Wading in Moravia
While the Anglican Communion developed under unique historical circumstances within western Catholicism, it remains to be seen whether it will discern its own special “genius” for our present times. There are many guides for such discernment, including William Countryman’s Calling on the Spirit in Unsettling Times and Greg Garrett’s My Church is Not Dying. Among the historic virtues many think might serve us well: willingness to be inclusive of “all sorts and conditions” of folks and traditions, feeling for beauty in worship and stillness in prayer, and penchant for engaging with our local communities on issues that affect quality of life.
All true, but one thing we need and have had less an eye for is wading very deeply in the braided river that has fed our spiritual well.
This came home to me last night watching the final episode of Wolf Hall. When a visitor is warning Thomas Cromwell of the dangers he might be in, he says that Thomas is known to be “a Lutheran.” But, protests Thomas, I’m not—“I’m a banker.”
I suspect critics will treat that as a little joke, a throw-away line. It is in fact profound. It is the sentiment for finding ways the Christian Gospel engages the world with the potential to transform it. It is a “Protest” all right…but a protest again cloistered virtue, against rarefied theology, against shutting doors to either our past or our future. Cromwell was indicating that he had no intention of “majoring in the minors” as Terry Fullam used to put it…theological disputation being, in Cromwell’s view, a decided minor.
A Church historian could trace this more fully and precisely than can I, but the fact is we Anglicans are fed by (as, living along the Platte, I’ve termed it) a braided river. Luther came out of one channel, to be sure; but then Cromwell’s own mentor was Cardinal Wolsey, hardly a Lutheran. For several centuries now, proclaiming ourselves the “bridge” church, we have claimed it was our genius to hold the best of Luther and Rome together. That is not an illegitimate claim. Still, I suspect it must seem to strike notes from a song no longer much sung, a discordant note to the modern ear or, worse, a “Johnny-one-note” apologia.
On Easter VIB (the designation in the year B cycle for the Sixth Sunday of Easter in the Revised Common Lectionary), Holy Women, Holy Men: Celebrating the Saints bid us commemorate Nicolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf. I doubt that is a household name for most Episcopalians, but then I doubt most of us consult Holy Women, Holy Men much in our daily devotions either…much the pity. But if you come from a Moravian background, you will recognize him as a “founding father.” More, he was one of the first Christian leaders in America to play the ecumenical card. Our calendar rightly draws from all the braids of the stream, and in this case it is even more appropriate since the Moravians were a powerful influence on Wesley who changed the face of the Anglican colonial world.
Citing Zinzendorf in our devotional guide would seem to indicate that we are on the right track—reaching out, embracing, inclusive. But, just as history is more than the names of places and dates, so it is not enough to note the many streams in the braided river—you have to wade out and plumb their depths, even their shallows. It takes more for appreciation to affect practice than to simply site a “saint.” Let me provide an example, then of what it is I think we lack and, lacking it, what hinders us from finding our heritage a resource for the future.
A Forward Day by Day publication of years gone by (Meditations by Fenelon in the Advent Papers) notes in one meditation the text (Luke xxi: 19)—“In your patience possess ye your souls.” Suppose you wanted to find attention to that passage among the lay people of a church—to which church might you profitably turn? I would guess that the passage comes up once every three years to be read in churches using the RCL, but if you also figure that most parishioners in those churches attend church only once a month or so, then the chances of hearing it become pretty negligible. So, it is a passage that, if it receives attention, does so by intention. In what churches would you find serious attention paid to such a passage? Where would you find a church exploring how patience becomes crucial in coming to live the Christ life?
My late friend, B. David Sinclair, belonged to such a church. That is, a church where the laity were eager to live a Christian life and believed scripture was there to help in that and so could find discussion of scripture passages a regular part of the routine of living into and living out their beliefs. I believe that is central to the Biblical concept of discipleship, indeed the essence of discipleship.
That feature of his church (and the other behaviors that stemmed from it) were about all I could see that commended that particular church. Whatever virtues Anglican churches possess were, so far as I could tell, almost totally lacking in his church. But, and here is my point, this virtue of his church is almost totally lacking in ours!
We ask too little of our parishioners in terms of developing their discipleship. I have known some grand Episcopalians—attended faithfully (some of them), gave fairly generously (some of them), took something of the church to the world (some of them), brought something of the world to the church (many of them, indeed)—but in their homes and engaged in the affairs of the church and facing the typical experiences life brings to most of us, they never heard of patience, much less thought it might be their church’s role to help inculcate in them a patience that would help them “possess” their souls, still less to do so by serious attention to scripture as teaching.
As our church heads to its General Convention, with streamlining ourselves for better pursuit of our mission on the agenda, perhaps we could give a thought to wading a bit deeper in the braided river and rediscovering ways to support developing discipleship. That is out there, in some braid of the river, waiting for us to wade out and go seining for it.
Charles Peek
PS: This will be the last blog until I get the galleys proofed for my new chapbook, Breezes on Their Way to Being Winds, available at Finishing Line Press.
capeek 