From the, "Can you believe this?" department...

Can you believe this stuff...the New York Times reports...

Pope Benedict XVI, reaching out to the far-right of the Roman Catholic Church, revoked the excommunications of four schismatic bishops on Saturday, including one whose comments denying the Holocaust have provoked outrage....

Among the men reinstated Saturday was Richard Williamson, a British-born cleric who in an interview last week said he did not believe that six million Jews died in the Nazi gas chambers. He has also given interviews saying that the United States government staged the Sept. 11 attacks as a pretext to invade Afghanistan.

A good thing to remember the next time the Vatican tries to lecture Episcopalians on our moral condidtion in the midst of ordaining women and recognizing the rights of gays and lesbians.

If you can stomach it, the whole article can be read here...

Bp. Jenkins post Katrina

They are an unlikely pair, chatting up people on porch stoops in the poorer neighborhoods of New Orleans: Bishop Charles Jenkins, 57, the son of white, rural north Louisiana and pastor to 18,000 south Louisiana Episcopalians, and Jerome Smith, 69, black and rumpled, son of Treme, a former Freedom Rider from the civil rights movement.

Before Hurricane Katrina, in the days when Jenkins says he was focused more on the well-being of his predominantly white church than his predominantly black city, they might never have crossed paths.

But since Katrina, they have forged a relationship in which Jenkins, now deep into a profound personal and spiritual transformation, said he has come to love and rely on Smith. Smith, a sometimes fiery activist in whom Jenkins sees a gentle soul, has become one of the bishop's principal guides into New Orleans' poor African-American culture, a landscape Jenkins said he previously glimpsed but did not understand.

"He's my mentor, you know," Jenkins said recently. "It is a good day whenever Jerome Smith comes by."

But Smith is only one symbol of the journey of Charles Jenkins, and by extension Jenkins' diocese, since Katrina.

Bishop Jenkins was the speaker at our last diocesan convention. He is a true man of God. Read this article all the way through, it's worth the time.

Read it here.

Episcopal Church in Inauguration Spotlight

President-elect Barack Obama will attend a private prayer service on the morning of his inauguration at the historic St. John's Episcopal Church on Lafayette Square, according to the Presidential Inauguration Committee.

Kevin Griffis, spokesman for the inauguration committee, said yesterday that the prayer service will not be open to the public.

St. John's, across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House, is known as the "Church of the Presidents." Since James Madison, every president has worshiped there at some point during his tenure in the Oval Office. The church has kneelers embroidered in tribute to each president, and Pew 54 is traditionally assigned to the chief executives when they visit.

Read it all here.

Taking kids to church...

This is a quick read, and a good reminder about how children bring life and adoration into the context of worship that adults don't because they are grown up...

I had a whole new experience of church. I got to do something I’ve never done before - I got to take children to church. How different it makes the experience. Turning up at a strange church with twin nephews (and my father) was an absolute delight.

Read all of Kelvin's experience here.

New Bishop on YouTube

Although this is not local, I thought it was an interesting way to meet a new Bishop in the Church. Take a look and see what you think about a new purple shirt from across the pond.

Spending some time with Jesus...

This has been such a crazy week. Fantastic Evensong with Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament, Parish Christmas party, 2 deaths in the parish, our monthly Requiem, a wedding on Saturday, and now a head cold.

The high point of the week was the glorious evensong. The choir and I sung the service using the Smart setting for the Magnificat (one of my favorites). We used our new monstrance during the benediction. It was one of those moments when time stopped and all of our gathered attention was focused on Jesus right in plane sight.

His presence was overwhelming and as our choir master, Justin, sung "Of the Father's Love Begotten," as a solo, there was not a dry eye in the place. It struck me in that moment how adoration and benediction are so wound up in the incarnation as to be the very foundation of this liturgical event. Jesus in the manger, Jesus at the Jordan, at the wedding in Cana, and Jesus on the Cross is the same Jesus who calls us into his loving embrace and shelters us in the midst of the storm.

Crazy aeh? The baby in the manger whose arms are open wide to embrace the world.

Epiphany

Epiphany gives us three stories of showing forth, when you bring the Eastern and Western traditions together, three stories in which the nature of Jesus is revealed in surprising and unexpected ways.

Today we start with the story of the wise men following a star to find the new king. The first visitors to the infant Jesus in Matthew’s Gospel are the wise men. Whoever they were, they were Gentiles. So, even though Matthew puts Jesus very much in a Jewish framework and his infancy stories are about portraying Jesus as the new Moses, Jesus is manifested first to foreigners. And that says that Jesus is for us too, all that he was, all that he did, all that he taught, was for us, for those who come because they have enough wisdom to follow the light and make the hard journey to come and kneel before the true king.

Then we get the story of the baptism of Jesus. The accounts show God proclaiming that Jesus is his son, and he is the Beloved, and God the Father is very proud of him. In all four Gospels, the baptism manifests Jesus’ divine origins.

And the triptych is completed with the story of the wedding at Cana, when the wedding feast, the messianic banquet, is enlivened by the new wine. Jesus is the one who transforms the ordinary water of our worship into better wine that you have ever tasted. Jesus brings in the kingdom of God which is fulfilled in the heavenly feast.

A thoughtful post at "Thinking Anglicans." Read it all here.

Something to think about...

You've seen the bracelets with the initials WWJD, "what would Jesus do." Have you ever given much thought to a year spent living this out. Here is an excerpt from a recent article describing one man's attempt to do just that...

"I've concluded that I am a follower, but I'm not a very good one," Dobson said. "If you get serious about the Bible, it will really mess you up." He has witnessed for Jesus in bars, picked up strangers needing rides and voted for a Democrat who he believes best reflects Christ's teachings. During recent Christmas celebrations, as Christians worshipped the Christ child born in a manger, Dobson appreciated more than ever the man who preached love, only to die on a cross...

Read it all here. It's very interesting.

Cantuar's New Year's Greeting

Here is a taste of Archbishop Rowan's new year's greeting...

It’s always a relief to have a bit of space after the busyness of Christmas to relax at home and mull over the past 12 months and the hopes and possibilities of the year ahead. The prospect of this coming year, though, is one that produces a lot of anxiety and insecurity for countless people. There are fears about disappearing savings, lost jobs, house repossessions and worse. While the headlines are often about the big figures, it’s the human cost that makes it real for us...

Read it all here...

Happy Christmas...

This is my favorite Christmas Carol. I guess I want to use it to say merry Christmas to all of you. What a blessed season it is...

Peace.

Thinking about Christmas

Last night, December 21st, was the longest night of the year for me and for everybody else in the northern Hemisphere. It was also the coldest night we have had in a while. Fitting, I guess. Fortunately I was snuggled up warm next to my wife in our living room watching a movie and feeling little if any of the affects of the winter weather just outside.

Even though this has been a rushed year and a rushed Advent, it has been a good one nonetheless. The gifts are purchased or made, the house and the Church are now decorated. There is little to do but wait...wait for the crowds to gather, wait for the carols to be sung, wait for hearts to me made joyful once again by the story of the Christ child's journey into this world so long ago and into our lives today. I hope all of you will have a merry Christmas and a truly happy new year.

Chrismas Greetings from a Welshman

My hope and my prayer for you all this Christmas-tide and always is that you will welcome Jesus, the light of the world, into your hearts and minds, and that you will allow your own lives to be used to bring light to others. Enjoy your celebrations of the coming of the light, be good news for others, and remember that the kingdom of God is present when little things are done in love. God bless you and strengthen you to do such things and to be an instrument of that Kingdom. And, if you are among those who are passing through darkness, may your needs be seen and answered in genuine love and real care.

Read all of Bishop John's message here.

Scottish Christmas Tidings

As Christians gather in worship we celebrate the way in which the birth of Jesus makes access to God open to all. ‘This is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us.’ That love of God is for all humankind and we are bound into an equality of need and the chance to respond. The Christmas story makes this real in a number of ways.

Read the rest of the Christmas message from the Primus of the Scottish Episcopal Church here.

++Rowan's View

Take a look at this from a new article featuring
Archbishop Williams...

One friend suggests [Rowan's] refusal to "speak out" is a reflection of Jesus's own approach, especially when Christ refused to answer Pontius Pilate's questions at His trial, as described in Mark's Gospel. "I think that, again, one of the things the Gospel ought to do is make us question the way we put our questions," Williams says. "So that, right throughout the ministry of Jesus as well as at His trial, a hostile person sitting there could say, 'He never gives a straight answer to a straight question: "Do we pay tribute to Caesar?"' And Jesus pushes it back and says, 'What are we really talking about?' I think it's always important to ask before we make the snap answer: what are we really talking about?"

Read it all here. It's worth the time.

Christmas is just around the corner...

Always a holiday classic. Thanks to Stan, one of the members of my Altar Guild, for this nugget.

Cantuar's Christmas Blog

God chose to show himself to us in a complete human life, telling us that every stage in human existence, from conception to maturity and even death, was in principle capable of telling us something about God. Although what we learn from Jesus Christ and what his life makes possible is unique, that life still means that we look differently at every other life. There is something in us that is capable of communicating what God has to say – the image of God in each of us, which is expressed in its perfection only in Jesus.

Read all of the Archbishop's Christmas message here.

It takes a community...

My salvation coach raised an interesting question. Salvation is a central theme of the Christian faith. Salvific themes of the Old Testament include escape from captivity, freedom from oppression and hope for a transformed and reconciled world.

In the New Testament Jesus announces the coming of God’s kingdom by forgiving sins and healing the sick. This is the work of salvation, which the Church would continue, instituting a new Heaven and a new Earth.

At least three things stand out. The first is that this salvation is experienced corporately, not individually. The Old Testament writers speak in terms of a community in which the presence of God could be experienced within a fellowship bound together by devotion to God. For the writers of the New Testament, Jesus was never to be thought of as a personal saviour, as though He were our personal toothbrush.

We are not saved individually, as though by some private act of divine indulgence. It is within the community that we can find forgiveness for the past, and hope for a way of beginning again.

A great read from the Dean of Perth. Read it all here.

A word from the Bishop of Washington

What Duncan and Minns propose – that Duncan become the Archbishop of a newly minted non-geographical province with the support of GAFCON primates such as Peter Akinola of Nigeria and Henry Orombi of Uganda – is a rejection of the respectful diversity and generous orthodoxy that defines the Communion. It is a repudiation of the role of the Archbishop of Canterbury in our communal life. It flies in the very face of what it truly means to be an Anglican. For Minns to suggest that he is leading a “new reformation” is ludicrous and demeans the historicity and value of the real Reformation as we know it and live it. The movers of the proposed new province embarrass themselves, the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion by the self-serving media coverage they have worked so hard to achieve. The news of the proposed province appears at a time when more than 28 million Americans are living on food stamps, one out of every 10 new mortgage holders is facing foreclosure, unemployment is at its highest level in decades, the auto industry is “tanking” and the real danger of deflation or a possible depression looms large on the horizon. In the global south, millions live on $1 a day, and wars, ethnic and religious violence, poverty and the AIDS epidemic continue to wrack the African continent. To learn in this context that Duncan, Minns and their allies think that the most important issue facing the church is the sexuality of the Bishop of New Hampshire suggests a level of self-absorption that is difficult to square with the teachings of Christ. And to learn that the New York Times considers the complaints of these deposed, retired and irregularly consecrated bishops to be front page news suggests a fixation on “culture wars” reporting that deprives readers of a true sense of the challenges facing the church in this country…

Read it all here..

Lines in the sand...

Where do you draw the line? Well, you might reasonably reply: 'What sort of line?'

All over our beloved creaky Anglican Communion, we find lines, borders, boundaries: 'The Bible plainly says so'. 'That's not part of the faith once delivered to the saints.' 'You must assent to these things to be part of the Anglican Communion.' Where, many of us have often lamented, is classical Anglican ambiguity? Shades of grey? The fabled 'large tent', in which paradoxical tensions can presumably sup together, at the Lord's table? We've seen lines drawn even there. Who on earth wants to do any more line drawing?

A great front page at Anglicans Online this week. Read it all here.

Early Church Fathers

I began teaching a new bible study today to a group of local pastors. From the aspect of church background, this is the most diverse group I have worked with in awhile. Their desire, to learn more about the Early Church Fathers.

Today I gave an overview of what the next few weeks will look like including the divines we will focus on. In dividing up the material, I made up 3 categories, the apostolic fathers, ante-Nicene and post-Nicene. Then I said, "studying the Apostolic Fathers will make you better pastors, the Ante-Nicene and Post-Nicene's will make you better preachers." Why? Because the early fathers where for the most part ministering to a people under marginalized by persecution, and the Nicene's were working out the finer points of the Incarnation and the Trinity while working on the unity of a Church taking on global leadership post Constantine.

Whether you agree or not, it made for some interesting discussion. And hopefully it will make a better pastor out of me.