Sarx

Since today is the Quartodecimian celebration of the Resurrection, I thought to pull this back up to the top. The rest of the conversations will be posted after Holy Week (and then some: I’ve got a lot of travel to deal with).

I asked the Pastor about holidays. She had already indicated that Praxis only meets as a full community on Sundays. And holiday during the week they commemorate in their homes as they see fit - with or without other members of the community, with or without communion. I assumed that meant that Easter would be a big Saturday Night/Sunday thing - as it was in most other Churches.

The pastor smiled and agreed it was a logical assumption… but no.

She explained to me the entirety of the Quartodecimian controversy, forgetting that I was a Church Geek. When I explained that I understood she said, “Well, we think the churches got that one wrong.”

This opened up a whole other field of enquiry: the authority of ancient tradition.

Look, she said: prior to the co-option of the Catholic Church by the Empire, the Christian communities were variegated, pluriform. Some were formed around a Bishop and his deacons. Others had presbyters in the middle of the structure. Some had various Biblical canons (although there was general agreement). There were various liturgies. Only after the Empire began to request uniformity - first with the fight over Arianism - did the Church begin to become formulaic, creedal and canonical. It even began to project some of that tendency backwards: the “Apostolic Constitutions” are from the 4th Century, but they pretend to be gathered from earlier documents, making the Apostolic and Subapostolic churches look rather a lot like Catholicism of the Empire.

I said but this “Catholicism of the Empire” is what gave us the Biblical Canon. Yes, she agreed. “But we’re open to using other literature in our our worship as well, ancient as well as modern. The Shepherd of Hermas, the Poetry of John Donne and George Herbert, the writings of Mother Theresa and Francis of Assisi. When we hear the voice of God in the writings we feel we can use it in Church.”

But I noticed you use the Roman Catholic lectionary for your services. Yes, she said: we stick to a recognisable core of material and use the other material mostly for commentary. Generally you will not hear Desmond Tutu’s writings replacing St Paul. But some of our home churches may never use more than the Beatitudes at their home table, with additional material drawn from the Tao, or the writings of Black Elk or even their own meditations. Either the spirit still speaks to us… or not. We’re open to either option: but we try to be consistent.

The same is true of our calendar usage. The thing that makes the most sense to us is a Passover seder on the 14th Day of Nisan. At my house we read from Melito of Sardis, as a commentary on the Passover story of the Haggada (editing out the Anti-Jewishisms). We follow recent scholarship in holding communion at the Afikomen, but we acknowledge that’s totally made up as we do it from Sunday’s Reserved Sacrament (after our own community’s tradition). We see no reason to be tied to the Ancient Council’s calendrical confusion, anti-semitism or lack of modern science. Neither do we see any reason to reject a reformation just because the ancient Church did not know it. Seems a two-way street. As I said: Either the spirit still speaks to us… or not. We’re open to either option: but we try to be consistent. “Speaking of which, we’re not, properly understood, Messianic Jews nor are we ‘Judaisers’”

I asked her to elaborate on the differences as she understood them.

Messianic Jews are modern Jews, born and raised as Jews, who looked to Jesus as the Messiah and, following to varying degrees the traditions of their Judaism. Judaisers are Gentiles who pretended to be Jews or who pretended that only by pretending to be Jews could they be saved. These last tended to be more torah-observant that even most devout Jews and yet they tended to be Biblical fundamentalists which was alien to Judaism. But there were persons of Jewish ancestry within Praxis - especially Praxis NYC. These folks kept some Jewish customs to one degree or another. Some were members of Synagogues as well as Praxis. Some held Sabbath gatherings with other members of Praxis. Their presence made celebrating the Passover make more sense: it was a shared communion within all the traditions that made up Praxis.

Early in the movement - ten years or so before - there had been some difficulty doing Easter - families etc. And there had been some trouble finding useful material for use within such a community. There were attempts at a reasonably Catholic/Anglican style “Holy Week”. These succeeded to varying degrees. Then it was decided to use the Seder on Maundy Thursday (traditionally, the night of the Last Supper). But there was some disagreement among members as to the Gospel Chronology. Was the Last Supper a Passover Seder? Was it not? No one could tell. Did the answer to this question provide direction for their weekly communion service? No one could tell.

Reading the Quartodecimians seemed to answer the question finally. Regardless of what the Last Supper was, it was clear that the Resurrection and Crucifixion happened at the time of the Passover. Commemorating both together on the night of the Passover (a feast that Jesus would have known) made more sense than making up a new feast.

This early decision also finalised their break with the “Canonical” or Council churches. They still felt free to access any of the material of Christianity within the last 2000 years, but they did not feel tied to it. They felt the same about Judaism and her resources. While they tended towards the more egalitarian and modern source materials, text from any agency could be edited to be useful to the Movement.

During this discussion a question had been growing in my mind and so I asked it, phrased in one word: “Trinity?”

“I wondered if you would get to that! To be honest some of us are not Trinitarian but rather more Unitarian. Others refer to themselves as Trinitarians but I think they are functionally Arians. Finally some are Arians. Some are, actually, Trinitarians. They all arrive at their various positions on their own, however, and with support from within their own community and networks, as Praxis doesn’t require them to believe it.”

This raise the question of faith in Praxis: what do they actually believe. But that was a longer discussion than we currently had time for.