That is my favorite prayer before worship, and today’s readings remind me exactly why I like it so much, find it so powerful.
Scripture is a mirror says Gregory and during this great fifty days, the weeks of weeks, we hold up the First Church in the Book of Acts every week as our opportunity to check ourselves in that mirror. This week’s glimpse is vital for a church in a time of stress challenge and crisis. Because it shows us what we really need to be doing.
There are four elements the science of anthropology has noticed in every global religion. Four and only four: vision, ethics, liturgy, and spirituality. That is, every global faith–Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism–has a particular and unique vision of God, humankind, and the world. Each one has its own understanding of the boundaries of ethics and of how ethics works. Each has evolved a regular communal worship life for its faithful to enjoy together. And each has developed the art of the individual believer in relationship to God.
Those are the indispensable four. No religion survives without them.
And during this Paschal Season, as we begin the story each week with a reading from the Acts of the Apostles and look through a window at the earliest Church, the First Church when it was new and most vital, we find those four front and center: they persevered, our first lesson today tells us, in the Apostolic teaching, the fellowship, the breaking of bread, and the prayers.
Four things– teaching of Apostles, fellowship, breaking of bread, prayers. V First, the Apostles’ Teaching. Now on the one hand I don’t think these are in a particular order, they are all essential, and as Ezra Pound said about the elements of a poem, it doesn’t matter which leg of a table you build first, as long as you make four of them. True.
But there is a certain priority to The Teaching. I don’t mean classroom teaching, this is not a commercial for Adult Ed (though we do put a lot of thought into that). No, I mean what we do during this portion of the Mass week by week, and I mean our faithfulness to the tradition of the ancient faith. That is our vision.
Don’t take those things for granted. They are not automatically part of a parish identity. I will give you an extreme example: an old priest friend in another diocese told me years ago of priests he knew who were atheists. I said that sounded a lot like a waste of time and a rather silly sort of hypocrisy: and he explained that the atheist priests he knew believed that the Church could be a tremendous vehicle for social change and moral good, and that therefore they had chosen to put up with many things they did not believe in so they could be part of that moral good and social change. And though he himself wasn’t one of these, he did respect their attitude.
And I don’t. Not that I don’t agree that the Church can be and should be exactly what he said it could be– a tremendous vehicle for social change and moral good. But we don’t exist in order to be that. We exist because we are convinced of certain things. There are certain things that lie at the heart of the way we see the world–like the Incarnation, or the sacred quality of suffering, or the paradox of dying to live, or the fact that God is love.
That is our vision. That comes first in the list today, and I believe it comes first for a reason.
Second, Fellowship: let’s look at the word. I confess I have never liked the feel of that word in English–it always somehow suggests a fraternity to me. The Greek word behind it is so much better–its one of those special words the Church made all her own. Koinonia. Not difficult to understand at all: it means common-ness. It implies a spirit of mutual service, of reflexive sharing, of humble mutuality. It is the kind of common spirit we find not in secret skull and bones college clubs, but in functional families. In the great Benedictine houses. And in parishes where the Spirit is flowing.
How do we know if it works? Obviously if we love one another. Now to keep form sounding either absolutely impossible, or sickeningly sentiment, let me offer something from one of my thoughtful students. He was wrestling with Jesus’ command to love, and I was challenging him as I challenge people very often to explain how someone could command you to love–isn’t it like saying I order you to like the taste of chocolate? Some of us do and some of us don’t but we cant decide yes I shall like that taste.
He said–and you could practically see the light above his head–I don’t like my aunt Martha. But I love her.
Catch that spirit and you have koinonia, real spiritual fellowship. Reverse the usual pattern. Usually there are many people we like but don’t love. Make it : here at least there may be someone you do not like. But no one you do not love.
And then we come to the breaking of the bread. For that we have an entire Gospel parable. But a parable that isn’t fiction, a parable that really happened.. I love this story: the Road to Emmaus. To approach it ask yourself this: how would you expect to recognize Jesus? By his appearance? I don’t think that would work. Remember he needed to be identified by the one who betrayed him: his appearance simply wouldn’t distinguish him. Would you recognize him then by his charismatic teaching, by his works of power? By the veneration of his followers and the love and loyalty of his
All those things are valid but they are not how these two disciples recognize him. For them it is in two stages: their hearts burn while he recalls scripture; and their eyes open at when he breaks the Bread.
If that is not shorthand for the Eucharist I don’t know what could be. We are here to listen to the word of God and to taste the bread of heaven.
And finally the fourth leg: the Prayers. There is a sheet of paper in front of Fr Warren or in front of Fr David right at this moment. It floats around here during th week: it appears around the altar in the Lady Chapel at noon, it appears on the prayer stand by the presider’s chair in there early in the AM and at the start of the evening. And on that paper is a List of names. Mechanical? No, not here. When I arrived three years ago there it was. Bp Andrew never explained it , it was obvious. This is our parish intercessions list, and we take it seriously . Obviously a prayer list is not a prayer life, but it is a strong sign of one. It is “the prayers,” and we mean it,. One sign being the fact that it gets weeded out now and then. Sure sign it is meant deliberately and honestly.
We persist in the prayers. There is a kind of gentle stubbornness about it in fact that I really love. There it is, day by day Lords Day by Lords Day, we are going to read that roll call of concerns like the pestering woman in the great story of Jesus who will not strop until that judge opens the door.
Now if we keep our own daily prayers going, and our own personal prayer lists, and if we share these prayer concerns with one another, and if we remember them and bring them with us as part of our mental gear on the Lord’s Day, then we are very obviously persisting in the prayers.
And in the Apostles’ teaching, and the fellowship, and the Breaking of the Bread. I believe we really can see ourselves in that distant mirror in Acts. It is important indeed that we do. Because it’s not just a good idea, and it’s not just the very best way to encourage Church growth–as you can see from the last sentence in the reading.
To continue in the teaching, the fellowship, the breaking, and the prayers is also a promise. We make it over and over- most recently we made the promise at the Easter Vigil. It is part of our Baptismal Covenant, the pledge and promise that makes us who and what we are. We promise we will continue in those four faith essentials–we will, with God’s help.
On these our faith stands.
Help us with them O Lord, help us continue in the teaching the fellowship and the prayers. And be known to us Lord Jesus as you were known to your disciples–in Scripture, and in the breaking of the Bread.
