The following is a link to our reading today:
Acts 17:22-31
“The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands. . .” Acts 17:24
I have been an Episcopalian my entire life. It is my spiritual home and there are so many things that I love about the Episcopal Church. I love our sense of community. We don’t gather for anonymous and impersonal worship and then go home. We gather with people we know and love. We gather as a group of human beings committed to being the body of Christ. So we eat together, we play together, we worship together, we reach out to those in need together, and we grow in our faith together. To be an Episcopalian is to be a part of something bigger than ourselves.
I also love our commitment to the fullness of the human experience. We value tradition and Scripture. These are both are necessary to our identity as Christians, but we also allow room for experience and reason. We allow for God’s continued movement in our lives. We acknowledge that the world is not as black and white as we would like to pretend that it is. Actually we don’t even say that it is gray. We say that the world is a panoply of color and therefore full of diversity and change. This allows us to be open to the promptings of the Holy Spirit. We are able to say to ourselves, “Perhaps they ways in which we have always categorized the world and the people in it was not correct. Perhaps God is calling is to a new and different way of being and seeing.”
And I love our polity. I love that rectors are called not appointed. This means that congregations have to look at themselves and listen to God, as do priests, so that we can follow God’s will when coming together to do God’s work. I love that our bishops are elected and not made. I love that we have a Presiding Bishop and not an Archbishop or a Pope. It is a chaotic and crazy process at times as we come together to choose our leadership, but it leaves space for the movement of God.
And finally I love our worship. I love that our worship links us to the past and to the future. I love that our worship links us to millions of Christians around the world. There is something comforting in the knowledge that others have said the same words we are saying in our prayer together over and over again.
However, I think that this final love of mine is also the source of our greatest corporate sin as Episcopalians. We, as a denomination, are often very critical of those we call “fundamentalist” Christians. We are critical of those we feel interpret Scripture too narrowly and literally. And yet, how often could we be accused of being fundamentalist liturgists? How often does an Episcopalian leave the church because some words were changed in the worship service? How many were raised with the belief that the Prayer Book was the same as the Bible and should be worshipped? How often have we hardened our worship and our worship space into a shrine, an idol? I fear more frequently than we would like to imagine.
And finally I love our worship. I love that our worship links us to the past and to the future. I love that our worship links us to millions of Christians around the world. There is something comforting in the knowledge that others have said the same words we are saying in our prayer together over and over again.
However, I think that this final love of mine is also the source of our greatest corporate sin as Episcopalians. We, as a denomination, are often very critical of those we call “fundamentalist” Christians. We are critical of those we feel interpret Scripture too narrowly and literally. And yet, how often could we be accused of being fundamentalist liturgists? How often does an Episcopalian leave the church because some words were changed in the worship service? How many were raised with the belief that the Prayer Book was the same as the Bible and should be worshipped? How often have we hardened our worship and our worship space into a shrine, an idol? I fear more frequently than we would like to imagine.
My liturgy professor in seminary once told us that there is tradition with a big “T” and tradition with a little “t”. Big T traditions are those things which if removed would change the foundation of our faith. For example, belief in the resurrection would be seen by most as a big T tradition. Exactly what you think the resurrection is and what it means might be up for debate, but removing it from our tradition all together would be to remove the very foundation upon which Christianity stands. The Eucharist could be considered a big T tradition as could baptism. Both sacraments were instituted by Jesus, and he commanded us to continue both.
Little t traditions are those things that if removed would not fundamentally change who we are. Baptism might be a big T tradition, but whether we sprinkle with water or completely immerse the newly baptized does not change who we are. They are both human expressions of a divine command. Neither one is right and neither one is wrong. I would argue that the words found in the Book of Common Prayer also are part of a little t tradition. They were written by human beings. They are beautiful. They are wonderful. They are human created.
The problem, my professor claimed, comes when we confuse little t traditions with big t traditions. Little t traditions are not bad or wrong, but they are also not necessary for salvation. They become bad and wrong when we enshrine them and turn them into idols. They become bad and wrong when we think our little t traditions are our foundation and without them we are no longer Christian. Fundamentalist Christians do this when they turn Scripture into an idol and claim that they know the mind of God. We are wrong when we turn our worship into an idol and claim that it can never be changed.
“The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands. . .” May we always remember this little bit of wisdom.
Little t traditions are those things that if removed would not fundamentally change who we are. Baptism might be a big T tradition, but whether we sprinkle with water or completely immerse the newly baptized does not change who we are. They are both human expressions of a divine command. Neither one is right and neither one is wrong. I would argue that the words found in the Book of Common Prayer also are part of a little t tradition. They were written by human beings. They are beautiful. They are wonderful. They are human created.
The problem, my professor claimed, comes when we confuse little t traditions with big t traditions. Little t traditions are not bad or wrong, but they are also not necessary for salvation. They become bad and wrong when we enshrine them and turn them into idols. They become bad and wrong when we think our little t traditions are our foundation and without them we are no longer Christian. Fundamentalist Christians do this when they turn Scripture into an idol and claim that they know the mind of God. We are wrong when we turn our worship into an idol and claim that it can never be changed.
“The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands. . .” May we always remember this little bit of wisdom.