Sarx

I’ve been wrestling for the last 2 summers with a shadow that won’t let go of me. It plagued me when I was Orthodox - only going away for a year or so - and continues to hound me. This issue, this shadow, is a sense that I’m called to priesthood. At times it feels very much like George Herbert’s The Collar. So much so, in fact, that in those times when I manage to run far enough away so as to be in a different place, I don’t so much feel “free” as I feel a failure.

When I left ECUSA for Orthodoxy, I ended up in the same place after a few years: wondering if I’d ever stand at the Altar of God, surrounded by his people in prayer. When I expressed this idea to Fr J, he directed me to the St Stephen’s Programme. But then things fell apart and, through first one thing then another, that path closed to me. Then I started going to St Mary’s, Asheville, and - in a reversal - despite my attempts to stay out of leadership roles, I found myself teaching Sunday School and helping the rector make liturgical changes. In fact, despite my best attempts, I usually find myself in positions of liturgical leadership as at every parish where I’ve been a member, Orthodox and ECUSAn. It’s been an ongoing reality in every religious tradition in which I’ve participated as well.

When I moved to Buffalo to be closer to Brodie and to seek a way to make that closeness possible in the long-term, I let all of that go. And, setting my path by two needs - no debt and a savings account - I began life here in the Frozen Tundra. But no sooner than I had shook Bp Michael’s hand did the Shadow find me again. But this time there was a complication.

Last Summer, as I prepared to move to Buffalo, I met Bp John, a reader of these pages who also leads a small, Independent Sacramental community in Nashville and is one of the most-widely know of the various Episcopi Vagantes in the US. Through his good gracese, when I left Asheville, I too, had become an Episcopus Vagans. We’ll get to the “why” in Pt 2, but for now that’s not the issue. Yet, for the last year, I’ve been wondering what that means. When the idea of ECUSAn ordination began to present itself again, I struggled: wondering what ordination was, what it means to be “valid” and what it might mean that I was one of these Vagantes now.

In the last seven months since the ceremony with Bp John, I’ve played with several possible sets of definition for this:

1) Meaninglessness.
2) Meaning the same as everyone else’s ordinations.
3) Meaning something, but different.

And all of these possible answers has come from the question of “What is ordination?”

In the Anglican tradition, of course, there are two wide streams of thought: these may be broadly expressed as “Magical” vrs “Ceremonial”, or “Functional” vrs “Sacramental” or “high church” vrs “low church” or “Protestant” vrs “Catholic”.

In today’s understanding (amid various denominations), those categories are meaningless, as I hope to show by this: for there are “Catholic Functional” and “Protestant Ontological” flavours, Low Church Magicians and High Church Preachers. The question is: is priesthood something that happens to the man at the time of Ordination or is it a job the community gives the man and nothing more? Or is a Job - and something more?

Many Protestant denominations bring us the idea that ordination merely means “the community has set you apart for preaching.” Some denominations - the ones most focused on preaching - don’t even ordain. A friend of mine, founder of three successful churches - is not ordained in any sense of the word. Other denominations require laying-on-of-hands every time the preacher takes a new congregation - I think some Baptists function this way (SBC?). Yet while it is clear from the Bible that the idea of ordination rises from the functional needs of a growing community rather than from any dominical mandate, it is not simply a call to preaching. Most preachers in the Bible are not ordained by the community. And the first Ordinations recorded in the book of acts are exactly to functions other than preaching. It would seem that, to one degree or another, everyone is called to preach: using words only if really needed. But some people are set apart by the community for specific functions as determined by their gifts.

In the (Western) Catholic tradition, as it has evolved, the priesthood is something ontological: ordination confers special meaning, special powers - wooji-wooji - both within the community and without. A priest (or bishop) is the only person who may perform certain functions: Mass, for example, will not work as a lay person may not confect Jesus in the Eucharist. You must have the right sort of magic available (in a D&D sense) to make Jesus happen. Despite the fact that the prayers - which God assumedly answers - are right there in print, for everyone to read.

The priesthood is, effectively, connected to the Episcopate. There are some things a Bishop alone, can do: priests can’t reproduce, for example. It takes a Bishop to make more.

In some ways, in the Roman church, the priesthood is the epitome of ordination: bishops, etc, are honours bestowed on priests, rather than the historic evolution in the other way. Both deacons and presbyters evolved to perform functions the local Bishops were too busy to fill. In the Eastern tradition the Priest is clearly a functionary of a Bishop: in the Byzantine tradition, for example, the Bishop’s throne is present before the screen at the Altar. Before it incense is always offered at every Liturgy. If the Bishop is not sitting in it, an icon of Christ is there.

Anglicans, especially Anglo-Catholics, maintain this idea in some ways: in 1985 the Bishop of Atlanta said to my then-BF’s confirmation class “there is only one Mass on Sunday in this diocese and it is my mass.”

In modern times, however the functions of a bishop have all flowed down the pipeline a little. In terms of function it is often a local, senior rector that is really the Bishop. He is the mentor, the example. Local clergy will defer to him. An invite to preach at his church is an honour. His diocese, of course, is non-geographic - like all Bishops prior to Constantine. Constantine made Bishops geographically-based officials of the Empire. The modern, “Cardinal Rector” isn’t a regional political functionary, but rather an elder in the faith who has many children. He doesn’t have an administration: he has a family. This reality is true in all branches of Catholicism, East and West: Anglicanism, Romanism and Orthodoxy. It is also true in Protestantism’s many branches. Look in any denomination, you can find the functional Bishop without regard to who runs the local administration or what his title might be.

All of this digression on Episcopal Function by way of showing that it is the function that is important. Not the wooji-wooji. No one cares who wears the black shirt or the white shirt or the purple shirt. The community discerns the gifts and uses them.

A man can do the liturgical work of a priest without the wooji-wooji (an authentically patristic theological term). But even with the wooji-wooji, a woman not doing the real work of a presbyter at all fails to be a presbyter at all. Any woman may do the real work of the Episcopus, with or without ordination to that office. But even if he has been ordained, a man fails to be an Episcopus when he fails to do the real work.

And what is the real work of a presbyter or an Episcopus? And - more to the point here: am I called to it?

For a number of reasons I decided I’d rather go to Trinity Church, where I’ve been attending class on Wednesday nights, rather than St Andrews, where I am Websexton. (I think this is a good thing: for one’s work to be separated in some ways: I think of the number of parish secretaries who do not come to church in the same parish…) Last Sunday, my first at Trinity, the rector preached a sermon on Holy Orders - purely by coincidence, you understand.

In that sermon he hit on something important - which is also a division between my ordination to the Wondering Episcopate and the church as I understand her: that difference is the source of my confusion and the sermon was, in one way, an answer. I’ve had that answer, in a way, confirmed this Sunday morning by an email from Donald. The first thing I’ve decided is that I’m not one to just sit and pray - as much as I love to. So I went ahead and signed up for “liturgical assistant” when I joined Trinity. As when I was at St Gregory’s: I must do my prayers in order to be who I am.

This is only the first part of what I think will be three essays and a new category - a reuse of an old term from my blogging, and that’s on purpose. I ask your prayers.