God our Father, whose Son our Lord Jesus Christ in a wonderful Sacrament hath left unto us a memorial of his passion: Grant us so to venerate the sacred mysteries of his Body and Blood, that we may ever perceive within ourselves the fruit of his redemption; who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

My cell phone is a constant reminder of how unnecessary going to church really is.  It’s remarkable, really.  At the flick of a finger I can pull up and listen to, or if I desire, watch full length sermons from the best preachers in the English speaking world.  Scratch that, I can pull up and listen to full length sermons from any language translated into english from the best preachers in the world.  Scratch that.  In one moment I can pull up the best sermons two thousand years of Christian witness has to offer into any language.  The priest in my parish may have a good sermon every now and then, but in all honesty he can’t compete with Chrysostom, Craddock or Campolo.

At the flick of finger I can download Christian music that suits me; the kind that I can sing along with and even sound halfway decent.  I can let the rhythm move me along in traffic or on the treadmill.  It can be the soundtrack of my day.  The choir in my parish has come a long way, but they’re not on iTunes, if you know what I mean.

With two or three text messages I can assemble my best friends together.  These are the people that know me best and support me in my spiritual journey.  We talk for hours on end about life and love and our triumphs and failures at both.  We meet in my home, the corner table at the struggling coffee shop we all love, or even if we just call or text during the day, we keep the community.  I know there are some good folks at my parish, but these are my friends.

If going to church only consists in hearing a good sermon or spiritual talk, good music and fellowship, then what I just said is true: we can get all of this (and more) from our iPhone. I could attempt to wax eloquently on the virtues of physical community with a diverse group of folks that challenge us in a variety of ways.  I could talk about the importance of the discipline of being in a place that makes a statement to the world.  I could even talk about the laudatory effort in singing hymns, even though as a society we no longer sing as we once did, certainly not together.  Although not original to me, everything I can say would be true.  And while you or someone else might agree with the substance of what I’m saying, I’m not sure it would move masses to reorient their lives around Sunday morning at church.  I’m skeptical because I wonder if deep down most know they can get all of this and more with the magical flick of a finger – if this is all that happens when we go to church.  It’s not.  At least not in the Anglican, Roman and Orthodox communions.  The climax, center, and crux of the whole experience is the celebration of the Most Holy Eucharist.  It is the reality of Christ’s Body and Blood made present under the appearances of bread and wine that is the ‘source and summit’ of our life.  And it is the one thing we cannot get anywhere else or by any other means.

How?

The Prayer Book Collect for the Holy Eucharist (used at votive masses for the Holy Eucharist and on Corpus Christi) presents an amazingly clear understanding of what we are doing – and what is being done unto us – at the mass.

God our Father, whose Son our Lord Jesus Christ in a wonderful Sacrament hath left unto us a memorial of his passion: Grant us so to venerate the sacred mysteries of his Body and Blood, that we may ever perceive within ourselves the fruit of his redemption; who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Our Lord Jesus Christ has given us a most wonderful Sacrament (a reality unique unto itself) of his passion on Calvary.  A sacrament is a tangible gift that signifies the power, promise, and presence of God in unimaginable ways.  The tangible gift of the Eucharist is the bread and wine that signifies (not just symbolizes) Christ’s crucified flesh and blood.  A symbol stands for something.  A sign is “something indicating the presence or existence of something else.”  A symbol causes us to think of something else; a sign lets us know it’s here.

But how in the world can Christ, who is exalted at the right hand of the Father, be present in the bread and wine on altars every hour all over the world?  Furthermore, how can it be that we say it’s Christ’s body and blood as it was after his death on the cross?  We must be intellectually honest and freely and happily admit that this is a mystery and any explanation we give will be immensely inadequate.  We can point to the mystery but we cannot diagram it.  We must understand that sacraments, as gifts of God, have a physics all their own.  Terms such as “substance” and “essence” help us, but they are ultimately only helps.  We must also recognize that seemingly impossible realities are actually quite possible.

General Relativity

Most of us have heard of Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity.  Described in a very layman and non-technical way, Einstein said that space and time are interwoven as if a fabric.  Objects with mass (like planets and stars) make indentations on space/time and thereby warping it.  What we know as gravity is the indentation on space/time.  The moon orbits Earth in the way a ball might roll around the top of a bowl.  Imagine the moon traveling on a straight path and then catching the rim of the indentation and voila – an orbit.    If space and time are not two different things but are woven together as in a fabric, then this has profound implications including the warping of time.  If you were able to fold the fabric of space/time back on itself, a point in the distant future and a point in the distant path could be held together.  Fold it over again and you can have past, present and future all together.  This may sound like cheap science fiction but it is the accepted scientific theory and observations have supported what was once upon a time an idea in the mind of Albert Einstein.

What does this have to do with Christ’s presence in the Holy Eucharist?  If it is no longer out of the realm of possibility for a point in the distant future to be connect to a point in the distant past, then why would it not be possible for pilgrims in 2013 A.D. to experience a reality made present from 33 A.D.?  Why would it be out of the question for people in the present to experience the past and future at once?  God is the creator of the laws of nature and is not governed by them.  We do not explain Christ’s presence in the Eucharist by way of General Relativity.  But Einstein does stand as a reminder that something that what once might have been written off as supremely bizarre is now the canon in textbooks.  Furthermore, a mystery that the Church has proclaimed for centuries (the past made present) is just now being recognized as credible by those with no creed.  Using this image (and it’s only a image) the Mass – the Holy Eucharist – has so much depth and weight that it warps time and space as we know it.  It brings us to Christ’s body and blood after his death on Calvary.  The Holy Spirit, the love proceeding from the Father and the Son, makes present the sacrifice of Christ as it was on Calvary.  Jesus is not being crucified again and he is not present with us in a physical way, but in an equally real sacramental way.

Why?

Human rebellion broke the covenant God had with us.  Our ambition and ego thought it could take God’s place and so we shifted our love and obedience.  Our adoration moved to people and things and because they are not worthy of adoration, our efforts exacerbate our frustration, brokenness and smallness.  When we are in our right mind, we recognized that our love (adoration and sacrifice) should be given to the Father.  But quickly we discovered our motives were tainted.  Even when we tried to offer a pure sacrifice to the Father, we knew, or were subsequently reminded, that we were still thinking of ourselves.  Furthermore, if adoration is the highest form of love and sacrifice is the highest form of adoration – what could we possibly offer up that would show our sorrow for what we have done and also be an expression of our perfect love?  A goat?  Birds?  Another person?  Nothing would satisfy.  We needed two things: a worthy priest and a worthy offering.  Neither could be found.

Christ’s sacrifice is so important because it is the only sacrifice that could ever be acceptable to the Father.  As fully God and fully man, Jesus Christ is the perfect priest because of his humanity – for it is humanity that must offer reparation. And he is the perfect priest because of his divinity – for only God is perfect and is therefore the only One who could offer a sacrifice perfectly.  Likewise, Jesus Christ is the perfect sacrifice because of his humanity – for it humanity must give of itself to show perfect adoration.  And he is the perfect sacrifice because of his divinity – for the sacrifice would be infinite in application.  The mystical union of the divine and human natures in the Incarnation make Jesus’s sacrifice on the cross the atonement for all sin.

When we say that Christ’s Body and Blood is made present to us in the Eucharist, we mean his Body and Blood not as he was teaching in Galilee with his disciples or his Body and Blood after the Resurrection or even his Body and Blood at the Right Hand of the Father.  We mean his Body and Blood at his death.  This is the moment of sacrifice – when Christ’s Body and Blood were separated (this is why there is one consecration of the bread and one consecration for the wine – because it is the separation of body from blood that makes a sacrifice).

Think about what this means: when this sacrifice is made present to us in the Eucharist sacramentally – we become a part of the one and only sacrifice that was acceptable to the Father.  We become a part of his self-offering to the Father.  When the acolytes or ministers hold the celebrant’s chasuble when he elevates the host and/or chalice, it makes me think of the people of God clinging to Christ as he gives himself to the Father.  We, because of our sin, are not able to offer up any sacrifice to the Father.  But because of our Faith and initiation into him, we are able to join in Son’s self-oblation to the Father: we have something to offer – we are able to adore the Father because we are given the perfect offering offered by the perfect priest.    This is what makes the Eucharist so important and it’s only in the Eucharist that we are able to do this.

Past, Present, Life of the World to Come

St Thomas Aquinas said sacraments must proclaim three things: Christ’s passion, the grace given in the present, and the beatific vision. The Eucharist clearly proclaims Christ’s passion, the bread and wine feed us with the benefits of his sacrifice, and we are pointed to the promise of the heavenly banquet.  In answering the question, “Why the High Mass?” the answer lies in the power and reality of the sacramental reality – Christ has died for the redemption of the world.  We receive this sacrifice and all the benefits thereof and we are oriented toward the vision of heaven.  The beauty, drama, sights, sounds, smells and tastes of the High Mass all exist to show us this truth.  The liturgy must be clearly a sacrifice of Christ’s Body and Blood (the past).  It must give us strength in the present (teaching and communion).  And it must give us a vision of the life of the world to come (foreign beauty).

The kings of Tarshish and of the isles shall pay tribute, and the kings of Arabia and Saba offer gifts. (Psalm 72.10)

I have nothing against the kings of Tarshish, Arabia and Saba, I just don’t know them, and because I don’t know them, I get a bit annoyed when they show up in my prayers.  They’re not alone.  There others I don’t know but whose names I repeat month after month.  They drive me crazy, but I’m glad they are there.

When new folks join us for the Daily Office, I know the psalms will be a challenge for them.  We don’t have bulletins for the daily office and mass.  I don’t give instruction.  The office begins when the officiant (usually me) stands and makes the sign of the cross over the mouth and says “O Lord, open thou our lips.”  If there are lot of visitors, we try to give them a heads up that there will be a very good chance they will hate how we do the psalms: antiphonal, pausing at the asterisk, and there are a lot of verses.  We follow the Cranmerian schedule of the psalms which gives us all 150 each month (there were 72 verses in Evening Prayer tonight).  You can’t really explain praying the psalter, you just have to do it.  You have to listen to it, observe it, it needs to wash over you as the antiphonal recitation crashes again and again like waves on the beach.  And you have to know it will be hard.

There are two things I’ve learned about praying the psalms this way.  A community praying the psalter in the Daily Office is a microcosm of our life together.  If you don’t pay attention, you will miss a word, make up a word or worse.  If you don’t pay attention you may scoot on pass the asterisk and keep on praying like Protestants at a Roman mass during the Our Father.  You’re embarrassed and try to cover it up by coughing.  It’s okay.  Someone will usually be faster and someone will be slower.  Someone will try to impress and someone will barely speak.  But as the psalm continues, the hope is all will be together; the faster will wait on the slower, the loud will quiet for the meek, etc.  Even if the psalm that day doesn’t bear much fruit, the act itself will.

And then there is Tarshish and Saba.  I think it was St Athanasius who also acknowledged the difficulty in praying the psalms.  He, or some other venerable saint, said when you find fruit in the psalm stay with it.  As the verses continue, keep meditating what grabbed you.  It is shocking how consistent the Holy Spirit is in giving fruit when we pray for it.  And this leads to why I have grown to like Tarshish and Saba. when I was a little boy I remember playing soccer for the first (and nearly only time) with two of my friends.  My team was winning, but because I didn’t know the rules, the other team kept changing them to make it more expedient for them.  If we don’t have structure, discipline, and the challenge of liturgical prayer and yes, the psalter, the temptation is quite strong to change prayer to make it more expedient for us, even down to nothing.  I may not suck the marrow out of every word of the psalms – but I’m praying them – and next month that psalm may save me.  And so I’ve grown to care an awful lot about these kings from Tarshish, Arabia, Saba or wherever.

Censing at the Introit

Between Evening Prayer and a Finance Commission meeting, John Roberts and I made a quick run to the neighborhood smoothie shop.  During the day we had been talking about the 11am Missa Cantata.  Nearly half of our dedicated (and quite skilled) servers will be moving away in 2013 – one to college, one to seminary, one to California and potentially two more to diocesan internships.  We’ve been talking about raising up new servers and raising up this very unique congregation in general.  It’s been 3 years since we added the High Mass and it has emerged as a mission congregation within the parish.  The attendance has been steady, while the 9am parish eucharist continues to grow (which is not a terribly ‘low’ mass in it’s own right/rite).  I’m such an advocate for the High Mass that I know I may seem like Richard Simmons at the Coney Island Hot Dog Eating Competition – obnoxiously pushing for something completely different.  John, who loves serving at the High Mass, asked me “Why is this so important to you?”

To answer that question I have to start in a small church library in South Carolina.  I was 12 or 13 at the oldest.  I’m not even sure what the occasion was, but I’m pretty sure it was a run of the mill youth group meeting.  Our beloved youth director was sitting on a table and was talking about what we do in worship.  All of us groaned.  We all hated it.  We hated the stuffiness of it, the bad music (actually we just hated singing), the preaching and perhaps most of up – dressing up.  He might as well had been talking about bath salts and potpourri – it was just as repugnant to us.  As he was talking, and we all ignored him, I noticed that he was thumbing through the pages of a book that I had never before seen.  The words were in black and red and it gave off an air of profound officiality.  When someone asked him about the book, he held it up and said “This is the Book of Worship” (this was a United Methodist church).  “Everything we do in church in found in this book.”  We had no idea there was a book for what happened in church.  We all assumed the preacher sort of made it up as he went along (and maybe he did!).  But that evening we were told something different.  I know it may sound silly, but I needed to have that book.  I don’t remember exactly why I need to have it; my adolescent naivete probably saw that book as a collection of incantations that unlocked the door of a spiritual realm.  Whatever my motivation then, my intuition understood that the book connected my ordinary, confused, acne filled teenager world with that of Jesus, angels, and things unseen.  As the sailor knows that there is land somewhere ahead even though the horizon is all wet, I knew (and don’t we all?) that there was something greater than I could ever ask or imagine.

I’ve always come back to the liturgy of the church as the connection between my ordinary life and the life of the world to come with Jesus, angels and things unseen.  I resonate with an image a Jesuit priest gave of the liturgy being like that tiny gap between the fingers of God the Father and Adam in Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel fresco.  That gap is filled by the liturgy of the Church.   The High Mass is important to me because it makes that connection between this life and the life of the world to come.  The High Mass seems foreign because it isn’t rooted in this life.  Liturgies that mirror my life and my tastes completely will most likely not mirror the beatific vision.  In the mass reading this morning (5/13/13), Paul met some folks who were baptized with the baptism of John only.  Paul baptized them and when he laid his hands on them the Holy Spirit came down and they began to speak in tongues.  I wonder if by tongues, St Luke doesn’t mean unintelligible syllabic utterances but an articulation of a vision that others simply didn’t understand.  We can feel that way when we talk about sacrifice and sacrament.  To many we might as well be speaking in tongues.  The liturgy doesn’t reflect me and my life; it shows the me and life I should be and reflect because it shows us Christ.  It shows us Christ Incarnate, Christ Crucified, Christ Risen and Christ at the right hand of the Father.  There is an awful lot of ink spilled in the Old and New Testaments about the foreignness of the liturgy.  God doesn’t cut any corners in the details he gave to Moses about the tabernacle, vestments and sacrifices.  He didn’t allow Aaron and his sons to make it up as they went along or to poll the Hebrews and see what they like.  I get the impression God could care less if they liked it, because it wasn’t about them.  And that’s another reason why the High Mass is so important to me – of all the liturgies, it is clearly not about us.  The ad orientem position (facing east during the entire celebration), the chanting (so I pray and proclaim the Gospel by the notes and not by my selective emphasis), the incense, the vestments, all of it swallows up our ego and orients us to the objective reality of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  The High Mass isn’t the only liturgy that does this – but it is so radical in its Godward orientation that the radiant heat from this intensity bleeds over into our 9am parish eucharist (still ad orientem), 7:30am (ad orientem again) and our daily masses (yep, ad orientem, etc.).

I am convinced that the only way to free us from our self-absorption is to refuse anthropocentric worship.  That is, liturgy cannot be about us.  The High Mass is beautiful and transcendent because from beginning to end – the orientation is the re-presentation of the Sacrifice of Our Lord.  I think deep down, even though billions upon billions of dollars are spent to convince us otherwise, we know this is right – that true worship is not about us.  The High Mass is important to me because it proclaims and preserves this truth.  The grandchildren of our patriarchs and matriarchs aren’t coming to church.  Their children are hit or miss themselves.  1/3 of all 20-30 year olds don’t even affiliate themselves with faith - let alone Christianity or even less the Episcopal Church.  The fact that the High Mass is so foreign and disinterested in our approval just might be what we need – what we all need.

Please don’t misunderstand, the High Mass is not the only valid celebration of the Holy Eucharist or expression of human adoration of the Triune God.  A mass on the hood of a Jeep by a military chaplain in a time of war is just as real as one in a cathedral.  The issue for me not one of validity.  The issue is over the mission of the Church.  I believe the Church needs to recover beauty, art, poetry and the sanctification of time and space.  We need to do this because we are in danger of forgetting the Origin of beauty and losing the objects of beauty themselves.  Who sings anymore?  Does anyone sing at home?  Who reads poetry anymore? In a world of texting, we can only say IDK.  In a time of glorified violence and degradation, where else will men and boys see images of true power but in the image of the Crucified Lord?  What is more universal than a liturgy that isn’t geared to youth, children, adults or seniors – but to everyone?  For hundreds, and I mean hundreds of years in the Western World, there has been a template to safeguard all of this.  There has been a template to connect this life with the life of the world to come.  There has been a template to communicate the love, grace, and very Presence of Jesus Christ.  There has been a template turn us from ourselves and turn us to Almighty God.  This is why the High Mass is so important to me.

“And I will go in to the altar of God: to God Who giveth joy to my youth.”

From a practical standpoint, I can’t think of one.  It doesn’t do anything, doesn’t protect my head from anything, doesn’t even have any real theological symbolism, at least not to my knowledge.  But I wear it the same reason a policeman wears a badge.  I wear it the same reason a doctor’s coat hangs near the knee.  I wear it for the same reason a pilot wears his hat.  None of these serve any real practical purpose.  Sure its helps with identification but any number of things can identify.  Policemen don’t need badges, doctors don’t need white coats and pilots certainly don’t need a hat – but that’s what policemen, doctors, and pilots wear.  That’s who they are.

Priests, at least some of us, wear birettas.  No one else does.  Just clergy.  If you see a strange hat with three or four blades and a pom pom tuft, there is no doubt who wears it. In a time where boundaries are blurred and identities are confused, the biretta – that silly little hat – makes a statement: I’m not trying to fit in.  I’m not trying to be cool.  I’m a priest.  Because trust me, no one thinks they look sharp in a biretta.  We may joke and deny this, but we know how we look, and we really don’t care.  We’re priests and it’s not about us.

There’s a wonderfully obscure verse in Exodus 28.40 and it’s in reference to the vestments of Aaron and his priestly descendants  “And for Aaron’s you shall make coats and girdles and caps, you shall make them for glory and beauty.”

That’s their purpose – to stand for the unique purpose of pointing the glory of God (especially when we remove it at the Holy Name and before Christ’s Sacramental Presence) and to be used in acts of profound beauty.  They’re not a style I would have created.  But it’s not for my glory.  When you see a biretta, you know it’s for worship.  When you see a biretta, you know it’s for a priest.  I think we as priests need to remember that too.

I have long known that I was born too late.  Jimmy Buffett looked at 40 and saw a pirate born two hundred years too late.  I understand exactly what he meant.  I enjoy not just things that are old, but things that are done the old way.  I have an iPhone but I collect fountain pens and write many letters with a pen and inkwell, dipping the nib in the ink every other word.  I wear a watch that powers itself from the sun, but I love the craftsmanship of an old world pocket watch.  The same is true for my religion.  I’ve been trained in the modern way but have made an effort to re-learn the old way.

For my natal feast this year, I received a straight razor, an archaic weapon to shave off ever encroaching stubble.  Nothing really compares to a straight razor shave, but it takes extra equipment.  To accompany this tool, I purchased shaving soap, a brush and band-aids   I needed all three.  More than anything else, it takes time.  My proficiency is gaining, but it still takes me nearly 15 minutes to shave.  There is no practical reason why I need a straight razor, all the accouterments and the time it takes me every single morning.  But there is this one undeniable fact – there is no better way to do it.

When my barber started shaving my face he told me the most important thing to do is to learn a man’s face.  Day after day, 15 minutes at a time, I’ve had to learn my face.  I know where I’m most likely to bleed and where I can shave quickly and where I need to be careful.  I pay more attention now.  It’s strange, despite the extra time it takes me to do this, I don’t get up any earlier and I’m not late to anything.  I just make better use of the time I have.

When we talk about spiritual disciplines that open us to the loving formation of the Holy Spirit, we are really talking about time.  No one really denies the efficacy of daily mass, prayer through the day, alms giving, fasting, Bible Study, the whole shebang.  But it’s the time it takes.

There may be easier and quicker ways to engage the faith given to us.  We can do the daily office on our iPhones and listen to a Bible Study through a podcast or even Facebook kind words to someone.  One might say there is no practical reason to live the catholic faith the old way.  But there is this one undeniable fact – there is no better way to do it.

These disciplines orient us to God, but we end up learning more and more about ourselves.  We learn the parts of us that bleed easily and the parts that are tough and resilient and the parts that need care.  And strange as it sounds, once we start taking more time to do this the old way – the right way – we quickly discover we’re not missing out on anything.  When we start to make time for prayer, frequent reception of communion and we give more of our hard earned money to the work of the Church, we aren’t without anything, other than wasted time.

We live in a time when practices that have formed generations are in danger of being lost.  Simple things like how to write a letter, shave with a piece of steel or making gravy from leftover grease and milk.  And more importantly we are danger of losing the discipline of real time with family, parents teaching their children, prayer in season and out, devotion to Christ in the Blessed Sacrament, and the grounding of the Church.

As I am writing this, my calendar is open before me, email is up on the computer and the cell phone just rang.  We can choose to be swallowed up or we can take control.  This won’t happen with the latest app or time management program; try the old way of sanctifying time.  If the day is sucking life out of you, counter it by putting life into it.  If the clock is moving too fast – turn it back.

Verses 3, 4, and 5 pleased me for their catholic theology and I wonder if anyone else picked this up.  Here are the lines:

3. When in Philadelphia settled, he sought persons in great need, dedicated to empow’rment, his own people did he lead.  Blessed Abs’lom, pray that we from all indiff’rence may be freed.
4. One fine morning, while at worship, wrestled from his knees in prayer; he, his friends, were thus evicted: “You no more may praise God here.”  Blessed Abs’lom, pray that we may stand steadfast and persevere.
5. Founded he Saint Thomas’ Church for Afric’s sons and daughters blest; full-fledged members of Christ’s Body, they no longer were oppressed.  Blessed Abs’lom, pray that we may be the church at Christ’s behest.

Blessed Abs’lom pray that… I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a more overt endorsement of the doctrine of the intercession of the saints in an official or semi-official publication from the Episcopal Church.  Maybe they’re there, but I’ve missed it or forgotten it.

Of course, I’m all for it.  I hold strongly that our Book of Common Prayer teaches this, albeit in a more subtle way.  But on page 44 of Lift Every Voice and Sing – Absalom Jones – ora pro nobis.

Behold the Lamb of God
Behold him who takest away the sins of the world.
Blessed are those who are called to the Supper of the Lamb.
Lord I am not worthy that thou should’st come under my roof.  But only say the word and my soul shall be healed.

The last line “Lord I am not worthy…” is also said by the congregation.  I have never printed this in the bulletin, not wanting to force a devotion onto people.  I’d much rather folks experience it, then reflect on it.

I was asked this morning if it was ‘catholic’ – translation: is this a Roman insertion?  Yes and no.  It is found in Roman liturgies, but it also found in English liturgies prior to the Reformation.  It’s an old devotion.  But more importantly, these are exact quotes from scripture:

“Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world” – John 1.29
“Blessed are those who are called to the Supper of the Lamb” – Revelation 19.9
“Lord I am not worthy that thou should’st come under my roof.  But only say the word and my soul shall be healed” -Matthew 8.8

These three verses from the New Testament provide a wonderful summary of Eucharistic theology.  In the Eucharist we receive sacramentally the Lamb of God, whose sacrifice took away the sins of the world.  Those who come to the Sacrament are strengthened by his grace and are nourished in the beatific vision.  We are not worthy to approach the altar God, save only by his grace.  He has said the word (He is the Word) and we are healed.

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Martin’s premise is this - Lumen Gentium, which outlined ways in which those outside the Church may be saved, has been extrapolated to a popular belief among the average Christian in universalism – even if the average Christian doesn’t realize that’s what they believe.  Ergo, there is no longer a push for evangelism or missions and a growing apathy among Christians.  See the latest Pew Survey that found 1/3 of all adults under 30 unaffiliated with any religion as an example.

Martin focuses on paragraph 16 in LG which says in part:

Nor is God far distant from those who in shadows and images seek the unknown God, for it is He who gives to all men life and breath and all things, and as Saviour wills that all men be saved. Those also can attain to salvation who through no fault of their own do not know the Gospel of Christ or His Church, yet sincerely seek God and moved by grace strive by their deeds to do His will as it is known to them through the dictates of conscience. Nor does Divine Providence deny the helps necessary for salvation to those who, without blame on their part, have not yet arrived at an explicit knowledge of God and with His grace strive to live a good life. Whatever good or truth is found amongst them is looked upon by the Church as a preparation for the Gospel.

LG present four conditions that must be met for those outside the Church to be saved:

1. non culpability for their ignorance of the gospel
2. seeking God with a sincere heart
3. living in conformity with what they know of God’s will
4. receiving whatever ‘good or truth’ they live amidst

In a recent meeting, the topic of how to publish the names of those who have removed themselves from our church community by transfer to another Episcopal Church or joining another Christian church.  The ambiguity lies in where we can transfer a person.  The Episcopal Church, not unlike the Roman Catholic Church, seems to distinguish in our polity “Churches so-called” and “ecclesial communities” (I’m using the language of Lumen Gentium and Dominus Iesus).  Can a member of the Episcopal Church be ‘transferred’ to a church not in communion with The Episcopal Church?

What do the canons say?

Canon I.17 addresses regulations respecting the laity.

• A member of the Episcopal Church is one who has been baptized in the Name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and has had said baptism recorded in the Episcopal Church.
• The expectation is that baptized members will be confirmed (another post for another day)
• A communicant is someone who is a member and has received communion 3 times during the year.  One heckuva standard.
• Communicants who have been “faithful in corporate worship, unless for good cause prevented, and have been faithful in working, praying, and giving for the spread of the Kingdom of God” are considered communicants in good standing.  One assumes it is the rector or priest-in-charge who determines whether or not a communicant has been faithful, etc.  This is important in that diocesan canons and parish by-laws may stipulate that only communicants in good standing can participate in parish leadership and governance.

When someone wishes to leave a congregation to join another – they have the right to receive a document reporting their status in the follow categories:

• if they are a communicant (have they been to church at least 3 times?)
• if they are in good standing (have they been faithful?)
• if they have been confirmed or received

Canon I.17.4.a says that “Upon acknowledgement that a member who has received such a certificate has been enrolled in another congregation of this or another Church (emphasis mine), the Member of the Clergy in charge or Warden issuing the certificate shall remove the name of the person from the parish register.”  This seems to suggest that transfer to a church not in communion with The Episcopal Church is possible yet I.17.4.d says “Any communicant of any Church in communion with this Church shall be entitled to the benefit of this section so far as the same can be made applicable.”

The way I read it – we can transfer members to other Episcopal Churches or Churches in communion with us and we acknowledge the removal of members who have joined churches not in communion.  Clear as mud.