Marah, Meribah and Massah

I've not written for a long time, and I do want to keep up this blog because I find that it at least allows me to set down my thoughts in total so that people can point at the flaws in my thinking. Very useful, especially when I have people who do disagree with me about what the nature of Anglican Catholicism is.

Alas, (Fr.) Marco Vervoorst has given up his blog, largely methinks due to commitment to his growing family and the fact that Third Blog from the Right has run its course. Considering that it started as Traditional Anglo-Papist, shows what a journey he has been through. Perhaps now is the time for him to have a little rest now that he has found some doctrinal stability.

My recent meanderings through the Old Testament have been following the meanderings of the Israelites as they grumble their way across the wilderness for the promised land which the majority never see due to their sheer disobedience to God.

So far for me, the three Ms have occurred in the course of their wanderings: Marah, Meribah and Massah, i.e. bitterness, and (as the Venite puts it) provocation and temptation. The waters of Marah are bitter until Moses throws in a tree that makes the water sweet, whilst Meribah and Massah have the Israelites crying out accusing God and Moses of seeking only to destroy them and showing a complete lack of faith in God. I've always found it rather fun that this occurs in the Wilderness of Sin!

It's very easy to draw parallels with the plight of the Christians in this century and the Israelites way back when. Christianity is no longer the force that it once was in the West, largely because the standards of the Christian Faith have been eroded by Liberalism, materialism and a militant atheism which is largely hedonistic in its expression.

In all walks of Christianity, there are those who move the goalposts just to make life easy for themselves. One only has to look at the outcry about the Holy Father's latest comments about contraception to see that the populace, rather than listen to the message of continence and self-control, are more concerned with the restraint which one needs to show in one's life. We cannot have life all our own way if we are to live together.

So these are the Christians who stay in Egypt and try to build a life for themselves there, and I pray to God that they be saved. Then there are Christians who, acknowledging the Sacrament of the Eucharist as an effective sign of God's nourishment and Salvation, who pass over the waters of the Sea of Reeds into the wilderness.

And here it is that we find ourselves. There is a lot of bitterness in our hearts. Certainly I see it so much in the lives of the many friends that I now have on the Anglican Diaspora Forum, and on the Continuum blog. The trouble is that we know that something is terribly wrong.

It seems to me that the typical Continuer has an enormous strength of character. They have been able to leave the Parishes, Churches and Congregations of their formative years because they have seen something horribly wrong in the way that their same church has been moving. They know what is right and have the Traditions of the Church ingrained in their blood. But that same strength of character is in danger of pushing them away from those who really do care about them, if they carry with them the bitterness that comes from that separation. Who wouldn't carry that bitterness?

The typical Continuer is also American and, from my English perspective, have a larger than life way of committing themselves to a social code. All the Americans that I have met take their religion terribly seriously. They cling to what is right and refuse to concede an inch, because they fear that it was concession that brought them to the wilderness. They feel charged with being disloyal by their erstwhile jurisdictions. One only has to look at Archbishop Coggan referring to the Continuers as disloyal and Archbishop Carey describing opponents of women's "ordination" as heretics. These words sting.

Yet, I don't think I've seen the word "heretic" bandied about so much as in Continuing Circles. Of course, it's true: anyone who departs from the Traditional teaching of the Church is a heretic - that is what the word means.

What the Continuing Church needs is that tree which sweetens all bitterness. If that isn't the tree of life that comes from communio in sacris then I don't really know what it is.

From my point of view, in my peripheral state in the Church of England, the danger for me and those like me is that of Meribah and Massah, the terrible despair that comes from disbelieving that God can and will sustain them in the wilderness. I suspect that my parish have given up on me completely now. I'm not called to do much, but, since quoting II Thessalonians iii.6 at them, I haven't won many friends!

The antidote for this despair is to hope that something will happen which will lift the gloom that surrounds the orthodox Anglican. There is refreshment available and we do have to turn to God together and be reassured that He has said that He would not abandon us.

Continuers and the relics in the Church of England do have to see that Rome is not the enemy, but Rome needs to recognise herself that she has many Egyptians within her hierarchy, and they do need to be recognised.

If Anglicans began to trust each other a little more, then perhaps our Unity may show sufficient light on the world, and on Rome too, to see what needs doing. Why don't we become the example of Unity to all Christians?