Monthly Archives: June 2023

We have had a number of changes in our Anglican Province of Christ the King recently, reminding me of the power of change, the movement of the hands of time and the fulfillment of human destiny.

Our Anglican body in the Body of Christ is a stalwart group, having left the mainstream Episcopal Church in 1977, a vital change in itself. We idealistically thought we could start anew and hold on to our traditional beliefs – the creeds, Holy Scripture, Church tradition and exegesis, the life-giving sacraments, the beauty of liturgy, particularly the weekly Eucharist, and we did hold on, treasuring these gifts of faith. All were threatened by the mainstream church, and we jumped ship, as it were, and swam to shore to renew and affirm the Anglican body of the Body of Christ. We needed to build from ground up, although we had clear enough plans as to what we were doing, indeed, what we were saving. We had a firm foundation.

Rather like the Puritan pilgrims fleeing persecution in England and arriving on our shores centuries ago, we knew things would change, and fixing our eye on Our Lord and following him through the wilderness to the Promised Land, we set out to do the job. We have never regretted it, only celebrated what we have built. We gave thanks to God for his benevolence toward us, sheltered by his canopy of love, fed by the great cloud of witnesses who testified to the reality of Christ and his redemption of mankind. We wanted to tell the world the good news, and still do.

Change. There can be bad change and good change. Change can be exciting, offering new frontiers. Change challenges us, forcing us out of our slumber to wake and look around again. Change stirs things up, within and without. But if change is part of the larger love of God, it may hurt, it may be inconvenient and costly, it may take effort, but the reward is great, for the faithful are filled with joy.

We traditional Anglicans, living lives of faith and practice as best we can, pleasing, we hope, to Our Lord, have structures that curate change carefully, modestly, sagely. We have bishops (the Episcopate) who shepherd the clergy, and clergy who shepherd us, the laity. We have councils and synods and elections and canons and by-laws. We have committees and boards and prayer groups. We have vestries and altar guilds and women’s associations. We have a great foundation going back to the Apostles that allows us to read the map and see the crossroads and make the choices necessary in our world today. And we have inspiring music, penetrating words, poetic chants, and… friendly coffee hours. We have riches that go beyond measure.

All the while we listen, watch, and move with the guidance of the Holy Spirit, or try to.

All the while we are covered by a canopy of grace, knowing our shepherds, our bishops, will lead us where we are to go, as best they can, in humility and prayer.

All the while we are teased by joy, pulled along the path of life by promised delight, in a never-ending dance.

Of course, as my bishop of blessed memory often said, the most healing change is the change of heart, the admission of sin, repentance and penitence, and this fundamental change in attitude places us where we must be, in order to see the greater changes and movements in our world. And the more we practice change of heart and mind and soul, the more we sing and dance for joy. It is a curious paradox, that when we grow small, our hearts grow big. Our eyesight grows sharp and our listening more intense. We see others as sacred, unique individuals; we see all human life as holy and of infinite worth, infinitely complex and diverse. We learn to love as we are loved.

And so we welcome a new Vicar to St. Joseph’s Chapel, as well as a new Rector, who is our newly elected Archbishop (it’s the Archbishop’s Chapel). We have a new shepherd who must look out for sheep that stray and return them to the fold, return them to joy.

Today’s Gospel lesson was the parable of the sheep that was lost and found and the parable of the coin that was lost and found (Luke 15:1+). Our Lord speaks of the “joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth.” That, of course, is the mission of the Church, and as we live out our lives in the presence of God, doing what we are meant to do, we are here for those lost sheep. We welcome them into our fold, knowing that we too are often lost, and we can turn and change, and return to the fold. This is a blessed assurance, this promise the Good Shepherd makes to each one of us. He will find us and bring us home.

Today’s Epistle lesson (Peter 5:5+) was written by St. Peter, our brave apostle who jumps into the sea and swims ashore, who follows Jesus to his crucifixion, denying him and then repenting, who tries to walk on water but begins to sink, who witnesses the empty tomb, who leads the others in building the Church. Peter has been many times lost and many times found, so that he knows what he speaks of when he says “Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in due time: casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you. Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour… ” And on Thursday we celebrate the Feast of St. Peter and St. Paul.

And so we watch and listen and cast our worries at the feet of Our Lord. There are many lions walking about today, roaring, looking for prey, looking for lost sheep that cannot find their way home without God.

It is good to know we are loved and cared for, indeed, treasured by our Creator. It is good to know we can cast our cares upon him. It is good to be among others in a chapel in Berkeley who are sheep like us; a family of God in a fold of Eternity.

Today is Father’s Day, a day when we celebrate our fathers, if we can. But many are fatherless these days; many never had a father growing up; many have missed something important, a father in the home.

Others, to be sure, can fill the role. Grandfathers, stepfathers, teachers. But what is the role of the father in the family?

I was fortunate to have grown up with a loving father. But when he lost his faith in God the Father around the time that I re-found my faith in God the Father, in a sense I became fatherless. For all that I had been taught, based on a Christian moral view of the world, was no longer a part of who he was. I had chosen a different path than he; at a cross-roads I turned toward God and my father turned away.

And so I gratefully turned to my Fathers-in-God in the Church.

A good father is a steady presence, reliable. A good father represents authority, in the Christian world, the wise, just, and merciful authority of God. He trains his children with patience and love to respect authority. He guides them, with the help of the Church, into righteousness, into living rightly. He provides shelter from storms and protection from the outside world, both literally and metaphorically. A good father keeps us safe on many levels.

Just so, we as a nation look to our founders, our history, to be protected from hostile enemies and natural disasters. For if we heed the centuries of fatherly advice, be it Church Fathers or Founding Fathers, successes or failures, we will thrive. We will have a way forward, a standard of measure – The Ten Commandments, the Rule of Law, the Golden Rule. We feed the hungry and heal the sick.

When we don’t measure up, we turn to the Church to be forgiven in the name of God the Father through his Son. And we pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and rejoin the path through time to Eternity.

It must be said that any authority exercised by humankind will be imperfect. But in America we have created a nation that has shown the best version of authority in the world, structured around the family, the community, the state, and the nation. The family is the foundation. The family trains the next generation, for it is a micro-society. If fatherless, the State fills the vacuum, and tyranny reigns.

And so it is of interest to totalitarian regimes to remove the father from the family, to break up the Judeo-Christian way that fathered Western Civilization, that best version of society and culture.

How is the father removed from the family?

The “sexual revolution” begun in the ‘sixties provided easy contraceptives. It seemed innocent enough at the time, and yet its trajectory over the next fifty hears removed marriage from the family, nullifying the father. Government policies stepped in and rewarded single parents, so fathers stayed away and fathered other crippled families dependent upon the authority of the State to survive. The government became the father substitute to these broken families, an authority that authorized the killing of the unborn, the maiming and the indoctrination of children.

Through it all the Church has preached the vital importance of families, the vital importance of fathers present.

And so today I salute fathers who have chosen the more difficult path, one of responsibility, one of learning how to love. I salute the mothers who have encouraged fathers in their role as authority figures, as creators of the ordered background necessary for children to thrive, and indeed, for mothers to thrive.

It is said that with the Industrial Revolution of the late eighteenth – early nineteenth century fathers no longer worked at home as farmers, or as tradesmen in the local village, but traveled to cities to work in factories, removed from their families. Women and children followed. The novelist Charles Dickens who worked as a boy in a shoe polish factory, never forgot those times and wrote about families caught in these tragic situations. Better protective laws were passed, but the family structure was severely crippled.

We have found in the Western World that any movement that harms the father’s role in the family, harms the nation. Any movement that denies gender, that denies marriage between a man and a woman, that discourages commitment and responsibility, but encourages men to be libertines, harms liberty and freedom.

And so we see the fruits of these trends today. What is the answer? We must look first to the father of all mankind, God the Father and see what he says through his Church and his Fathers-in-God, his pastors that truly shepherd us with his Word. We listen to the lessons each Sunday, and we encourage our priests and pastors as best we can.

We have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. We know our clergy are not perfect (don’t get me started) but then we also know that their congregations are not perfect, including you and me. So we celebrate mercy and withhold judgment. We hold them close to our hearts and prayers. For they are today’s fathers of the fatherless. Or should be.

And to those fathers who support and love their families, may the grace of God go with you daily, hourly, minute by minute. Do your best and learn from your mistakes. But don’t give up. Don’t abandon those who need you. Be a role model of quiet strength. You are raising the next generation. We need you.

You, along with the mothers of your children, must forge a new foundation in our world, must celebrate our Founding Fathers as you worship God the Father. We are grateful. We are thankful.

We love you.

As the political rhetoric heats up in our country, it is so good to be present for an hour in a holy place, to rest from the “talking heads” newscasters, and appreciate being surrounded by Eternity, as we sing and pray and kneel and listen. The rest and renewal sends me out into the real world again, driving home on the freeway, dodging the weaving racecars, wondering if this will be the day of my entering Eternity, not merely visiting Heaven in a Berkeley chapel.

Today is a Sunday rich in celebration, to be sure. I learned about Barnabas, the traveling companion of Paul, who filled the role of helper and mediator with the other disciples, bringing Barnabas to them, a quieter role than the disciples we have all heard of. And as I listened to the lessons I could envision the scene in a new way, for we have been watching “The Chosen” TV series, a remarkable dramatization of the disciples chosen by Christ.

The series shows the real-life world in which these events occurred: the poverty, the challenges of walking the hills and setting up camp, the rivalries and battling egos natural to any group living in such close quarters. The Pharisees and the Sadducees. The lepers, the blind, the lame. There is much drama to portray, and they do it well. There are times when the filming can be too dark, without enough light to see who is speaking, but that seems to be the film fashion today. The Jewish characters have accents as well, adding to the difficulty in understanding the scene, but we have managed to become used to the way of speaking.

What has occurred to me today is how the episodes have given me such a gift, a rich background that comes to mind when I hear Scripture read. I can see it better now, Barnabas going to find Saul, Barnabas bringing Saul back to the others, Barnabas saying, Saul’s different now, do not be afraid.

For of course Saul persecuted the Christians in those early days, and his terrible deeds were known and justly feared. He was there at the stoning of Steven. But Barnabas linked the feared Pharisee with the frightened followers, mediated them, and with the addition of Saul, who becomes Paul, the first great Christian theologian is given voice. The Church owes Barnabas a great debt of gratitude, for Paul understood what had happened when the Nazarene lived and died and rose again; he understood the events within the framework of Greek philosophy, for he was Greek.

The story of Barnabas made me appreciate those of us who help, who assist, who clean up, who listen and watch for the next moment when we are nudged by the Spirit to do what must be done in that unique time and place we find ourselves. We are not famous. We do not bow to applause. We worry too much, to be sure, worry if we are in the right place at the right time and if we interpreted the spiritual nudge correctly.

But not to worry, as my bishop of blessed memory often said, usually in Russian (another story). Nothing is lost. All is gained. We need only be faithful, tithing, confessing, attending, singing, praying, listening and watching always. Like the young women in the parable, we keep our lamps trim, to be ready not only for the return of Our Lord, but what Our Lord desires of us now, today.

And over time, a pattern emerges, and we can see that we are a part of the pattern. We are threads among many, but together we weave a beautiful cloak of many colors for the world to wear. We give as we have received. And what have we received? Love.

And Christ himself. Each Sunday Eucharist. With every morning and evening prayer. And in the Gospel for today, the Feast of St. Barnabas the Apostle, Christ speaks to us today:

The Gospel. St. John xv. 12.
“THIS is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you. Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever command you. Henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends; for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you. Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit… ” (BCP 241)

And so we leave our little chapel, fortified with the love of God, a love that will enliven our week until we return next Sunday to be enlivened once more.

Deos gratias.

I always look forward to Trinity Sunday, since we usually sing the majestic, awe-inspiring “Holy, Holy, Holy,” one of my favorite hymns, but I didn’t expect (although should have) “St. Patrick’s Breastplate,” another hymn to the Holy Trinity, a powerful hymn, robust, and commanding. To have these two hymns, accompanied by the magnificent melodic and thundering organ playing six feet behind us! I thought we might soar into the heavens: our little chapel burst with song.

I wrote of “Holy, Holy, Holy” in my latest novel, Angel Mountain (Wipf and Stock, 2020). Toward the end of the story (plot spoiler!) Abram the hermit finds himself in Heaven, and the great vision of St. John on the Island of Patmos is described, the vision that became the Book of Revelation (some call it the Apocalypse) in Holy Scriptures. In his vision, John describes the angels and saints worshiping before the throne of God.

The hymn is a testament to the triune God – God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, the belief that God is One in Three Persons, the Holy Trinity. Reflected in Scripture, this dogma was written into the Nicene Creed with carefully carved phrasing, at the Council of Nicaea (325 AD), an effort to clarify Christian belief.

The words to the hymn are more recent than the Council and the Creed, written in 1827 by Reginald Heber, an Anglican priest. He captures, using phrasing from Revelation, the glory and beauty of worship before the throne of God, and for a brief time this morning in a small chapel in Berkeley, we sang with the angels:

“Holy, Holy, Holy! Lord God Almighty! Early in the morning our song shall rise to Thee;

Holy, Holy, Holy! merciful and mighty! God in three Persons, blessed Trinity!

Holy, Holy, Holy! All the saints adore Thee, Casting down their golden crowns around the glassy sea; Cherubim and seraphim falling down before Thee, Which wert, and art, and evermore shalt be!

Holy, Holy, Holy! Lord God Almighty! All thy works shall praise thy Name, in earth, and sky, and sea;

Holy, Holy, Holy! merciful and mighty, God in three Persons, blessed Trinity.”

So of course our Epistle for today was Revelation 4:1+, reflected in the hymn and the creed (BCP 186). And the Gospel, too, considers what it means to believe the Creed. In this scene with Christ Jesus and the Pharisee Nicodemus, their conversation explores being born again of the Spirit (John 3:1+, BCP 187). For Christ says, “Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God… except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.” Christ has come to Earth and a new world has been born among men. We are invited to enter, to come and see, to glimpse Heaven from Earth.

Our Eucharistic liturgy also reflects the words of Revelation, when the priest prays before the consecration of bread and wine, “Therefore with Angels and Archangels, and with all the company of heaven, we laud and magnify thy glorious Name; evermore praising thee, and saying (the people join in), “HOLY, HOLY, HOLY, Lord God of hosts, Heaven and earth are full of thy glory: Glory be to thee, O Lord Most High. Amen.” (BCP 77)

Holy Scripture is woven throughout the liturgy, and these sacred words are sung in the hymns chosen for the day. There is a satisfying sense of having partaken deeply of Beauty, embraced by Love, Truth, and Goodness.

In this sense we are born again in every Eucharist, every song, and every prayer. ^“For in him we live, and move, and have our being… For we are also his offspring.” (Acts 17:28). For the space of an hour of worship, we live inside this golden reflection of Heaven, fed by God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.

One would think that hymns to come would seem less, or even redundant, but no, we sang an ancient hymn attributed to St. Patrick (372-466 AD), a hymn of dedication (268). For we lived within God; we were given graces and joys. Now, in return, we dedicated ourselves to Him with the words, “I bind unto myself today the strong Name of the Trinity, by invocation of the same, the Three in One, and One in Three.” The hymn describes the great moments of our salvation in the life of Christ – His baptism, His death, His resurrection, our judgment and eternal life. Toward the end of the hymn, it shifts in tone to one of the greatest prayers, pleas, of any Christian, as the words and phrases march to the sounds of salvation:

“Christ be with me, Christ within me, Christ behind me, Christ before me, Christ beside me, Christ to win me, Christ to comfort and restore me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me, Christ in quiet, Christ in danger, Christ in hearts of all that love me, Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.”

It was a holy, holy, holy morning, full of Christ, filled by Christ.