The Anglican Catholic Family

 

Why relationships are key to the health of the Anglican Catholic Church.

O Felix Culpa!

Sermon for the Octave Sunday of Easter

Hindsight is a wonderful thing.

With hindsight, you can look at an argument and see that it wasn't your fault.

With hindsight, you can look at your accident and see that it could have been worse.

With hindsight, you can see the unforeseen benefits to that pain you had.

[PAUSE]

Hindsight is a terrible thing.

With hindsight, you can see that that accident was entirely your fault.

With hindsight, you can see that things could have been done much better.

With hindsight, you can see that your efforts to help made things a lot worse.

Either way, with hindsight we get a different perspective of events that have occurred.

[PAUSE]

There is a notion called Felix Culpa - the happy fault or happy sin. The idea goes that, if Adam hadn't sinned in the first place, then we would never have seen how much God loves us. We can say that with hindsight. How does that make you feel, though?

Perhaps you think that if Adam hadn't sinned then God would have shown us how much He loves us in a less painful, less bloody way.

Perhaps you think that this makes human beings extra guilty for forcing God to take such terrible action to bring us back.

Perhaps you think that this is all God's fault for planting a tree that would cause so much pain that He only has Himself to blame, so the crucifixion is His own fault.

Hindsight does not solve "what if" problems.

[PAUSE]

What we have is human sin and human death, God's love and God's death, God's Resurrection and human resurrection. Those are the facts.

Because we sin, we die for the wages of sin is death - separation from God.

Because we die, Jesus dies to pay our ransom. 

Whom does He pay? 

Does He pay God? Is God a feudal lord who demands justice? Does He demand satisfaction? Where's the love in that? Where's the forgiveness?

Does He pay the Devil? Who gave him permission to rule us? Is God powerless? Or are we toys for God to share with the Devil?

Does He pay Death itself? Yes! For Death is an absence of Life and Sin is an absence of Good. Both sin and death are debts - they need resolution. God's death fills them and, in filling them, destroys them. It is like destroying a hole by filling it in. 

Sin is an absence of Good: only God can fill it for only God is perfect Goodness.

Death is an absence of Life: only God can fill it for only God is perfect Life.

Paying the ransom destroys the power of death and sin over us.

[PAUSE]

We look back at Good Friday and see that it may have been agony, but it was supreme victory. The whole life of Christ with us is the supreme victory.

Yes, we sinned, but we have been given more than we ever lost. We have been given God with us! 

O Felix Culpa, indeed!

Where are the Christians when the lights go out?

 

Answer: Still in the Light!

The Rest of the Resurrection

Sermon for the Day of Resurrection

Alleluia, Christ is risen!

You have travelled through Lent. You have struggled with trying to see yourself more clearly in the light of Christ. You have gone down into the depths of the darkness of your fallen state and now, in Christ you rise again. But do you feel refreshed? Are you still tired from the struggle? Doesn't it look as if, rather than getting a break, you have climbed Golgotha only to see Everest in front of you across the ledge?

[PAUSE]

The downside of Easter Day is that it doesn't automatically mean that we are refreshed. To many, Easter Day is yet another day, a bank holiday, a brief respite before the drudgery of work comes in again. For some of us, Easter Day has lost its state as a special day - a day of rejoicing and cheer. There might be a nice bit of chocolate, a chance to take up what was laid down for Lent, and a hot cross bun, but the cheer will pass quickly as the toil begins again. For some people, life is too serious to be wasting on rejoicing and cheer.

The problem is that Society has forgotten what it is to be holy. The World makes us Christians forget what it is to be holy.

[PAUSE]

Easter Day is seen as the most holy day in the Christian year. For many Christians, Easter and Christmas fight it out for the most important day. For the World, Christmas wins hands down because birth is nicer to think about than death. Birth is easier to accept than Resurrection.

And that's why we Christians get tired. We are constantly battling the messages of the world enticing us to forget God. What the world wants us to forget is the commandment to keep the Sabbath Holy. The life of Our Lord Jesus Christ is not just Christmas and Easter. He lives a full life, every day is His. This is the day that the Lord has made, and Jesus rejoices and is glad in it. But do we?

[PAUSE]

Many do not. They hear the Lord tell those who are heavy laden to come to Him for rest, but something stops them. What stops them is a vision that has been clouded by the cares of this world and the lies of the Devil. The Resurrection may be two thousand years distant from us, but it is no less real. The years of doubt and sorrow, of fear, pain and conflict may cloud those two millennia but the Gospel does not change: it still says that today Christ is risen indeed. And tomorrow, it will say that Christ is risen. And the day after that, the Gospel will say that Christ is risen. Even on our darkest, most pain-filled, day of despair, grief, misery, heartache and futility, the Gospel will still say Christ is Risen! And it will still be true.

[PAUSE]

But we do need rest. This is why we are given the Sabbath Day in order to sit down and look at God and for Him to look at us. This is the day that we sit down and pour our grief and pain out from our heart into His through the wound in His side, and He responds by showing us that He is still alive, that life is worth living, that we are loved and that all the pains we take for Him are not futile. This is the day when we see His face look into ours and hear Him call our name even as he addresses Mary Magdalene by her name in her grief. And she looks up and, in the midst of her tears, she glorifies!

And this needs to be every Sunday - a day to sit down with God and connect with Him. This is the day of grace in the Holy Sacrament. This is the day when new believers are Baptised. This is our day, not the world's. This is our day, not our pay-packet's. This is our day of rest.

This is why we need to pull Sunday back out of the hands of the world. This is why we need to reclaim our rest, and the rest for others, too. We stop shopping, even online. We stop arranging for Amazon deliveries on a Sunday. We turn off the internet router and put down our phones. We even cease to talk about Church business with our priest on a Sunday. For today is our rest. Today, we recuperate by sitting and looking Our Risen Lord in His Risen eye, just being who we are and accepting who we are for His sake. 

Today we are God's beloved and nothing in the entirety of existence will ever stop that from being true, rest assured!

Food for the Journey

 

Homily for Maundy Thursday

Lying in the way

Brief homily for Palm Sunday

There is usually no time for a sermon on Palm Sunday as the Long Gospel says it all. However, for completeness here is a short reflection.

You understand that the palm branches and garments are cast into the way mainly for the sake of the donkey. They make its path easier to tread and even out the surface of the road. Of course, if the donkey has an easier passage so does the passenger.

[PAUSE]

Throwing down your coat for a donkey to tread on shows how much you regard the rider. If thousands of the people of Jerusalem turn out to welcome the one they believe to be the Messiah, then His reputation has preceded Him and they clearly show their love for Him.

And then they will shout, "Crucify!"

And then, some will lay their lives down before Him so that He can walk into the lives of others.

[PAUSE]

If Our Lord has taken our humanity in order to enter into the gates of our heart, what of our lives do we need to lay down before Him so that the Lord of Life may enter in?

Why I am no longer an Anglican (or, non Anglicanus sed Catholicus Anglicanus)

Well, I thought that, given recent posts on the blogosphere such as "Why I am a Baptist", "Why I am no longer a Baptist" et c., I should grab my quint-bass sordune and jump on the bandwagon.

My reason for doing so is largely motivated by yet another debate on social media in which I have had to defend my Anglican Catholicism. I have tried very hard to answer many of the questions arising in my book, "The Meaning of Anglican Catholicism" but people don't like reading books these days, apparently, especially if they are by me!

I have long given up calling myself an Anglican. The reason can be found in my blog posts but, essentially, I have rejected three specific statements:

1) I reject the Thirty-Nine Articles as an accurate description of my faith.

2) I reject the need to be Communicatio in Sacris with the CofE.

3) I reject the doctrinal innovations of the Reformation such as Sola Fide and (de facto) Scriptura Solo.

And of course, I am told that I am not an Anglican. Actually, I accept that. If the essence of being an Anglican is to be found in the acceptance of any one of these positions, then I am not an Anglican and I don't care. Similarly, if the definition of a Protestant is someone who is not a Roman Catholic, then I am a Protestant just like a member of the Eastern Orthodox Church and I don't care.

The problem with "Anglican" is that, like "Protestant", it is an umbrella term which has lost meaning. Archbishop Haverland has said much of this when he was only in priestly orders. Even Anglican Scholars agree that there is no one single Anglicanism. How can Anglicanism simultaneously (a) affirm the priesthood of women and the validity of same-sex couples; (b) reject the priesthood of women and/or the validity of same-sex couples yet see priesthood as a secondary issue; (c) hold to a Catholic understanding of the male-only priesthood - i.e. that it is a first order issue - and affirm the traditional moral teaching of the Church; (d) that it is possible for a Christian to be an atheist? If Anglicanism is able to hold together contradictory positions, then simple logic says that Anglicanism is simply not a means of discerning and promote Christian Truth but is more of a cultural milieu. 

Now, this makes more sense. It gives the Anglican the option of affirming one of the following:

(1) that Anglicanism possesses the means to discern the Christian Truth. This will mean that it must necessarily reject contradictions to that truth. It will mean that "being an Anglican" is well-defined.

(2) that Anglicanism is not truth-discerning but rather a means to help people experience God for themselves through non-logical and mystical means. This will mean that it will embrace contradictions but, in so doing, lose any form of credibility and meaning as anyone will be able to call themselves Anglican without some specific defining principle.

(3) that Anglicanism is a cultural term describing the heritage of the Church in England. This will mean that it ceases to be a noun, possessing no substance in itself, but rather be an adjective that points the enquirer to the Anglican Heritage.

This last position is mine and it makes sense when we use the word "Anglican" meant in its original usage. Of course there will be those who say, "'Anglicanism' has come to mean..." but I cannot accept that. The label defines the set. The set of Red Kangs cannot remain the set of Red Kangs the moment it contains a Blue Kang for the simple reason that Red is not Blue. If Red comes to change its meaning to become Blue, then it is no longer Red in its first sense: it has either lost internal consistency or external comprehension.

That's a problem with the Church which seeks to preserve timeless teaching. If "Catholic" changes its meaning then the "Catholic Church" will not be the "Catholic Church" that Our Lord intended it to be.The Doctrine of the Church cannot change because God is independent of Time and thus is changeless along with His Truth.

Thus, I hold to "Anglican" as simply meaning "English" and use that to qualify my Catholicism just like the adjectives Roman, Russian, Eastern are used to describe Catholicism and Orthodoxy.

I applaud those who have made a definition of Anglicanism in order to discern the Truth. Those who hold to the Anglican Formularies will have my admiration and very much of my affection because we do share something vital. We do depart on various issues but we can at least agree on heritage and some degree of walking parallel with the possibility of convergence.

But I am saddened by those who seek to hold contradictory positions because they do not understand the importance of Truth which is objective: it is made objective in the hypostasis of Our Lord Jesus Christ. It does make me wonder whether these folk are the Laodiceans.

I left the Church of England ten years ago. It was painful to do so but, given what it has become, I do not know it any more. It doesn't want to share heritage with me because only Now is relevant. Thus I am no longer an Anglican but Anglican.

Passionate about identity

 

Why the Resurrection is better for the you that you are than the you that you think you are.

Suffering Passionately

Sermon for Passion Sunday

As Christians, we have to hold up our hands and say that we don't know why there is so much suffering in the world. We might say that all suffering is the result of our sin, but then did God not create the tree of knowledge of Good and Evil? Did God not create Man with the ability to choose freely? Did not God create the Devil?

While it is true that God did not create Evil, what we human beings cannot understand is why God could not have created the world without the need for evil. This is one of the hardest questions to answer. But does it really need to be answered?

[PAUSE]

Passion Sunday bids us reflect on Our Lord offering Himself as the sacrifice for sin. He follows the Law laid down by God through Moses: sin requires sacrifice.

 Does the Father send His Son as a sacrifice for sin in order to fulfill the Law? It is possible that the Father, knowing that His Son has to die on the cross, sets up the whole sacrificial system so that those who live before the Incarnation have a chance to participate in Christ's death.

Does Christ follow the Law or does the Law follow Christ?

[PAUSE]

If that's hard to understand then you appreciate the difficulty there is in trying to second guess God. God has the whole of Time and Space in front of Him. He doesn't even have to work chronologically, though we are bound to Time. It is as if we live and the world is created around us as the Lord desires.

But this still doesn't answer the question: why suffering? If Jesus has to suffer and die because we suffer and die then why suffer in the first place?

[PAUSE]

We can look to the book of Job for answers but we find that God confronts Job with what Job cannot do, and that includes understanding the extent of Creation. We may have all science at our fingertips. We may have all philosophy at our fingertips. But these are all created too. In order to understand Creation fully, we have to be able to stand apart from it. We have to be like God in order to see. 

The point that God makes to us is that knowing why there is suffering will not help us when there is suffering. Knowledge is not a medicine. Only Christ is the true medicine for all our sin, sickness and suffering. If we look for meaning in our suffering then we have three choices.

We can look for meaning in this world and watch as this meaning crumbles to dust along with everything else. We will never be satisfied.

We can say there is no meaning in suffering and thus trivialise the pain and heartache of millions. We will live our lives in sadness in the knowledge that this is all there is.

Or we can look for meaning beyond Creation and see the cross as the window into a world that is only accessible to God. God chooses to suffer because we suffer. We suffer because of sin but God does not in any way let sin have the last word. His wrath against Sin is the Cross. And suffering is the cross we have to bear.

[PAUSE]

Answering the question "why is there suffering?" does nothing for us. God asks us to have faith. God asks us to trust Him.

Our pain does not mean nothing, no matter what causes it. We must have the humility to know that we cannot know and just offer true love wherever there is pain. Love is the power of power of God's Passion and no human understanding can ever grasp it.