Announcements. And the Prayer Book is quite clear that it is the Presider – the Celebrant – who goes to the Altar and reads the Offertory Sentence there, the book being paced there as s/he arrives. The action of going to the Altar in silence emphasizes that something new is about to happen.

Then – in the only time the Prayer Book gives directions that do not allow an alternate position – the people stand while the gifts of life – bread, wine, money – are offered and placed on the altar. This is best done in silence – or, as many now do – using offertory prayers from some of the African Anglican Liturgies. This is NOT a time for a performance by the Choir. THIS IS WHEN THE PEOPLE OF GOD OFFER ALL THEY ARE, ALL THEY HAVE, TO BE JOINED WITH THE ONE, TRUE SACRIFICE JESUS MADE ON THE CROSS. This self oblation then is one with Jesus, is presented to the Father, is raised – made alive – and given back to confirm our union with Jesus, and through him with each other.

That empowers us to “Go forth into the world, rejoicing in the power of the Spirit.”