So, show of hands, how many of y’all took on random hobbies in the last two years or so? Same, same. It all started with Jennifer getting a little pathos plant and two succulents. I took it upon myself to help those plants avoid the normal fate of plants in our house. I researched, I set a calendar reminder for watering, I even got a little grow light. (My neighbors are no doubt incredibly confused by the purple glow that comes from my office all winter long.) To my surprise, my little plants started growing, maybe a little too much. I had to learn to prune, how to propagate new plants from the cuttings. Then a friend offered us free plants from their yard, I just couldn’t resist. My plant-minding grew to the outside with my precious hostas and cannas. I watered and tended all spring and summer to my outside garden. But, then winter came and I learned I was to cut them back to the ground. It seemed awful!
Read more...The Book of Revelation — or more traditionally the Apocalypse of St. John (better highlighting the genre of apocalypse Fr. Justin spoke about last week) — is a brilliant book to be reading during the season of Easter. Moderns tend to read St. John’s Apocalypse primarily as a prophecy about the “end times.” They aren’t wrong, but to read Revelation and leave with only an urgency to be ready for Christ’s return is to miss the point.
Read more...“Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O Lord, our rock and our redeemer.”
The season of Epiphany has been all about God revealing himself to his people. In Advent we await the coming King. At Christmastide we stand awestruck as God enters our filth. In Epiphany we see the perfect revelation of God in Jesus Christ. Epiphany drives us to contemplate what it means for Divinity to fully intersect with fallen humanity. Jesus stands wrapped in common cloth with dirt-caked feet on a hill and yet reveals himself to glow brighter than the sun and converse with the prophets. Jesus crosses the surface of the waters like they are streets of glass only to enter a smelly fishing boat full of peasants.
Read more...This is part four of a four part project. The final project is here.
The genesis of this project starts with my confusion and unease communing at a Disciples of Christ led ecumenical Eucharist service inside a jail each week. Starting with the Chicago statement of Protestant Episcopal Church in 1886 and culminating with the great ecumenical work Baptism, Eucharist, and Ministry coming out of Lima in 1984, much academic and theological work has been done within and outside the Anglican Christianity on the path towards visible unity in the Church. Unfortunately, outside of the guidance provided on intercommunion at Lambeth 1930 and the Intercommunion To-day coming out of the Archbishops’ Commission on Intercommunion of the Church of England very little clear, pragmatic direction has been given to laity and clergy.
Read more...This is part three of a four part project. The final project is here.
“For a long time the Conference on Faith and Order shied away from and avoided directly addressing this problem [ecumenical Eucharist]. It was the type of issue so loaded with emotional dynamite, that we feared it might with the first little thrust set off a spark that would explode our entire movement into pieces.” Dr. Leonard Hodgson.1
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This is part two of a four part project. The final project is here.
As a chaplain, I find myself worshiping and serving during the week more often in contexts outside of my own tradition than I do within. Weekly I face the question of whether a non-catholic1 minister’s orders and, thus, the sacraments she or he presides over are valid — partially or otherwise. At the onset of this project, I described my main concern as finding a path towards a generous orthodoxy. A generous orthodoxy is a path that allows me to maintain my Anglican ecclesiology and theology in the context of the non-Anglican ministries I find myself a part of. Specifically, I sought to find a way of resolving my personal theological conflict with the sacramental validity of the ministers and chaplains I work alongside.
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