What we have; What we lost; What we need

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If the church were more like Oxford University:

Subfusc is a Latin term used to refer to a specific type of academic dress worn by students at Oxford University. It is a black gown of varying lengths and shapes worn over formal attire by students during examinations, some lectures, dinners and numerous other occasions. If Oxford were like many other universities, subfusc, would be a period costume and nothing more: something one might expect to see depicted in movies like Brideshead Revisited or the Shadowlands, but not an item of contemporary apparel. Thankfully, Oxford is not like any other university.

Last week as I was having breakfast in a hotel in Oxford’s city centre, I could see outside the window phalanx of students, impeccably dressed and donning their subfusc, heading into an austere stone building to take their examinations. This was not some historical reenactment of life at Oxford in the 1920s; this is life at Oxford now and if the students have anything to say about it, it will still be life in Oxford for many years to come.

Last week the Oxford Student Union held a referendum. The question it posed: Should students still be required to wear subfusc on the usual occasions? One of the university’s vice presidents proposed that this was an archaic tradition that the students would be glad to get rid of. The result: more than 75% of the student body voted in favor of keeping the unusually shaped black gowns as required apparel for Oxford students. The students who actually live their lives in and out of these garments expressed a strong desire to maintain this centuries old tradition. This does not mean, however, that Oxford students are simply intransigent and unwilling to adapt to the modern world. In 2012 rules regarding the type of subfusc that each gender was permitted to wear were lifted, but the general rule that students must be dressed in some type of the uniform were maintained, proving that it is possible to adapt a tradition to modern needs without throwing it off entirely.

Oxford University takes modern youth, from a variety of backgrounds and races, and invites them into a different life. It is a life steeped in centuries of tradition, where students know that they are a part of something much larger and more significant than just the concerns of the present age. But because its life is comprised primarily of the young, Oxford is always confronted with new ideas and new thoughts. So what you end up with is a city and a University that is at once extremely old, while at the same time being eternally young. It has both the reverence of ancient tradition and the vitality of new life, and that is, in my opinion, exactly what the church should look like.

The ability to adapt tradition without dispensing with it, has proven to be Oxford’s strength and the Church’s weakness, and this is crucial because it is that very ability that will lie at the heart of any successful prayer book revision.

The next prayer book revision needs to take a close look at three critical questions regarding the 1979 Book of Common Prayer: What we have; what we lost; and what we need.

What we have

While I admit that I am not the biggest fan of the 1979 prayer book, there is much there that works and works well. Some of the prayers are clumsy and dated, but some work very well. Overall, the 1979 prayer book, when it is actually followed, can produce beautiful and wonderful liturgies in worship styles that range from high Anglo-Catholic to low protestant and everything in between. It is imperfect, but for many of us in the church now it is the tradition that has formed us, and that is not to be taken lightly or easily dispensed with.

What we lost

All revisions and reformations have a tendency to go too far. Things get pushed aside or left behind in one generation that the next generation finds itself in need of. Any revision of the 1979 Book of Common Prayer needs to look backwards as well as forwards. We need to look back at previous revisions and identify places where something of value was lost. How can a new prayer book connect modern Christians to ancient rituals and beliefs? How can we help today’s worshiper feel that oneness of spirit with Christians in every other generation? If we can accept that merely casting off old traditions is not an acceptable solution to moving forward, can we look back and identify some traditions that previous revisions dispensed with in too much haste?

What we need

Much has changed in the last 30+ years. Technology is vastly different. The battlegrounds within the church and within the world have all changed. A new prayer book must take into account the world it is being sent into. It must be able to invite individuals from every background, race, gender and sexuality into the life of the church. This will mean adding and altering some services and it is here principally that the ability to alter traditions without dispensing with them altogether will become key.

There are many reasons why I would propose that now is not the time to be contemplating prayer book revision in the Episcopal Church, but my primary reason that I pray we hold off, is that we simply have not done the work of finding out from our youth and young clergy what the answers are to those three questions: what we have; what we lost; and what we need. Like the students at Oxford wearing subfusc, it is the young in the church that are going to have to actually live with and in any new revised prayer book, so any discussion of revision must begin with them.

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The way to keep a trail alive is to walk on it: Sermon for Easter Sunday 2015

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Sermon for Easter Sunday 2015

Readings:

Acts 10:34-43 
Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24
1 Corinthians 15:1-11
John 20:1-18 

I once heard an archeologist use an expression in an interview that has since become one of my favorites: The way to keep a trail alive is to walk on it

As someone who had a great deal of experience in digging up the past, he was well aware that the difference between a living tradition and a dead tradition is practice. The moment that people stop practicing a tradition, stop teaching its history or stop holding its rituals it dies. And just like a path that no one walks on, the weeds and the grass creep in, and eventually it fades away, disappears and is forgotten.

When our youth group was travelling the Way of Saint James to the cathedral in Santiago de Compostela a couple years ago, we were travelling along a path that had been used by pilgrims for over a thousand years, but despite the fact that this trail was so old, most of the time you didn’t have to worry about getting lost or wonder where you were going, because not only is the path well worn from ancient use, but people are still using it. People are still walking that way and using that trail. It is a living tradition and it is alive because people still experience God along the way. The experience still has something to teach modern people, it still has something to offer to our lives, something which all of the modern technology in the world just can’t replace. There at the tomb of one of Jesus’s first followers, or in the cathedral itself, or in the incense, or maybe just in the faces of the people you meet along the way, God is there and people are still walking that trail to seek him.

This past week we have been walking a different kind of path. We have been walking, figuratively at least, the way of the cross with Christ. We have been telling his story and the story of his disciples, we have been observing ancient traditions that speak to the last things that he said and did, and we have done these things for much the same reason that people still walk the Camino in Spain. This path, this trail of Holy Week is still walked because people still find God there.

Our journey of Holy Week ends this morning with taking a short walk with Mary Magdalene to the tomb. She is walking there to clean and to anoint the body of her dear friend, her leader and her teacher. She is walking there with the expectation of performing the gut wrenching task of unwrapping him from the linen shroud and having to again witness the lifeless body of someone she loves laying before her. We are traveling that way with Mary this morning. Year after year we walk this same path to the tomb with Mary and we retell the story of what she found.

We continue to walk this way and to tell this story because at the end of the road we find something which gives our life meaning. We find out that the world which we thought we knew and understood might be a little more complex and a little more mysterious than we had previously imagined. We find out that miracles do happen, that God really is in control. We find out that the path which we thought led to the grave and no further actually leads to new life.

Mary didn’t find a dead body that morning as she was expecting. What she found was the Resurrected Christ, transformed, but more alive than ever.

I will venture to say that the Easter story isn’t new to most of you. You have heard the gospel witnesses, you have heard preachers and priests talk about it before, you might have even seen the movie…there are lots. You are not here this morning to find out how this story ends, you are here because you know the ending and you find there in that story of Christ’s resurrection something which changes your life and gives it deeper meaning. You are here because deep down you know or feel that the story the secular world tells us, the story that only looks to the material world and not beyond is simply not good enough. You are here because Christ’s story challenges you to imagine a world that is bigger and more miraculous. You are walking this path with us because this trail, this tradition has been kept alive by generations of individuals who have continued throughout the years to find God here and you are walking this path because you have probably found God here too.

Ours is a living tradition. A living trail that continues to lead travelers to a deeper knowledge and love of God. If we have found God along the way, if we have walked to that tomb with Mary and found it empty, if we have experienced God in this place or in the proclamation of the gospel or in the sacraments and rituals of the church that teach us and draw us deeper into the life of Christ, if this path has led us closer to God then we must keep it alive. We must continue to walk on it. We must continue to proclaim and live out these stories which we believe to be true so that future generations will not learn about who Christians were and what we believed between the covers of a textbook. This way, this path, this trail must be kept alive for them.

Our tradition is a living tradition and it will remain so as long as we continue to live it out. This trail will stay alive as long as we continue to walk on it. If we want our children to have faith we must continue to live it out ourselves, not just today, but every day. We need to be living sign posts along the way, arrows that constantly redirect people to the empty tomb and the resurrected Christ.

Walking this way has forever changed my life. I have been and continue to be amazed at the many ways I have encountered God along this journey. It has given me immeasurable hope, not just for what my resurrected life might be like in the next world, but for what my forgiven life can be in this one. If you share this hope of mine, if you have experienced God here in this place or in our tradition and if you want to keep this trail alive: keep walking on it.