On Communion

This just in. Two very worthy links:

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2008/may/36.38.html will take you to an essay on liturgy I think very worth reading.

http://www.uperekperisou.blogspot.com/ will take you to Phil Snider's series on Origen and prayer. Not to be missed.

**************************************

And now back to our regularly scheduled blog (yeah, like I have a schedule!)

Jamie’s dad, Drew, was sitting at my desk the other day. I had left a window open on one of the more extreme right wing web sites that bedevil the Episcopal Church. He was to say the least, appalled.

From our conversation about the site; he understands the character of a communion much better than many of the primates.

“We can fight, after the Eucharist.”
“Ideological purity is not a value; in fact it is a sin.”1
“A church should challenge its members not preach their preconceptions.”

I think all three are worthy of consideration.

1. If the primates could figure out that after the mass is a fine time to argue with Bp. Robinson et al, Lambeth the communion might have a chance. As is, the conference and the communion are on a path to catastrophe charted by an Archbishop of Canterbury who has no clue.
2. I have written previously of the sin of ideology. Jesus taught a way to live, now and forever, not a political viewpoint. When we make an ideology our religion we worship a new Ba el.
3. As Drew observed our lives as Christians are about the journey, not the destination. The destination is fixed by God; it is how we undertake the journey that matters. Good instruction and preaching should not chart the way, it should guide us in our efforts to discern the way.

At the end of the day, it seems to my conservative son and me (the house liberal) that the church fails when it thinks it knows all. That is why the Roman curia must spend so much time and effort trying to make the realities mesh with the ideology and why increasingly the neo-orthodox appear to be neo-curial.

FWIW