Immersion

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by Herbert Donovan

Baptism: The word literally means the action of immersion in water.  A more commonly acceptable meaning, among Episcopalians, is the action of sprinkling with water. Many Christians hold to immersion, as in Jesus’ baptism by John the Baptism, as the most effective way to symbolize our being made clean by God, and clothed in God’s Spirit, for this life and the life to come.  While most of our Prayer Book service assumes the sprinkling or pouring of water, it is interesting to note the rubric, i.e. “direction”, on page 307, where we read that the officiating clergy “immerses, or pours water upon, the candidate”.

A priest tells the story of how he was in the action of sprinkling a baby at Baptism, when an old man in the congregation, on observing his action, spoke out in a loud voice, “”More water!”

God grant that our intentions and actions in services of Holy Baptism, whether as officiants, candidates, Godparents, family or friends, may be to immerse ourselves in God’s healing and strengthening action, that we may live more perfectly as His children, now and forever.

Mantra for Mission in Daily Life

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by Peyton G. Craighill

 

In our daily lives,

through the decisions we make

and the actions we take,

Christ invites us to share in his mission.

Life Is Ministry —

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or All Ministry is Apostolic, Presbyteral, and Diaconal (Part 1)

by Edward L. Lee, Jr.

How’s that for a mind-boggling church-y title! But please, keep reading.

First, let’s start with the Book of Common Prayer. Go to page 855 in the Catechism and the section titled, “The Ministry.” It begins:

Q: Who are the ministers of the Church?

A: The ministers of the Church are lay persons, bishops, priests, and deacons.

Q: What is the ministry of the laity?

A: The ministry of lay persons is to represent Christ and his Church; to bear witness to him wherever they may be; and, according to the gifts given them, to carry on Christ’s work of reconciliation in the world; …

The rest of this section identifies and spells out the particular ministries of bishops, priests, and deacons with such words as “apostle” (bishops); “to bless and declare pardon” (priests/presbyters); and “servant” (deacons).

In short, we are a Church of four orders of ministers, not the traditional three. The first is the laity, the baptized, followed by the ordained ministries of bishops, priests, and deacons. This sequence is one of elemental and essential equality in its understanding of ministry, of Christian discipleship. It’s communal, not hierarchical, and certainly not patriarchal. The primary and front line of ministers are the baptized laity; the baptized ordained persons empower, support, and sustain the laity like, for example, the conductor of an orchestra. Yet the result is always a concert of communal endeavor and commitment, an enterprise of equals. That’s ministry.

Or as expressed insightfully by a perceptive presbyter:

“Life is ministry. Ordained ministry is a role within the ministry of the people of God, and I think we lose our bearings when we see it as something other than facilitating the whole.” (James Callaway, Trinity News, Trinity Church, NYC, Summer 2014)

Amen! Life IS ministry and the baptized laity live it daily in the tasks and on the frontiers of their lives. And it’s as apostolic and presbyteral and diaconal in character and function as that of those facilitating clergy who participate with them in Christ’s relentless yet glorious “work of reconciliation in the world.”

In my next blog (Part 2) I’ll break open those churchy words in the title and illustrate how every person’s ministry is apostolic, presbyteral and diaconal. Stay tuned.

What’s the church here for, anyway?

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by Wayne Schwab

I was the interim pastor in a small church in Essex in upstate New York on Lake Champlain.  For some reason, Essex hosted meetings of the International Bagpipe Organization.

A piper walked through the church hall.  He asked, “What’s the church here for anyway?”

I answered, “God is most interested in how we live Monday to Saturday.  Sunday is to help us to do it better.”

He liked the answer.  I’d been thinking this way for some time.  At last I had said it.

That’s a key to living God’s mission every day – especially to what a church should be doing.

We say a church needs to be friendly and open to anyone who walks through its doors.

— I now say a church really needs to help everyone walking through its doors to live better on Monday because they were there on Sunday.

We say a church should offer community – very important in a world that can be very lonely.

—  I now say a church really needs to help you to build community in your worlds outside the church.

We say a church needs vitality – to be alive within its walls and alive in its town or city.

— I now say a church really needs to be known for how its members are making the world around them more loving and more just wherever they are 24/7/365.

Finding your calling

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by Fletcher Lowe

“Jesus is in the legislature. If he were not there I would not be either.”

Rep. Byron Rushing, Member of the Massachusetts State Legislature

Lent is a season of penitence. In keeping with that we Episcopalians in the Liturgy put the Penitential Order front and center. We talk a lot about sin and forgiveness and reconciliation and redemption—all significant Christian themes.

That being said, let’s take a second look and go back to the reason that Jesus went into the wilderness. It was not for repentance; it was for vocation. As I read the accounts, it was to figure out what his mission and ministry were to be. Now the devil helped him in that by offering him at least three other options—each of which he refused. Out of the 40 days he emerged with his mission/ministry: to proclaim the Kingdom of God is at hand. His teachings and healings and other miracles gave credence to that.

For me that provides an alternative focus for Lent: to critique how I am doing in understanding my calling as a follower of Christ in my daily life and work. Relevant questions might be:

  • In whatever I do, what is the faith connection?
  • In my everyday life, how is God calling me to “proclaim by word and example…, to seek and serve…, to strive….,” as we affirm in the Baptismal Covenant.

Each of us, by the very nature of our Baptism, has been sent “into the world to love and serve the Lord.” That world is wherever and with whomever we “live and move and have our being”: in our work and home and community and school.

Christ, in his 40 days in the wilderness, gives us a model: to take some time focusing on what we do beyond Sunday. Thanks be to God who gives us the opportunity, in our own way, to be “Christ” with those whom we meet in everyday life.

Tapping Jesus’ ‘crazy wisdom’

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by Demi Prentiss

Brian McLaren, in his book We Make the Road by Walking, makes the point that becoming Christian means being alive in Christ. Wherever we find ourselves, we are to “be Christ” to the fullest extent we can manage.

What a challenge! I’m often stumped knowing how to begin “being Jesus.” Rob Voyle’s article “Compassion and the Crazy Wisdom of Jesus” opens possibilities. Voyle begins by making the point that “people don’t want to be changed, they want to be blessed.” There’s a beginning: I can take action to be a blessing.

Then Voyle goes on to describe three compassionate faces of Jesus:

  • When he encountered injury, he responded with tenderness.
  • When he encountered injustice, he responded with fierceness.
  • When he encountered stuck-ness, he responded with playfulness.

Jesus’ compassion was consistently directed at bringing transformation – opening the way toward wholeness and healing.

As a repertoire of compassion, those three possibilities open my imagination. In the situation I am facing, what is the truly compassionate response – tenderness, fierceness, or playfulness? And how can I respond in a way that opens possibilities for transformation – my own as well as others’?

Prayers for renewal

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by Peyton G. Craighill

These prayers began life as collects in the Book of Common Prayer. With extensive editing, the author has re-shaped them as prayers for the renewal of the mission of the church through the movement for mission in daily life.

Almighty and everliving God, source of all wisdom and understanding, be present with us as we seek to renew the mission of your church as Christ’s mission working through us in all that we do. Teach us to seek first your wisdom and glory; Guide us to perceive what is your will, and grant us both the courage to pursue it and the grace to accomplish it; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

O God, You prepared your disciples for the coming of the Spirit through the mission of your Son Jesus Christ: Make the hearts and minds of us, your servants, ready through your Holy Spirit to receive Christ’s mission, that we may be filled with the power of the Spirit’s guidance in everything we do in our daily lives, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

A question never asked until . . .

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Until I was a bishop. The question: “Is being bishop your baptismal ministry or is it a position in your career as a minister?”

It was asked by a 16-year-old young man and candidate for confirmation during a day-long teaching session on baptism I was leading in a Western Michigan diocesan deanery.

He wasn’t trying to be funny in a “gotcha” moment. He was serious because he “got it.” He got the connection between baptism as a Christian identity and therefore baptism as the basis of all ministry for both lay and ordained persons alike. He was beginning to understand that baptism is the first order of ministry in the church and not ordination, not even that of a bishop. (See Book of Common Prayer, p. 855, “The Ministry.”)

As soon as he asked, I realized I had never been asked it before — never during my seminary years, never during any of the canonical requirements leading to ordination, never in the course of my conversations and searchings regarding what I wanted to do with my life. Baptism and being baptized, being “sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked as Christ’s own forever,” never entered the vocational equation. In  time, only ordination was discussed as “real” ministry and never was it related or connected to my baptism.

Baptism as an actual order of ministry is not yet fully realized because for centuries that was and has been confined to ordination.  But we now have the opportunity to change that.

How do the ordained let baptized persons know and claim their identity as “called and sent” ministers of Christ in the world? When they affirm, empower, lift up, and thank the baptized for their ministries on behalf of the Gospel in their daily lives 24/7. And that will begin when the ordained can truly acknowledge that being a bishop or priest or deacon is in fact their own authentic baptismal ministry, a vocation long before it was manifest by ordination.

For me it was late in coming, but I hope not too late, thanks to a teenager’s question a couple of decades ago.

How’s your hangover?

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by Fletcher Lowe

With Christmas and the Epiphany just behind us, I have a question: What effect did the shepherds’ experience with the Christ child have on their shepherding and their home life? Ditto the wise men. What effect did their paying homage to the Christ child have on them when they returned home to their jobs and families?

We have no Biblical answers, but is that not the key question of the Christian’s life – a yours and mine: What difference does our worship make in our daily lives? What kind of Monday morning hangover do we have from our Sunday morning experience?

If the congregation is like a base camp — there to nurture and support and equip us for our hikes — then our time there should prepare us for our daily hikes in our work and home and communities. After all, the base camp exists for the hikers, the hikers don’t exist for the base camp.

As Philipp Melanchthon, a 16th century reformer friend of Martin Luther, once said, “It would be a shame to be known by where we gather and not where we scatter.”

So how is your Monday morning hangover?

Seven daily mission fields?

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by Wayne Schwab

“You say ‘living God’s mission.’  Just where do I live God’s mission?”

“Sam, you live it right where you are each day from Sunday to Saturday.”

“I’m in lots of different places each week.  Like here I am, at supper with my family.

  • I started with them at home this AM.
  • I went to work.
  • I read the papers on the bus – the local paper for city news and the Times for Barack’s State of the Union.
  • Time in the hobby shop over lunch.
  • And, on the bus home, an ‘arrow prayer’ for my sister’s marriage .”

“Those places are mission fields, Sam – your home, your work, your neighborhood, your part in the issues of the world out there, your leisure time at the hobby shop, and your spiritual health in prayer.  God’s at work in each of those places, too, to make them more loving and more just.  My guess is that you were trying to be caring and fair — to be God’s person — in each of those places today.  You were already part of God’s mission.”

“What?  Me, a missionary!”

“You sure are. Sam.  And I bet that before the week is out you will be reading another lesson at church – your seventh mission field.”