During my first Annual Parish Meeting, I shared with you that I believed church vision emerges in the context of relationship.
It cannot be from the outside but cultivated through the trusting dance of a shared life. It has been nearly a year since I started. We have danced our way through the major events and seasons of the church calendar. I led you through beloved traditions, holidays, and Holy Week. We have visited in homes around tables and in hospital rooms around beds. We have experienced together the ordinary rhythms of church; the taste of church coffee and breakfast tacos, the sound of Bible pages opening at a morning study, or the feel of a handshake or hug on the sidewalk on Saturday or Sunday morning. We have grieved together at gravesides, and we have sung our alleluias of hope in funerals. To put it simply, we have done church.
Every week in the Nicene Creed we confess our faith in the church. My vision of church is rooted in this proclamation. We say, “We believe … in the one holy catholic and apostolic church.” During my time at Princeton Seminary, I wrote my thesis seeking to understand this line of the creed. That paper was 75 pages that would bore most readers to tears; I’ll keep this shorter.
As we dance into the future and develop a vision for Christ Church, we do so in continuity with this rooted sense of Catholicity. You might ask, what does catholic mean anyway? This is a frequent question asked when preparing people for baptism vows or in confirmation. We wonder if this is a sly reference to the Roman Catholic Church and if we need to change the language to the creed or change our ecclesial affiliation to say it with any integrity. Neither are necessary, of course.
What Is Catholicity?
The word catholic comes from Greek word, katholiken, which means “pertaining to the whole” or “universal.” It speaks to the entire body of the church which spans time and space. Sometimes, people will refer to this as the “invisible Church,” as it contains all the souls who are united to Christ. While catholicity speaks to all God’s people, dead and alive, known fully to God alone, it is not an invisible body. After all, the church is a historical and visible community. Just as Christ had a physical body, so does the catholic church.
What, then, does the catholic church look like? St. Vincent of Lerins defined catholicity to that which is believed and practiced everywhere, always, and by all. The idea is that one would be able to recognize the church’s faith and practice at any point in history or in any location on the earth. Though one might not understand the language or culture of a time or place, the church catholic would be recognizable by their faith and practice to any Christian.
Recently, our staff gathered at the diocesan office for a day retreat. We meditated on the healing of the lame beggar in Acts 3. In this vision of the young and fledgling church, St. Luke portrays a dramatic expression of continuity between the ministry of Jesus and the ministry of His church. In many ways, it is a window into the catholicity of the church. In it we see three features of the church that are consistent throughout history: Liturgical prayer, evangelical proclamation, and charismatic power.
Liturgical Prayer
“One day Peter and John were going up to the temple at the hour of prayer.”
(Acts 3:1)
Gathered Prayer is a rhythmic and regular act for catholic Christians. Christians keep in the tradition of Israel, which gathered for prayer on the sabbath and pilgrimaging on feast days for sacramental and sacrificial worship. In the preceding verses to the healing story of Acts 3, St. Luke notes about the early church, “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers” (Acts 2:42). This was to establish some pattern of the gathered rhythm of the church, giving us a window into their liturgy. It was ordered around prayer, scriptures read and taught, fellowship, and Holy Communion. While the praying life of Christians may have spontaneous conversations with God, the gathered life of prayer is scheduled, ordered, and regular. It is no surprise that the Apostles encounter the man on their entry into the temple “at the hour of prayer.” It is just part of their rhythm.
As you trace the development of the church’s liturgical life of prayer through time and place, church liturgies tend to develop within the soil of their context. The gathered communities develop customs, styles and emphasis that are grounded in their cultural moment and language. Nevertheless, the catholicity of the church is revealed in the continuity of its worship with that of the apostles. The church catholic gathers in the regular rhythm and devotion to “the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.”
This is one of the great gifts of the Book of Common Prayer. Cranmer’s book of prayers was and is masterfully arranged to collect some of the best and oldest prayers of the church throughout the ages. As we gather weekly and organize our worshiping life, I am confident that Christians from any time and place would be able to join our worship on Sunday mornings and recognize our gathering of prayer to be “catholic.”
Evangelical Proclamation
“What I have I give you; in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, stand up and walk.”
(Acts 3:6)
The term evangelical has been drug in the mud over the years and is mostly used to describe a coalition of voters in our American moment. The word evangelical, however, is rooted in the Greek word euangelion, which means “good news.” In the early church, the simplest evangelical proclamation of good news was this: “Jesus Christ is Lord.” Jesus holds ultimate authority; not Caesar, not Trump, not you, not me (thanks be to God!). This is good news because no other leader died for his people and overcame death. The central vocation of the church catholic, since the day of Pentecost, has been to proclaim the good news of Jesus. The good news of Jesus is more precious than silver or gold. When St. Peter speaks to the lame beggar he says, “silver or gold I do not have, but what I have I give you.” What Peter has is good news of Jesus. He speaks the authority of Jesus and in the name of Jesus. This may not be a sermon, but it is an announcement of the kingship of Christ, which is coming into the world and making all things new.
As you trace the development of the church’s evangelical proclamation through time and place, you will notice nuance and variance grounded in cultural moments and context. Theological statements, including our creeds, never emerge in a vacuum. Nevertheless, the evangelical proclamation of the divine Son, Jesus Christ crucified and raised from the dead persists with clarity and continuity.
This is one of the great gifts of the ecumenical creeds, most notably the Nicene Creed, which we profess every week in our liturgy. The Nicene Creed conveys the essential features of the church’s evangelical proclamation regarding the divinity of Jesus and his historical passion and resurrection as the Incarnate Son of the Father and ascended king. During the years following the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD, the creed became the standard of unification and catholicity. As we gather weekly at Christ Church, we join the people of God through the ages confessing and proclaiming the catholic gospel: Jesus Christ is King!
Charismatic Power
“And he took him by the right hand and raised him up, and immediately his feet and ankles were made strong. Jumping up, he stood and began to walk, and he entered the temple with them, walking and leaping and praising God.”
(Acts 3:7-8)
One of the most provocative features of the Acts of the Apostles is the miracles performed in the name of Christ. In this text, we encounter Peter doing the works that Jesus performed. This puts Jesus’ word to them in John 14 in context, “the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these” (John 14:12). In these events, the words of Christ are fulfilled; the Spirit has come and his disciples begin to perform the works of Christ. They are becoming his hands and his feet.
When St. Paul describes his ministry to the Corinthians, he said “my speech and my proclamation were not with plausible words of wisdom, but with a demonstration of the Spirit and of power.” The ministry of the church is one that is empowered by the gifts of the Spirit. The word charismatic, when referring to the church, is often associated with the Pentecostal movement and its influence on the church. However, the word charismatic is much older than the Pentecostal movement; it is derived from the Greek word Charisma, which means divine gift. When the Spirit came upon the church on Pentecost, the disciples began speaking good news in the native tongue (e.g. languages) of people from all over the world. This was a divinely given gift. The healing of the lame beggar also is a divine gift of the Spirit’s power to reveal the trustworthiness of the news of Christ’s kingship.
When a church is healthy, each aspect of Catholicity is revealed and transforms the body of Christ to become the compassionate fellowship.
The catholicity of the church is rooted in the gift of the Holy Spirit and His demonstration of power on earth. The catholic faith believes that the same Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead lives in our mortal body, giving us power to overcome sin and darkness. We know that earthly power can corrupt even the most well intended. The pattern of power in God’s kingdom, however, is made perfect in weakness (2 Cor. 12:9) and revealed chiefly on the cross. The kind of power that the church manifests, then, will follow in that pattern of weakness, vulnerability, and sacrifice.
When you read the stories of the saints throughout church history, you will read of strange miracles. People are healed, saints levitate, they are caught up in vision, they dream dreams that come to pass and are given personal knowledge of things and people that cannot be easily explained. These are just normative events in the life of the church catholic. The Spirit of God is present among his people, endowing them with gifts of power to proclaim and practice the Kingdom of Jesus.
Three Streams
In some Anglican circles, the features laid out above are described as the “three streams” of Anglicanism, which merge into one. Some have used this image to suggest that the Episcopal church is broad and can contain a variety of churches: high church, low church and broad church or Anglo Catholic, Evangelical, and charismatic. While, undoubtedly, these descriptions have some sociological significance and describe aspects of disparate parishes around the communion, I suggest that separating these features from one another works against the catholicity of the church. High liturgical worship is not, in fact, in competition or opposed to the powerful charismatic activity of the Holy Spirit or an Evangelical Proclamation of Christ. Nor is an Evangelical Proclamation of Christ opposed to a high view of the sacraments and the sacred liturgies or the power of the Spirit.
When a church is healthy, each aspect of catholicity is revealed and transforms the body of Christ to become the compassionate fellowship that is so beautifully embodied in the image of Peter and John in the story of Acts 3. This is the fruit we long to see; the fruit of a people being healed, leaping and praising God in the company of His people (Acts 3: 8-9).
One year into this calling and I am not exactly sure what the next ten years will look like. My prayer and hope, however, is that we will continue in the belief and practice of the church catholic; that many will be healed, our hearts made strong in praise, and that the Lord will “add to our number those who are being saved” (Acts 2:47).
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