CHAPTER 1
CALLING ON THE SPIRIT IN UNSETTLING TIMES
Anglican reformers of the sixteenth century made an unusual decision when theychose to focus and shape our common faith through public prayer. It was notwithout controversy. Many Puritans objected vehemently to the Book of CommonPrayer (BCP) on the grounds that it embodied a cold formalism and virtuallyconstituted a third testament of scripture. And even the most faithful ofAnglicans have sometimes found it constricting or perhaps even misleading in itscharacterization of human life and Christian faith.
But whatever its merits or inadequacies and however much it has been revisedover the centuries, the Book of Common Prayer established one veryimportant point. The first thing Anglicans do together, in principle, is not totheologize, but to pray. Accordingly, each chapter of this book will begin withprayer and with some reflection on that prayer. Some of the prayers will comefrom the BCP. But some will come from another source, an unquestionablyorthodox Anglican laywoman of the late nineteenth century, known to us primarilyas a poet: Christina Rossetti.
Late in life, she wrote a commentary on the Revelation to John, published justtwo years before her death. It combines a wide array of writings: interpretivematerials drawn from the biblical scholars of the day, prose reflections on thespiritual meaning of the text, expostulations, prayers, and some splendidpoetry. Here is one of the prayers:
O God, only Good, think upon Thy congregation whom Thou hast purchased andredeemed of old. Rule all hearts by Thy Most Holy Spirit; that humbly we mayworship Thee, and truthfully confess Thee, owning ourselves unprofitableservants, and in honour preferring one another. To the praise of our Lord JesusChrist. Amen.
Rossetti lived in a time not unlike ours, when the church seemed threatened byindifference without and conflict within. It was being pushed aside byscientific positivism and the industrial age's fixation on profit. It was alsoriven from within by disputes between Anglo-Catholics and Evangelicals andsuffered significant losses on the Anglo-Catholic side from conversions to RomanCatholicism. Even though her prayer is that of an individual, she was formed bythe church's common prayer; and she implicitly invited her readers to pray withher. It is a prayer in and on behalf of the church.
The central petition is "Rule all hearts by Thy Most Holy Spirit." Anglicans donot usually start with the Holy Spirit—after all, the Spirit is hard tosay much about. We can think of God the Father in concrete terms as Creator ofthe world. We turn to the Gospels for the still more concrete image of Jesus,the Incarnate Word. With the Spirit, we are apt to lose our bearings, ourfooting, our certainties. "The wind (pneuma, spirit) blows where it chooses, andyou hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where itgoes" (John 3:8).
Those words come from Jesus' conversation with Nicodemus, early in John'sGospel, where he is telling Nicodemus that he has to be born "over again" or"from above" of the Spirit. And Nicodemus cannot understand what Jesus isgetting at, though he remains fascinated by Jesus' teaching. Things get noeasier at the end of John's Gospel, when Jesus returns to the subject of theSpirit. In the discourse where he bids farewell to his disciples, he declares,"I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with youforever. This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because itneither sees him nor knows him. You know him, because he abides with you, and hewill be in you" (14:16–17). And a little later: "The Advocate, the HolySpirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, andremind you of all that I have said to you" (14:26). And again, "When the Spiritof truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak onhis own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the thingsthat are to come" (16:13).
So here is the Spirit present at our beginning as confused and uncertaindisciples. The Spirit acts on us in the baptism of new birth. The Spirit is inus and with us as we seek to understand Jesus' meaning, as we look into anuncertain future, as we ask how we are to be faithful while moving forward intoa time that seems less friendly than we had expected. And Jesus says to thedisciples—that is, to us—"I understand your anxiety; I sympathizewith it. But you won't need my concrete, personal guidance now. The Spirit willbe in you. I and my Father will put the Spirit in you, and we will bewith you in and through the Spirit."
It doesn't make matters any easier, does it? No. Nor is that the point, ofcourse. The Spirit, by definition, is the One whom we cannot get the hang of,whom we cannot even pretend to be in control of, the One who will always outfoxus and surprise us, particularly at the moments when we feel most confident. TheSpirit can be comforting. The Spirit can also be alarming and unsettling. Eitherway, the Spirit is always beyond our grasp.
Calling on the Spirit
"Rule all hearts by Thy Most Holy Spirit." Rossetti chose her words with care.She was a brilliant poet, who is now coming back into critical esteem afterbeing ignored for about a century. (Some thought she should be poet laureateafter the death of Tennyson, but a woman as laureate was too much for that era.)And she was a devout Anglo-Catholic, a faith she shared with her sister, whojoined one of the revived religious orders for women. She lived through a periodof intrachurch conflict not unlike ours. Indeed, her parish priest—WilliamDodsworth—was one of the Anglo-Catholic leaders who seceded to Rome.Rossetti was not tempted to follow. Her father had been forced to flee Italy forhis liberal politics, and she harbored no romanticism about the papacy. Shefirmly opposed secession in that direction.
She also recognized the more hidden spiritual dangers of such a time of trouble.She prays—we pray with her—that, by the gift of the Spirit, we may"humbly worship" God. To worship humbly may sound like a matter of self-abasement.But, no, that's not it. Worship is a celebration of God's goodness,which is beyond anything we can imagine or desire. There may be room in it fornoticing that we do not measure up so well ourselves—but not very muchroom. We do not occupy center stage here; our failings are just not thatinteresting. To worship means to rejoice in the beauty of the Lover who has comeseeking us as beloved, however unworthy we may be.
To worship humbly means to set aside our own ambitions and anxietieslong enough to celebrate God our Lover, God who is only Good. The church hasrepeatedly tried to portray itself as something more official and authoritativethan God's beloved—perhaps God's press secretary or police officer.Perhaps God's substitute teacher. Certainly, God's vicar. Christians have oftenacted as if we alone have God's ear. We exclude from God's confidence not onlypeople of other faiths, but also other Christians who disagree with us. Rossettidid not fall into this trap. Even though she disagreed strongly with theAnglo-Catholic leaders who crossed the Tiber, she never, as far as I can tell,wrote anybody off because of such disagreements. Her generous and loving sonneton the death of Cardinal Newman asserts that he "chose love not in the shallowsbut the deep" and concludes:
Thy best has done its best, thy worst its worst:Thy best its best, please God, thy best its best.
The repetition of that last phrase acknowledges her doubts about his course ofaction and yet leaves no room for anger or rejection, only for the praise oflove and faithfulness. Her prayer that the Spirit would enable us to worshiphumbly was no formality. She knew what she was asking for.
She also asked—we ask with her—that we might truthfullyconfess the God who is only Good. Well, yes, the Spirit is certainly notgoing to get involved in any form of confession that is less than truthful. TheSpirit Jesus left with us is the Spirit of Truth. To confess God means to tellof God's goodness. And that does not mean doing a public relations job for God.In the Book of Job, Job insists that God has punished him even though he was notat fault. Job's three pious comforters try to defend God: "Job, you know you'rein the wrong. Go ahead and confess your sinfulness. God will forgive you andmake everything right again." But at the end of the book, God says to them, "Youhave not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has done" (42:8). Theythought it was better to fudge the truth a bit so as to make God look better,but God does not want that. God wants us to be honest about our world, ourexperience, our uncertainties, even our lack of perfect comprehension. Only bytruth, only by shunning all lies and cover-ups, can we truthfully confess theTrue God.
And finally, Rossetti concludes with a double request in this prayer: that wemay worship and confess God while "owning ourselves unprofitable servants, andin honour preferring one another." In more prosaic terms, it means that we admitthat we have not done so well ourselves and we give each other some respect. Thegoal of the Christian life is not to claim any kind of certainty or perfectionfor ourselves. The goal is to work toward a community in which we can praise oneanother, accepting one another's gifts with joy and generosity. That is a visionof church that is worth praying for, worth embracing, worth trying to live into.And it is a vision of the church that, I would imagine, every one of us has infact experienced as reality at some time or other. We have probably experiencedsome other, less attractive realities of church, too. I don't deny that. But weknow what the church can be when it is ruled by the Holy Spirit. Thereis no room in it for fraud or arrogance. It is a community of people who canworship humbly and confess truthfully and who do not feel the need to make muchof themselves but who are genuinely, deeply delighted by one another's gifts. Itis the Spirit who makes this possible.
Our unsettled times
The church, poised in an unsettled state between past and future, is the centraltopic of this book. But I begin with the Spirit, even though I suspect we wouldall rather start from some more definite anchorage, a set of eternal andunambiguous verities, a boundary marker that we can keep coming back to. Andyet, this seems the right place, especially in the way Rossetti phrases it forus. When we find ourselves in difficult times, it will actually be helpful totake as our starting point one who is beyond our grasp and is nonetheless ourAdvocate and guide, our reminder of Jesus and the guardian of honesty andintegrity. We do not, after all, understand our current position. Well, some ofus think we do, but there is no clear evidence that any of our internal Anglicanparties actually possesses the keys to the future, even if some of them claimto. What we need, rather, is to find a new sense of possibility andhope—and, at the same time, to renew our sense of humble worship, truthfulconfession, and love and respect for one another. Anglicans are not alone inthis. Christians of all sorts find themselves right now confronting times ofchange, flux, perhaps threat.
The threats and challenges are different in different parts of the world. Inmany countries right now it is dangerous to be a Christian. Throughout theworld, Christians suffer along with everyone else the consequences of naturaland humancaused disasters, of political upheaval, of dislocated economies. IfAnglicans who live in Western countries are somewhat better cushioned againsttheir ill-effects, we are not immune; and the problems that do not confront usdirectly still touch us through people who are sisters and brothers in Christeven if we do not know them personally.
And Anglicans in the West face our own challenges. Some are demographic incharacter. Australia and North America, for example, both experience ongoingurbanization and the attendant draining of people away from more rural areas.This threatens the continued existence of parishes and dioceses in such regions.In one rural American diocese the new bishop is also serving as rector of one ofthe larger parishes. This represents a return to an older pattern of episcopalorganization in the United States, and it may prove an excellent solution. Butit also raises the question of whether this diocese, located in thewheat-and-cattle country of the High Plains, will need to consider reunitingwith its parent Diocese of Kansas, which covers the more urban eastern part ofthe state. Similar challenges face rural dioceses in Canada, Australia, Ireland,and Great Britain.
In the cities, too, the shifting of ethnic groups and the aging of populationscreate challenges. The population of California, where I live, is becoming lessand less "Anglo" and Black and more and more Hispanic and Asian. A neighborhoodchurch may easily find itself in the midst of a new population with no historyof an Anglican connection. I attend a small church in Berkeley, California, thathas just celebrated its one hundred thirty-third birthday. Over that time, thecongregation has waxed and waned and changed in ethnic composition severaltimes. And it is no closer to assured stability today than when it was firstfounded.
There are also cultural shifts, including increased indifference toward thechurch on the part of many. The United States is unusual among industrializednations in having a high percentage of church members. Still, recent studiesindicate that the "religiously unaffiliated" is the most rapidly growing group.Even the Southern Baptists, who pride themselves on evangelism, seem to beshrinking. In other words, indifference (and sometimes hostility) toward thechurch seems to be more widespread. People doubt that religious communities havemuch of value to contribute to human life. This challenges us both practicallyand personally: Why is our faith and our connection with the church importantfor us? Why do other people just not "get" it? And what do words like "humbleworship" and "truthful confession" mean as we get shoved around by such culturalshifts?
Our world is also caught up in political tensions that are difficult tounderstand and impossible to control. The uprisings of 2011 in North Africa andthe Middle East underscore the fact that even laudable movements like the drivetoward freedom and democracy can produce new uncertainties and dangers. Weconfront war and terrorism, vast discrepancies of wealth, chaotic markets,oppressive governments, overpopulation, mass movements of population, threats offood shortages, and the overarching issue of the planet's health and well-being.Neither the church nor the "secular" culture seems able to move all thesemountains, despite sometimes heroic efforts to provide relief. But that does notleave us free to ignore them either. Indeed, religion gets blamed for some ofour problems, notably conflicts with an overtly religious element and issues ofthe environment, where Christianity is widely perceived as manifesting a certainindifference toward the natural world.
On top of these broad cultural shifts, there are problems created by thechurches themselves—most obviously the newly revealed stories ofmalfeasance and abuse, particularly abuse of children. At one time—not sovery long ago—these things might have been hushed up with the help of thepress and even the police. That is no longer the case. And if we are tempted torue that shift, we had better remember again that the Advocate Jesus promised usis called "the Spirit of Truth." Probably the Spirit is herself involved inpushing the church into a new openness, telling us that we cannot worship humblyor confess truthfully if we do not attend to the abuse and lies that sometimesafflict our own life together. What we refused to deal with forthrightly, shewill drag right out into the open.
Then, of course, there is the open conflict within churches, including Anglicanchurches, over gender issues—primarily ordination of women and equalityfor lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgendered people. One might wonder at times whetherthe church is melting away around us. And we might well think so if we only readthe newspapers and did not actually go to church and see, for the most part,people worshipping together as before. Even apart from the threat to our lifetogether, however, the publicity attending these disagreements has left manypeople wondering whether the church can be taken seriously. Conservatives thinkit has sold out to the liberals. Liberals think it has sold out to theconservatives. Centrists invoke a plague on both their houses. If one relied onnews reports alone, it would seem that the church is consumed with conflict anddissatisfaction.
None of this, of course, is news to the reader of this book. My purpose inreciting it is not to inform anyone, but to specify the context for the thinkingand praying in which I hope we can join. This is the unsettled and unsettlingcontext in which we live right now as faithful people, the context in which weare the church—and therefore it is also the context in which theSpirit is at work.
The living Spirit
We have Jesus' assurance that the Spirit does not abandon us. No matter howdifficult she may be to discern at any given moment, the Spirit is always atwork among us and in the world around us. Nothing can keep her out. This doesnot mean that people are always responding positively or cooperating. Neither inthe church nor in the world can we assume that; both alike are capable ofwrongdoing, even of grave evil.
But the Spirit is still at work, which means that the task before us is, humblyand hopefully, to seek out the traces of that work, to decipher the directionsthe Spirit is pointing us. Where then do we begin to look? What work do weexpect the Spirit to be doing? We have some traditional answers—and theyare good ones: we expect the Spirit to be active in the sacramental life of thechurch, in the reading of the scriptures, in the communion of saints of which weare a part, and in the life of prayer and reflection that we refer to as"spirituality." These experiences of the Spirit's power have shaped us over ourlifetimes and they have shaped Anglicanism over the centuries. They areessential to our identity as Christian and Anglican people, and we shall returnto them in chapters three and four.
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