"Worship -- Still a Verb" Eleven Years Later

While looking for a quote in an email earlier I came across the following and thought I'd share and revisit it. -- DC

Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Worship -- Still a Verb

This past Tuesday evening I found myself in downtown Charleston with some time to kill so, as I often enjoy doing, I took pipe and a book and stopped by The Smoking Lamp, my favorite tobacconist. While sitting there and visiting with a couple of hookah-smoking College of Charleston students the Rev'd Canon J. Michael Wright, Rector of Grace Episcopal Church came in and in the course of our conversation he mentioned that Dr. Richard Schori, husband of Dr. Katharine Jefferts Schori, the Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church, would be speaking the next evening at Grace Church.  An accomplished photographer, Dr. Schori frequently takes his camera along while traveling with his wife (many of his photos have been used by Episcopal News Service) and was to speak on some of his observations and experiences). Canon Wright kindly invited me, but I wasn't sure if I could make it or not. After speaking later to a friend who wanted to go, I did indeed attend.

Dr. Schori spoke on "The Episcopal Church: Aspects of Breadth and Depth." Not surprisingly, his presentation was copiously illustrated and, in the main, non-polemic, focusing on the work that the Episcopal Church is doing around the world (it did have a bit of a company feel to it, but that wasn't surprising given who his wife is and the fact that Grace Church is a bastion of the Episcopal Forum of South Carolina, the local Via Media franchise -- one would hardly expect the man to come here and bash his wife). I'll not critique all of the presentation, but one comment, made toward the end when he gave his advice to new bishops, is worth of comment and, I believe, respectful disagreement.

The second of those rules was "practice your spirituality on your time," followed by an explanation that bishops (and one would assume other clergy as well) are "performing" during services and should keep that in mind so as to allow for a better presentation (and nicer photographs). Uh, no.

As I commented to my friend, if ever I am performing rather than worshiping, take my collar and send me out to sell insurance, used cars, fertilizer or something. As the late Robert Webber reminded us, worship is a verb and those who worship should be doing so in spirit and in truth. Don't get me wrong, I like liturgy (hence, my Anglicanism by choice) and I'm all for worship done well (agreeing completely with the Clergy Handbook for the Free Church of England that ". . . slovenliness or carelessness in deportment are not evidences of true Protestantism or of consecration of life."), but when staging a pretty picture becomes more important than worshiping, things have gotten horribly, horribly wrong.

I'm a priest, but I'm also a sinner. When I come to worship I need to confess my sins, receive absolution and assurance than my sins are forgiven in Christ, and I need to hear the comfortable words. Because the Christian life is hard, I need to hear God's Word preached and need to be sacramentally fed in Holy Communion. All of that is lost if it's only a pretty performance. From time to time people have told me that I read the prayers and lessons well ; they mean that as a compliment and I take it as such (although sometimes joking about them
having no idea how impressive that is for a graduate of the South Carolina Public Schools), but I was even more complimented when another priest with whom I served once told me that he could tell that I was not only reading the liturgy, but praying it. May it always be so.

The late Flannery O'Connor, devout Roman Catholic and Southern author, once responded to the Zwinglian view of Holy Communion, noted "Well, if it's a symbol, to hell with it." That pretty much sums up my views of worship as a performance.

Eleven years have now passed. Canon Wright is now Dean Wright, Grace Church having become Grace Church Cathedral, the base of the Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina following the departure of the bulk of the former Diocese of South Carolina from The Episcopal Church in 2012 (it's now known as the Anglican Diocese of South Carolina and is part of the Anglican Church in North America).  The Episcopal Forum of South Carolina has closed up shop, having more or less accomplished what they were aiming for.  Dr. Katherine Jefferts Schori stepped down from the office of Presiding Bishop in 2015, spent a couple of years assisting in the Diocese of San Diego, and now seems to be fully retired. Dr. Richard Schori is now Professor of Mathematics, Emeritus, at Oregon State University and is presumably still taking pictures. I wasn't an enthusiast then and aren't one today, but I still focus on worshiping rather than performing and making a pretty picture.

On the PC(USA) and Ammendment 14f

Although I've been an Anglican since my entry into the Reformed Episcopal Church, in which I was ordained deacon in 2001 and priest in 2003, I was born and baptized into and joined the Presbyterian Church in the United States, the old "Southern Presbyterian Church" which ceased to exist in 1983 when it participated in the merger that resulted in the creation of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) . At least one line of my family tree has Presbyterian roots going back directly to Scotland with a number of other ancestors having stopped off in Ulster before coming to the New World. My great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather, John Makemie Wilson, was a scrappy Scotch-Irish kid from the Waxhaws (he had a boyhood friend named Andy Jackson you may have heard of) who entered the Presbyterian ministry and served as the Minister of Rocky River Presbyterian Church in Concord, North Carolina, for 30 years, where he also had a classical school where he taught some of the men who went on to found Davidson College; he and his wife had several sons enter the ministry including one who perished as a medical missionary. When to no one's surprise more than my own I began to discern a call to the ordained ministry I took the initial steps to do so in the Presbytery of New Harmony with the intention of attending Columbia Theological Seminary because, well, that's where the Presbyterian ministers whom I knew had pretty much gone -- I knew I'd tend toward the evangelical wing of the PC(USA) but honestly, with all of the vigor of an early twentysomething with a sense of vocation figured that things could be turned around, something that an interview with the then-admissions officer made pretty clear wasn't welcome (it was pretty much made clear that she'd rather not have my kind there) and resulted in my departure for the Associate Reformed Presbyterians and going to Erskine Theological Seminary instead. Despite not being a member of the PC(USA) since 1993 and not even being a Presbyterian any more I follow events there because many of my family and quite a few friends still in that body.

For that reason I was disappointed but not surprised when I learned that sufficient presbyteries had ratified Amendment 14f to their Book of Order which neutralized the definition of marriage to allow for same-sex unions. I had known it was coming as they trends were clear that that portion of the Church was following cultural trends rather than being grounded in Scripture and Sacred Tradition in standing against the culture (something that was made clear in a local news story where the Rev'd Deane Kemper, Stated Clerk of Charleston-Atlantic Presbytery, commented that the church had to follow the state in how it conducted marriage ceremonies and used a very simplistic example drawn from the Latter Day Saints' abandonment of polygamy in order to gain Utah's statehood [in point to fact some "Mormons," the term that Kemper used retained the practice]). The Church is called to bear witness to culture and transform it through the preaching of the Word, evangelism, discipleship, and works of charity, it is not called upon to follow the whims of culture and when it has done so the results have been negative.

I suspect that many in the leadership of the PC(USA) have vastly underestimated the fallout that they will experience from this. Although my father was raised in the Presbyterian Church he is only an occasional attender and doesn't really follow church news, When I spoke with him today he brought it up and noted that he might withhold any contributions from his own congregation as a result -- if he is sitting up and taking notice then I'm sure others are as well and with the recent South Carolina court decision regarding the ownership of property in The Episcopal Church (about which I wrote here), South Carolina presbyteries may find that they no longer can intimidate those congregations seeking to depart. Look for more conservative Presbyterian bodies like the Presbyterian Church in America, the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church, the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, and especially two options that allow for women officers (a practice long accepted in the PC[USA] and entrenched in most congregations at this point) -- the Evangelical Presbyterian Church and the Covenant Order of Evangelical Presbyterians to make substantial gains in light of this.

Decisive times are no doubt ahead.

Chuck Colson and Me

When I prayed the evening office tonight I remembered Charles Colson, in extremis, for reports have been received that Colson -- better known to many as "Chuck" -- is near death after having fallen ill several weeks ago and undergoing emergency surgery for a blood clot. I owe him a debt of gratitude on a number of counts.

I was raised in a nominal Christian family in a nice respectable church that, quite frankly, didn't talk much about my sinfulness or need for redemption, but I did spend a good deal of time at the now-demolished Myrtle Square Mall because Collins Department Store, owned by the family and (in the case of that one) managed by my dad (it's gone now too -- we sold them in 1981). We'd go there shopping and I was let loose to roam at a fairly early age. The Word, a Christian Bookstore located right by Sears (people of a certain age who were raised in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, will know exactly where I'm talking about) was owned and operated by the Herdons, good folk whom I knew from church, and sold (among other things) Spire Christian Comics. They were simplistic but actually conveyed the stories that they intended to tell pretty well and one of them was an adaptation of Chuck Colson's autobiography, Born Again. While it wasn't high art it was the first time that I can remember hearing of my need for a saviour and the concept of new birth in Christ. I later read the book and saw the movie, but that comic book was the first clear presentation of the Gospel that I can remember and was used to bring me to faith in Christ. Really.

Some years later, after commissioning and while still in college, I began considering a vocation to ordained ministry and read a number of Colson's books including The Body. While not a scholarly tome it did impact how I viewed the Church and its mission in the world -- the first ecclesiology I read. It was through his works that I first learned of a Christian world and life view, and for that I'm very thankful; his thoughtful Breakpoint commentaries fleshed that out. Charles Colson was also one of the leaders in the Manhattan Declaration, a great statement of Christian conscience of which I was pleased to be the 4177th signer (if you've not done so I encourage you to sign it as well) and continued to promote Christian engagement with culture -- all of this, in addition to his primary work reaching men and women in prison with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

In 1997 I got to hear Colson in person at the dedication of Reformed Theological Seminary's Charlotte Campus and I regret that I didn't meet him that night (the crowds were considerable). Barring the miraculous, I probably won't get a chance to thank him in person in this life but want to take this opportunity to express my appreciation for the impact that he's had on my life and the Church of Christ at large.