Becoming the Story We Tell - Baptismal Ecclesiology

Becoming the Story We Tell

John W.B. Hill

One of the notable features of the last generation of Anglican prayer books (e.g., the ‘79 BCP, the ‘85 BAS) is the new status given to Holy Baptism.  It is no longer located amongst the Pastoral Offices (weddings, funerals, etc) but stands alongside The Holy Eucharist.  For Baptism and Eucharist are “the two great sacraments of the Gospel” (‘79 BCP, page 858).  And this is just one of many indicators of the new agenda mapped out in our current prayer books: a new agenda for this secular age.  We usually identify this agenda as the recovery of a ‘baptismal ecclesiology’.

The trouble with this agenda is that it may have arrived too late.  For most Anglicans/Episcopalians, baptism is more or less meaningless.  How else could we explain the widespread abandonment of the traditional pattern of Christian life, beginning in baptism and leading to participation in the eucharist?

Our impoverished sense of baptism is not something new, of course; it has been developing over centuries.  At our recent APLM conference in New Jersey, I sketched the historical accidents that have slowly hollowed out the meaning of baptism:

·      in the era of Christendom, there was a growing expectation that every citizen would be baptized;

·      this led to a decline in adult candidates for baptism, as infant baptism became the norm;

·      confirmation emerged as a new sacrament whose meaning was wholly taken over from baptism, requiring a redefinition of baptism that did not include the meanings now attributed to confirmation;

·      paschal (Eastertide) baptism was supplanted by emergency baptism (what the old prayer books referred to as “baptism as soon as possible after birth”);

·      baptism came to be seen as a precaution rather than as a response to the gospel;

·      the priestly vocation of the baptized was usurped by the clergy;

·      preparation for baptism disappeared;

·      initiation to communion was eventually no longer through baptism but through confirmation;

·      baptism became the sign of membership in a Christian society;

·      then, over the last century, as the Christian worldview faded and the Church became a promoter of individualized faith, indiscriminate baptism became our default practice.

What we are left with is an impoverished sacramental consciousness.  Developing a robust practice of baptism with a truly catechumenal ministry will only lead to frustration, for even if we succeeded in truly making disciples, they would simply be discouraged (perhaps even scandalized) by the bland consumer religion typical of an average congregation.

So where do we start if we wish to rebuild a baptismal ecclesiology? 

That is the purpose of the new collection of resources introduced at the APLM conference in New Jersey, which the Anglican Church of Canada has provided, called ‘Becoming the Story we Tell’, available at www.anglican.ca/becoming. 

Photos from the September 2015 APLM regional conference in Lebanon, NJ.

John W. B. Hill, a Council member of APLM, is an Anglican presbyter in Toronto, Canada, author of one of the first Anglican sources for catechumenal practice, and chair of Liturgy Canada. He served as keynote speaker at the September 2015 APLM regional conference in Lebanon, NJ.

Stay tuned for more posts related to ‘Becoming the Story We Tell’ and how you can make use of this resource in your faith community. ~ DJK

Preacher’s Study – Year B Proper 20 (25) 2015

Monday Morning in the Preacher’s Study

First thoughts about next Sunday’s sermon

(17th Sunday after Pentecost, Sept. 20, 2015)

Maylanne Maybee, deacon

Proverbs 31:10-31

Psalm 1

James 3:13-4:3, 7-8a

Mark 9:30-37 

The readings for this Sunday continue the theme of the daily struggle against the patterns of “empire” or domination in our interpersonal and social relationships.  Those who form our communities of faith come together to learn a new way of relating where power is shared and dignity is respected in those whom the world disrespects or ignores. Taken together, the readings invite the preacher to reflect on the promise of a new community in Christ from the perspective of our intimate relationships with parents, children, and life partners.

Walking on the Way, the disciples argue among themselves about who is the greatest.  Jesus holds up a child to put the their argument in perspective.  I usually imagine a well-behaved child looking up at Jesus with eyes of wonder.  But how often I have held a child who is squirming and bending and fussing to be let go! “Whoever welcomes such a child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.”  Could it be that Jesus and the One who sent him can be just as bothersome as that squirming child– refusing to fit into the agenda of the moment, distracting us from adult conversations about who and what is important?

James gets at the heart of what makes for harmonious relationships, reminding us that peace begins from within (he uses the metaphor of above).  Such wisdom is “pure, peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy.  And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace for those who make peace.”

I wouldn’t ignore the passage from Proverbs about “a capable wife”, but rather point out that it can be applied to anyone, man or woman, who works willingly and creatively with the stuff of daily life – food, clothing, property; who is organized and generous; whose children call them happy; who enjoy their partner’s praise. 

Whether we are single or married, gay or straight, in our teens or eighties, opportunities to resist domination and sow peace in our relationships and world present themselves to us all.  The German theologian Dorothy Soelle said that her activism on behalf of Vietnam during the sixties started when she couldn’t get a picture out of her mind of a mother carrying a five-year-old child on her back as she waded across a river in terrified escape from a napalm bomb. Soelle reflected that as a mother of three children of her own, “I realized that ‘motherliness’ is indivisible; one cannot be the mother of two or three children and that’s it.” 

Our roles as spouses or parents are indivisible from our roles as citizens of the world.  Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission has uncovered the terrible abuse that took place in church-run residential schools, pointing to a catastrophic failure among Christians to extend respect for the least among us when confronted with systems of domination.  Recently the image in the news of the body of a small boy, washed up on a beach in Turkey after drowning while trying to flee with his father and mother from war torn Syria is a poignant call to find ways to “welcome such a child in my name.” 

Image: Sieger Koder, Jesus umringt von Kindern, Jesus surrounded by children.

Maylanne Maybee, a member of APLM Council, is a deacon serving in the Diocese of Rupert’s Land (Anglican Church of Canada).  She is Principal of the Centre for Christian Studies, a national theological school based in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.

Preacher’s Study – Year B Proper 19 (24) 2015

Monday Morning in the Preacher’s Study

First thoughts about next Sunday’s sermon

(16th Sunday after Pentecost, Sept. 13, 2015)

Maylanne Maybee, deacon

Living our Baptismal Promise in Word and Action

Do you renounce the evil powers of this world which corrupt and destroy the creatures of God?

Will you proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ?

Today’s readings invite us to ponder the relationship of word and action.  Peter confesses with his lips that Jesus is the Messiah, but cannot accept that the Messiah must suffer and die.  He rebukes Jesus, tries to put him in the place he thinks should be occupied by the Messiah – a place of political leadership where power and domination and even violence are justified.  Jesus will have none of it, and rebukes Peter in turn, just as he did Satan in the wilderness.  Jesus uses their confrontation as a teaching moment for others: “If any want to become my followers, they must take up their cross and follow me.” 

There are all sorts of ways this passage has been interpreted, but I like Reginald Fuller’s suggestion that here “the cross” refers to the sign of the tau (T) or chi (X), the sign of ownership with which cattle were branded, just as we were “branded” as Christ’s own at baptism. The call to be followers of Christ is a solemn reminder that the road to fullness of life may require risking life itself in order to resist the deadly agenda of empire.

The teaching is hard to apply to our daily life as North Americans.  Most of us don’t live in a world where good and evil are in stark contrast, where choices are clear, or where danger to life and limb is imminent. 

Which is why I find the readings from Proverbs, the Psalm and the Epistle of James an important complement to the passage from Mark.  Jesus’ invitation to LIFE may lead to far less dramatic choices than risking bodily death. 

In Proverbs Wisdom is personified as one who stands in the streets and entrances of our cities.  She is there in the midst of daily life to be seen and heard.  Those who are branded as God’s own will open their ears and hearts to the Spirit of Wisdom.

Likewise, Psalm 19 is an invitation to learn “the law of the Lord”, the ways of the heart that make our eyes clear and satisfy our desires more deeply than the shallow enticements of our age.

And the Epistle of James echoes the Wisdom tradition, focusing today on wise speech.   If we are to use our ears to hear and our minds to learn, let us also use our mouths and tongues to teach and speak as ones who are “perfect”, whose faith has been made complete by our actions.  Yet how can we heed the voice of Wisdom in the midst of the barrage of words and propaganda that assault us in our daily exposure to the Internet and other media?  How can we tame our words, not only the ones we speak, but especially those we write and text and blog and email? 

I understand our diakonia to be the way of these daily, ordinary choices – whether we use our voice and words for good or for ill, whether we choose the path of integrity or the lesser path of self interest, whether we strive to align our heart and our mind and our actions with “the fear of the Lord.”

As a preacher today, I would ask how we can become communities of the baptized who choose the way of life, a way that is paradoxically signified by the cross.  How do our small choices in community lead us to become life-giving signs of peace and justice and integrity over and against the death-dealing values of empire that surround us?

Maylanne Maybee, a member of APLM Council, is a deacon serving in the Diocese of Rupert’s Land (Anglican Church of Canada).  She is Principal of the Centre for Christian Studies, a national theological school based in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.

Preacher's Study - Holy Cross, 2015

Monday Morning in the Preacher’s Study

First Thoughts about Next Sunday’s Sermon

(or, in this case, Holy Cross Day, September 14, 2015)

John W.B. Hill

Numbers 21.4b-9; Psalm 98.1-6; 1 Corinthians 1.18-24; John 3.13-17

When I was a summer camp counselor, I took the boys from my cabin on a hike through the woods one day. It was very hot, and the mosquitoes were ferocious. It wasn’t long before some of the boys began to wonder aloud whether I knew where I was taking them. Then someone stepped in a hornet’s nest, and many of us got stung. Suddenly they were all convinced that we were lost, and that it was my fault — a minor mutiny.

The metaphor of the serpent in the wilderness which John uses to amplify the message of the cross (and which the lectionary has chosen to reinforce) seems bizarre. Stories of wilderness grumbling about food are frequent in the story of the Exodus, but this version is unique: immediate punishment by snakebite, and a remedy that looks suspiciously like a graven image! There are depths to this story we will never fathom — although the similarity to the staff of Asclepius, the Greek god of healing, can hardly be coincidental. The pharmacological wisdom of using a small dose of the poison as the antidote to the poison (as in vaccination) may be part of the answer. But if the people were to be healed they had to ‘face up to’ the thing they feared.

But did everyone get bitten? Or did the few who got bitten trigger a panic amongst the many who were already predisposed to fear the worst? And which was the greater danger: snakebite, or anarchy? (Was Moses perhaps viewed as the real ‘snake’?) These, after all, are some of the social dynamics that come into play in the story of Jesus: resentment about God’s failure to save us in the way we would like, a resentment we project onto any convenient scapegoat; or the unchecked power of an evil that none of us is willing to ‘face up to’ or acknowledge.

So Jesus became our scapegoat. But that does not justify using crucifixes as therapeutic charms. Rather, beholding the cross must be a ‘facing up to’ the reality of our unremitting resort to violence to express our frustrations and our fears. We have to ‘face up to’ what we did to the One who was the world’s best hope. And yet his arms are outstretched in mercy still!

It was in the shock of beholding that loving victim that St Paul awoke to recognize “Christ crucified (a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to the gentiles)” as “Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God”. Holy Cross Day may be the only Church festival in honour of a holy relic, and a dubious one at that. Yet for all the implausibility of St Helena’s claim to have found a piece of the true cross, this festival nevertheless recognizes the central truth of our history – which is bad news first, but then the very best news of all.

John W. B. Hill, a Council member of APLM, is an Anglican presbyter in Toronto, Canada, author of one of the first Anglican sources for catechumenal practice, and chair of Liturgy Canada.

Light and Colour (Goethe's Theory) - the Morning after the Deluge - Moses Writing the Book of Genesis (1843), by Joseph Mallord William Turner. Tate Collections, London