31.10.09
30.10.09
Woman is a misbegotten male.
Thought that would get your attention!
So I am thinking....
Why doesn't the Church just get on with it?
Well, considering the Fathers our heritage rests upon, no wonder it is taking them some time to be brave about the issue of women bishops. There is a lot of damage to undo.
Check this lot out from Rosemary Radford Ruether, 'Women-Church Theology and Practice of Feminist Liturgical Communities', Harper and Row, San Francisco, 1985, pp. 137ff
“You are the Devil’s Gateway. It is you who plucked the fruit of the forbidden tree. You are the first who deserted the divine law. You are the one who persuaded him whom even the Devil was not strong enough to attack. All too easily you destroyed the image of God, man. Because of your desert, that is death, even the Son of God had to die. . . Therefore cover your head and your figure with sack-cloth and ashes.”
Augustine, On the Trinity: “Why must a woman cover her head? Because, as I explained before, the woman does not possess the image of God in herself, but only when taken together with the male who is her head, so that the whole substance is one image. But when she is assigned the role as helpmate, a function that pertains to her alone, the she is not the image of God. But as far as the man is concerned, he is by himself alone the image of God, just as fully and completely as when he and the woman are joined together into one.”
Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica: “As the philosopher says, ‘Woman is a misbegotten male.’ Yet it is necessary that woman was made in the first production of things as a helpmate. Not indeed as a helpmate in any other works than procreation, for in all other works man can be more efficiently helped by another man than by a woman, but as a helper in the work of generation… The woman is in a state of subjugation in the original order of things. For this reason she cannot represent headship in society or in the Church. Only the male can represent Christ. For this reason it was necessary that Christ be incarnated as a male. It follows, therefore, that she cannot receive the sign of Holy Orders.”
Malleus Maleficarum (fifteenth-century manual of the Dominican Inquisitors against witches): “When a woman thinks alone she thinks evil, for the woman was made from the crooked rib which is bent in the contrary direction from the man. Woman conspired constantly against spiritual good. Her very name, fe-mina means ‘absence of faith’. She is insatiable lust by nature. Because of this lust she consorts even with Devils. It is for this reason that women are especially prone to the crime of witchcraft, from which men have been preserved by the maleness of Christ.”
Martin Luther. ‘On Marriage’: “Eve originally was more equally a partner with Adam, but because of sin the present woman is a far inferior creature. Because she is responsible for the Fall, woman is in a state of subjugation. The man rules the home and the world, wages war and tills the soil. The woman is like a nail driven into the wall, she sits at home.”
I think we just have to pray that more damage is not done. There is an offer on the table to leave for Rome, for those who are unable to accept the ministry of ordained and consecrated women. Anglo-catholics might very well jump ship but I wonder where it leaves Conservative, reformed evangelicals? Can they really return to something that is pre-reformation? Martin Luther would be turning in his grave if we didn't trust that actually he is probably having rather a nice time in Heaven, despite some of his challenging theology ;-)
I have been reading through Peter M M Lewellyn's paper again, just whilst I take a break from my exegesis of Ephesians 1 for college (yes, this girl knows how to party on a Friday night! ;-)) and it's got me thinking again.
Alongside Dr James I. Packer, whom Peter quotes, it would indeed seem that 'the burden of proof regarding the exclusion of women from the office of teaching and ruling within the congregation now lies on those who maintain the exclusion rather than on those who challenge it.’—‘Understanding the Differences’, p.298.
This is the last thing that I expected to read from Packer, but there you go, there is so much to hope for.
I have become rather shy in recent years about using two lines of reasoning in the defence of women's ordination and consecration but Peter Llewellyn has redeemed the approaches for me.
I avoid using arguments from culture, contemporary culture, because I never want to present the idea that the church should be governed by social mores or current discrimination legislation when it should be governed by scripture.
I avoid using Gal 3:28 because when I did use this in an essay I was told it was really speaking into the question of baptism rather than ministry.
Peter sets forth the very lines of reasoning that I have avoided as follows:
Now that discrimination against women is generally illegal, rather than being the standard of society, the church is in the position of either having to justify its discriminatory practices or end them. (It is a matter of profound regret and shame that it did not give leadership in this area, rather than being correctly perceived as the last bastion of discrimination.) The church can therefore no longer evade the issue, and indeed courageous people in different parts of the world are compelling the church to face it. Under these circumstances, for this Church to continue discrimination on the grounds of women’s subordination would serve to entrench that doctrine among its central theological principles.
I think that this is a very interesting angle and yes, I think that whilst we all insist that it is a secondary issue and that we can all get on with each other despite our disagreements, I suspect that whilst our attempts to 'wait for one another' and welcome one another are godly and orientated by the gospel, in reality the issue has become primary and not secondary.
AND
In both senses Galatians 3:28 is certainly a ‘key text’. Its meaning, like that of the other texts, is disputed, and will be discussed...but it is interesting to observe how the dispute is treated. Sydney ... give great attention to the detailed exegesis of 1 Cor. 11:2-16, 1 Cor 14:33-36 and 1 Tim. 2:11-15, but dismiss such a key text as Gal. 3:28... Sydney says that ‘both Jews and Gentiles retained their own distinctiveness, as do men and women in marriage (Eph. 5) and in the church (1 Cor. 11)’; in the face of Paul’s most strenuous opposition to maintaining the distinction between Jews and Gentiles. Would Sydney have us reinstate that distinction in the church? Or the distinction between slave and free? Surely not. As the world’s greatest evangelical New Testament scholar, F.F. Bruce has put it: ‘If in ordinary life existence in Christ is manifested openly in church fellowship, then, if a Gentile may exercise spiritual leadership in church as freely as a Jew, or a slave as freely as a citizen, why not a woman as freely as a man?’ii. That our unity in the body of Christ must find its full expression in our church life, is absolutely fundamental—and must not be whittled away by the artificial diminution of the centrality of this text.
This is a new way of reasoning from that passage for me and I have some thinking to do about its consequences but I am glad to have the old brain cells stretched again in this interesting direction. I am also pleased for obvious and multiple reasons that whilst we have learned a great detail from the Church Fathers, we have also benefited from exercising discernment about some of their claims. If anything it means that there is hope for us all for it would only be the most arrogant amongst us who would claim that we have all of our theological arguments in perfect order!
More to come....
And just in case you are a seeker and all of this sounds downright horrible and off-putting, go and read about your status as an Ezer Kenegdo here, not a helpmeet, if you set out with the first rung in order on the theological hermeneutical ladder, there really is less chance that you will fall off
More here
So I am thinking....
Why doesn't the Church just get on with it?
Well, considering the Fathers our heritage rests upon, no wonder it is taking them some time to be brave about the issue of women bishops. There is a lot of damage to undo.
Check this lot out from Rosemary Radford Ruether, 'Women-Church Theology and Practice of Feminist Liturgical Communities', Harper and Row, San Francisco, 1985, pp. 137ff
“You are the Devil’s Gateway. It is you who plucked the fruit of the forbidden tree. You are the first who deserted the divine law. You are the one who persuaded him whom even the Devil was not strong enough to attack. All too easily you destroyed the image of God, man. Because of your desert, that is death, even the Son of God had to die. . . Therefore cover your head and your figure with sack-cloth and ashes.”
Augustine, On the Trinity: “Why must a woman cover her head? Because, as I explained before, the woman does not possess the image of God in herself, but only when taken together with the male who is her head, so that the whole substance is one image. But when she is assigned the role as helpmate, a function that pertains to her alone, the she is not the image of God. But as far as the man is concerned, he is by himself alone the image of God, just as fully and completely as when he and the woman are joined together into one.”
Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica: “As the philosopher says, ‘Woman is a misbegotten male.’ Yet it is necessary that woman was made in the first production of things as a helpmate. Not indeed as a helpmate in any other works than procreation, for in all other works man can be more efficiently helped by another man than by a woman, but as a helper in the work of generation… The woman is in a state of subjugation in the original order of things. For this reason she cannot represent headship in society or in the Church. Only the male can represent Christ. For this reason it was necessary that Christ be incarnated as a male. It follows, therefore, that she cannot receive the sign of Holy Orders.”
Malleus Maleficarum (fifteenth-century manual of the Dominican Inquisitors against witches): “When a woman thinks alone she thinks evil, for the woman was made from the crooked rib which is bent in the contrary direction from the man. Woman conspired constantly against spiritual good. Her very name, fe-mina means ‘absence of faith’. She is insatiable lust by nature. Because of this lust she consorts even with Devils. It is for this reason that women are especially prone to the crime of witchcraft, from which men have been preserved by the maleness of Christ.”
Martin Luther. ‘On Marriage’: “Eve originally was more equally a partner with Adam, but because of sin the present woman is a far inferior creature. Because she is responsible for the Fall, woman is in a state of subjugation. The man rules the home and the world, wages war and tills the soil. The woman is like a nail driven into the wall, she sits at home.”
I think we just have to pray that more damage is not done. There is an offer on the table to leave for Rome, for those who are unable to accept the ministry of ordained and consecrated women. Anglo-catholics might very well jump ship but I wonder where it leaves Conservative, reformed evangelicals? Can they really return to something that is pre-reformation? Martin Luther would be turning in his grave if we didn't trust that actually he is probably having rather a nice time in Heaven, despite some of his challenging theology ;-)
I have been reading through Peter M M Lewellyn's paper again, just whilst I take a break from my exegesis of Ephesians 1 for college (yes, this girl knows how to party on a Friday night! ;-)) and it's got me thinking again.
Alongside Dr James I. Packer, whom Peter quotes, it would indeed seem that 'the burden of proof regarding the exclusion of women from the office of teaching and ruling within the congregation now lies on those who maintain the exclusion rather than on those who challenge it.’—‘Understanding the Differences’, p.298.
This is the last thing that I expected to read from Packer, but there you go, there is so much to hope for.
I have become rather shy in recent years about using two lines of reasoning in the defence of women's ordination and consecration but Peter Llewellyn has redeemed the approaches for me.
I avoid using arguments from culture, contemporary culture, because I never want to present the idea that the church should be governed by social mores or current discrimination legislation when it should be governed by scripture.
I avoid using Gal 3:28 because when I did use this in an essay I was told it was really speaking into the question of baptism rather than ministry.
Peter sets forth the very lines of reasoning that I have avoided as follows:
Now that discrimination against women is generally illegal, rather than being the standard of society, the church is in the position of either having to justify its discriminatory practices or end them. (It is a matter of profound regret and shame that it did not give leadership in this area, rather than being correctly perceived as the last bastion of discrimination.) The church can therefore no longer evade the issue, and indeed courageous people in different parts of the world are compelling the church to face it. Under these circumstances, for this Church to continue discrimination on the grounds of women’s subordination would serve to entrench that doctrine among its central theological principles.
I think that this is a very interesting angle and yes, I think that whilst we all insist that it is a secondary issue and that we can all get on with each other despite our disagreements, I suspect that whilst our attempts to 'wait for one another' and welcome one another are godly and orientated by the gospel, in reality the issue has become primary and not secondary.
AND
In both senses Galatians 3:28 is certainly a ‘key text’. Its meaning, like that of the other texts, is disputed, and will be discussed...but it is interesting to observe how the dispute is treated. Sydney ... give great attention to the detailed exegesis of 1 Cor. 11:2-16, 1 Cor 14:33-36 and 1 Tim. 2:11-15, but dismiss such a key text as Gal. 3:28... Sydney says that ‘both Jews and Gentiles retained their own distinctiveness, as do men and women in marriage (Eph. 5) and in the church (1 Cor. 11)’; in the face of Paul’s most strenuous opposition to maintaining the distinction between Jews and Gentiles. Would Sydney have us reinstate that distinction in the church? Or the distinction between slave and free? Surely not. As the world’s greatest evangelical New Testament scholar, F.F. Bruce has put it: ‘If in ordinary life existence in Christ is manifested openly in church fellowship, then, if a Gentile may exercise spiritual leadership in church as freely as a Jew, or a slave as freely as a citizen, why not a woman as freely as a man?’ii. That our unity in the body of Christ must find its full expression in our church life, is absolutely fundamental—and must not be whittled away by the artificial diminution of the centrality of this text.
This is a new way of reasoning from that passage for me and I have some thinking to do about its consequences but I am glad to have the old brain cells stretched again in this interesting direction. I am also pleased for obvious and multiple reasons that whilst we have learned a great detail from the Church Fathers, we have also benefited from exercising discernment about some of their claims. If anything it means that there is hope for us all for it would only be the most arrogant amongst us who would claim that we have all of our theological arguments in perfect order!
More to come....
And just in case you are a seeker and all of this sounds downright horrible and off-putting, go and read about your status as an Ezer Kenegdo here, not a helpmeet, if you set out with the first rung in order on the theological hermeneutical ladder, there really is less chance that you will fall off
More here
| Genesis 1-3 by Allison Young |
| 1 Corinthians 11:2-16 by Allison Young |
| 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 by Allison Young |
| Ephesians 5:18-33 by Allison Young |
| 1 Timothy 2:11-15 by Allison Young You'll have to join CBE to access the stuff, which you should do anyway, if you are stuggling with some of the issues highlighted above. You can access a lot of this stuff for free. If you do not want to join CBE, you can read this helpful book: Beyond Sex Roles: What the Bible Says About a Woman's Place in Church and Family by Gilbert G. Bilezikian If neither of these will do - go and read Ben Witherington III - intelligent and accessible instantly! |
28.10.09
Feminist? No. Charismatic? - think so. Evangelical - I guess. Anglican - done deal now!
It was interesting to read Jody's recent post in which she was musing about how some consider her a feminist. It would seem that it is difficult to hold positions about women being in leadership roles in the church without some thinking that you are a feminist. The problem is the term 'feminist' is very secular.
When Christians speak of mutuality and service through giftings, terms like egalitarian can also muddy the waters because it is then wondered if we hold to any differences between men and women, which I do and I also understand God's plan to create us as complementary to one another.
From Bondage to Blessing by Dee Alei explores the difficulties for women finding a voice in the debate that doesn't cause them to be too easily boxed-in and labeled.
Labels very rarely help to clarify our position.
At other times they are necessary. I was asked last night by some visitors who are fast becoming friends (their label is that they are pentecostals) how I would describe my Christianity, convinced they were that Anglican was not enough, or at least did not help them to get to know what I am like spiritually. So I said I was a charismatic evangelical. I forgot about the 'open' bit and I also wondered whether I am charismatic evangelical or evangelical charismatic and then I realsied how ridiculous I was being and just answered their question. My husband rather put me to shame by declaring that he was simply a Christian. But my explanation helped my friends. They said that at one time they had known a lot of charismatic Anglicans but we are fast becoming a dying breed.
This caused me to wonder whether I am therefore holding on to a very out-dated term. I am wrestling at the moment with the term charismatic. Part of me thinks that the term shouldn't be necessary because experiences of the Holy Spirit, are, from a New Testament perspective, a completely normal and expected experience of living a daily Christian life. On the other hand, there does seem to be a marked difference between those churches which are charismatic and those which are not (I've been church-hopping). In the more charismatic churches there seems to be more urgency and expectation, more waiting on God and more openness to the Holy Spirit, dare I say it, more joy. Being filled with the Holy Spirit is something we are encouraged to continually seek. And so in some ways, it is a helpful label when people ask you about your Christianity and what you expect to see God doing amongst his people. But it is also a shame that it has to be used and it does leave you feeling responsible for the inevitable conclusions drawn so that you want to immediately qualify it with lots of details about your faith in verbal footnotes.
Some are now describing themselves as post-charismatic not because they are not charismatic but because the term is again failing to fully explain what they are experiencing God doing. Rob McAlpine explores this in his book. Some are reluctant to use the term charismatic because it conjures up stories of supposed revival which ended badly or it even reminds them of spiritually abusive situations which they have been in or witnessed.
The term evangelical seems to be shifting too in its meaning, as is lamented particularly at the moment by John Richardson. Of course, in the days of the New Testament, people were disciples or followers of 'the Way'. The term Christian hadn't even really been invented. Paul referred to all believers as 'saints', which has come to mean something very different today. if I described myself as a saint, people would think me highly arrogant. Having said that, I think it is apparent that we all need to be aware of our 'reader response-orientated', post-modern culture and that the terms that we use to describe ourselves might be causing our hearers to think the very strangest things about us, not what we are intending to communicate about ourselves at all. Ultimately, perhaps the fewer words we use to describe ourselves, the better, when the inner life might shine through our actions and the reason for the hope that lies within us might actually speak for itself. If in doubt, pehaps describing ourselves as saints might not be such a bad idea after all, at least the reaction would give us cause to explain that it is not a label that we have invented but that God has given to us, for no reason of our own creation but his having chosen us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be his people. It would give us a good opportunity for proclaiming the outrageousness of the gospel once the outrage of our hearers has abated!
25.10.09
23.10.09
Is it possible to be at Theological college and miss God?
Yes! And I mean in the gut-wrenching kind of way. God becomes 'strange'. God, at times, becomes 'other' and I know he is 'other' and strange', but it's also an intimate thing we have going on, if you know what i mean and I know it can't be like that all the time. Only, once you've tasted it, you crave more.
So I'm feeling it, baby, you know, that whole eschatological tension thing and okay, by my language, you can tell i am trying to make light of it but I miss the charisma, I miss the waiting, I miss the manifest presence of the Holy Spirit. I can not find God at the moment in the wordiness, in the stage sets, in the nervous performance. However, i trust the line will clear, the fuzziness is all at my end, I'm working on it. I nodded off for ten minutes today, after college and before making the tea, before my youngest came in to say 'I'm hungry, mummy', and I thought, wow, I'm hungry too, hungry for God. And so God blessed me and I met with him in that ten minutes, in a dream where I was worshipping him freely, my hands up in the air, in self-abandon. And I should probably be posting this at Angelutterances where I deal with this kind of thing but I just seek a little assurance - is this normal, is it just all a part of the training, the formation?
Ouch, it hurts.
So I'm feeling it, baby, you know, that whole eschatological tension thing and okay, by my language, you can tell i am trying to make light of it but I miss the charisma, I miss the waiting, I miss the manifest presence of the Holy Spirit. I can not find God at the moment in the wordiness, in the stage sets, in the nervous performance. However, i trust the line will clear, the fuzziness is all at my end, I'm working on it. I nodded off for ten minutes today, after college and before making the tea, before my youngest came in to say 'I'm hungry, mummy', and I thought, wow, I'm hungry too, hungry for God. And so God blessed me and I met with him in that ten minutes, in a dream where I was worshipping him freely, my hands up in the air, in self-abandon. And I should probably be posting this at Angelutterances where I deal with this kind of thing but I just seek a little assurance - is this normal, is it just all a part of the training, the formation?
Ouch, it hurts.
Giles about Letham's ESS (Eternal Subordination of the Son).
On Christ’s Nature
'...Letham argues that the human nature of Christ demands His eternal submission. He reasons that if Christ was subordinated in taking flesh to become man, as all agree, He must be subordinated eternally because He continues in a hypostatic union to be God and man. In this argument Letham fails to make the theologically important distinction between the subordinate, suffering, and humiliated incarnate Son on earth and the exalted, glorified, and triumphant Son now reigning as Lord. This contrast between the two epochs in the ministry of the one Christ is a fundamental of orthodox Christology, possibly most helpfully developed in the Reformed distinction between Christ’s “state of humiliation” in the incarnation on earth and “His state of exaltation” in heaven as the reigning Lord of the universe.
What this distinction makes clear is that in returning to heaven as God and man, the Son’s divine nature was not subordinated in any way because of His human nature; rather His human nature was exalted so that as God and man the Son could rule as omnipotent God. The united voice of the New Testament states that after His resurrection and exaltation, the Son is no longer the “submissive Son,” the second Adam, who obeys the Father to win our salvation, but the Lord and head of the universe. Letham seems to miss this idea completely in this unfortunate digression in his book.'
(Kevin Giles)
It will be interesting to look at the trinity at college, which is a module I get to study soon. As an open evangelical college, we seek to be open to lots of different theological thoughts on matters but are then encouraged to wrestle with scholarly opinions and make up our own minds - no mean feat.
I know that there are lots of opinions about the trinity and the relations between the persons of the Godhead and it is the reason why many people have been brought to faith by the way in which God has spoken to them through 'The Shack', which has also received a mixed press, largely negative, in conservative evangelical churches because of how Young presents the perichoresis within the trinity. We are still attempting to fathom the mystery of the trinity, despite the Council of Nicea.
I understand Giles better than I understand Grudem. I have tried hard to comprehend the argument put forward by Bruce and Ware but it just makes my brain ache.
I am aware that PaulaFether did some work on this debate, which i hope to return to, if ever I get to write about the relations in the trinity.
Apart from Grudem and Ware and George Knight III, are there any theologians who argue that because Jesus is somehow eternally subordinate (is he?), women should be subordinate to men? Are there any other theologians whom I might find more convincing and less difficult to follow than Grudem, Ware and Knight?
For more on this debate look here
'...Letham argues that the human nature of Christ demands His eternal submission. He reasons that if Christ was subordinated in taking flesh to become man, as all agree, He must be subordinated eternally because He continues in a hypostatic union to be God and man. In this argument Letham fails to make the theologically important distinction between the subordinate, suffering, and humiliated incarnate Son on earth and the exalted, glorified, and triumphant Son now reigning as Lord. This contrast between the two epochs in the ministry of the one Christ is a fundamental of orthodox Christology, possibly most helpfully developed in the Reformed distinction between Christ’s “state of humiliation” in the incarnation on earth and “His state of exaltation” in heaven as the reigning Lord of the universe.
What this distinction makes clear is that in returning to heaven as God and man, the Son’s divine nature was not subordinated in any way because of His human nature; rather His human nature was exalted so that as God and man the Son could rule as omnipotent God. The united voice of the New Testament states that after His resurrection and exaltation, the Son is no longer the “submissive Son,” the second Adam, who obeys the Father to win our salvation, but the Lord and head of the universe. Letham seems to miss this idea completely in this unfortunate digression in his book.'
(Kevin Giles)
It will be interesting to look at the trinity at college, which is a module I get to study soon. As an open evangelical college, we seek to be open to lots of different theological thoughts on matters but are then encouraged to wrestle with scholarly opinions and make up our own minds - no mean feat.
I know that there are lots of opinions about the trinity and the relations between the persons of the Godhead and it is the reason why many people have been brought to faith by the way in which God has spoken to them through 'The Shack', which has also received a mixed press, largely negative, in conservative evangelical churches because of how Young presents the perichoresis within the trinity. We are still attempting to fathom the mystery of the trinity, despite the Council of Nicea.
I understand Giles better than I understand Grudem. I have tried hard to comprehend the argument put forward by Bruce and Ware but it just makes my brain ache.
I am aware that PaulaFether did some work on this debate, which i hope to return to, if ever I get to write about the relations in the trinity.
Apart from Grudem and Ware and George Knight III, are there any theologians who argue that because Jesus is somehow eternally subordinate (is he?), women should be subordinate to men? Are there any other theologians whom I might find more convincing and less difficult to follow than Grudem, Ware and Knight?
For more on this debate look here
22.10.09
Looking at Pauline Ethics
Very interesting, particularly in terms of the debates currently.
Paul holds the tension together – you can not have truth without unity – this is a very interesting way of looking at our Church today? Who are our brothers and sisters? This is a very powerful metaphor, this image of the body of Christ and needs to be held very highly and we should not separate truth as if it is objective from this unity in the body because that has implications for how we treat one another and with this we should underpin our conduct in the church debates. Emm...
How must we read Paul? In many ways, of course but this is interesting...
Paul holds the tension together – you can not have truth without unity – this is a very interesting way of looking at our Church today? Who are our brothers and sisters? This is a very powerful metaphor, this image of the body of Christ and needs to be held very highly and we should not separate truth as if it is objective from this unity in the body because that has implications for how we treat one another and with this we should underpin our conduct in the church debates. Emm...
How must we read Paul? In many ways, of course but this is interesting...
The study of the Pauline ethics...is not study of his ethical theory, for he had none, nor of his code for Christian living, for he gave none. It is the study, first of all, of the theological convictions which underlie Paul's concrete exhortations and instructions, and secondly, of the way those convictions shape his response to practical questions of conduct.'
(VP Furnish Theology and Ethics in Paul 212)
Equality, mutuality etc
I want to collect some references to the mutuality and equality in the trinity.
Here is a book worth reading:
Here is a book worth reading:
Vincent Taylor The Person of Christ in New Testament Teaching (London: Macmillan 1958, p.105)
It is not a servant and master relationship, or that of an inferior and a superior, but that of two in perfect unity in an eternal fellowship of love. It is a state of being in which direction is the function of the one and the obedience is that of the other in a relationship of love which robs direction of superiority and obedience of inferiority.'
Equality, mutuality etc
I want to collect some references to the mutuality and equality in the trinity.
Here is a book worth reading:
Here is a book worth reading:
Vincent Taylor The Person of Christ in New Testament Teaching (London: Macmillan 1958, p.105)
It is not a servant and master relationship, or that of an inferior and a superior, but that of two in perfect unity in an eternal fellowship of love. It is a state of being in which direction is the function of the one and the obedience is that of the other in a relationship of love which robs direction of superiority and obedience of inferiority.'
21.10.09
World Prayer ar St John's
Hello fellow students.
For World prayer tomorrow, we are going to pray for a family whom my sending church support. They are called Kate and Tim Lee and they have set up Jigsaw Ministries in the Philippines. You can find out more about them here and here and here.
20.10.09
Taize prayer from Monday
Holy Spirit, Creator, In the beginning you moved over the waters. Holy Spirit, come! Holy Spirit, Creator, from your breath all creatures drew their life. Fill us anew! Holy Spirit, Counselor, by your inspiration the prophets bore witness to the Word of God. Empower us in our witness!
O Lord hear my prayer. O Lord hear my prayer. When I call, answer me.
Holy Spirit, you prepared the Virgin Mary to become the mother of our Lord. Prepare us for our ministries. Holy Spirit, you descended upon Jesus on the day of his baptism. Descend upon your people afresh, here gathered.
O Lord hear my prayer. O Lord hear my prayer. When I call, answer me.
Holy Spirit, you led Christ into the desert; you assisted him in proclaiming the Kingdom. Lead us by still waters.
Holy Spirit, Christ promised you would always be with us and in us. Speak of this to us now.
Holy Spirit, you came down upon the apostles to gather them into a new communion, the Church. Nourish this community, your Church and the world.
O Lord hear my prayer. O Lord hear my prayer. When I call, answer me.
Holy Spirit, Comforter, you bring us to birth as God’s children. Help us to receive from the Father.
Holy Spirit, you make us a living sign of God’s presence. Help us reflect Jesus' light into a dark world.
Holy Spirit, you pray within us. Speak for us now.
O Lord hear my prayer. O Lord hear my prayer. When I call, answer me.
Holy Spirit, breathe upon us, such fragile ashes. Kindle into flame a godly power so that we might love with a godly love and serve each other with a Christ-like heart because through you, even the fears and the nights of our heart can become the dawn of new life. Bless us, all-loving God. Make our lives a living sign of your Christ through the power of your Holy Spirit. Amen.
Moot and the Mootique
Here you can find out about Ian Mobsby and here about Moot.
You can buy his book here
I am going to buy this one
The book above might help me to bring a little more silence to college when it is my turn to lead. I am still struggling with 'college prayer wordiness' - do we leave enough space for God to answer and come by His Spirit so that we feel his presence in manifest ways? I am not sure that we do but I am also sure that we are a learning community and under the influence of our new dean Nick Ladd, there is much to hope for. I am also aware. of course, that as a theological college, they have to be in the business of teaching us ordinands the words so it's about my patience too.
Anyway, to the point, Ian Mobsby came to talk to us today, well, those of us who wanted to find out about pioneer ministry. St John's doesn't run a separate pioneering course as such, but bucks the trend, expecting us to be pioneering from within, expecting us to work out how we are going to be fresh as we progress through our training.
A lot of what he said struck a cord with me and his work sounds exciting. I like what he said about what Church needs to become to engage with a post-secular, consumerist, spiritually seeking society and his vision for what sorts of priests we need to be.
Seeking Jesus within contemporary culture – requires apostolic and pioneering forms of leadership – need people to be missional. And yet Anglican priests are often authoritative and yet these people need to be loving and committed to mission. It's about praxis, it is now about shared leadership teams.
Need to give power away and be deeply relational. Need to be radical but work within a team. We need to make ourselves dispensable.
Integrity is vital. Need to practice radical vulnerability!!!
Need to have accountability structures.
General skills
Artistic and creative
emotionally and culturally intelligent
relational
entrepreneurial
all-rounder
team-player
pragmatist
multi-tasker and deals with complexity
well-rounded in the traditions – you cannot critique the communion service unless you understand what it is – this is where you need to understand what you can be creative with
All of the above makes for a skilled pastor
I liked his emphasis on vulnerability which is what I feel blogging, in part, is all about. I like his emphasis on ministry teams.
I wonder whether it is the case that women have an advantage over men in reaching a post-modern culture because they are presenting something fresh and alternative just by being women in the world of Church where the great majority of people imagine 'vicar' and imagine 'man'. We are radical already. We present something which is more about our age and less about traditional associations people make with Church and 'authority'. I also wonder if it is more natural for us to give away power than hold onto it but then I never was one to make gender assumptions. However, since because from the beginning we have found that culture has forced us to give power away, even when we do not want to, I wonder whether we have it inbuilt...just some thoughts.
I am glad to be a woman becoming a priest, there is something exciting about that!
As someone also who works with Open source software (ubuntu Linux), this metaphor Ian used appealed to me.
‘[Our] church is like an open source
computer platform of the gospel rather
than a Microsoft product. We take the
source code as the gospel but around
that code, everyone has a particular
part to play, equally in making this
‘kingdom-system’ work... Everyone
contributes...offering their gifts, and
every time a new person comes into the
community the DNA changes, it never
stays the same, it’s not static, it’s not
issued in a box version 2.0’
19.10.09
Reading an interesting paper from Australia
Traffic from Australia is quite common here at Re vis.e Re form. I first became aware of Sydney diocese and its influence when I started to crack a circle of recommended reads. This was back in the days when I was struggling against the idea that the subordination of women was somehow biblical. It took me about £3000 (independent theological training) and a lot of heart-ache to finally realise that the Bible does not advocate female subordination. I am very sure that I was supposed to go on this journey and I do seem to have been given a big pair of shoulders (even though I'm only 5 ft 2) and a reasonably good sense of humour to keep me going. I am aware that some women have given up and been quite adversely affected by becoming caught up in the debate, and as the recent revisions to the 'Revision Committee thinking' on the question of women Bishops would reveal, the struggle is by no means over.
If you are being taught Christian doctrine on primary and seconday issues in a church which pulls from resources within Cornhill, Matthias Press, Sydney Moore college stuff, Latimer, Good book Keeping Company etc etc then your access to more egalitarian emphases, gospel emphases moreover, on the equality of men and women in the home and the Church are likely to be less developed.
Read around! Read widely! Be aware of the bias of the publishing houses. The other day St John's had IVP sale. It was going to be full of Piper, Grudem, Packer and Stott, godly men, called by Christ indeed but with particular theories about women's roles in the Church...so I gave that book sale a miss.
Do you remember this post at Re vis.e Re form July 08?
A letter has been written and signed by clergy that includes the following:
It is with sadness that we conclude that, should the Church of England indeed go ahead with the ordination of women to the episcopate, without at the same time making provision which offers us real ecclesial integrity and security, many of us will be thinking very hard about the way ahead. We will inevitably be asking whether we can, in conscience, continue to minister as bishops, priests and deacons in the Church of England which has been our home. We do not write this in a spirit of making threats or throwing down gauntlets. Rather, we believe that the time has come to make our concerns plain, so that the possible consequences of a failure to make provision which allows us to flourish and to grow are clear. Your Graces will know that the cost of such a choice would be both spiritual and material.
It has been signed by many clergy. If you wonder whether your vicar has signed it, click here and open the letter
Groups like Watch won't worry about the leavers. GRAS don't want dissenters to have provision either.
...And yet, so far, recent news conveys that there is going to be provision. I wonder what the motivation is behind the recent revisions? Does the church simply want to prevent the hemorrhaging of such clergy? I wonder whom we have got making decisions at the moment. Do you remember this post from the 15th November 2008?
So, anyway, as I said, I am reading through a very interesting paper which was presented in 1990 entitled 'On the matter of the 1990 references by the Primate to the Appellate Tribunal of the Anglican Church of Australia pursuant to Section 63 of the Constitution of the Church of several questions relating to the ordination of women to the office of priest' by
My two girls came with me to college today, it's their half term. They are seven and five and I was very tempted to take them into Christina Baxter's teaching on the issues of the ordination and consecration of women. You're never too young to learn!
Over the next few days I shall be digesting some of Peter's points, wondering whether we are any further forward with our situation here in England. Two of his areas of investgation got my interest straight away and they are included below so that you might also wrestle with their implications:
And the following does rather make me want to swot up on Chrysostom, particularly considering my interest in what I thought was a modern heresy: ESS (the eternal subordination of the Son, which is often used to justify the subordination of women's function).
Peter describes how:
If you are being taught Christian doctrine on primary and seconday issues in a church which pulls from resources within Cornhill, Matthias Press, Sydney Moore college stuff, Latimer, Good book Keeping Company etc etc then your access to more egalitarian emphases, gospel emphases moreover, on the equality of men and women in the home and the Church are likely to be less developed.
Read around! Read widely! Be aware of the bias of the publishing houses. The other day St John's had IVP sale. It was going to be full of Piper, Grudem, Packer and Stott, godly men, called by Christ indeed but with particular theories about women's roles in the Church...so I gave that book sale a miss.
Do you remember this post at Re vis.e Re form July 08?
A letter has been written and signed by clergy that includes the following:
It is with sadness that we conclude that, should the Church of England indeed go ahead with the ordination of women to the episcopate, without at the same time making provision which offers us real ecclesial integrity and security, many of us will be thinking very hard about the way ahead. We will inevitably be asking whether we can, in conscience, continue to minister as bishops, priests and deacons in the Church of England which has been our home. We do not write this in a spirit of making threats or throwing down gauntlets. Rather, we believe that the time has come to make our concerns plain, so that the possible consequences of a failure to make provision which allows us to flourish and to grow are clear. Your Graces will know that the cost of such a choice would be both spiritual and material.
It has been signed by many clergy. If you wonder whether your vicar has signed it, click here and open the letter
Groups like Watch won't worry about the leavers. GRAS don't want dissenters to have provision either.
...And yet, so far, recent news conveys that there is going to be provision. I wonder what the motivation is behind the recent revisions? Does the church simply want to prevent the hemorrhaging of such clergy? I wonder whom we have got making decisions at the moment. Do you remember this post from the 15th November 2008?
REFORM strategy - get as many like-minded, preferably REFORM networked clergy into synod 2010 as they can: (I quote)'How many of us here have either considered standing for General Synod in 2010 or have asked a member of the congregation whether they would do so? General Synod has enormous power to muck things up. We must encourage people who are capable of standing firm to stand for election. And don’t worry that you may be taking votes from someone else; the voting system we have operates by transferable vote, so you can never take votes away from anyone that way.'
Despite this bold move, tread gently because 'we want to insist that we are not setting up a separate ecclesial organisation. Rather, we are a fellowship operating within a wider federation. And as a fellowship we seek to reach out to whoever wants to be a partner in the gospel. We must win friends to the cause.'
The problem at the moment as Rod sees it: 'Groups of likeminded people formulate voting tactics so that synodical processes can be used to subvert what is clearly the will of synod. And once underway, the House of Bishop’s declares itself powerless to reverse the synodical process.'
...em interesting. So, anyway, as I said, I am reading through a very interesting paper which was presented in 1990 entitled 'On the matter of the 1990 references by the Primate to the Appellate Tribunal of the Anglican Church of Australia pursuant to Section 63 of the Constitution of the Church of several questions relating to the ordination of women to the office of priest' by
My two girls came with me to college today, it's their half term. They are seven and five and I was very tempted to take them into Christina Baxter's teaching on the issues of the ordination and consecration of women. You're never too young to learn!
Over the next few days I shall be digesting some of Peter's points, wondering whether we are any further forward with our situation here in England. Two of his areas of investgation got my interest straight away and they are included below so that you might also wrestle with their implications:
At the very centre of the Christian faith is the incarnation and resurrection of the second Person of the Trinity as a human being, with no reservations as to his full and perfect humanity (Articles II and IV). As the Church Fathers perceived, ‘that which is not assumed is not saved’; only such complete incarnation and resurrection can be effectual; if women, therefore, are to be saved, the full humanity of women must be included in the incarnation of Christ.
It follows that a man has no better ground than a woman for representing Christ, in any circumstance; including that of exercising the functions of a priest in the Church (insofar as the priesthood may be said to ‘represent Christ’). If the priest is the ikon of Christ, then priests must be both male and female—else heresy is committed against the full humanity of our Lord.
And the following does rather make me want to swot up on Chrysostom, particularly considering my interest in what I thought was a modern heresy: ESS (the eternal subordination of the Son, which is often used to justify the subordination of women's function).
Peter describes how:
There are those who argue for a subordination within the Godhead so that they may affirm the subordination of women. Their understanding of headship enables them to assign subordinate positions both to women and to the Son of God. Saint John Chrysostom said it far better than I when he observed that there were heretics who seized upon the notion of headship and derived from it a concept of the Son as somehow less than the Father. The heretics would argue that although the Son is of the same substance as the Father, He is under subjection. No, said Chrysostom, had Paul intended to demonstrate subordination, he would have chosen slave and master rather than wife and husband. The Apostle intended to show equality. Chrysostom asked, How then should we understand head? and answered, understand it in the sense of “perfect unity and primal cause and source” (John Chrysostom, Commentary on the First Epistle to the Corinthians, Homily 26)
Time allowing, more will follow. This blog has now wrestled with these issues since its birth and perhaps it always will, see this thread for example.
17.10.09
My other blog
I have decided to restrict readership of my other blog. I have been advised by my spiritual director to keep a journal, which I think is probably what a lot of Christians do anyway, but on paper. I use laptops so much I have pretty much forgotten how to even hold a pen so I am turning Angel utterances into my journal, which is what it was fast becoming anyway. It is about witnessing what God is doing in my life and the life of people around me through his Holy Spirit. I usually record the manifestations of his presence and I think that restricting readership will enable me to disclose more and wrestle with it with the help of my spiritual director.
Re vis.e re form covers my theological thinking, on the whole, with reflections on college life but my angel utterances blog explores the manifestations of the Holy Spirit and that sort of thing and stuff I just do not understand at all.
I think that I have a wee bit of baggage to sort out. I have exposed myself to too many articles knocking Todd Bentley and the Toronto Blessing and other outpourings and I do not know if I can trust readers to not think I've gone a bit loopy-loo at times and so I will just keep this stuff separate.
If however, you are someone with a really busy Spiritual life, if you know what I mean, and the blog has helped you in some way, then get in touch and I'll consider dialoguing with you. If you already follow angelutterances get in touch for a password.
If you do not know what I am talking about then it's not an issue so that's okay, ignore this post. You never read the stuff anyway.
It is important to me to record this stuff because I think that part of our witness to Christ is through teaching from the scriptures and our telling of a very experiential relationship with God. I know that my own journey with Jesus is spurred on with a real hunger when I see, at first hand, the manifestations of his presence occurring right in front of me in the lives of people walking moment by moment with the Spirit. I need to record my own experiences so that later they can be testified about when I am in ministry, if I discern they might help others to seek out a closer relationship with Jesus for themselves. I am also aware, though, that St Paul had much to say about the excesses of the Spiritual gifts in 1 Corinthians and so I also want to guard against spilling all in a very public way just in case I bring a sense of chaos rather than order to the table.
Be it all to his glory!
Just to leave you with some of the writings of Bernard of Clairveaux who expresses the Spirit's work in a way with which I can identify:
Rest is in Him alone. Man knows no peace in the world; but he has no disturbance when he is with God. And so the soul says with confidence, ‘Whom have I in heaven but Thee; and there is none upon earth that I desire in comparison of Thee. God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever. It is good for me to hold me fast by God, to put my trust in the Lord God’ (Ps. 73.25ff). Even by this way one would eventually come to God...
‘The Lord is good unto them that wait for Him’ (Lam. 3.25). What will He be then to those who gain His presence? But here is a paradox, that no one can seek the Lord who has not already found Him. It is Thy will, O God, to be found that Thou mayest be sought, to be sought that Thou mayest the more truly be found. But though Thou canst be sought and found, Thou canst not be forestalled...
No longer do we love God because of our necessity, but because we have tasted and seen how gracious the Lord is’...
‘My flesh and my heart faileth; but God is the strength of my heart and my portion for ever’ (Ps. 73.26). I would count him blessed and holy to whom such rapture has been vouchsafed in this mortal life, for even an instant to lose thyself, as if thou wert emptied and lost and swallowed up in God, is no human love; it is celestial.
And wow-
just consider for a while what the future holds:
When the flesh is laid aside, she eats no more the bread of carefulness, but is allowed to drink deeply of the wine of love, as if after a repast. But the wine is not yet unmingled; even as the Bridegroom saith in another place, ‘I have drunk My wine with My milk’ (Cant. 5.1). For the soul mixes with the wine of God’s love the milk of natural affection, that is, the desire for her body and its glorification. She glows with the wine of holy love which she has drunk; but she is not yet all on fire, for she has tempered the potency of that wine with milk. The unmingled wine would enrapture the soul and make her wholly unconscious of self; but here is no such transport for she is still desirous of her body. When that desire is appeased, when the one lack is supplied, what should hinder her then from yielding herself utterly to God, losing her own likeness and being made like unto Him? At last she attains to that chalice of the heavenly wisdom, of which it is written, ‘My cup shall be full.’ Now indeed she is refreshed with the abundance of the house of God, where all selfish, carking care is done away, and where, for ever safe, she drinks the fruit of the vine, new and pure, with Christ in the Kingdom of His Father (Matt. 26.29).
Thank you Bernard of Clairveaux
Thank you Jesus
(Taken from Christian Classics Ethereal Library)
Re vis.e re form covers my theological thinking, on the whole, with reflections on college life but my angel utterances blog explores the manifestations of the Holy Spirit and that sort of thing and stuff I just do not understand at all.
I think that I have a wee bit of baggage to sort out. I have exposed myself to too many articles knocking Todd Bentley and the Toronto Blessing and other outpourings and I do not know if I can trust readers to not think I've gone a bit loopy-loo at times and so I will just keep this stuff separate.
If however, you are someone with a really busy Spiritual life, if you know what I mean, and the blog has helped you in some way, then get in touch and I'll consider dialoguing with you. If you already follow angelutterances get in touch for a password.
If you do not know what I am talking about then it's not an issue so that's okay, ignore this post. You never read the stuff anyway.
It is important to me to record this stuff because I think that part of our witness to Christ is through teaching from the scriptures and our telling of a very experiential relationship with God. I know that my own journey with Jesus is spurred on with a real hunger when I see, at first hand, the manifestations of his presence occurring right in front of me in the lives of people walking moment by moment with the Spirit. I need to record my own experiences so that later they can be testified about when I am in ministry, if I discern they might help others to seek out a closer relationship with Jesus for themselves. I am also aware, though, that St Paul had much to say about the excesses of the Spiritual gifts in 1 Corinthians and so I also want to guard against spilling all in a very public way just in case I bring a sense of chaos rather than order to the table.
Be it all to his glory!
Just to leave you with some of the writings of Bernard of Clairveaux who expresses the Spirit's work in a way with which I can identify:
Rest is in Him alone. Man knows no peace in the world; but he has no disturbance when he is with God. And so the soul says with confidence, ‘Whom have I in heaven but Thee; and there is none upon earth that I desire in comparison of Thee. God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever. It is good for me to hold me fast by God, to put my trust in the Lord God’ (Ps. 73.25ff). Even by this way one would eventually come to God...
‘The Lord is good unto them that wait for Him’ (Lam. 3.25). What will He be then to those who gain His presence? But here is a paradox, that no one can seek the Lord who has not already found Him. It is Thy will, O God, to be found that Thou mayest be sought, to be sought that Thou mayest the more truly be found. But though Thou canst be sought and found, Thou canst not be forestalled...
No longer do we love God because of our necessity, but because we have tasted and seen how gracious the Lord is’...
‘My flesh and my heart faileth; but God is the strength of my heart and my portion for ever’ (Ps. 73.26). I would count him blessed and holy to whom such rapture has been vouchsafed in this mortal life, for even an instant to lose thyself, as if thou wert emptied and lost and swallowed up in God, is no human love; it is celestial.
And wow-
just consider for a while what the future holds:
When the flesh is laid aside, she eats no more the bread of carefulness, but is allowed to drink deeply of the wine of love, as if after a repast. But the wine is not yet unmingled; even as the Bridegroom saith in another place, ‘I have drunk My wine with My milk’ (Cant. 5.1). For the soul mixes with the wine of God’s love the milk of natural affection, that is, the desire for her body and its glorification. She glows with the wine of holy love which she has drunk; but she is not yet all on fire, for she has tempered the potency of that wine with milk. The unmingled wine would enrapture the soul and make her wholly unconscious of self; but here is no such transport for she is still desirous of her body. When that desire is appeased, when the one lack is supplied, what should hinder her then from yielding herself utterly to God, losing her own likeness and being made like unto Him? At last she attains to that chalice of the heavenly wisdom, of which it is written, ‘My cup shall be full.’ Now indeed she is refreshed with the abundance of the house of God, where all selfish, carking care is done away, and where, for ever safe, she drinks the fruit of the vine, new and pure, with Christ in the Kingdom of His Father (Matt. 26.29).
Thank you Bernard of Clairveaux
Thank you Jesus
(Taken from Christian Classics Ethereal Library)
15.10.09
Spirit as first instalment of kingdom of God
New covenant 2 cor 3
First-fruits Rom 8
Down-payment 2 Cor 1:22, Eph 1:14
Seal 2 Cor 1:22 Eph 1:13
The key thing for Paul is that the Spirit is the hallmark of the Christian life.
So encouraging to hear today about this embracing in the life of the Spirit.
Baptism is the initiation. Baptism of the Spirit begins the experience. The Spirit and eschatology, the Spirit and behaviour, the Spirit and relation with God as Father, the Spirit and relations with one another. All these things were explored. it was acknowledged that the language of 'baptism in the Holy Spirit' is controversial and we left that for another day....ow that's a shame.
First-fruits Rom 8
Down-payment 2 Cor 1:22, Eph 1:14
Seal 2 Cor 1:22 Eph 1:13
The key thing for Paul is that the Spirit is the hallmark of the Christian life.
So encouraging to hear today about this embracing in the life of the Spirit.
Baptism is the initiation. Baptism of the Spirit begins the experience. The Spirit and eschatology, the Spirit and behaviour, the Spirit and relation with God as Father, the Spirit and relations with one another. All these things were explored. it was acknowledged that the language of 'baptism in the Holy Spirit' is controversial and we left that for another day....ow that's a shame.
Ephesians 5:21
We have just looked in class at this passage and how the split at 21 is not correct and has huge pastoral implications, which we did not look into further. We have looked at the grammar just briefly and how at 18, the emphasis on being 'continually' filled with the Spirit is about a habitual daily filling. The same grammar works through the 'speaking' and the 'submitting'.
At 21 there is no verb, so women are instructed to continue submitting as men also lay down their lives. Instructions to children and slaves work in a similar way so that there is mutual submission. All of this is done to the Lord. Lord Jesus. Mr Grudem does different things with this verse.
What about 'submission' (better, 'being subject to)?
What is hypotass?
Origin is military: setting things in order (under one another).
In the NT the word is always passive, unless God is the subject - he is the only one who does the subjecting. It cannot here mean 'obey' (as per the marriage service), since it is in the context of all being subject to one another. See Col 3:18 for contrast between submission and obedience ('hypakouo').
Emphasis appears to be wives submitting to their OWN husbands (v22). Example of Christ's headship (v25) is that of self-giving and life-offering, not authority.
At 21 there is no verb, so women are instructed to continue submitting as men also lay down their lives. Instructions to children and slaves work in a similar way so that there is mutual submission. All of this is done to the Lord. Lord Jesus. Mr Grudem does different things with this verse.
What about 'submission' (better, 'being subject to)?
What is hypotass?
Origin is military: setting things in order (under one another).
In the NT the word is always passive, unless God is the subject - he is the only one who does the subjecting. It cannot here mean 'obey' (as per the marriage service), since it is in the context of all being subject to one another. See Col 3:18 for contrast between submission and obedience ('hypakouo').
Emphasis appears to be wives submitting to their OWN husbands (v22). Example of Christ's headship (v25) is that of self-giving and life-offering, not authority.
14.10.09
Prayer ministry at St John's college 'Come Holy Spirit'
Our new Dean of college, Nick Ladd, spoke really encouragingly about prayer ministry this morning and what it entails. It all just felt so right. Sometimes we can be too full of words and this is a lesson I had to learn. When I first involved myself in prayer ministry, I do not think I was in a complete place of trust and surrender. It was almost as if I needed to be clever. It was all an effort. I felt self-conscious, as if it was all somehow my responsibility, as if I needed to say clever things, really know the person. Oh boy, I must have been so hopeless and the people whom I ministered to showed me such grace. When I discovered that it is God who works and not me, it was just the hugest relief and I came to understand why Paul explains to the churches that when he ministers to them he delights to do so because he receives too.
Nick Ladd explained that we are all waiting on God, there is no pray-er and pray-ee.
When we prayed together yesterday and today as a college, we left long periods of silence after we had asked the Holy Spirit to come. I think this was the first time in three weeks that our prayers were not packed full of petitions and words and even sometimes theology (which always makes me wonder whether we are trying to explain to God who we think he is, which always strikes me as a little bit of a peculiar thing to do.) I met with God through the power of his Spirit today because we were able to wait on the Lord.
...And so I am particularly encouraged that we have such a prayerful man as our Dean, that this culture of waiting on the Lord and expecting his Holy Spirit to be truly manifest amongst us, in the name of Jesus, is something that we expect to see happen.
Nick Ladd explained that we are all waiting on God, there is no pray-er and pray-ee.
When we prayed together yesterday and today as a college, we left long periods of silence after we had asked the Holy Spirit to come. I think this was the first time in three weeks that our prayers were not packed full of petitions and words and even sometimes theology (which always makes me wonder whether we are trying to explain to God who we think he is, which always strikes me as a little bit of a peculiar thing to do.) I met with God through the power of his Spirit today because we were able to wait on the Lord.
...And so I am particularly encouraged that we have such a prayerful man as our Dean, that this culture of waiting on the Lord and expecting his Holy Spirit to be truly manifest amongst us, in the name of Jesus, is something that we expect to see happen.
Prayer ministry occurs at college informally, in worship and privately, as part of the normal provision of a chapel service and by appointment with a tutor or two students.
If we are involved in prayer ministry, we are to ask if there is a particular need for prayer and also ensure people are happy with the laying on of hands (restricted to head, shoulders and upper back). We then invite the Holy Spirit to come and bless them.
Why do we ask God to come when he is here already. In Isaiah 42, he gives the Spirit to those who walk creation.We have the Spirit living within us already. In Psalm 140 - without the ruach everything dies and when God sends forth his ruach there is life. If God is omnipresent why do we call on him to come in the power of the Spirit?
When we call on God, we call for the manifest presence of God. The Bible is full of encounters of God. He is always coming in fresh ways.
'Come Holy Spirit' is not new. We sing hymns which invoke the Holy Spirit.
'Come down, oh love divine'
'Come Holy Ghost our souls inspire'
Sunday by Sunday we invoke the Holy Spirit in the Eucharist.
When we ask the Holy Spirit to come, we signal to God that we are ready for him to minister to us. If we want to be trinitarian we might ask for the Spirit to be poured out in Jesus' name. We invoke the one whom Jesus sent and this is right. We invoke the Spirit to come and in 1 Cor 12, it is his will regarding what he brings.
How do we practise this theology?
Think about posture. Do you pray better standing up or sitting down?
We are a unity of body, mind and spirit.
You can tell a lot about attentiveness by posture. Invite people to have an open posture.
The touch is like a sacrament of God's presence but be aware that some poeple will not want to be touched. Ensure people are happy with the laying on of hands (restricted to head, shoulders and upper back).
Ask if there is a particular need for prayer.
Invite the Holy Spirit to come and bless them 'Come Holy Spirit'.
Pray quietly in tongues but not obtrusively.
Wait, do not fill the space with words.
The person needs time to relax into God's presence.
Watch the person. If there are tears do not jump in straight away. Have some tissues available. If there is real distress, pause. Call on support if you need it.
There is a place for words but do not see it as one-sided. We are coming together into the presence of God. Ask God whether this is the right time to speak and share. Ask open-ended questions. Pray on. Always pray to bless, for wholeness and healing but also for the specific need.
If the person wants to stop, you stop.
If there are people who fall down, make sure they are not too uncomfortable.
I had discussed with a friend whether St John's would think to have catchers, it would seem that they do think along these lines and expect God to minister to people in this way.
We can underpin it all with words from 1 John 4:12
No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.
This is what it is all about. It isn't about our result. We do not know what God is doing but we trust he is working.
We had time to minister to one another afterwards in this expectant atmosphere and it was wonderful to see God at work amongst us so manifest in the power of his Spirit.
I have had just the most fab day!
David Runcorn on 'Spirituality' - redeeming orthodoxy
The roots of Christian Spirituality.
I am in the chapel, looking forward to more pearls of wisdom from David Runcorn. Spirituality is fast becoming the highlight of my week because it is here where we really get to wrestle with God and ourselves in a really gritty and honest but live-enhancing way.
So what does 'spirituality' mean? It is relatively new in the context of theological thinking and programmes like this one are relatively new in colleges. Sometimes it connotes more a Catholic sense of intimacy with God. But it is also about exploration of our inheritance, the mystical inheritance. It reminds us of the practices of monks who were known alongside clergy as the 'spiritualities'.
Where do we come across this word now? We certainly find it outside Church circles. The church does not have a monopoly on spirituality. Spirituality is cosmic. It is personal but it is never private. It speaks of ecology, it is cosmic in a way which has helped the church to catch up on green issues. It also encompasses our relationships and energies. It encompasses everything.
People will claim that they are not religious but they have a spirituality. Spirituality makes up our DNA. In Christianity it takes on a new context but we have been spiritual since we were created. Sometimes our longings get misplaced but it is fundamentally about who God has made us to be.
So what is distinctive about Christian spirituality?
If it has a colour for you, what colour would it be? If it were a dance what would it look like? For Jo and I it would be purple and a perichoretic dance, full of lots of circles and movement. What kind of texture would it have? A soft, luxurious velvet, perhaps.
We look at Ephesians 1:3-10.
3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. 4 For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love 5 he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will— 6 to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves. 7 In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God's grace 8 that he lavished on us. With all wisdom and understanding, 9 he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, 10 to be put into effect when the times reach their fulfilment—to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ. David quotes from the passage of scripture which I have been analysing for the last two days. Wow! Yesterday I spent two hours looking at the word 'beloved'.
And so in this remarkable passage, spirituality is about enormous celebration and blessing, it leaves us as people of celebration. We have the wonder and the dance and the praise, the generous glory of God's gift which fills creation and he has chosen us. We have the language of adoption. Christian spirituality is deeply personal because he is calling us by name. It is intentional. God draws us in to a living relationship, into his household, our inheritance. It is about a revelation rooted and worked out in history and time and not in abstract ideas. It is about redemption. It is through his blood, to the enormous cost of God.
We will go through liberation, redemption, suffering, death and resurrection as we travel towards and never away from the cross.
It is costly. It is a narrow way and those who find it are few. We have to keep knocking, we have to face warfare and struggle and we will often be left in the dark.
It is about our destiny in God and nothing will be left out. It is the entire cosmos Christ holds together. It is gratuitous gift, something given with no regard, it is pure gift. There is no tag, there is nothing required in return. Spirituality is a gift, God chooses to love us this way.
Thank you, Father!
It is lavish, gift, goodness, grace. It's all just washing through. God gave us all this from the beginning and assured us it would come to fullness in Christ.
We are finite and fallen and so we often do not know how to handle it. At times we look for it to be safely packaged. It can become tribal. All Christian spirituality is a continuing act of reconciliation.
So where have the fault-lines fallen?
Catholic/protestant
Evangelical/the rest
What are we going to do about it? We need to seek to pray beyond a tribal faith and we need to pray that we seek something other than a tribal faith! We must worry less about crossing fault-lines!
David Gillet - 'We can begin to benefit...from the pluralism of our age. It is something to be welcomed as a gift and opportunity from God. It is not something to be feared and rejected as an unwelcome feature of our culture.'
Be prepared to widen your horizons, David suggests. Many theological ordinands do not get placed in evangelical churches. What will we learn? We will realise that we can integrate, enter into this spirituality without feeling disarmed. But we need to learn. We are called to learn and to live beyond the tribes - this is our calling in Christ. Our God is not a tribal God!
Tribal faith keeps us safe but there is a challenge to break out of this, actually this speaks to me about my post entitled 'Going home'. There lies my tribal faith.
How else might we redeem our spiritual footprint? 'How great thou art' is one expression of a kind of homage to God. How much are we we creating pastoral idylls with our hymnody and thinking? Can we write an urban verse in the creation hymns that we sing. if you can write a rhyming verse - there's a bar of chocolate in it for you from David Runcorn.
We need to challenge the fault-lines and resist splitting the world. God is in all creation. Let's not 'chocolate box' it. God is not more in the mountains than the supermarkets! Fantastic.
The universe in its entirety gives glory to God.
Maximus the confessor said in the smallest thing we can contemplate the trinity. It's actual existence speaks of the creator God, it's meaning speaks of the logos and its life is the life of the Spirit. That is wonderful.
Clement said the incarnation needs to be put back into the whole scheme of creation ...everything in effect exists as a great movement of incarnation...it is all fulfilled in him. Clement is explaining that God is doing more than a rescue job for the whole world.
How else might we redeem out spiritual expression?
We have split Spirit and matter. This was exacerbated by a kind of Greek philosophy the results with which we are still living. There is a disembodied sense of the spiritual which is unhealthy. We are not to triumph over matter. We are not to abdicate matter. If we do we will pass Jesus who is going the other way. Spirituality is about taking flesh, it has to be embodied. Christ took flesh!
The place of the body in prayer is a place that we are slowly discovering. Consecrate each part of your body before you pray. Your body is not the enemy. Mime your prayers. I do this. Particularly felt I had to when I was so full of the Holy Spirit after New Wine. That was a wonderful time in my prayer life- that season!
Out of your heart flows running waters, living streams. Indeed!
The home of the Spirit is not the realm of the intellect, it is in the guts, a place of conflict, confusion, desire and vulnerability. Oh yes!
There is a question here for charismatic renewal. Incarnational or ecstatic (lit: 'out of matter'). Out of the sacramental renewal wave, people realised that all creation was a part of the renewal. Wimber's American Quaker revitalist movement led a move towards the ecstatic but we need to think about the place for renewal now. Will it look more cosmic and less ecstatic in the individualistic, escaping matter sense of the expression.
I wonder if it can be both and indeed David agrees that the two can be integrated. I guess this is wholeness where there is integration. I ask about Paul's more mystical 'third heaven' experiences, but I am reminded by David that he was very rooted too, very earthy, very fleshy in his sufferings. Paul Spirituality was a spirituality that was not disembodied and we we do experiences the 'third heaven' moments, we are to celebrate them as pure gift.
We are reminded that the personal life of prayer is not private, it is personal but it is is corporate because even alone, we pray to our father.
How else might we redeem our spiritual expression?
We must avoid splitting our wholeness into mind verses heart. Praying in a context of academic study as we are, we should be aware that we put unhealthy splits where there are none. All prayer is theology and all theology is prayer, it is all mystical, whatever is going on in brains ,we pray from our guts. We are not to split the mind from the heart. Sometimes this is often split on gender lines too and through history men have found it harder to engage with that which is not of the mind.
Objective, academic or emotional in response? We should not ask these questions. They do not exist. We wonder about the brain when we are engaging in stuff of the emotion. We should talk instead about the emotional mind. What we are doing is engaging with emotion when we are studying.
Thoughts, feeling, passions, relationships, all these things in Christ come together so that we live whole-heartedly for God. We need a profound understanding about what it feels like to 'know'.
In the present discussion on the web about faith, those choosing new bishops will decide that they want someone of orthodox faith and teaching but what do we mean by this?
Faith should be exploratory and not pinned into something tribal. David Runcorn feels it too narrow to be tied down. Ortho means right and doxo means glory, so orthodox actually means that you are filled with the glory of God. This is wonderful.
Prayer and theology are inseparable says Clement.
The session draws to a close, but I feel like I could have sat discussing these things forever!
13.10.09
... longing for the priesthood
I found this in my in-box today (see below) and I found it really moving. It made me feel another surge of overwhelming gratitude to God that he would have me do this with my life: ordination training for ministry.
I have such feelings quite frequently at the moment. I stood in the library yesterday and for a moment time froze as I took in where I was, and stared at all those books lining all those shelves, sensing the awesome weight of the privilege it is to be surrounded by those voices shouting of God's love from their slightly sticky and perhaps often wept-over dust jackets. I imagined all the fingers of the priests past, present and future who have agonised in heart, soul and mind over the words contained therein. I have a kind of heart churning, stomach clenching reaction at these times, a kind of painful joy.
At the moment, I am also being treated to the most amazing sunrises on the A52 as I travel the 20 minute journey to college at just after 7 am each day. God paints the sky in colours I've never seen before and the landscape flashes past me bathed in a kind of rising mist like some beautiful painting. I like to think that the occupants of the other cars must feel a little of the awesomeness of God at these times, or at least acknowledge the beauty of his creation in some way.
When I first heard God's call some years ago, I must admit I did wonder whether he was preparing me for the end rather than the beginning of my life. I couldn't understand at first why he seemed to want me to get to know him with such an urgency. And so I was very touched by the idea that Theresa accepts her death as a kind of cruel kindness because living, she would never have been truly alive, unless she had been able to take up holy orders and be ordained as a priest. God was taking her to spare her the agony.
It would seem to me from the little that I know about her that she was quite prepared to live and love hard and passionately, without fear that she was making herself vulnerable.
I think I must find out a little more about her. This is the second time in a week that she has caused me to pause and breathe in afresh the aroma of my Lord and Saviour.
Who is this?
'I sense in myself the vocation
of Warrior, Priest, Apostle,
Doctor, and Martyr.
In the heart of the Church,
my Mother,
I will be love.'
The unlikely answer is St Therese of Liseaux. The saint is often called 'the Little Flower' offering a softer image of a gentle soul whereas Marie Francoise Therese Martin had steely determination and a vision of where she wanted to go and was only thwarted by her poor health. The picture shows her dressed as Joan of Arc, another strong woman of vision.
Here in England, relics of St Therese are making a tour invincing much public interest. Her relics are being displayed in churches around the country not only Catholic churches but Protestant churches and in chapels attached to universities and even one of London's prisons, Wormwood Scrubs - a testament to Therese's popularity as an accessible saint, one who acknowledged the trials and tribulations of daily life.
She is one of the great modern saints and is one of only three women to receive the honour of being recognised as a Doctor of the Church...
Catharina Broome OP, a a well known lecturer, writer and preacher based in Stockholm, Sweden, also explores St Therese's priestly vocation. She writes ..'The most significant testimony to the fact that Therese of the Child Jesus priestly vocation was nor a symbolic one but was indeed very serious, is the confidence she shared with her sister Genevieve. Her sister does not give the exact date when Therese confided in her, but says, only that is was some time in 1897 her final year, when she was only 24 years old.
'Don't you see that God is going to take me at an age when I would not have had the time to become a priest. If I had been able to become a priest, it would have been in this month of June, at this ordination that I would have received holy orders. So in order that I may regret nothing, God is allowing me to be sick; I wouldn't have been able to present myself for ordination, and I would have died before having exercised my ministry'
See http://www.womenpriests.org/called/broome.asp
May St Therese of Liseaux continue to be an inspiration to us!
Leonie Russell (Editor Womenpriests.org)
I have such feelings quite frequently at the moment. I stood in the library yesterday and for a moment time froze as I took in where I was, and stared at all those books lining all those shelves, sensing the awesome weight of the privilege it is to be surrounded by those voices shouting of God's love from their slightly sticky and perhaps often wept-over dust jackets. I imagined all the fingers of the priests past, present and future who have agonised in heart, soul and mind over the words contained therein. I have a kind of heart churning, stomach clenching reaction at these times, a kind of painful joy.
At the moment, I am also being treated to the most amazing sunrises on the A52 as I travel the 20 minute journey to college at just after 7 am each day. God paints the sky in colours I've never seen before and the landscape flashes past me bathed in a kind of rising mist like some beautiful painting. I like to think that the occupants of the other cars must feel a little of the awesomeness of God at these times, or at least acknowledge the beauty of his creation in some way.
When I first heard God's call some years ago, I must admit I did wonder whether he was preparing me for the end rather than the beginning of my life. I couldn't understand at first why he seemed to want me to get to know him with such an urgency. And so I was very touched by the idea that Theresa accepts her death as a kind of cruel kindness because living, she would never have been truly alive, unless she had been able to take up holy orders and be ordained as a priest. God was taking her to spare her the agony.
It would seem to me from the little that I know about her that she was quite prepared to live and love hard and passionately, without fear that she was making herself vulnerable.
I think I must find out a little more about her. This is the second time in a week that she has caused me to pause and breathe in afresh the aroma of my Lord and Saviour.
Who is this?
'I sense in myself the vocation
of Warrior, Priest, Apostle,
Doctor, and Martyr.
In the heart of the Church,
my Mother,
I will be love.'
The unlikely answer is St Therese of Liseaux. The saint is often called 'the Little Flower' offering a softer image of a gentle soul whereas Marie Francoise Therese Martin had steely determination and a vision of where she wanted to go and was only thwarted by her poor health. The picture shows her dressed as Joan of Arc, another strong woman of vision.
Here in England, relics of St Therese are making a tour invincing much public interest. Her relics are being displayed in churches around the country not only Catholic churches but Protestant churches and in chapels attached to universities and even one of London's prisons, Wormwood Scrubs - a testament to Therese's popularity as an accessible saint, one who acknowledged the trials and tribulations of daily life.
She is one of the great modern saints and is one of only three women to receive the honour of being recognised as a Doctor of the Church...
Catharina Broome OP, a a well known lecturer, writer and preacher based in Stockholm, Sweden, also explores St Therese's priestly vocation. She writes ..'The most significant testimony to the fact that Therese of the Child Jesus priestly vocation was nor a symbolic one but was indeed very serious, is the confidence she shared with her sister Genevieve. Her sister does not give the exact date when Therese confided in her, but says, only that is was some time in 1897 her final year, when she was only 24 years old.
'Don't you see that God is going to take me at an age when I would not have had the time to become a priest. If I had been able to become a priest, it would have been in this month of June, at this ordination that I would have received holy orders. So in order that I may regret nothing, God is allowing me to be sick; I wouldn't have been able to present myself for ordination, and I would have died before having exercised my ministry'
See http://www.womenpriests.org/called/broome.asp
May St Therese of Liseaux continue to be an inspiration to us!
Leonie Russell (Editor Womenpriests.org)
12.10.09
11.10.09
Good to go 'home'
I positively raced to worship this evening and entered late but to sing 'open the eyes of my heart, Lord' and immediately felt the tangible presence of the Holy Spirit in that place.
I am finding that I need to go 'home' and by this I mean my home church which I haven't really had to leave because I still live nearby and have not moved to college like the other students.
The people here have nurtured me in my faith and watched me grow. They also hold me accountable too. My spiritual director worships here and we all seem to meet with God in similar ways. There are deep connections there.
Theological training is challenging because even though you are in the presence of God and exploring his majesty, you are also exploring other ways of worshipping. This is absolutely necessary but it sometimes feels like rather than seeing your father and mother face-to-face, you email them or text them or a better analogy still, you are trying to talk to them when the line is crackly. I know what I am talking about because we live in a valley and the phoneline to home is not good but my mum and dad still pick up a phone each so that they can talk to me together. So when I worship God in contexts that are a little alien to me, I speak and hear on a crackly line.
It was fantastic this evening to hear clearly and receive in abundance and I think it is the only way that I can keep going through the next two years, although I am open to discovering something to the contrary. My home church will always be a very special place to me, no matter where I end up and to know that I can go there and to the Pentecostal church who suggested i return for 'top-ups' as they put it, is always good to know.
Ralph Martin writes about how 'We are grateful for all our preachers and teachers but some seem to have a special “gift” that is not only the fruit of human eloquence or diligent study but brings with it a sense of God’s presence and has a particular ability to help us recognize that the Lord is present and speaking to us in the preaching or teaching.'
This is how I feel about the people at my home church.
I am finding that I need to go 'home' and by this I mean my home church which I haven't really had to leave because I still live nearby and have not moved to college like the other students.
The people here have nurtured me in my faith and watched me grow. They also hold me accountable too. My spiritual director worships here and we all seem to meet with God in similar ways. There are deep connections there.
Theological training is challenging because even though you are in the presence of God and exploring his majesty, you are also exploring other ways of worshipping. This is absolutely necessary but it sometimes feels like rather than seeing your father and mother face-to-face, you email them or text them or a better analogy still, you are trying to talk to them when the line is crackly. I know what I am talking about because we live in a valley and the phoneline to home is not good but my mum and dad still pick up a phone each so that they can talk to me together. So when I worship God in contexts that are a little alien to me, I speak and hear on a crackly line.
It was fantastic this evening to hear clearly and receive in abundance and I think it is the only way that I can keep going through the next two years, although I am open to discovering something to the contrary. My home church will always be a very special place to me, no matter where I end up and to know that I can go there and to the Pentecostal church who suggested i return for 'top-ups' as they put it, is always good to know.
Ralph Martin writes about how 'We are grateful for all our preachers and teachers but some seem to have a special “gift” that is not only the fruit of human eloquence or diligent study but brings with it a sense of God’s presence and has a particular ability to help us recognize that the Lord is present and speaking to us in the preaching or teaching.'
This is how I feel about the people at my home church.
Worship (Anglo-Catholic and Forward-in-Faith)
This morning I went to Anglo-Catholic Church, St Laurence's in Long Eaton, presided over by Father Simon. It is a Forward-in -Faith church under the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Ebbsfleet.
On entering the building, I was struck by how old it is, parts of it are Norman. I was warmly greeted and handed a hymn book and a couple of printed pieces of paper, one about the church notices and another with supplementary hymns. I noticed that one of the hymns we would sing would be the one about Samuel: 'Is it you Lord, did you call Lord? I have heard you calling in the night'. I looked forward to this.
On entering the building, I was struck by how old it is, parts of it are Norman. I was warmly greeted and handed a hymn book and a couple of printed pieces of paper, one about the church notices and another with supplementary hymns. I noticed that one of the hymns we would sing would be the one about Samuel: 'Is it you Lord, did you call Lord? I have heard you calling in the night'. I looked forward to this.
We opened with the Gloria and then prayers, particular in content to what had gone on in the week and sung by the priest in charge. They were about the dedication of the building which had been celebrated as a living temple to the Lord for over one thousand years.
2 Chronicles 5 was then read by a woman at the front from behind a golden eagle lectern. A psalm was then sung and the congregation joined in with the words: 'The waters of a river give joy, give joy to God's city (1078)'
We then sang 'hallelujah' whilst the members of the choir with extra functions such as holding the candles at the side of the Bible (there is a name for them which escapes me) and swinging the incense, processed to the middle of the aisle so that the priest could read from the gospel according to John. 'Hallelujah' was then sung again and the Bible was replaced onto a special stand where it sat in full view of the congregation. Father Simon then ascended the pulpit to preach.
There was humour in his sermon. His aim was to unpack what had happened in the week with the procession through Walsingham of the relics of Saint Therese of Lisieux , who had made her way throughout the country attended by large crowds, 5000 people in Walsingham according to this blog. (Therese was a young cloister nun who lived in the North of France at the end of the 19th Century. She died young after two years of suffering).
Father Simon wanted us to wonder about how and whether the veneration of relics contrasts with our modern sensibilities? Do we struggle with it? After all, we are a resurrection-people! And yet there is a place for this too.
St Laurence is a Norman church and a house of prayer so when we think of the relevance of relics, we think of the building of these temples of God. The relics would have sat in the alter places of newly consecrated churches. In Rome you can visit the tomb of St Laurence if you should so wish. The church was built over his tomb there because people wanted a tangible link with the saint. Saint Polycarp 157AD spoke of these martyrs of the faith as being not so much chained with metal but with diadems because in their martyrdom they were professing with confidence that they had been truly chosen by God. Ignatius of Antioch wrote on the day of his martyrdom that he was God's wheat being ground by the wild beasts so that he might be found purely in Christ.
Father Simon wanted us to wonder about how and whether the veneration of relics contrasts with our modern sensibilities? Do we struggle with it? After all, we are a resurrection-people! And yet there is a place for this too.
St Laurence is a Norman church and a house of prayer so when we think of the relevance of relics, we think of the building of these temples of God. The relics would have sat in the alter places of newly consecrated churches. In Rome you can visit the tomb of St Laurence if you should so wish. The church was built over his tomb there because people wanted a tangible link with the saint. Saint Polycarp 157AD spoke of these martyrs of the faith as being not so much chained with metal but with diadems because in their martyrdom they were professing with confidence that they had been truly chosen by God. Ignatius of Antioch wrote on the day of his martyrdom that he was God's wheat being ground by the wild beasts so that he might be found purely in Christ.
I think at this point about how Father Simon is attempting to redeem for us how we feel about relics and have us not revere too much those who have come before us so that the sufficiency of Christ is compromised (not that it ever could be) but also bid us have respect for our fore-fathers and mothers, without whom our churches wouldn't be what they are.
Father Simon goes on to tell us how Laurence was mentioned by Gregory in the 6th century because Gregory received the parts of this martyr's bones. King Knut, (who tried to part the waves unsuccessfully) had a wife who had the bones of the arm of Saint Bartholomew amongst her most treasured possessions. Between 500 and 1500 AD ladies and lords would have treasured such bones or fragments of the saints. How different are we? Father Simon asks this, suggesting that when we display photographs of the generations that have preceded us or cling on to precious china bequeathed, valuing it priceless for its sentimental value, we are not so different. However, we had the reformation and there is a little laughter here to demonstrate that it was a right and necessary thing, for I think Father Simon is being careful that we shouldn't make too much of these saints of the past.
Here now is where we turn to application from 1 Corinthians 3.
Don't you know that you yourselves are God's temple and that God's Spirit lives in you? If anyone destroys God's temple, God will destroy him; for God's temple is sacred, and you are that temple.
We are, in the words of St Peter 'the living stones'. (1 Peter2:5)
Relics are important for the consecration of churches and we should not scoff at them but we should also not attend too much to the value in these things – we are the people of the resurrection! The Church understands this. Rome would not pay ransom money to the thieves who stole the bones of St Lucy because they know they are a resurrection people.
So what makes this building Holy? It is consecrated – yes, but it is us who are sacred! As St Paul tells us, we are the living temple.
I think this is where the emphasis of the sermon lies.
No matter what respect you give; this veneration you give, it is more important to respect and revere the person who sits right next to you, Father Simon insists.
I think this is where the emphasis of the sermon lies.
No matter what respect you give; this veneration you give, it is more important to respect and revere the person who sits right next to you, Father Simon insists.
Anselm is mentioned because we celebrate his 900th anniversary. He had been given relics as a gift and rejoiced in the gift but returned them to the sender. Anselm's own relics are not venerated to the same extent as those of Thomas of Canterbury's and yet Anselm's prayers form an important part of our devotions.
So what do we think about relics? We have them in our time, even now in Oxford you can purchase a small vial containing the sweat of Marilyn Monroe, should you wish!
How would we behave if we were to visit the temple at Jerusalem? We certainly would not play football there.
And so it is right to give the due respect. However, respect more fully the person sitting right next to you and on this dedication Sunday, thank God for the saints who have come before us but also that you have been called by God to be a Holy people! Amen.
So what do we think about relics? We have them in our time, even now in Oxford you can purchase a small vial containing the sweat of Marilyn Monroe, should you wish!
How would we behave if we were to visit the temple at Jerusalem? We certainly would not play football there.
And so it is right to give the due respect. However, respect more fully the person sitting right next to you and on this dedication Sunday, thank God for the saints who have come before us but also that you have been called by God to be a Holy people! Amen.
The sermon therefore ends on this high note before we chant the Nicene Creed and complete the intercessionary prayer asking the Lord to 'graciously hear us'. Prayers end with
Hail Mary, full of grace.
The Lord is with thee.
Blessed art thou amongst women,
and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
Holy Mary, Mother of God,
pray for us sinners,
now and at the hour of our death.
Amen.
The Lord is with thee.
Blessed art thou amongst women,
and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
Holy Mary, Mother of God,
pray for us sinners,
now and at the hour of our death.
Amen.
And somehow I find myself saying this until I refrain half way through because it doesn't feel quite right. I know now not to say the Angelos at the end, which I can see is coming up and indeed, when the congregation turn to face the statue of Mary and speak their words to (through?) the Theotokos, I turn just half way around but address my prayers instead to Jesus by focusing on a plaster icon which hangs of him on the cross above my head. I am hoping that there was no churlishness in me at this point for I rather prefer to think that I was being true to my evangelical insistence on Christ Alone.I need to further inspect my motives.
However, between the 'Mary sandwich', we partake in the Eucharist. A hymn is sung and incense is swung as the elements are prepared. The organ plays in the background. The peace is signaled but not enacted with a handshake for we move on quickly as words are chanted about what God has accomplished for us in Christ and we sing that it is 'right to give thanks and praise'. We then hear a bell ringing as the elements are made ready and we sing 'O Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world', the singing of which never fails to move me in a deep part of my being. The Eucharistic prayer is chanted and bells ring at the mention of the bread and the wine and perhaps to signal the descent of the Holy Spirit, which is something else that leaves me in a bit of a theological tangle. I have much more thinking to do about what I actually think happens at the Eucharist. The priest remembers in his prayers not just Rowan but the Pope too, which I find interesting, and also Mary and the saints and all of us gathered, in the hope that our lives might be a worthy offering. Communion is shared and we drink from the cup despite the ruling against it from Rowan that we shouldn't because of the spread of swine flu.
The blessing finishes the service.
Notices and thanks to the choir are given after the banns of marriage are read and then we are off to the church hall for coffee and tea where I am very moved by one woman, who gives me an enormous hug and a kiss on the cheek and tells me that I am very welcome.
Father Simon is an affable, approachable and humble man, who doesn't seem to take himself too seriously. It transpires that he frequents New Wine and when I rather foolishly suggest that perhaps there is an evangelical within him ready to burst out (why did I say that?!), he assures me quite passionately that he is an evangelical and what does it all mean anyway? Think, Rach!!
So there we are. I felt at ease and loved in that place. I felt that I was honouring God in all his otherness and mystery and taking part in something very special. I thought about the Holy Spirit and felt his presence and taking the Eucharist in that place felt awesome and solemn. However, I missed Jesus a little and I would have liked for more to have been made of the gospel reading from John. I am pretty convinced, however, that this would have happened had it not been dedication Sunday.
I felt indebted to the great heritage of the Church but also that if someone had entered from the street, someone unchurched, they might have missed the message of God's love for him/her in his making us the living stones because that person would not have been able to access allusions to Polycarp and Ignatius, Saint Theresa and Anselm unless they had been a part of the crowds which had accompanied Theresa's procession, of course.
I felt indebted to the great heritage of the Church but also that if someone had entered from the street, someone unchurched, they might have missed the message of God's love for him/her in his making us the living stones because that person would not have been able to access allusions to Polycarp and Ignatius, Saint Theresa and Anselm unless they had been a part of the crowds which had accompanied Theresa's procession, of course.
I felt as though the gospel was being proclaimed but not afresh for this generation, it was instead directed to feeding the faithful who were present and already mature in their faith. Perhaps there are churches for whom this is to be their role. Local people are provided for, though. The church does run Alpha and have activities occurring in the week for the unchurched and it obviously has a presence in the local community as it involves itself in fund-raising campaigns and opens its doors to people on a Saturday.
So I am left with some questions. Do those who do not sit happily with the ordination and consecration of women more often become incumbents of Anglo-Catholic churches? Where else is there a safe haven for traditionalists outside of Anglo-Catholicism? How does the oversight of a flying bishop work in practice? What does it mean for the theology of the episcopate when the Bishop is supposed to symbolise unity?
I was pleased to see this church welcoming us so warmly into the fold. There are people within the church who do and do not believe in the ordination of women. It transpires that my friend who invited me there would be happy to receive communion in my church from a woman but not in his own church from a woman.
Father Simon was a very warm, intelligent and godly man. I didn't ask him how he felt about the two integrities because it didn't seem to matter at the time. It doesn't. I realised how I have grown. I felt no concerns about being there as a future ordained woman amongst people who would choose not to take the Eucharist from me. I just felt at peace about it.
So this morning I felt very held by God, comfortable with every element of the liturgy and worship but less so about the veneration of Mary. It will not be a place in which my own ministry can flourish because there are the obvious barriers. However, I would not find it too difficult to go on placement there. I feel as though I would learn a lot.
Looking at Father Simon, I was able to imagine myself properly for the first time wearing all the gear and reciting all of the correct things. The vicars dress less formally where I woeship. At the same time I was thinking that I am probably seeking to integrate a more charismatic, joyful expression of worship, an intimacy with Jesus to be celebrated, not to the exclusion of the awe and reverence with which we approached God this morning for that I dearly value but with a little more emphasis than there was today on God's immanence as well as his transcendence.
I was pleased to see this church welcoming us so warmly into the fold. There are people within the church who do and do not believe in the ordination of women. It transpires that my friend who invited me there would be happy to receive communion in my church from a woman but not in his own church from a woman.
Father Simon was a very warm, intelligent and godly man. I didn't ask him how he felt about the two integrities because it didn't seem to matter at the time. It doesn't. I realised how I have grown. I felt no concerns about being there as a future ordained woman amongst people who would choose not to take the Eucharist from me. I just felt at peace about it.
So this morning I felt very held by God, comfortable with every element of the liturgy and worship but less so about the veneration of Mary. It will not be a place in which my own ministry can flourish because there are the obvious barriers. However, I would not find it too difficult to go on placement there. I feel as though I would learn a lot.
Looking at Father Simon, I was able to imagine myself properly for the first time wearing all the gear and reciting all of the correct things. The vicars dress less formally where I woeship. At the same time I was thinking that I am probably seeking to integrate a more charismatic, joyful expression of worship, an intimacy with Jesus to be celebrated, not to the exclusion of the awe and reverence with which we approached God this morning for that I dearly value but with a little more emphasis than there was today on God's immanence as well as his transcendence.
Thank you Father Simon!
Update fr Simon joins the Ordinariate
10.10.09
Put your goggles on Bishop - are you flying or might you now even just set up a bishopric next door?
So are these male bishops for those who do not agree with female bishops going to be nested or will they have to fly in, as they have done in the past? Could we even get to the point where there are two bishoprics in a diocese, one for all and one for the one or two parishes in a diocese who will not accept oversight from a woman?
I don't think I like the latest updates from the revision committee on Women Bishops.
In that press release we were informed that the Revision Committee has voted to amend the draft legislation so as ‘to provide for certain functions to be vested in male bishops by statute rather than by delegation from the diocesan bishop under a statutory code of practice’.
Can the Church of England continue to be all things to all people. I guess in many ways I am attracted to its via media peculiarities but I wonder how women bishops will feel when others can simply opt out of their diocesan control. I guess you are going to say it has nothing to do with how people feel and everything to do with theological sensibilities but theology is at stake when the diocesan bishop should be be a focus of unity, male or female.
If you can opt to come under the control of another bishop that focus of unity is compromised?
Tomorrow I will church-hop to an Anglo-Catholic church to which I have been invited by someone who is becoming a good friend. They will not believe in women bishops but from a Catholic perspective I can understand this. Women Bishops are new and Anglo-Catholics pay a great deal of attention to tradition. Like Tim Keene, who blogged this response over a year ago, whose words I've borrowed 'I find it hard to understand why the issue is so important to Evangelical Anglicans. Conservative Evangelicals acknowledge that bishops are not necessary in the same way as the gospel, the Bible or the sacraments. If bishops are not necessary, and let's face it some of them are distinctly unnecessary, why does it matter if they are women or men? For years Evangelical Anglicans had survived an episcopacy that was horrendous. Why does it matter so very much if the bishop is a woman, perhaps even a godly and orthodox woman? Evangelicals have always had to cope with bishops who should not be bishops. Even if they consider it inappropriate for women to be a bishop, can they not rejoice when they get a godly bishop even when a woman?' It seems a lot better than what many have now. What I am saying is that the issue seems to have gathered a significance that is appropriate only to fundamentals such as the gospel, when the issue does not merit it. The letter to the Galatians is a tract directed against giving non gospel things a kind of gospel status.'
If this half-way house measure becomes the one adopted, and I believe there is much time and debate to be had before this happens, if it happens at all, are we really able to sustain such a compromise, when as I have pointed out on this blog before the whole thing will become a mockery as traditionalists go through the kind of questioning system below to ensure the purity of those in oversight:
(1) - have you ever received communion from a woman?
(2) - were you confirmed by a female bishop?
(3) - were you confirmed by a male bishop who:-
(a) - was confirmed by a female bishop?
(b) - was ordained by a female bishop?
(c) - was ordained at a service where women were also being ordained?
(d) - was consecrated at a service where a female bishop was present or laying hands?
(e) - has ever received communion from a female priest or bishop?
(f) - has ever ordained a female priest?
(g) – has ever participated in the consecration of a female bishop?
(4) -If you answered 'no' to (3(a) to (3)(g)) above, repeat each step (a) to (g) in relation to:-
(i) the bishop who consecrated the bishop who confirmed you
(ii) the bishop who ordained the bishop who confirmed you
(iii) the bishop who confirmed the bishop who confirmed you
This was only half of the process, I got a bit lost after point 4, it's more thorough even than this!
For more see Church mouse, Brad Cook, Thinking Anglicans Reuters
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
LinkWithin
.
A little background reading so we might mutually flourish when there are different opinions