“To all who received [Jesus], who believed in his name,” John’s gospel tells us, “he gave power to become children of God” (Jn 1:12). In Christ we have been given a new identity: We are sons and daughters of the Most High God, children deeply cherished and unconditionally loved by our heavenly Father. Our status and significance in life derives not from our performance, but from our position in Christ. Who we are and what we are, is grounded in the truth that we now belong to God. We are God’s children by adoption and heirs of God’s promises. This new identity offers us a sense of value that does not come from anything that we have done for God, but rather from what God has done for us. No longer are we preoccupied with the way others see us. Our worth comes from how God sees us. No longer are we seeking the approval of others. We are seeking only to comprehend and embrace the wonder of being children of God!

When the Enemy depreciates us, recalling to us the failures and deficiencies of the old self, we have only to assert the truth about our new self:

I have been given power to become a child of God! (Jn 1:12)
I am no longer a slave, but a friend of Christ! (Jn 15:15)
I have bought with a price. I belong to God! (I Cor 6:20)
I am a child of God by adoption! (Rom 8:15)
I am no longer under condemnation! (Rom 8:1)
I have been redeemed and forgiven! (Col 1:14)
I know that nothing can separate me from the love of God! (Rom 8:28)
I am a brand new person in Christ Jesus! (II Cor 5:17)
I am a citizen of heaven! (Phil 3:20)

This is the first gift of the Spirit that is given to us: a new identity that is undeniable and that can never be taken away from us. We are God’s children by adoption, joint heirs with Christ! This is who and what we are now, and will be forevermore. “See what love the Father has given us,” the author of I John exclaims, “that we should be called children of God, and that is what we are!” (I Jn 3:1)

I long for the Church to be more truly itself, and for me this involves changing its stance on war, sex, investment and many other difficult matters …. Yet I must also learn to live in and attend to the reality of the Church as it is, to do the prosaic things that can be and must be done now and to work at my relations now with the people who will not listen to me or those like me — because what God asks of me is not to live in the ideal future but to live with honesty and attentiveness in the present.

Anglo-Catholicism and Evangelicalism both began as reform movements aimed at bringing Anglicans back to their roots. This is easily forgotten today, as both movements have become more concerned with aping their corollaries in the wider Christian world than with celebrating Anglican distinctiveness. Nevertheless, the early Evangelical movement in Anglicanism was deeply concerned with communicating the Gospel by means of both impassioned preaching and liturgy. The great Evangelical Charles Simeon wrote gushingly of his love for the prayer book and his belief that “a congregation uniting fervently in the prayers of our Liturgy would afford as complete a picture of heaven as ever yet was beheld on earth.” He distrusted Evangelical efforts that were not grounded in the prayer book. He also joined his fellow Evangelical John Wesley in having a special devotion to Holy Communion, something that had fallen out of fashion in the latter half of the eighteenth century.

In the beginning, the Anglo-Catholic movement was equally imbued with the spirit of the Elizabethan Settlement. There is a fierce desire apparent in the early Tracts for the Times to associate the Church of England not only with its pre-Reformation past but also with the great lights of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Much of what is available from the reformers and divines today was re-published and circulated by early Anglo-Catholics, from the commentaries and sermons of William Beveridge to Richard Hooker’s Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity. Moreover, the early movement was deeply concerned with maintaining the prayer book as the standard for doctrine and faith. Early Anglo-Catholics objected to schemes that would allow for non-subscription to the 39 Articles by those obtaining university posts. Even Tract 90, which was admittedly an effort to find ways around uncomfortable parts of the Articles, was nevertheless an indication of how committed the Oxford Fathers were to explicating the Catholic character that they believed Anglicanism has always had.

The point is, both Evangelicalism and Anglo-Catholicism can legitimately claim a stream of continuity with classical Anglicanism. Moreover, both parties, as reform movements, are able and fitted to make sure that modern Anglicans do not lose an important part of our theological heritage. Evangelicals are well poised to remind us of the ultimate authority of Scripture within the Church, the all sufficiency of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross, and the need for personal conversion. Anglo-Catholics, on the other hand, remind us of the power and importance of the Sacraments, the nature of the Church as a divine institution, and the guiding principle of Anglicanism that we judge all of our doctrine and practice by how it relates to the early Church. A full and true Anglicanism has to have all of these things to function.

… the business of this assembly will look more than a little silly to us unless we know that the bread and wine, water and words are used here with historical intent. Bread and wine are ancient foods in Israel, figuring in many of the ancient stories and coming to frame the Jewish festive meal in the time of Jesus. Water for washing is important in Israel from the time of the crossing of the Red Sea and the washing and appointing of the newly constituted priests down to the apocalyptic expectations of the Qumran community and of the early Christians. And Israel was a community of the word from the time of the exile, when collecting, writing, and reading the stories and poems, oracles and laws became immensely important to Israel’s very existence. These things at the center of our assembly connect us to that history. The very choice of these things as the communal central symbols arises from that history.

The resurrection of Jesus can be understood from the perspective of the past, the present, and the future.

Let’s start with the past. The resurrection of Jesus Christ occurred at a point in human history. It is not an event whose reality is acknowledged by academic historians as a fact, but it is the definitive historical event for faithful Christians.

We believe that God really raised Jesus from the dead even if the constraints of academic historiography prevent history professors from talking about God’s involvement in human life in professional journals and scholarly books.

As members of the Christian community we have already accepted the validity and profundity of the witnesses who came before us. Those earliest witnesses experienced an empty tomb and they experienced the risen Lord himself. In the pages of Scripture they tell us that they have seen him, touched him, and even eaten with him.

We can and do accept their testimony and base our lives on it. We take their word for it when the rules of academic evidence and publishing will not allow professional historians to do so.

Think of it this way: I trust what my wife tells me about her family of origin, her school days, and her experiences in college. I trust what she tells me about how she spends her day. Her testimony does not rise to the level necessary for academic history. But I am confident of its truth because of my confidence in her. So too I trust the witness of the Christian community about the resurrection of Jesus precisely because of my confidence in who they are and whose they are.

Next, let’s think about the resurrection from the perspective of the present. Jesus is risen. He is alive now, this moment. He is alive in a way that makes my life pale by comparison.

I really encounter him on a regular basis. In the Blessed Sacrament. In the Scriptures. In the sisters and brothers of my parish family. In the poor and the marginalized. In the movements of the Holy Spirit in my own life. The risen Lord is at work guiding me and transforming me through the power of the Holy Spirit. The real power of the Christian life arises from our experience of Jesus himself in our daily lives.

Finally, we turn to the future. As the Nicene Creed says, “He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.” The resurrection – our resurrection – is on our horizon. We are promised a new life. A new kind of life. Eternal life. A life that has passed through sorrow, sickness, and death and will never undergo them again.

Jesus is the first fruit of the new era awaiting the entire creation. The resurrection is the source of our hope. A life stirred and energized by hope can endure all things and can change the world.

Evangelism in a secular age isn’t about making a choice, or even making a commitment to church community. It is about drawing people, through worship, life in community, and service, into a framework for understanding reality whose value and comprehensiveness isn’t immediately obvious. Evangelism in a secular age is an invitation into commitment to an arduous course of learning, and a long term relationship with a community that has no obvious and immediate payoff and does have immediate and obvious hardship.

This pamphlet uses familiar Episcopalian language for liturgical ministers. Many newcomers to St Gregory’s find this language new; others ask how Episcopalian ministers differ from those in their home denominations. Such questions have special importance in today’s ecumenical context, where grassroots relations, including sharing church members across old boundaries,can build a practical local basis for reunion. In fact the Church’s ministry has sparked debate, redefinition, reform and schism throughout history, and language confusion has played an important role. A word-study can help untangle this, and uncover the longtime unity of ministry which almost all churches share today. The following summary may serve Episcopalians and non Episcopalians who must sometimes wonder whether we are talking about the same things.

Much past conflict has arisen from confused analogies to Old Testament ministers, and chiefly to the COHEN. This hereditary Hebrew clergyman originally cast lots to determine God’s judgment decrees (tôrah), and so came to oversee temple sacrifices by seeing to it that people offered these as God had commanded. It is important to recognize that the biblical cohen only consulted, while others sacrificed; even after the exile he offered no sacrifices except on the Day of Atonement, when he scattered sacrificial blood in the sanctuary. Active religious leadership, as we would recognize it, belonged instead to the king, who was anointed (messhiach in Hebrew, christos in Greek, hence MESSIAH or CHRIST in English) with divine power, and bore the title “Son of God.” During the Jewish monarchy the cohen obeyed the king in all religious matters, even when the king commanded idolatry! After the Maccabean restoration, and only then, the chief cohen took on part of the missing king’s religious authority, while people waited for real royalty to return.

Rabbis of Jesus’ time debated how that might happen. Some awaited a single warrior king, like David; others, a renewed kingly nation (laos in Greek, hence the English “laypeople”) pure as the cohen is pure. Both groups called this deliverer “royally anointed” (Messiah/Christ). The gospels indicate Jesus dismissed any suggestion he was a king; nevertheless New Testament writers naturally use the language of popular messianic hope to describe Jesus’ victorious death and resurrection. Paul’s usage proved influential in New Testament times, and long afterward. He probably never met Jesus in the flesh (2 Corinthians 5:16) and never discusses Jesus’ teaching; instead, Paul treats familiar rabbinical questions in the light of his own new faith. Paul reckons that God declared Jesus king (“Son of God”) at the resurrection (Romans 1), and that Christians share Jesus’ kingly work and identity as members of the messianic body (Galatians 6; Colossians 1; 1 Corinthians 10 & 12). In other words, Paul argues that through Jesus, God has fulfilled both rabbinical notions of the hoped-for Messiah.

Other New Testament writers combine the images of king and cohen to similar effect. The Letter to the Hebrews says Jesus the royally anointed (Christ) has taken over the cohen’s one active sacrificial job by offering his own blood in God’s true sanctuary (Hebrews 10). In other words, Jesus’ death has restored the ancient kingship with all its true religious authority, of which the post-Maccabean high-priesthood had consciously preserved a living shadow. Later letters underscore Christians’ share in Jesus’ messiahship, as a royal cohen-ish people (Ephesians 4; 1 Peter 2). In sum, first century Christians saw the ministries of anointed king, purified laos, and sacrificial cohen as the united work of Jesus and his Church.

Christian institutions developed independently of these scriptural images, however, and reshaped them. At first Jesus’ followers at Jerusalem made his brother James their leader, much as Muslims would one day vest authority in a succession of Mohammed’s blood relatives, called caliphs. There James presided over “the Twelve,” a body Jesus had chosen to symbolize a restored laos of twelve tribes: together these decided institutional questions for the growing churches. And from there the gospel spread among Jewish synagogues throughout the Roman empire,carried by countless APOSTLES. (Unlike later ages, the New Testament period did not reserve this name for”the Twelve,” but simply continued here the familiar Greek Old Testament translation for the Hebrew shaliach, meaning anyone on an authorized errand.) At the same time the apostle Paul and his fellow-apostle helpers added new gentile synagogues to their number. Suddenly, however, the Christian caliphate with its council of the Twelve vanished, after James’ murder and the Roman destruction of Jerusalem in 70 a.d., leaving Christian synagogues elsewhere to work in conventional synagogue ways. Hence the Christian liturgical ministers we know spring from Jewish synagogues, and not from any distinctive creation by Jesus or the early Church.

Anglicanism lacks a recognizable pattern of piety. It is necessary to have a Communion-wide pattern of piety, for shared devotional practices unite us to one another, just as they deepen our corporate memory and also give us something to pass on to our children. Above all, a shared pattern of piety witnesses to those outside the Communion. It tells them who we are, where we locate our corporate memory, how we articulate our Christian vision, and why they themselves should participate in our way of life.

Patterns of piety are located in liturgical celebrations. These happen on Sundays in the Divine Service, but must also continue on appointed days of feasting and fasting. These days of feasting and fasting are located in the Church Calendar, and their celebration must be given greater emphasis by the bishops. Otherwise, our heritage remains a thing of texts, historically occasional reception, and the hermeneutical imagination, rather than a thing of bodies, successive generations, and the liturgical imagination.

In the Hebrew Bible “seeing God” is cultic terminology referring to Temple worship (e.g., Pss 27:4, 63:2, 84:7). That such cultic connections are also implicit in John is supported by John 12:41, which states that “Isaiah said this because he saw his Glory and spoke of him.” This is an allusion to Isaiah’s Temple vision (Isa 6) in which the prophet is transported from the earthly to the heavenly Temple and beholds YHWH seated on his exalted throne.

According to John, the “YHWH” of Isaiah’s vision was none other than the pre-incarnate Logos. Thus, before “the Word became flesh and tabernacled” in this world and allowed those who believed to “see his Glory” (1:14), he was enthroned in the heavenly Temple and imparted a vision of God to a chosen prophet who sought him in his earthly Temple. John may be implying here that the Logos was enthroned both in the heavenly Temple and in the Jerusalem Temple, which constituted a point of intersection between earth and heaven. After the incarnation, the humanity of Jesus serves as the earthly Temple, and mediates the vision of God to human beings.

Unfortunately, we have been at the mercy of a questionable translation of the remembrance phrase which appears in 1 Corinthians 11:24, 25. We almost always get something like: “Do this in remembrance of Me.” And that, in our minds, translates out to something like this: “Do this while remembering Me.” On this reading, the way to celebrate the Lord’s Supper is by remembering Him in some subjective fashion.

But the translation is unsatisfactory. The phrase in question is more literally, “Do this unto My remembrance.” The Greek preposition usually translated “in” in these verses (eis) very rarely takes that meaning (particularly when the meaning rendered is an “in” of manner, rather than an “in” of location). This preposition generally has a directional or purposive function, so that, in varying contexts, it can be rendered with “into,” “unto,” or “as” (such as: “it was reckoned to him as righteousness”).

The truth is, parallel phrases and language can be readily found in the Old Testament. In Leviticus 24:7, for instance, the frankincense is placed upon the bread for a memorial to the Lord. The very same phrase is used as is found in 1 Cor. 11:24, 25 (eis anamnesin). Obviously, the text in Leviticus does not mean that the frankincense engages in subjective remembrance of the Lord, or even that the priest does so. Rather, it is the act itself which constitutes a remembrance.

This is typical of old covenant sacraments. Numbers 10:10 says that the feasts and sacrifices were to be a memorial for Israel before their God. In connection with Passover (particularly relevant due to the connection between Lord’s Supper and Passover), Exodus 12:14 declares that this day is to be for them a memorial.

The point is that this remembrance which we find in 1 Corinthians 11 is not a de novo introduction. It stands in line with how the sacraments have always been constructed. And even if we were to grant that Passover did not admit children (which we most certainly do not), it is absolutely certain that other rites which had this remembrance-character did. Consequently, it is not some subjective requirement that lifts the sacrament out of reach for young children. Remembrance, whatever more precise meaning we put upon it, is not an exclusionary requirement.