This morning (Monday, February 19, 2018) is one of those mornings when my head is still spinning from the previous Sunday, that is, yesterday. You could say “my head is still spinning” or “my brain is fried.” You see, the work of pastoral ministry, the privilege to serve in this way, is as precious a gift as I can imagine. And yet, it is A LOT of work (blood, sweat, and tears)! Five services yesterday, scores of conversations / “life stories” with individual folks, two sermons, untold needs of people texting & messaging (some of whom are truly in dire straits). A wise priest once told me, in all seriousness, that a typical Sunday of active pastoral ministry is the equivalent of a 40-hour work week. What a joy, and what a burden. Throw into the mix the joyful responsibility of daddyhood and husbandom, and truly, it makes one’s head spin.
I suppose one reason for my heightened sense of being stretched today is the intensity of this past week: not just Ash Wednesday, but Diocesan Council (Thursday through Saturday, in beautiful Waco, Texas).
Ah, Diocesan Council.
I can tell you that, for me, every year this gathering is mainly an encouragement. I love seeing friends new and old. I (usually) love hearing the Bishop’s vision. Often Council is something of a mixed bag, though, and I suppose this year was no exception, for I witnessed, yet again, a tendency to reduce to the role of a priest (or, indeed, a Christian) to that of a “Social Justice Warrior” (SJW).
And yet, justice is a huge part of what we are called to as the Body of Christ. After a long day of Council presentations geared toward motivating us clergy and lay leaders to engage in social justice warfare (along the lines of community organizing and “Black Lives Matter”) I found myself sitting around the dinner table with trusted allies in ministry. One colleague wisely reminded us that, in the New Testament, the term for “justice” is the same exact term as that of “righteousness.” In the other words, in the mind of the apostles, there is no distinction between “righteousness” and “justice.” This is a truth which progressive SJW’s would do well to heed.
And yet, the kind of racial reconciliation on display at Council truly stirs up a deep yearning for justice within me. It is what my church planting (and yes, community organizing) work in Austin during my 30’s was all about. It is why, together with key leaders of Christ Church, I cannot give up on working with the Episcopal Health Foundation’s office of Congregational Engagement to bring holistic justice to Smith County, fraught with challenges though this work be.
Finally, it is why I’ve been so deeply encouraged by a recent development within our college ministry, which I would like to share with you, dear reader. Thanks to one deeply engaged leader in our parish, the leadership of our Episcopal College Community recently had a ground-breaking lunch with a leader of Texas College (among others). Then, this past Friday, Ian Hyde (our Christ Church College Missioner) along with Mr. Uriah Johnson (one of our gifted lay leaders, involved as both a youth mentor and a college mentor), met again with this Texas College representative, along with one of her local leaders. So, now, the ball is rolling with Texas College, a historically black college here in Tyler. God willing, this will bear fruit, resulting in many Kingdom centered relationships of love with our neighbors in North Tyler.
If that happens (and I’m full of biblical hope that it will), it will be an answer to a long and passionately held yearning for justice, indeed.
Why do we reverence the altar?
Why, in “liturgical churches,” do we bow in front of, or before, the altar (which is also a table) of God, upon which the Body and Blood of Christ are given to God’s people?
One of the greatest joys of my life personally is the opportunity to share the sacramental-way-of-being-Christian with folks who have never known. With folks who have never been exposed to the life of a Eucharistic community which centers itself on the sacramentalism by which God puts his life into us (as CS Lewis says).
Why do we reverence the altar?
Much of the time, when it comes to questions like this, there is no single correct answer. With the liturgy things are not always systematically black & white.
And yet, for me there are two reasons why we bow (or genuflect) before the altar. One is metaphysical and the other is practical.
The metaphysical reason is that we are bowing before the King of the Universe, who is present at the altar. How is he present at the altar? He is present at the altar in a sacramental way. This is true when the Body and Blood of Christ are on the altar; it is true when the people of God are surrounding the altar; most of all (in my opinion) it is true because of the aumbry or tabernacle, in which the consecrated elements are kept for later use. and which is located somewhere behind (or sometimes to the side) of the altar.
Interestingly, Christ Church South does not have an aumbry. That is OK; we are one church on two campuses, and Christ Church Downtown does have an aumbry. So, in my sacramental imagination, when I bow before the altar at Christ Church South (say, on a Thursday afternoon when I am in the worship space getting tasks done), I am actually bowing in the presence of the aumbry at Christ Church Downtown. This is something like what Charles Williams would call metaphysical co-inherence.
Secondly, however, reverencing the altar is practical. This is just as important as the metaphysical reason for bowing or genuflecting. It serves as a reminder, which seeps down into my “muscle memory” and my bones, that I need not be in a hurry. Because of Christ and the Gospel, I can rest. I can pause and give thanks. Every bow is like a little prayer. In a world in which time is both insanely scarce and efficiently commodified, this practice or habit is like a miniature “mental vacation” (to borrow a phrase from Fr. Thomas Keating). For me, it’s a little taste of leisure.
Those are my reasons for reverencing the altar. The last thing to be said is that some Episcopalians (brothers & sisters in my own church) never reverence the altar. And that is OK. Here as elsewhere, the Anglican dictum “all may, some should, and none must” is apropos.
“How could God have created light on the first day, when the sun was not created until the fourth day?” (I wonder who the first critical, early modern philosopher was to scornfully ask this question.) Finally, I have an answer to this question that is satisfying, thanks to the first section of the fifth “collation” of St. Bonaventure’s Collationes in Hexaëmeron.
The answer is that the light God created on the first day was intellectual light, not visual light (or any kind of physical light on any spectrum). Intellectual light, that is, which is the condition of possibility for the understanding of objects in the world (metaphysics), for the understanding the meaning of linguistic statements (logic or “interpretation”), for the understanding the propriety of “right behavior” (morality or ethics).
So thinks Bonaventure, anyway, much in line with an approach to the six days of creation initiated by St. Augustine.
OK, but here’s my lingering questions. If this light was the condition of the possibility for the understanding objects, would not there have needed to be objects for the understanding to grasp? Yes, and indeed there was: the prime matter which we read about in Gen 1:2, and which, according to Aristotle, in characterized by spatial extension. Would not there, in the same vein, have needed to be linguistic (lôgikôs) expressions in order for the understanding to comprehend? Yes, and indeed there was: first, “in the beginning was the Logos” (John 1), and second, it is God’s speech which brought the light into being in the first place: God’s speech precedes the light. Same for good behavior: not only has the Trinity (and the proprietary activity contained therein) already existed for all eternity, but the very activity of God’s creation is the standard for propriety, if ever there was one.
OK, but what about an understanding? Should there not have been an understanding already in place, before God created the condition of the possibility of its ability to function? No: there is nothing troubling about the view that God created the ability to understand before the actual factulty of the understanding. (In fact, this view lends credence to the stance of divine illumination theory, which insists that for a knower to know an object, a third thing must be in place: light.)
Of course this answer will not satisfy the biased demands of the modern skeptic, who rejects out of hand the existence of the transcendent or supernatural, and who thus rejects the notion of intellectual light.
