The day has come

The Feast of St Mary the Virgin
August 15, 2009

Dear Friends and Fellow Parishioners,

With some regret we write to tell you that we have discerned that it is time for us to leave The Episcopal Church, which means that we must leave the Church of the Holy Family, our church home for the past twenty years.

As most of you will know, this decision is not undertaken lightly. It follows on several years of prayer, thought and discussion, of searching the Scriptures under the guidance of catholic tradition, all as we watched The Episcopal Church as a whole move toward what we and many in The Episcopal Church, the Anglican Communion and the wider Church Catholic believe to be an unfaithful representation of the gospel of Jesus Christ. There has been what Bishop Mark Lawrence of South Carolina recently described as “a common pattern in how the core doctrines of our faith are being systematically deconstructed”, those core doctrines concerning the nature of God and the liturgical use of the trinitarian Name, the uniqueness of Christ and of the necessity of salvation through him, the authority of Holy Scripture, the theology of baptism, and the right understanding of the nature of our humanity (of which human sexuality, the presenting issue in the current crisis in the Anglican Communion, is a part). The Episcopal Church has consistently and repeatedly acted in a manner that has defied the wider discernment of both the Churches of the Anglican Communion and of the Church Catholic, and the actions of our General Convention and of our bishops over the past six years have fractured the bonds of affection throughout the Anglican Communion.

While the Diocese of North Carolina and our bishop, +Michael Curry, have concurred in and promoted the theological direction of The Episcopal Church, the Church of the Holy Family, under Father Timothy’s leadership, has remained largely unaffected. We have maintained right liturgical practice. The welcoming, inclusive and transformative gospel of Jesus Christ has been preached. The youth leadership have faithfully worked to present that gospel to our children and to help them work out the implications of the gospel in their lives. Through the years God has graciously given us a haven in Holy Family wherein we could discern what we should do, and where we should go, and for that we are profoundly thankful.

But this has come at a cost. A catholic understanding of the Church, wherein we are linked to other Christians through the ministry of the bishop, has had to be laid aside in favor of a de facto congregationalism. The cognitive dissonance of remaining Episcopalians – heirs of a catholic tradition of episcopacy – by becoming functional congregationalists has grown too great. This took on greater immediacy when our eldest daughter announced two weeks ago, reluctantly and with sadness, that she did not want to be confirmed in The Episcopal Church.

And so our decision. On this feast of St Mary the Virgin, when we commemorate her blessed dormition (falling asleep in death), we do well to remember her words at the wedding feast at Cana when she was asked what to do when the wine ran out. Indicating Jesus, she said, “Do whatever he tells you to do”. Echoing what our daughter told us that hot Texas afternoon, we are reluctant to leave Holy Family, but that is what we, with the prayer and counsel of friends, have discerned that we are being told to do.

We cannot adequately express what a blessing the fellowship of the Church of the Holy Family has been for us for the last twenty years. From the early years of the Fellowship of St Timothy, through the years of the Thursday night Bible study, through years of magnificent liturgy (including the baptisms – by immersion! – of our three daughters) and faithful, challenging and thoughtful preaching, through the prayers and encouragement of many friends, through the utter joy of working with parish musicians in our music teams and of leading the Children’s Choir, the Compline Choir and singing in the Adult Choir years ago: through all of these we have been blessed in ways for which we can never adequately express our thanks to God and to all of you.

We know that some of you support the direction that The Episcopal Church has taken. Our point is not to spark a debate or to judge your faithfulness personally, but to lay out the reasons for a decision that is momentous and life-changing for us.

Our last Sunday at Church of the Holy Family will be August 30th. We will work to keep our friendships with parishioners at Holy Family alive and well, and we hope that you will do the same for us. Keep us in your prayers, particularly as we look for our new church home, that we would rightly discern where the Lord is leading us. You all remain in our prayers.

In Christ’s peace,

The Martin-Grangers

Perpetua and her Companions, Martyrs at Carthage, 202

Vibia Perpetua was a young widow, mother of an infant and owner of several slaves, including Felicitas and Revocatus. With two other young Carthaginians, Secundulus and Saturninus, they were catechumens preparing for baptism.

Early in the third century, the emperor Septimius Severus decreed that all persons should sacrifice to the divinity of the emperor. There was no way that a Christian, confessing faith in the one Lord Jesus Christ, could do this. Perpetua and her companions were arrested and held in prison under miserable conditions.

In a document attributed to Perpetua, we learn of visions she had in prison. One was of a ladder to heaven, which she climbed to reach a large garden; another was of her brother who had died when young of a dreadful disease, but was now well and drinking the water of life; that last was of herself as a warrior battling the Devil and defeating him to win entrance to the gate of life. “And I awoke, understanding that I should fight, not with beasts, but with the Devil…So much about me up to the day before the games; let him who will write of what happened then.”

At the public hearing before the proconsul, she refused even the entreaties of her aged father, saying, “I am a Christian.”

On March 7, Perpetua and her companions, encouraging one another bravely to bear whatever pain they might suffer, were sent to the arena to be mangled by a leopard, a boar, a bear, and a savage cow. Perpetua and Felicitas, tossed by the cow, were bruised and disheveled, but Perpetua, “lost in spirit and ecstasy,” hardly knew that anything had happened. To her companions she cried, “Stand fast in the faith and love one another. And do not let what we suffer be a stumbling block to you.”

Eventually, all were put to death by the stroke of a sword through the throat. The soldier who struck Perpetua was inept. His first blow merely pierced her throat. She shrieked with pain, then aided the man to guide the sword properly. The report of her death concludes, “Perhaps so great a woman, feared by the unclean spirit, could not have been killed unless she so willed it.”

Adapted from Lesser Feasts and Fasts.

Collect

O God the King of saints, you strengthened your servants Perpetua and Felicitas and their companions to make a good confession, staunchly resisting, for the cause of Christ, the claims of human affection, and encouraging one another in their time of trial: Grant that we who cherish their blessed memory may share their pure and steadfast faith, and win with them the palm of victory; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

The propers for the commemoration of Perpetua and her Companions, the Martyrs of Carthage, are published at the Lectionary Page.

George Herbert, Presbyter, 1633

George Herbert is famous for his poems and his prose work, A Priest in The Temple: or The Country Parson. He is portrayed by his biographer Izaak Walton as a model of the saintly parish priest. Herbert described his poems as “a picture of the many spiritual conflicts that have passed betwixt God and my soul, before I could submit mine to the will of Jesus my Master; in whose service I have found perfect freedom.”

Herbert was born in 1593, a member of an ancient family, a cousin of the Earl of Pembroke, and acquainted with King James the First and Prince (later King) Charles. Through his official position as Public Orator of Cambridge, he was brought into contact with the Court. Whatever hopes he may have had as a courtier were dimmed, howeer, because of his associations with persons who were out of favor with King Charles the First – principally John Williams, Bishop of Lincoln.

Herbert had begun studying divinity in his early twenties, and in 1626 he took Holy Orders. King Charles provided him with a living as rector of the parishes of Fugglestone and Bemerton in 1630.

His collection of poems, The Temple, was given to his friend, Nicholas Ferrar, and published posthumously. Three of his poems are well known hymns: “Teach me, my God and King”, “Let all the world in every corner sing”, and “King of glory, King of peace”. Their grace, strength, and metaphysical imagery influenced later poets, including Henry Vaughan and Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

Lines from his poem on prayer have moved many readers:

Prayer, the Church’s banquet, Angel’s age,
God’s breath in man returning to his birth,
The soul in paraphrase, the heart in pilgrimage,
The Christian plummet sounding heav’n and earth.

Herbert was unselfish in his devotion and service to others. Izaak Walton writes that many of the parishioners “let their plow rest when Mr Herbert’s saints-bell rung to prayers, that they might also offer their devotion to God with him.” His words, “Nothing is little in God’s service,” have reminded Christians again and again that everything in daily life, small or great, may be a means of serving and worshiping God.

Adapted from Lesser Feasts and Fasts

Collect

Our God and King, you called your servant George Herbert from the pursuit of worldly honors to be a pastor of souls, a poet, and a priest in your temple: Give us grace, we pray, joyfully to perform the tasks you give us to do knowing that nothing is menial or common that is done for your sake; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

The propers for the commemoration of George Herbert, Priest, are published on the Lectionary Page website.

Week of Prayer for Christian Unity

Having missed posting yesterday because of pressure of work, I have combined yesterday’s and today’s intentions for intercession.

Today we pray for the Church in Asia and the Middle East, and for Anglican and Methodist Churches; and the Church in the Pacific region, and Baptist and other free churches and Pentecostal churches.

Contrast between two inauguration prayers

Well put, Cheryl Wetzel.

The contrast between the membership of the Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire and Pr Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church is particularly illuminating. (Parenthetically, it does not do merely to contrast numbers – but we should remember that St Luke takes pains to note numbers of new believers several times in the Acts of the Apostles as the Gospel is preached to more and more of the world.)

Richard John Neuhaus, 1936-2009

Fr Richard John Neuhaus has died.

Rest eternal grant to him, O Lord;
And let light perpetual shine upon him.

May his soul, and the souls of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace, and may they rise at the last day in the resurrection of the just.

On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity (compos’d 1629)

THIS is the month, and this the happy morn
Wherein the Son of Heaven’s Eternal King
Of wedded maid and virgin mother born,
Our great redemption from above did bring;
For so the holy sages once did sing
That He our deadly forfeit should release,
And with His Father work us a perpetual peace.

That glorious Form, that Light unsufferable,
And that far-beaming blaze of Majesty
Wherewith He wont at Heaven’s high council-table
To sit the midst of Trinal Unity,
He laid aside; and, here with us to be,
Forsook the courts of everlasting day,
And chose with us a darksome house of mortal clay.

Say, heavenly Muse, shall not thy sacred vein
Afford a present to the Infant God?
Hast thou no verse, no hymn, or solemn strain
To welcome Him to this His new abode,
Now while the heaven, by the sun’s team untrod,
Hath took no print of the approaching light,
And all the spangled host keep watch in squadrons bright?

See how from far, upon the eastern road,
The star-led wizards haste with odours sweet:
O run, prevent them with thy humble ode
And lay it lowly at His blessed feet;
Have thou the honour first thy Lord to greet,
And join thy voice unto the Angel quire
From out His secret altar touch’d with hallow’d fire.

THE HYMN

It was the winter wild
While the heaven-born Child
All meanly wrapt in the rude manger lies;
Nature in awe to Him
Had doff’d her gaudy trim,
With her great Master so to sympathize:
It was no season then for her
To wanton with the sun, her lusty paramour.

Only with speeches fair
She woos the gentle air
To hide her guilty front with innocent snow;
And on her naked shame,
Pollute with sinful blame,
The saintly veil of maiden white to throw;
Confounded, that her Maker’s eyes
Should look so near upon her foul deformities.

But He, her fears to cease,
Sent down the meek-eyed Peace;
She, crown’d with olive green, came softly sliding
Down through the turning sphere,
His ready harbinger,
With turtle wing the amorous clouds dividing;
And waving wide her myrtle wand,
She strikes a universal peace through sea and land.

No war, or battle’s sound
Was heard the world around:
The idle spear and shield were high uphung;
The hookèd chariot stood
Unstain’d with hostile blood;
The trumpet spake not to the armèd throng;
And kings sat still with awful eye,
As if they surely knew their sovran Lord was by.

But peaceful was the night
Wherein the Prince of Light
His reign of peace upon the earth began:
The winds, with wonder whist,
Smoothly the waters kist
Whispering new joys to the mild oceàn—
Who now hath quite forgot to rave,
While birds of calm sit brooding on the charmèd wave.

The stars, with deep amaze,
Stand fix’d in steadfast gaze,
Bending one way their precious influence;
And will not take their flight
For all the morning light,
Or Lucifer that often warn’d them thence;
But in their glimmering orbs did glow
Until their Lord Himself bespake, and bid them go.

And though the shady gloom
Had given day her room,
The sun himself withheld his wonted speed,
And hid his head for shame,
As his inferior flame
The new-enlighten’d world no more should need;
He saw a greater Sun appear
Than his bright throne, or burning axle-tree could bear.

The shepherds on the lawn
Or ere the point of dawn
Sate simply chatting in a rustic row;
Full little thought they than
That the mighty Pan
Was kindly come to live with them below;
Perhaps their loves, or else their sheep
Was all that did their silly thoughts so busy keep:—

When such music sweet
Their hearts and ears did greet
As never was by mortal finger strook—
Divinely-warbled voice
Answering the stringèd noise,
As all their souls in blissful rapture took:
The air, such pleasure loth to lose,
With thousand echoes still prolongs each heavenly close.

Nature, that heard such sound
Beneath the hollow round
Of Cynthia’s seat the airy region thrilling,
Now was almost won
To think her part was done,
And that her reign had here its last fulfilling;
She knew such harmony alone
Could hold all Heaven and Earth in happier union.

At last surrounds their sight
A globe of circular light
That with long beams the shamefaced night array’d;
The helmèd Cherubim
And sworded Seraphim
Are seen in glittering ranks with wings display’d,
Harping in loud and solemn quire
With unexpressive notes, to Heaven’s new-born Heir.

Such music (as ’tis said)
Before was never made
But when of old the Sons of Morning sung,
While the Creator great
His constellations set
And the well-balanced world on hinges hung;
And cast the dark foundations deep,
And bid the weltering waves their oozy channel keep.

Ring out, ye crystal spheres!
Once bless our human ears,
If ye have power to touch our senses so;
And let your silver chime
Move in melodious time;
And let the bass of heaven’s deep organ blow;
And with your ninefold harmony
Make up full consort to the angelic symphony.

For if such holy song
Enwrap our fancy long,
Time will run back, and fetch the age of gold;
And speckled Vanity
Will sicken soon and die,
And leprous Sin will melt from earthly mould;
And Hell itself will pass away,
And leave her dolorous mansions to the peering day.

Yea, Truth and Justice then
Will down return to men,
Orb’d in a rainbow; and, like glories wearing,
Mercy will sit between
Throned in celestial sheen,
With radiant feet the tissued clouds down steering;
And Heaven, as at some festival,
Will open wide the gates of her high palace-hall.

But wisest Fate says No;
This must not yet be so;
The Babe yet lies in smiling infancy
That on the bitter cross
Must redeem our loss;
So both Himself and us to glorify:
Yet first, to those ychain’d in sleep
The wakeful trump of doom must thunder through the deep;

With such a horrid clang
As on Mount Sinai rang
While the red fire and smouldering clouds outbrake:
The aged Earth aghast
With terror of that blast
Shall from the surface to the centre shake,
When, at the world’s last sessiòn,
The dreadful Judge in middle air shall spread His throne.

And then at last our bliss
Full and perfect is,
But now begins; for from this happy day
The old Dragon under ground,
In straiter limits bound,
Not half so far casts his usurpèd sway;
And, wroth to see his kingdom fail,
Swinges the scaly horror of his folded tail.

The Oracles are dumb;
No voice or hideous hum
Runs through the archèd roof in words deceiving.
Apollo from his shrine
Can no more divine,
With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving:
No nightly trance or breathèd spell
Inspires the pale-eyed priest from the prophetic cell.

The lonely mountains o’er
And the resounding shore
A voice of weeping heard, and loud lament;
From haunted spring and dale
Edged with poplar pale
The parting Genius is with sighing sent;
With flower-inwoven tresses torn
The Nymphs in twilight shade of tangled thickets mourn.

In consecrated earth
And on the holy hearth
The Lars and Lemurès moan with midnight plaint;
In urns, and altars round
A drear and dying sound
Affrights the Flamens at their service quaint;
And the chill marble seems to sweat,
While each peculiar Power foregoes his wonted seat.

Peor and Baalim
Forsake their temples dim,
With that twice-batter’d god of Palestine;
And moonèd Ashtaroth
Heaven’s queen and mother both,
Now sits not girt with tapers’ holy shine;
The Lybic Hammon shrinks his horn:
In vain the Tyrian maids their wounded Thammuz mourn.

And sullen Moloch, fled,
Hath left in shadows dread
His burning idol all of blackest hue;
In vain with cymbals’ ring
They call the grisly king,
In dismal dance about the furnace blue;
The brutish gods of Nile as fast,
Isis, and Orus, and the dog Anubis, haste.

Nor is Osiris seen
In Memphian grove, or green,
Trampling the unshower’d grass with lowings loud:
Nor can he be at rest
Within his sacred chest;
Nought but profoundest Hell can be his shroud;
In vain with timbrell’d anthems dark
The sable-stolèd sorcerers bear his worshipt ark.

He feels from Juda’s land
The dreaded Infant’s hand;
The rays of Bethlehem blind his dusky eyn;
Nor all the gods beside
Longer dare abide,
Not Typhon huge ending in snaky twine:
Our Babe, to show His Godhead true,
Can in His swaddling bands control the damnèd crew.

So, when the sun in bed
Curtain’d with cloudy red
Pillows his chin upon an orient wave,
The flocking shadows pale
Troop to the infernal jail,
Each fetter’d ghost slips to his several grave;
And the yellow-skirted fays
Fly after the night-steeds, leaving their moon-loved maze.

But see! the Virgin blest
Hath laid her Babe to rest;
Time is, our tedious song should here have ending:
Heaven’s youngest-teemèd star
Hath fix’d her polish’d car,
Her sleeping Lord with hand-maid lamp attending:
And all about the courtly stable
Bright-harness’d Angels sit in order serviceable.

John Milton (1608-1674)

Breaking the silence

I realize that I’ve remained mostly silent on this weblog for several months now. That is because I don’t feel that I have had anything particularly constructive to add to the ongoing discussion and the worsening crisis in fellowship that is the Anglican Communion. Division – a division that may threaten to multiply itself along confessional or church parties, and a steady, almost ineluctable slide into apostasy (abandonment of apostolic faith and tradition) threaten the Churches of the Anglican Communion as never before. In the face of it all, I am largely silent. I haven’t even been sending out email news digests to friends and fellow parishioners of largely like-minded concerns, something that for several years (from October 2003) I did at least once, and sometimes several times, weekly.

But I am shaken from my silence by a chance to teach. (Or perhaps it’s just one of the trying parts of my personality – didacticism – that I cannot resist.)

Anglican Mainstream has picked up a news story from (the Revd Mr) George Conger, “US Bishops drop bid to have Robinson admitted to Lambeth Conference“. Much could be written about the news that Mr Conger shares in the article, but I am most interested in something of some theological weight; viz., why the Armenian Church and the Salvation Army are participating, when the celebrated “I’m not just the gay bishop” Gene Robinson of New Hampshire has been shut out of the decennial Lambeth Conference by not being invited, unlike every other bishop in The Episcopal Church.

The exclusion of Bishop Robinson raised an interesting issue, as the Salvation Army and the Armenian Church are full participants. The Salvation Army does not baptize and the Armenian Apostolic Church adheres to the miaphysitism [sic] where Christ is of one incarnate nature, where both divine and human nature are united.

(I presume that Mr Conger, a presbyter of the Church and seminary-educated, actually wrote “monophysitism”, and not “miaphysitism”, and that this is simply a typographical error. Edit (7/22/08): on reflection after George Conger commented in defense of the word, “miaphysitism” is precisely the word that should be used to describe Oriental Orthodox christology, as it is not an example of Eutychian monophysitism.)

The answer given by the Most Revd Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury and inviter-in-chief to the Lambeth affair, was direct and to the point:

“Ecumenical participants are here precisely on that ticket. They are representing their Churches as sisters in communion as friends. They are there because they are Armenian Orthodox or Salvation Army,” he said.

Bishop Robinson was a different matter. “The problem that we face within the Anglican Communion is that bishops gathering for the Lambeth Conference represent not only their diocese, but their participation in the fellowship of worldwide Anglican Christians. Where there are bishops whose participation in that worldwide fellowship is for one reason or another questionable that’s the reason for questioning their participation here.”

Initially, Dr Williams pointed out that he could “answer with a long disquisition on Armenian Christology, but I don’t think I don’t think that’s an option for this audience.”

Here’s a short disquisition on Armenian Christology, or at least on the differences between the monophysitism of the Oriental Orthodox Churches (of which the Armenian Church is one) and the duophysitism of the Roman Catholic Church and of the Orthodox Churches: for the most part, in successively issued joint statements over the past three decades or so, these ancient Churches have all recognized that the theological differences between them, both now and at the Council of Chalcedon, are largely semantic. No, not a matter of weaseling out of what was written in the fifth century and subsequently by these separated communities (the Catholic Orthodox Churches and the Oriental Orthodox Churches), but a recognition that both communities of Christians confess that Jesus Christ is

Perfect God as to his divinity, perfect man as to his humanity, his divinity is united to his humanity in the Person of the Only-begotten Son of God, in a union which is real, perfect, without confusion, without alteration, without division, without any form of separation.

(Common Declaration of John Paul II and Catholicos Karekin I, 1996)

Dialogue between the Orthodox Churches and the Oriental Orthodox Churches has produced substantive theologial statements about their unity in the faith and essential christological agreement, in both the First Agreed Statement of 1979 and the Second Agreed Statement of 1990.

So, as you discern by reading through these documents, there should be no theological reason that Anglicans , as catholic Christians who, though separated from their Catholic and Orthodox brethren by the 16th century schism, confess the orthodox faith of two natures united in one person, Jesus Christ, could not welcome in fellowship bishops, clergy and laity of the Armenian Church as brothers in Christ and sharers in councils of the Church.

Vatican: the time has come to choose

From the Catholic Herald, May 6:

The Vatican has said that the time has come for the Anglican Church to choose between Protestantism and the ancient churches of Rome and Orthodoxy.

Speaking on the day that the Archbishop of Canterbury met Benedict XVI in Rome, Cardinal Walter Kasper, the president of the Pontifical Council of Christian Unity, said it was time for Anglicanism to “clarify its identity”.

He told the Catholic Herald: “Ultimately, it is a question of the identity of the Anglican Church. Where does it belong?

“Does it belong more to the churches of the first millennium -Catholic and Orthodox – or does it belong more to the Protestant churches of the 16th century? At the moment it is somewhere in between, but it must clarify its identity now and that will not be possible without certain difficult decisions.”

He said he hoped that the Lambeth conference, an event which brings the worldwide Anglican Communion together every 10 years, would be the deciding moment for Anglicanism.

Cardinal Kasper, who has been asked to speak at the Lambeth Conference by the Archbishop of Canterbury, said: “We hope that certain fundamental questions will be clarified at the conference so that dialogue will be possible.

“We shall work and pray that it is possible, but I think that it is not sustainable to keep pushing decision-making back because it only extends the crisis.”

Read it all.

A new weblog for boreal Lutheranism

Dr William Tighe has put us onto a new weblog, Tentatio Borealis, whose author, Esko Murto, is a pastor in the Finnish Lutheran Church and part of the confessional movement in Finnish Lutheranism, connected with the Mission Province in Sweden. Pr Murto is currently a student at Concordia Theological Seminary in Fort Wayne, Indiana, a theological school of the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod.

From one of Pr Murto’s posts, is this ringing condemnation of all Protestant and Anglican (and Old Catholic) apostasy:

One thing is widely common to all apostasy: it can not bring itself to publicly confess that doctrine and faith have really been changed. The facade of confessions are kept up, the traditions and church history are highly revered, yes. Because in the end, Church which has given up the Word of God has no other force keeping it together than tradition and power.

How true, Pr Murto. How deeply, deeply true.