In 1870, less than five years since the end of the American Civil War, William Reed Huntinton, then rector of All Saints Church, Worcester, Massachusetts, wrote a treatise entitled: The Church Idea, an Essay toward Unity. In his essay, Huntington argued that just as the Union forces had needed a “definite and tangible centre, around which to rally” so too the churches of Christendom, at least those that claimed some element of catholicity and did not exist as some separatist sect, also needed to identify what the core of their faith was.

 

He writes:

“…whenever any social organization has become dispersed, or thrown into solution there is needed for its re-collection a firm core or nucleus about which the returning parts may group themselves.”

 

Huntington, as an Episcopal priest, set out to identify what the core principles of the Anglican Church are, in the hope that other churches would rally around those shared principles.

 

He continues:

When it is proposed to make Anglicanism the basis of a Church of Reconciliation, it is above all things necessary to determine what Anglicanism pure and simple is. The word brings up before the eyes of some a flutter of surplices, a vision of village spires and cathedral towers, a somewhat stiff and stately company of deans, prebendaries and choristers, and that is about all. But we greatly mistake if we imagine that the Anglican principle has no substantial existence apart from these accessories. Indeed it is only when we have stripped Anglicanism of the picturesque costume which English life has thrown around it, that we can fairly study its anatomy, or understand its possibilities of power and adaptation.

 

Huntington goes on to describe what he discerns to be the four principles of the Anglican Church, or as he also calls it the “’quadrilateral’ of pure Anglicanism”:

 

1. The Holy Scripture as the Word of God: “How far and in what precise manner the divine and the human elements coexist there, it is idle to surmise…it is enough to know that in a sense peculiar and unique, differencing it from all other books, the Bible is God’s word or message to us.”
2. The Primitive Creeds as the Rule of Faith: Huntington argues that the Apostles’ Creed and the Nicene Creed, both being from antiquity and representing the faith of the undivided church, ought to be the sufficient summation of Christian belief: “Certainly we who stand within the pale ought to be thankful for a Creed which enunciates the central truth of our religion with a distinctness and emphasis that fifteen hundred years of controversy have not sufficed to blur.”
3. The two sacraments ordained by Christ himself: “the Two Sacraments of Christ’s appointment image forth to the eye His two all-comprehensive sayings, ‘come unto me’, ‘abide in me.’ The one is the Sacrament of Approach, the other is the Sacrament of Continuance. Baptism answers to the grafting of the branch; Holy Communion to the influx of the nourishing juices that keep the graft alive.”
4. The Episcopate as the Key-stone of Governmental Unity: “There exists a form of Church polity which can be traced back, century after century, until we come to the very confines of the Apostolical age. A characteristic feature of this polity is headship. The name of it is the Episcopate.”

 

Huntington’s proposal was transformed into a resolution from the House of Bishops of the Episcopal Church (passed in Chicago in 1886), stating that unity with Christians of different communions would be sought based on those principles. Two years later, in what was only the third international gathering of Anglican bishops (the 1888 Lambeth Conference), the bishops approved the same four principles stating that they supplied “a basis by which approach may be by God’s blessing made towards home reunion.”

These four principles have since become known as the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral and they can be found printed on pages 876 and 877 in the back of the Episcopal Church’s Book of Common Prayer. I think that it is a great pity, that in the life of our Anglican Communion at least, that is where they seem to stay.

 

During the past couple of weeks, as I have been watching the Anglican churches wrestling publicly with each other, I have wondered to myself: “Whatever happened to the Quadrilateral?” Are we unwilling to show our fellow Anglicans the same grace and latitude that we have in the past proclaimed that we are willing to show to any church? Have we lost all perspective as to what are the core principles of our church and now seem intent on dividing over issues that in the history of the Church, never rose to the level of core doctrine?

 

How is it possible that the Episcopal Church’s change to its canon on marriage is a greater threat to Anglican unity than the Columba Declaration (which is an agreement between the Church of England and the Church of Scotland that would allow Presbyterian clergy, which do not have the Episcopate, to serve in Anglican churches)? Or how is it possible that a gay bishop can create a more significant division in the Anglican Communion than bishops that openly and publicly denounce elements of the creed?

 

Perhaps the solution to our disunion within the Anglican Communion is the same solution that Father Huntington saw to disunion within Catholic Christendom: a deep understanding and commitment to our core principles and the ability to accept diversity in everything else. We need to renew our focus on what unites us, not what divides us. Maybe it is time to dust off the old Quadrilateral and start using it among ourselves.

 

Fr. Huntington concludes:

The first step toward finding a remedy for our ailments is to acknowledge that we are sick. Christendom, with a very querulous voice, is beginning to do just this. Then there is still further encouragement in the fact that all over the world religious thought is concentrating itself more and more every day upon the Person of our blessed Lord. Believers and unbelievers are alike agitated with the question, What think ye of Christ? This is a sure precursor of renewed efforts after unity. The more clearly our holy religion is seen to have its centre in Him whose name it bears, the more will those who love him in sincerity feel that the Church must be one.

The full text of William Reed Huntington’s essay can be found here.

Sermon for the Second Sunday of Epiphany 2016.

Reading: John 2:1-11

When people talk about the story of the wedding at Cana they usually focus on one of two things: the wedding or the wine.

Well I am here to tell you that those things don’t interest me very much in this morning’s gospel.

Despite the fact that our marriage service in the Episcopal Church tries to extract great meaning from our Lord’s presence at a wedding, the truth is, it is just a simple detail of where Jesus happens to be. The gospel writer doesn’t spend much time explaining it; we shouldn’t either. The wedding doesn’t interest me.

The fact that Jesus can turn water into wine doesn’t interest me much either. As a believer in miracles, as a believer in the Incarnation and Resurrection, I believe that Jesus is one with the creator of the universe. To quote the beginning of John’s gospel: “All things were made by him; and without him was not anything made that was made.” I believe that Jesus can turn death into life, so it really comes as no surprise to me that he can turn water into wine. The wine, frankly, doesn’t interest me.

What does interest me greatly about this morning’s gospel and our Lord’s first miracle in Cana is how it comes about. I find it fascinating that the first person mentioned at the wedding is not our Lord himself, but his mother.

On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galillee and the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding.

Mary is the first person mentioned in the story. Mary is the first to learn that the wine has run out, though whether she observed it herself, or whether it was made known to her by the servants at the wedding seeking her assistance we don’t know. What we do know is that Mary’s response was to go to her son immediately and seek his help. Mary knew that her child was special. She might not have predicted how he would solve the problem, but she knew he would have the solution.

So Mary goes to Jesus and it is she who tells him that they have no wine.

Jesus’s response to her is puzzling: He says to her: “woman, what concern is that to you and me? My hour has not yet come.” Now that sounds rather harsh to us, but Jesus isn’t actually being rude to his mother. He is simply saying to her: but it’s not time yet. This is going to happen in God’s time.

Mary’s response is perfect. She doesn’t get angry or impatient with her son. She doesn’t box his years or yell at him. She doesn’t give up and try to fix the problem herself and she doesn’t lose faith in her son’s ability. She simply goes back to the servants, points back to her son and says: “do whatever he tells you.”

The relationship between Jesus and his mother in this morning’s gospel is of great interest to me, because it is the perfect example of what intercessory prayer is all about and because it clearly illustrates the role that Mary plays in our life of prayer.

Perhaps one of the most fundamental misunderstandings that many people have about the Catholic tradition is the belief that we pray to the Blessed Virgin Mary. We don’t actually (and when I say we, I refer to all catholic Christians Romans and Anglicans) we don’t actually address our prayers to the Virgin Mary, at least, not in the same way we pray to God or to Christ.

Listen to the words of the most famous prayer to the mother of Jesus, the Hail Mary:

 

Hail Mary, Full of Grace, the Lord is with thee.

Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb Jesus

Holy Mary, mother of God, Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death.

 

Pray for us sinners. Our request here is for Mary to pray for us. We aren’t requesting for her to change things for us, she doesn’t have the power to do that. What we are requesting is to be among her prayers. We are requesting for her to bring our needs to Jesus. It is the sort of thing that we do for each other all the time. We pray for our loved ones and we ask them to pray for us. That is what intercessory prayer is all about: petitioning God on behalf of someone else; acting as a mediator, serving as a bridge or connector between Jesus and someone that is in need. We do it for each other all the time, so why do people get so uncomfortable about asking the mother of Christ to do the same thing? or any other saint for that matter?

Surely we don’t see death, which our Lord conquered by his own death and resurrection as some barrier to prayer between those who have gone to glory and those who yet await it?

No. The prayers of the departed are just as valid, if not more so than the prayers of the living. If we are serious about prayer here, how much more so will we be when we get to the other side?

Mary is so important to the catholic tradition and such a fundamental part of our spirituality, because through her we have the first, and perhaps most perfect, example of what it means to be a faithful, prayerful Christian and what it means to connect people to Jesus.

Mary hears about a problem this morning and the first thing that she does it take it to Jesus. She makes sure that he knows that someone is in need. And when he doesn’t grant her request or seem to solve the problem instantly, she remains faithful. She makes the connection between the servants’ dilemma and the solution to their problems. She points them to Christ and says: follow him. Do what he says.

If we take our life of prayer seriously, if we believe in the power of prayer to change things, and if we feel called to intercede on behalf of others, then we have a lot to learn from Mary.

We need to learn to keep our eyes and ears open to the needs of people around us; to keep our hearts open to their pleas, to be moved with compassion toward them.

We need to learn first and foremost to carry those burdens straight to Jesus. Not to try to fix them ourselves first, not to try to carry the burden of the world’s suffering on our shoulders, but to take the world’s problems from the trivial to the monumental, straight to him.

We need to remember that ultimately he is the one that has the power, not us.

We need to learn that when our prayers and petitions are not answered in the way we want, or in our time, that we are called to be faithful, remembering that God’s time and our time are not the same.

Most importantly, we need to learn to keep pointing people back to Jesus; to encourage them to follow him; to listen to what he says, and to do it. In the end, our life of intercessory prayer should connect people to Jesus.

That is what Mary does in our life of prayer: she points us to Jesus. She isn’t worshiped, she is venerated; she is shown the greatest respect because she, as the mother of Christ, still has so much to teach us about him, and about what it means to follow him.

No the remarkable thing about this morning’s gospel isn’t the wedding or the wine; the remarkable thing is that here, even before Jesus has performed his first miracle, his mother is showing the faith that she has in him and is fulfilling her call of interceding for others and connecting them to him.

May we have the faith to do the same.

 

Turn then, most gracious advocate,

thine eyes of mercy towards us,

and after this our exile

show unto us the blessed fruit of thy womb, Jesus.

If the Devil is good at anything, it is at distracting us from the things that really matter.

A remarkable thing was announced today in Canterbury. The Archbishop or Canterbury, Justin Welby, announced that representatives from the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Anglican and Coptic churches would be meeting in the next few years to discuss fixing one universal date for Easter. Currently Easter is a feast that moves according to the first full moon of Spring and it is usually celebrated at different times by churches in the East and in the West due to the use of different calendars. Fixing one date for Easter would heal a division that has existed in the church for over 1000 years. In fact, one of the first great divisions between Christians in England was between Roman and Celtic missionaries over the date of Easter. Now we are looking at the very real prospect that in 5-10 years the major branches of Christ’s Church will be celebrating his resurrection on the same day for the first time in many centuries.

This Is Huge.

This is a huge announcement, but unfortunately most people missed it because they were too distracted by all of the hype that has been generated around the issues of same sex marriage and whether or not the various Anglican churches, which disagree about this issue, can remain together. One astute reporter at today’s press conference asked the Archbishop to speak more about this (he was my hero for the day for doing that), but most other reporters just wanted to focus on the divisions and disagreements within the Anglican Communion.

On the one hand, we have deep disagreement between Christians about how to honor and serve the lives and relationships of Gays and Lesbians, something which has been a matter of debate for the past 30 years or so.

On the other hand, we have news of a potential agreement between the major Christian churches on settling a division that has existed for over 1000 years, and directly pertains to our proclamation of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Which one of these issues should really be getting the most press and attention?

Personally (traditionalist that I am when it comes to liturgy), the idea of setting one immovable date for Easter doesn’t thrill me, but it would be a small sacrifice to make for the possibility of having all Christians come together at the same time to proclaim with one voice the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. That would be a liturgical change worth making. And while the divisions in our church over the issue of same sex marriage matters to me personally, I refuse to let that one division distract me from doing what I and the church are really called to do.

The take-away from this morning’s press conference, if you ignore all the distractions that the Devil tries to throw in the way, is that there really is always hope for Christians to overcome our divisions, no matter how old they are and no matter how deep they run. The key is of course to maintain perspective and to keep our attention on that which is of supreme importance: our proclamation of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

All the other drama is just a storm in a teacup.