gimme a Lite
Changing course is normal in life, and we are changing course for 2021 Confirmation Class, one reason being, no one signed up with Madge, it’s just us!
So this year I'll not prepare an Episcopal-101 confirmation booklet or formal presentations. Instead, we will have Confirmation Lite, both just in case anyone decides they want to be confirmed after all and so maybe reads these notes before the bishop comes, and also as our fun annual refresher for ourselves. However, instead of the first half of Sunday School class during Lent, it just will be the first few minutes. And as today, I may have handouts
As usual, everything is live streamed on the Holy Nativity Facebook page.
And as always, everyone is invited and welcome to raise questions for discussion. If discussion takes us more than a few minutes, no problem; no class was ever more “loose” than what we do here on Sunday mornings.
My original intent was to open with discussion of church organization and governance:
+ Holy Nativity parish, rector, vestry and ministries;
+ Diocese of the Central Gulf Coast, parishes, bishop, standing committee, Diocesan Convention
+ The Episcopal Church, dioceses, Presiding Bishop, General Convention, Executive Council; that the Episcopal Church is generally found on the progressive cutting edge of social issues in America.
+ Worldwide Anglican Communion, Archbishop of Canterbury, member Province churches.
But instead I’ll open on a different level, from a different angle. I invite you to listen and jot down any questions or anything you’d like to discuss when I’m done.
Our Presiding Bishop, Michael Curry, calls us “the Episcopal Branch of The Jesus Movement”. I’ll talk about that in my own lifelong experience as an Episcopalian.
Being The Jesus Movement is theological, which is not a technical term, but a word that means how we talk about God, and how we believe God calls us to live as Christians. Bishop Curry’s terms are Loving, Liberating and Life-Giving. There is no “guilting” or "shaming" in the Episcopal Church, not a fear-based faith worrying about accepting Christ and forgiveness of our sins lest we go to hell, we are a love-based faith focused on living into our creation in the image of God. I’ll say this again and again.
Let me define a Christian as a person who, accepting the loving guidance of Jesus as the Son of God, and His loving call into the kingdom of God, promises to live life in a covenanted Way, the Way of the Cross.
One joins the church, becomes a Christian, officially through Baptism with water in the Name of the Trinity, in our church usually as a child or infant. And then at a reasonable age of maturity (some bishops make it 12 years old or so), one affirms one’s baptismal promises about belief and life, and is confirmed by the bishop.
We believe that life for a Christian centers on Jesus’ New Commandment that, in the Gospel according to John, Jesus gave at the Last Supper: “A New Commandment I give you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you love one another; by this all will know that you are my disciples, that you have love for one another”. The NT Greek word for love is agape’, the OT Hebrew word chesed: kindness, courtesy, charity, generosity, goodwill toward all people everywhere (not just those we know), agape’, chesed, lovingkindness.
That’s what we are as a church, a faith to live lovingly by, not a faith to die and go to heaven by. Again, we are not a fear-based church, fearing hell.
So as I perceive what we ARE, as we go along, obviously I’ll contrast by also saying what we ARE NOT!
“Are you saved?” is not a question in the Episcopal Church.
Loving, Liberating, Life-Giving. We are not worried about accepting Christ as our personal savior so as to be saved into heaven at death. Again, we are not a fear-based church. Loving, Liberating, Life-Giving.
We are not sin-focused. We're focused on living our baptismal covenant, we are not centered on Jesus dying for our sins in the way the evangelical Protestant churches are. If you bring that with you from another denomination, that’s fine, but you will find that our focus is not what Jesus can do for us, but how we promise to live in Jesus’ Name.
Our focus is living our five Baptismal Covenant promises:
+ Will you continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers?
+ Will you persevere in resisting evil, and whenever you fall into sin repent and return to the Lord?
+ Will you proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ?
+ Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself?
+ Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?
What else?
From the Catechism: The Holy Scriptures
Q. What are the Holy Scriptures?
A. The Holy Scriptures, commonly called the Bible, are the books of the Old and New Testaments; other books, called the Apocrypha, are often included in the Bible.
Q. What is the Old Testament?
A. The Old Testament consists of books written by the people of the Old Covenant, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, to show God at work in nature and history.
Q. What is the New Testament?
A. The New Testament consists of books written by the people of the New Covenant, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, to set forth the life and teachings of Jesus and to proclaim the Good News of the Kingdom
for all people.
Q. What is the Apocrypha?
A. The Apocrypha is a collection of additional books written by people of the Old Covenant, and used in the Christian Church.
Q. Why do we call the Holy Scriptures the Word of God?
A. We call them the Word of God because God inspired their human authors and because God still speaks to us through the Bible.
Q. How do we understan d the meaning of the Bible?
A. We understand the meaning of the Bible by the help of the Holy Spirit, who guides the Church in the true interpretation of the Scriptures.
The Bible is central for us, but we do not hold a literalist, inerrantist view of the Bible, that’s not our doctrine.
We do not believe, as some churches teach, that God dictated the Bible to the people who wrote it down. That’s not our doctrine.
Still, the Bible is the central document of our church. The Bible was written by the church for the church, by humans for humans, Divinely inspired, if you will. The Old Testament is the holy history of the Jewish people in their relationship with God as they experienced and recall it, and as they see and understand it. Some of the OT (see the book of Joshua) is disturbing, bloody, murderous, and difficult to rationalize. But Jewish scholars worked out which Jewish writings would be included in the Old Testament canon, and which would not be included.
The New Testament is twenty-seven writings by various authors, seven for sure by Paul (six more tentatively "Pauline"). Most of the rest are anonymous. Over decades and its opening centuries, the Early Church settled on which books to include in the New Testament depending on various factors. Here are four of them, for example:
+ If a book was thought to have been written by Paul it was “in”.
+ If a gospel (and there are two dozen or so gospels) was thought to have been written by someone close to Jesus, it was “in”.
+ If a book was widely circulating in the church & was generally accepted & was being read in worship in local churches, it was a candidate.
+ If the book was seen as containing material that was counter to teachings and developing theology of the Church (see the Gospel of Peter as an example that was rejected notwithstanding having been widely accepted for some time), it was rejected.
The Bible is the church’s book, and we love to read and discuss and explain and rationalize and doubt and question and pick it apart and put it back together and find ourselves. In fact, that’s mostly what we do here in our adult Sunday School class.
Episcopalians are members of the Worldwide Anglican Communion. We have a saying that our Anglican theology is based on Scripture, Tradition, and Reason, where
+ Scripture is the Bible of the Old and New Testaments (and the Apocrypha).
+ Tradition is the doctrines and creeds and worship and stories and experiences and practices of the Church (e.g., the BCP, the Virgin Birth, the Trinity). (We are a church of doctrine but NOT dogma).
+ Reason is not simply plain, common sense (which IS part of it though), but is relying on the guidance of the Holy Spirit in helping us study, discuss and reasonably understand the Bible.
So Confirmation Lite, gimme a Lite.
Comments and questions?
Now as our regular Sunday School class, and also as a Confirmation Class example of how a group of Episcopalians might approach the Bible and Bible study, I’d like us to look at three of the four lessons for today (not the psalm).
I have points to make about each reading. Members of the class may have more.
Old Testament Genesis 9:8-17
God said to Noah and to his sons with him, “As for me, I am establishing my covenant with you and your descendants after you, and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the domestic animals, and every animal of the earth with you, as many as came out of the ark. I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.” God said, “This is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations: I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth. When I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow is seen in the clouds, I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh. When the rainbow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.” God said to Noah, “This is the sign of the covenant that I have established between me and all flesh that is on the earth.”
Genesis 9 is concluding the story of the Great Flood. In that story, which starts at Genesis 6 and goes through Genesis 9 (and is actually two flood stories combined, which we can look at one morning if you wish), God has looked at people on the earth and been so disappointed with us that he’s sorry he created us in the first place. God chooses one person, Noah, as “righteous”, sends the Flood to kill every other living thing, and starts over with a New Creation. The Genesis Flood Story in the Hebrew Bible is not new or unique, or even the first one.Practically every ancient civilization had its flood story, mostly about gods fighting with each other. Our Genesis story seems to have origins in the Babylonian flood story. In today’s OT reading, God is assuring Noah that now everything’s fine, promising that we don’t have to worry about God doing this again.
Of course, there are conjectures, like James Baldwin’s book The Fire Next Time.
Why is Genesis 9:8-17 a good reading for the First Sunday in Lent? For one, because it’s full of divine promise after divine judgment of human sin.
The Epistle: 1 Peter 3:18-22
Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to bring you to God. He was put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit, 19 in which also he went and made a proclamation to the spirits in prison, 20 who in former times did not obey, when God waited patiently in the days of Noah, during the building of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were saved through water. And baptism, which this prefigured, now saves you-- not as a removal of dirt from the body, but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers made subject to him.
Said by many scholars to have been written about 80-110 AD, in a time of Christian persecution, not by the Apostle Peter, First Peter has been characterized as perhaps the most cultured Greek writing of any book in the NT, certainly not by an illiterate Galilean fisherman, nor even by Sylvanus, a companion of Paul. It’s a call to holy living in the face of suffering as a Christian. The verse that interests me says, “he went and made a proclamation to the spirits in prison (they’ve been imprisoned (presumably in hell) at least since the days of Noah). This is the verse from which we have the line in the Apostles/Baptismal Creed “He descended to the dead” or “He descended into hell”. Tradition says that during his time in the tomb, when his body was dead, Jesus in spirit offered salvation to those in hell. 1 Peter 3:19 is the basis for that.
The Holy Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ according to Mark. (1:9-15)
In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”
And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.
Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”
This is Mark, my favorite NT book. Today’s reading is the first of two “Grand Epiphanies” of Jesus in Mark, God speaking to Jesus at Jesus’ baptism and specifying to Jesus (for Mark, to his readers) that Jesus is the Son of God. The second “Grand Epiphany” is Jesus’ transfiguration on the mountain when God tells Jesus’ trusted special disciples and friends Peter, James and John (and also again, tells Mark’s readers) who Jesus is, the Son of God.
The 40 days in the wilderness is to be compared with Moses 40 years in the wilderness. My view is that Jesus’ was tempted to decline the assignment of “Son of God” with all the horror it would entail for Jesus.
The line about John may indicate that until John was arrested Jesus was associating himself closely with John, and only at John’s arrest struck out independent.
My final comment on today’s gospel reading is that Mark makes quite clear what Jesus’ call is: to proclaim the kingdom of God is at hand. NT scholars argue about what that meant to Jesus, many saying that Jesus meant it apocalyptically as the End of Days, as Paul did in preaching about the coming Day of the Lord. What do I think? I don’t know. I’m satisfied to be uncertain and just wonder.
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gimme a Lite