Author: leanderharding

Cathedral of All Saints, Albany

Dog Packs, Kitchen Nightmares and Deep Survival

Dog Packs, Kitchen Nightmares and Deep Survival

 

I am a fan of raiding other disciplines for thoughts on leadership in the church. There are all sorts of at first sight unlikely places to garner human wisdom which can be applied to church life. I regularly watch the National Geographic television show “The Dog Whisperer.” There is much wisdom there about being a calm, confident and consistent pack leader and about the chaos that comes from projecting the wrong kind of energy into the pack. It is quite food for thought for pastors that out of control dogs become calm in a good pack and that good dogs go crazy in a chaotic pack that is poorly led.

Another show I watch regularly is “Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmares.” Gordon Ramsey the famous chef and main character of this reality show is vulgar in the extreme and hardly a sentence goes by that does not contain numerous bleeps. The censors allow the word “ballocks” which is used at least once a paragraph. The show which is on BBC America takes Ramsey to different restaurants which are about to go under and gives him a week to turn them around. The survival rate for restaurants is something like one in five. Often he actually helps them. Ramsey has a bullying style which is part of the appeal of the show I suppose and really more morally problematic than the incessant cursing. There is something to learn here. Most of the restaurants are being killed by the same group of problems: arrogant, self-indulgent but weak leaders who are out of touch with their market, an over-elaborate menu which is really beyond the skill set of the chefs, lack of teamwork and poor communication both in the kitchen and between the kitchen, the management and the wait staff, lack of a coherent and realistic vision and a lack of commitment and passion. One of the things that makes the shows galvanizing is that the audience can see almost immediately how out of touch with reality the chefs and owners are and yet like drowning men going down for the third time they fight off the advice of the man who is their last and best chance. It gives Ramsey a lot opportunity to say bleep and ballocks.

By chance I picked up a book called Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales which is a close look at what might be called the psychology of drowning. The subtitle is “Who lives, Who Dies and Why?” The author has spent a life time analyzing and writing about stories of extreme survival of the “58 days alone in a Raft on the Atlantic” sort. He has combined his knowledge of how people act in extreme conditions with the emerging understanding of how the brain works and the role that emotion plays in reasoning and decision-making. It is a fascinating read, and parish clergy and other church leaders will see obvious parallels to decision making and survival in parish ministry, especially during moments of crisis. Continue reading “Dog Packs, Kitchen Nightmares and Deep Survival” →

Comments on The Pope’s Ecumenical Address

 

Comments on The Pope’s Ecumenical Address

April 19, 2008

I heartily recommend the Pope’s address to the ecumenical audience given at St. Joseph’s church in New York City. The full text can be found here.

The Pope’s message makes the important connection between unity and mission. The proclamation of reconciliation with God and our fellow human beings in Jesus Christ is contradicted by our sad divisions. Unity and mission are inextricably intertwined. Furthermore the breaking of unity with the faith and practice of the church of ages in the name of “prophetic action” and “local option,” demonstrates a loss of grip on the nature of Christian truth which transcends time and culture. The Pope of course is making a reference to among other things the unilateral actions of the Protestant Churches including The Episcopal Church in authorizing same-sex blessings and the ordination of actively homosexual clergy.

The Pope warns against the temptation to try to find an ecumenical unity which is not also a unity in faith and doctrine. The downplaying of the role of doctrinal agreement in the search for unity is according to Benedict the result of alien and secular ideologies taking root in the church.

“My dear friends, the power of the kerygma has lost none of its internal dynamism. Yet we must ask ourselves whether its full force has not been attenuated by a relativistic approach to Christian doctrine similar to that found in secular ideologies, which, in alleging that science alone is “objective”, relegate religion entirely to the subjective sphere of individual feeling. Scientific discoveries, and their application through human ingenuity, undoubtedly offer new possibilities for the betterment of humankind. This does not mean, however, that the “knowable” is limited to the empirically verifiable, nor religion restricted to the shifting realm of “personal experience.”

For Christians to accept this faulty line of reasoning would lead to the notion that there is little need to emphasize objective truth in the presentation of the Christian faith, for one need but follow his or her own conscience and choose a community that best suits his or her individual tastes. The result is seen in the continual proliferation of communities which often eschew institutional structures and minimize the importance of doctrinal content for Christian living.

But the uncritical acceptance of this reduction of dependable knowing to scientific knowledge by the intellectual elites of the mainline churches has led to exactly the marginalization of the dogmatic tradition which the Pope rightly sees as the enemy of any true ecumenism. (The Pope is here making a philosophical critique of popular epistemology similar to that made by Michael Polanyi and others. See my remarks given at GTS below.) The result is an acceleration of the momentum toward a kind of anti-ecumenism with the church breaking into more and more idiosyncratic communities.

Without what Lesslie Newbigin calls proper confidence in the truth there can no true community and a church which has lost its proper confidence in its own proclamation cannot effectively evangelize a world which hopes for truth but doubts its existence. As the Pope puts it:

Only by “holding fast” to sound teaching (2 Thess 2:15; cf. Rev 2:12-29) will we be able to respond to the challenges that confront us in an evolving world. Only in this way will we give unambiguous testimony to the truth of the Gospel and its moral teaching. This is the message which the world is waiting to hear from us. Like the early Christians, we have a responsibility to give transparent witness to the “reasons for our hope”, so that the eyes of all men and women of goodwill may be opened to see that God has shown us his face (cf. 2 Cor 3:12-18) and granted us access to his divine life through Jesus Christ. He alone is our hope! God has revealed his love for all peoples through the mystery of his Son’s passion and death, and has called us to proclaim that he is indeed risen, has taken his place at the right hand of the Father, and “will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead” (Nicene Creed).

Some Reflections on the Anglican Covenant Conference at GTS, April 10-12, 2008

Some Reflections on the Anglican Covenant Conference at GTS, April 10-12, 2008

 

The conference was sponsored by the Tutu Center at General which has a mandate for conferences that address reconciliation and peace. The conference conveners were Titus Pressler, the subdean at General and the venerable J. Robert Wright, canon theologian for the diocese of New York, who teaches Patristics among other things and has had a high profile in ecumenical theology for many years. Canon Wright broke his ankle on Easter day and was not present, though his paper was read.

The format of the conference had a major address each day by one of the keynote speakers, Archbishop Drexel Gomez, head of the covenant design group, Canon Jenny Te Paa from New Zealand and a member of the Windsor Committee, and Canon Gregory Cameron, Deputy Secretary General of the Anglican Communion. After the major address there were each day several panels made up of faculty from each of the Anglican seminaries in North America. All were represented save Nashotah House. Each faculty person gave a ten minute presentation. At the end of the panel of four presentations, four students gave two or three minute reactions to the papers and the faculty responded and the floor was open for questions. You can read my presentation below.

 

All in all the atmosphere was civil and courteous. Archbishop Gomez was subjected to some discourtesy which he handled with great charity and a sharp intellect. The whole conference can be listened to at The General Theological Seminary website.

General is a very beautiful seminary and it was a treat to worship in the chapel there. The office is sung every evening with great care though I found the feminist canticles that were inserted from time to time a little trying. “Our mother Jesus”  and so forth. The seminary has a massive challenge to keep the premises up and there is much work going on. Still like a lot of places in mainline Christendom in North America there is a poignant sense of faded glory.

Trinity and Wycliffe represented the reasserter point of view and the rest the reappraiser. As I predicted the issue was not what was in the covenant but the very idea of covenant. The majority of the faculty presentations were hostile to the very idea of covenant. A notable exception was Dean Kevern of Bexley. Throughout the conference I was reminded of Mouneer Anis’ comments on his meeting with the Joint Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion that there was little evidence that these leaders were really registering the state of crisis in the communion. There was a common confidence in the presenters, the confidence I suppose of the winners in a dispute. There was denial that the communion would come apart and that the life of the churches represented was in any serious way threatened. It was clear that for most of the people present the justice issues which they perceived in the Gay agenda were of more moment than any desire to maintain communion with the Anglican world. There was even a conviction that the breaking of communion was not really possible, that no one could tell them that they were not members of the communion. It was in a word, unreal.

I thought my presentation about what I called imperial pluralism and intolerance masquerading as tolerance would create some discussion. It didn’t. In passing I mentioned that I thought there was a corollary to pseudo-tolerance which was pseudo-democracy. I said that despite much rhetoric about representation and our democratic polity, the leadership style of TEC was one of finesse and fait accompli. I was challenged strongly on this by several members of the executive committee who pointed out all the studies and reports of the House of Bishops and General Convention. One member of the Executive Committee quoted a report that I have never seen which she claimed showed that a majority of the members of the church were in favor of 2003 et al. Earlier in the program Dr. Daniel Joslyn-Siemiatkoski had given a presentation in which he made a distinction between history from above and history from below. I responded to my questioners that it was true that there had been many official studies and reports at the institutional level, at the history from above level, but that was not the same as the sacrificial work needed to create a true mind of the church. This we have not engaged either at the parish, diocesan, provincial or communion level. The history from above is out of touch with the history from below. I sensed an incredulousness at my answer. This exchange and others gave me a sense of leadership really disconnected from the mass of people in the church, of a head out of touch with its body. I think that compliance and resignation are widely taken as affirmation and support. The cost of this mistake is only beginning to emerge. Continue reading “Some Reflections on the Anglican Covenant Conference at GTS, April 10-12, 2008” →

My Remarks at The Tutu Center Conference on The Anglican Covenant

The St. Andrew’s Draft of the Proposed Anglican Covenant

Instrument of Oppression and Exclusion or Instrument of Inclusion and Justice?

By

The Rev. Leander S. Harding, Ph.D.

Associate Professor of Pastoral Theology

Trinity School for Ministry

 

Actions of The Episcopal Church and the Diocese of New Westminster in Canada have precipitated a crisis in the Anglican Communion. These actions have brought to the surface a deep divide in the communion which has been a long time developing. A number of provinces and dioceses have concluded that they have impaired or broken communion with the Anglican churches in North America. In the face of demands that The Episcopal Church and New Westminster be in some fashion officially sanctioned and excommunicated, the Anglican Communion through its instruments of unity established the Windsor Committee which proposed as the way forward the development of an Anglican Covenant which would identify core beliefs and the practices of ecclesial decision-making necessary to maintain a world wide communion of churches. Thus in answer to the demand to exclude from communion those churches making revolutionary innovations in a unilateral fashion, the Windsor Report proposed that the Anglican Communion engage in a process of mutual consultation leading to a consensus on the minimums of faith and practice necessary to maintain communion, and then let member churches decide for themselves whether they could abide by such common commitments.

 

The first thing to be said about the covenant strategy is that it is an inclusive strategy which places on local churches the responsibility to decide whether they shall or shall not be a constitutive part of the communion of a world-wide church. All the member churches have been invited to contribute to the drafting of the covenant. It is clear that the existing instruments of unity and the existing articulations of Anglican faith and practice such as the Lambeth quadrilateral are not able by themselves to hold together the communion. Without some new feature the communion is certain to break apart along racial and cultural fault lines. It is part of the Gospel that God is making a new people out of many peoples, and a church that breaks apart along a North-South fracture line would be a counter sign to the Gospel in our time. Without a new articulation of the consensus of faith and a new agreement about the means to settle serious theological disputes we will not have the tools to hold the communion together but neither will we have the tools to hold together the various provinces. The skills and spiritual disciplines that will come from striving to maintain the worldwide communion are exactly the skills and spiritual disciplines needed to hold together our own dioceses and parishes. Sacrificing global communion on the altar of local communion is certain to lead to the intensification of the local momentum toward schism.

 

The main debate now in The Episcopal Church is not over the content of the covenant but whether the very idea of covenant is legitimate or not. Any possible covenant is seen by many in leadership in The Episcopal Church as an immoral example of over-reaching and over-definition and as an attempt to constrain consciences in an unacceptable way. I see an emerging negative consensus in The Episcopal Church with regard to the very idea of a covenant. This emerging negative consensus about the concept of a covenant is, I believe, based on an unexamined and to a degree unconscious commitment to a paradigm of knowledge that is part of the mental furniture of the West. This paradigm has been described and critiqued by the philosopher, Michael Polanyi in Personal Knowledge. The missionary theologian, Lesslie Newbigin, has applied this critique to the crisis of theological confidence in the churches of the developed world in a series of books, including The Gospel in a Pluralist Society and Proper Confidence.  

 

There has arisen in the West what Polanyi calls a false scientism that divides knowledge into two categories. There is the relatively small category of facts and in this area certainty is possible. There is a larger realm of beliefs and values and in this realm by the nature of the case certainty is never possible. There may be commitments that “work” for people. In this sense there is my truth and your truth but to treat a belief as though it were certain is seen in this paradigm as a category mistake and an inherently immoral and oppressive act.

 

 The proposed Anglican Covenant is felt by many of the leaders of The Episcopal Church to represent an improper and even backward understanding of the nature of truth. The logic as I see it goes something like this, “Everyone knows that the proposed covenant requires the submission of individual consciences to a consensus about the truth of Christian beliefs and everyone knows that there is no public truth in the arena of beliefs and faith to which all consciences should submit. Hence the very idea of a covenant is an attempt to coerce uniformity where it should not be attempted.”

 

Everyone knows? Everyone who lives uncritically within the paradigm that Polanyi calls scientism or objectivism. But this is not the only paradigm of knowledge going and it is among other things, including its inability to actually account for the demonstrable nature of scientific knowing, inadequate to the sort of knowing which is the knowledge of faith. This paradigm is inadequate to what Leslie Newbigin calls the proper confidence of faith.  It is not so that belief is an inferior sort of knowledge but rather belief is the necessary prerequisite of knowing anything at all. Scientists are able to discover and know because of preceding beliefs. Their famous methodological doubt is based on deeper commitments and beliefs. Science does not provide certainty but proper confidence, and in a similar way faith produces its own proper confidence. Both Polanyi and Newbigin think that Augustine got it just right, “I believe in order that I may understand.” It is necessary for Christians to articulate their common beliefs just so they can engage together in a common search for a more comprehensive truth and so they can adjudicate true and false implications of the faith.

 

Radical pluralism is an inevitable consequence of the theory of knowledge that makes belief into an inferior sort of knowledge. If there is no way to establish a proper confidence about particular beliefs, then any attempt to establish authoritative beliefs will be thought an exercise in tyranny. This conviction is often expressed in what has now become the canonic parable of the blind men and the elephant. A group of blind men so the story goes are exploring an elephant by touch. One feels the tail and says the elephant is like a rope and one feels the leg and says the elephant is like a tree and one feels the ear and says the elephant is like a large leaf. Each has a piece of the truth. No one of them has it all. To apply the parable to our current controversy, many in The Episcopal Church see the establishment of a covenant as an attempt by one of the blind men to make his perspective the one authoritative perspective and thus a power play and an immoral case of over-reaching. Lesslie Newbigin points out that there is a problem with this parable. The parable is told from the point of view of the King and his courtiers who take in the whole scene. The parable is told from the point of view of a supposedly neutral observer who is able to see the partial and limited nature of all other perspectives from the vantage point of the one perspective which is not subject to any critique. The parable is told from the imperial point of view of the theory of knowledge that Polanyi critiques as scientism. The teller of the parable adopts the pose of tolerance but this is surface camouflage behind which the King asserts the right to relativize and marginalize all other claims to truth but his own. Of this Newbigin says, “In a pluralist society such as ours. . .any claim to announce the truth about God and his purpose for the world, is liable to be dismissed as ignorant, arrogant, dogmatic. We have no reason to be frightened of this accusation. It itself rests on assumptions which are open to radical criticisms, but which are not criticized because they are part of the reigning plausibility structure.” (Gospel in a Pluralist Society, page 10.)

 

The established churches of the West are deeply permeated by the philosophy of pluralism and the epistemology which generates it. The established churches of the West are profoundly influenced by an understanding of tolerance which is really tyranny in disguise, a tyranny which is inherently hostile to the confident expression of apostolic faith. If the very concept of an Anglican Covenant is rejected in the name of Western pseudo-tolerance, it will be an exercise not of inclusion but of exclusion and what will be excluded will be the very possibility of building a consensus and proper confidence about the essentials of Christian faith and practice necessary to maintain the life and order of a world-wide church.

 

Without the renewal of consensus in faith and practice that a covenant represents, the imperial pluralism that really governs much of the common life of the churches in the West will continue without challenge. The result will be Orwellian. There will be continuing talk about the provisional quality of all truth claims and the need for tolerance and respect for conscience while unilateral innovations which ride roughshod over the consciences of others continue apace. I predict that the pace will in fact accelerate. If theological argument cannot by definition come to a consensus about the minimally authoritative truths of Christian faith and practice, and it cannot under the aegis of the sort of imperial pluralism I have described, what is to restrain the one who perceives that personal conscience demands unilateral action?

 

 The adoption of an Anglican Covenant allows us a chance to renew our commitment to the basics of the apostolic faith and to develop a suitably Christian and Anglican process for engaging and settling debates about the common boundaries of faith and practice. Within the parameters set by a common covenant real tolerance of differing opinions is possible with the confidence that they can be adjudicated justly according to mutually agreed principles. In the West the alternative is a church life based on a pseudo-tolerance behind which lurks the intolerance of an imperial pluralism which will inevitably encourage those who happen to be in power toward the unilateral imposition of their enthusiasms over what they see as the blind commitments of others. It is life under the reign of imperial pluralism that is unjust and exclusionary. The logic of church life under this sort of pluralism is the logic of finesse and fait accompli and power politics. The adoption of an appropriate Anglican Covenant has the chance of creating a more just and inclusive community and a global church which is not merely the extension of a Western cultural hegemony.

 

 

 

 

Thank You to the Bishop and People of Dallas

Thank you to the Bishop and people of Dallas for the great privilege of participating in the election leading to the selection of the next bishop suffragan. My wife and I were treated with great courtesy and grace. It is always wonderful to get to meet other Christians and to have a chance to talk about the deep things of the faith, the ministry and our common life in Christ.

Congratulations to Canon Lambert. My prayers are with the Diocese of Dallas for a speedy confirmation of this election and for joy in the service of our Lord.

Opening Remarks

Here is a copy of the remarks that I gave at the recent election in Dallas.

Opening Remarks

Election of a Bishop Suffragan

Diocese of Dallas

 

My name is Leander Harding. I am in my 27th year of ordained ministry. For most of that time I have been a parish priest. For the last three years I have been teaching Sacramental Theology, Pastoral Leadership and Pastoral Care at a seminary. I am also Head of Chapel and on Sunday I help out at one of the local parishes.

 

I am here because three of your clergy were at a conference where I was the chaplain. They heard me give a homily on the Christian virtue of patience and stopped me on the way out of the service to ask me if they could put my name forward for this election. I don’t think they walked into the church that evening thinking to ask me that question and it certainly hit me as a great surprise. We had dinner and talked and I promised to read the profile, talk with my wife and pray. Ultimately the whole thing, the profile, the words of your bishop and the way this request came to me in an atmosphere of prayer, touched my heart and made me wonder if it might be the Lord and I thought I had better do my part to find out. So thank you for the great privilege of being part of this moment of discernment.

 

I want to tell you something of my understanding of the ministry of a bishop. I believe the bishop is first and foremost a teacher of the faith. I have a personal mission statement which is to speak of the basic things of the Christian faith in a simple way. I see persistent, consistent teaching of the basics of the apostolic faith as the essence of the episcopacy. The bishops certainly do this in their preaching and teaching ministry in the course of the normal visitations. I hope it might be possible from time to time to gather together the clergy and people in a part of the diocese and have a time for building each other up in the faith. The bishops could teach, the clergy could teach, lay people with a gift of teaching could teach and we could share stories of what God has done in our lives. Some of these might be quite spectacular and some more humble and simple but no less a witness to the work of God in His people. This would be the kind of thing that could encourage us all and to which we could bring people who were curious about the faith with confidence that they would find grace, a gentle spirit and a winsome introduction to life in Christ.

 

I think a bishop is a pastor to the clergy and to the families of the clergy. I hope the suffragan could put a lot of focus here and really be a backstop for the diocesan. With a diocesan and suffragan I hope that this could be a truly personal and pastoral ministry. I hope it might be possible to meet with the clergy in groups small enough to have real conversation and often enough to build real community. I hope we might read the Bible together, share our faith and hope, pray and in this context deal together with the shared challenges of parish ministry and the life of the diocese and wider church.

 

I know that a particular challenge for the new suffragan is the care of the rural parishes. I spent the first ten years of my ordained ministry in small and struggling parishes. I have a soft spot for this kind of ministry. There are a lot of things that look different from the inside looking out than they do from the outside looking in and rural ministry and small church ministry is one of them. It would be a joy for me to get to know the people and clergy of these parishes one by one and work with them one by one to find the way forward for their ministries.

 

Let me close by saying one of the things that I am not good at. I am not good at finding someone to blame. Often when the ministry is not going smoothly our natural instinct is to find someone to blame. It’s the rector or the vicar or the vestry or the bishop or the national church. Surely we all make mistakes and there are certainly from time to time very serious incidents which require enforcing the discipline of the church. But more often when there is a problem and things are not working well my prejudice is that 85% has to do with the way we have set things up, with our system and method and our process. I am very interested in understanding the set up and working with others to make it less a burden, more workable, more likely to support success and effectiveness. That will usually take care of 85% of problem. For the other 15%, what a wonderful opportunity to practice Christian forbearance and charity.

 

You know that hymn text, “Oh to grace how great a debtor daily I constrained to be.” This is what I want to be a daily witness to the undeserved grace and love of God which has been made known to us in Jesus Christ.” Thank you for letting me make my witness here tonight.

What is Essential to the Office of Bishop?

 These are some thoughts on the office of bishop that I developed some time ago. 

 

There is a standard form of the argument about the significance of episcopacy for the order of the church. Is episcopacy of the esse, bene esse, or plene esse of the church? That is, is episcopacy of the essence of the order of the church, so that without bishops in apostolic succession there is no church, or is episcopacy essential for the good order of the church but not absolutely necessary, or is episcopacy for the fullness of the order of the church, meaning that a church can be a valid church without bishops but that to be the fullness of the apostolic church demands the fullness of the apostolic order. The center of Anglican witness has been in the last two positions with a minority Anglo-Catholic report holding out for the first position. The great book about all of this is Michael Ramsey’s The Gospel and the Catholic Church. Ramsey’s argument fits perhaps best into the category of plene esse. Churches without bishops are certainly valid members of the body of Christ, but there is something about the fullness of the apostolic witness and unity that is lacking and toward which the churches should press with full vigor for the sake of a fuller and more adequate witness to the crucified and risen Lord. Ramsey’s book convinced the Reformed pastor and missionary in India, Lesslie Newbigin, of the significance of the catholic order of the church for the sake of Gospel mission, and made it possible for Newbigin to embrace a call to be one of the first bishops of the Church of South India. Ramsey’s book remains a classic and breaks open stale arguments by arguing for the evangelical and missionary significance of the catholic order of the church. It is a travesty that the book is out of print. If you ever see a used copy, buy it.

 

The moment of foment and crisis that we are enduring in the Anglican world brings to the fore the significance of the office of bishop. All the old questions about how or whether bishops are of the esse of the church are bound to arise anew. But at the same time let us pause to ask what is of the esse of this order? What is essential to the office and ministry of the bishop? Ramsey argued that the bishop had an evangelical significance, for the bishop like the apostles from which the office derived was a living witness to the dependence of the whole body upon its one head and therefore upon the actual historical events of the crucifixion and resurrection of the Lord. The bishop was to hand on the tradition of the Apostles which was a witness to the life, death and resurrection of the Lord.

 

A full answer to the question of what is of the esse of the episcopacy would take many pages. But a quick answer can be given here. Two things at least, that are completely interrelated and interdependent, are essential to the office of the bishop, one is the stewardship of apostolic doctrine. John Spong has written somewhere of the bishop as an “apostolic pioneer.” Such a phrase is an oxymoron. Paul is quintessentially apostolic and laying out the essence of the apostolic order which the episcopacy must maintain if it is indeed to be an apostolic succession, when he says to the Corinthians, “ I pass on to you that which I received, that the Lord Jesus on the night in which he was betrayed took bread. . .” To be a successor to the apostles is to hand on a witness which is primarily a report of things which God has done. To be a bishop is to be a sacred historian and the teller of a true witness and a true story. My word for this is to say that the bishop must be a faithful steward of apostolic doctrine. It is this witness which creates the one body utterly dependent on its one head and on the actual death and resurrection of the Lord.

 

Related to the stewardship of apostolic doctrine is the ministry of guarding the unity of the church. This is a unity in faith which is a response to the one witness, now mediated by the succession of teachers, to the one saviour. The bishop is a visible link with the college of apostolic witnesses. The original twelve have a common witness, and witness to each other and the church and the waiting world that their witness is authentic and true just because it is a common witness. The apostles and their successors in the apostolic ministry of bishops are to build up the one church in unity for the sake of its mission of bringing all the nations to the worship of the one true and living God within the body of Christ. It is of the essence of the episcopal office that the bishop cultivates and guards the unity of the church. This places a heavy responsibility on those in episcopal office to keep faith with the apostolic teachers that have preceded them and to be servants of ecumenical solidarity. Thus the bishops are to be living sacraments of the unity of the body of Christ.

Books That Influenced Me

 

For The Life Of The World, by Alexander Schmemann. This is a set of lectures that the late dean of St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Seminary in Crestwood, New York gave to a Student Christian Movement gathering in the 1960’s. It is real Russian writing, full of passion and profound theological and spiritual wisdom in lucid prose studded with sparkling aphorisms.

 

I Heard The Owl Call My Name, Margaret Craven. A short simple novel about a young Anglican priest working with Native Americans in British Columbia.

 

The Brother’s Karamazov, by Fydor Dostovesky. A classic of Christian literature. I am especially moved by Fr. Zosima’s remarks to his brothers in the monastery as he lies dying.

 

The Resurrection of Christ: An Essay in Biblical Theology, Michael Ramsey. This book on the resurrection was life changing for me. Ramsey brings forward a long line of English exegesis on the resurrection which has found its latest advocate in N.T. Wright.

 

The Gospel and The Catholic Church, Michael Ramsey, This is out of print but is well worth getting when you can find it. It is a defense of catholic church order on the basis of its evangelical significance.

 

Romans In A Week, N.T. Wright. This is a CD of lectures that Wright gave at Regent and is available through their bookstore. The ideas presented here can be found elsewhere such as the Abingdon commentary on Romans. This is a very accessible way to get the information. Probably the biggest influence on my presentation of the Gospel in the last ten years.

 

 

The Gospel In A Pluralistic Age, Leslie Newbigin. Anything by this author is good. This is the classic statement by the late great missionary bishop.

 

Christianity Rediscovered, Vincent J. Donovan. A classic text and dramatic story about initial evangelization.

 

The Religious Potential Of The Child, by Sofia Cavalletti, A moving book by a pioneer in the religious education of children.

 

For Your Own Good: Hidden cruelty in child-rearing and the roots of violence, Alice Miller.  Not a book on theology but a very sobering and serious critique of some religiously inspired methods of child-rearing.

 

Against The Protestant Gnostics, Phillip J. Lee. A sometimes overstated but very searching important critique of Gnostic tendencies in North American Protestantism.

 

The Resurrection of the Body and the Life of the World to Come

A SERMON PREACHED ON EASTER SUNDAY, MARCH 27, 2005

IN ST. JOHN’S EPISCOPAL CHURCH, STAMFORD, CONNECTICUT

BY

THE REV. DR. LEANDER S. HARDING

Christ is Risen! This is the Christian Gospel. He lives and because He lives, we shall live; this is the good news which is the life of the church and which the church has to share with the world. That God raised Jesus from the dead and that there is new life in His name, a life which begins now and which the grave cannot hold is the precious message which the Apostles have entrusted to us and which is our joy and privilege to pass on to you. The church exists for no other reason than to communicate this message, the Christ, the Saviour, is risen. But we proclaim not only that God in Christ has triumphed over sin, evil and death but, the church says, this triumph is for you, this life is for you. Come and stretch out your hands and receive this life. Come and take this cup and drink deeply of this life. This life of love and sacrifice, of holiness and righteousness, this life poured out toward God and poured out toward brothers and sisters, this life which conquers all the enemies of our human nature, sin, evil and death, this life, the life of the Lord, the life of the Saviour, this life is for you that you may live in Him and He may live in you.

The proclamation of the church is that this Risen Lord comes to us as we gather together and that the life that is in Him, He breathes into us as we hear His words in the scriptures, share in the sacraments, serve each other and the world in His name. For He has said,”Wherever two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst.” And He has said, “Lo I am with you always even to the end of the ages.” The great theme of the Gospel according to St. John is Life, abundant life,”For this reason I have come that they might have life and have it more abundantly.” St. John teaches us about the eternal life that was in the Saviour and which has come into the world. This life that was in Him is most certainly and surely a promise of life eternal with the Father but it is also a new kind of life, which begins now, a new relationship with God and with each other. St. John speaks of this life as light. Humankind is living in darkness. We know much about darkness. A world in which we are forced to choose between war and passivity in the face of evil is a dark world. St. John says, “the light shines in the darkness and the darkness overcomes it not.” On the cross of Calvary love meets hate, righteousness meets sin, holiness meets evil. Light meets darkness and the darkness does not overcome Light. The light of the resurrection breaks forth from the grave. The purpose of the church is to carry and convey this life and this light. All about us this light shines with rays of the Resurrection. The vestments, the flowers, the music, the light coming through the stained glass, the best offering of art and architecture, our prayers, praises and adoration are all testimony to the Resurrection, all a way of saying with Mary Magdalene,”I have seen the Lord.” All of these things are visible witnesses to this invisible life at the heart of the church, which is the secret life at the heart of the world. Here the life of this world is beginning to shine with the life of the world to come. Here the creation and our human nature, which have become darkened by evil and sin, are being transfigured by the light of Christ. Therefore, St. Paul says, “Let us put away the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.”

The Resurrection of Jesus Christ is not only a past event; it is also a present reality and a future hope. We believe in the Resurrection because of the trustworthy testimony of the original witnesses but also because when they speak we know what they are speaking of. We live by, with and through that love and that life. We have died with Him to sin that we might live with Him unto God. Therefore, St. Paul says,”You have died and your life is hid with God in Christ.” From the first Easter day until the Ascension the Lord revealed to his disciples the nature of the risen life, which He continues to give to the world. Here in this Gospel this morning a very important aspect of the nature of this life is brought out to us. That is that the Resurrection is a resurrection of the body for the tomb is empty.

In the Apostle’s Creed we say that we believe in the Resurrection of the Body and the life of the world to come. We believe that the Lord was raised bodily. The Resurrection does not proclaim that some part of Jesus, his spirit or soul, survived death but that God raised Him up. What was raised was not a part of Him but all of Him. When God raises us up it is not a part of us that God shall raise but all of us. “Behold,” St. Paul says, “I tell you a mystery. We shall not all die but we shall all be changed.” St. John says, “It does not yet appear what we shall be but when He appears we shall be like Him.” And what is He like? He is completely changed and yet completely the same. There is an awesome strangeness about the Risen Lord. But He calls His sheep by name and they hear Him and know Him and there is nothing lacking, nothing left behind, all is transfigured. When He raises luminous hands in blessing they bear the marks of the nails. Everything He bore in His body has been raised, even the suffering. The wounds are not erased, forgotten but raised, changed, transfigured, glorified. The prints of the nails are the tokens of his victory.

The Resurrection of the Body, that when He appears we shall be like Him, is our hope for the life of the world to come. The Resurrection of the Body also speaks to us of the kind of life the Risen Lord offers to us now in this life. When He was raised, everything pertaining to our humanity was raised with Him and that Risen Life is being offered to us now, communicated to us now. St. Paul says that we are being given an arabon which means a preview, a down payment, a first installment of the life of the world to come. We are members of the body of the Risen Lord and the life of His Risen Body flows into us through the Word and sacraments.

We must think for a moment what the body is. Our body is intimately connected to our personality, to our individuality. We know the footsteps of our loved ones. That the body is raised means that everything which makes you, you will be raised. Your uniqueness as an individual is of eternal significance. We will recognize those we love and they will recognize us. God intends you to grow from glory to glory in the life of the resurrection and become more and more yourself as you grow in the love of God and in the fellowship of all the saints. But you do not have to wait to begin to become truly yourself. God now wants to give you the glorified humanity of His Son. God wants you to grow now in his love and service and in fellowship with all the saints. You were never meant to be scarred by sin, your own sins or the sins of others. If we turn to God with repentance, if we turn to God for healing, God will give us the new humanity of His Son which will be embodied in us in a way which is eternally unique and you will already begin to become more you than you have ever been. You will certainly begin to change on the inside and you may even look different on the outside.

The body is the means through which we process information and through which we come to knowledge. Even the knowledge we have of spiritual things comes to us through the body. When we begin to understand something we say that we have “come to our senses.” In heaven we shall truly come to our senses and we shall know even as we are known. But we do not have to wait begin to know the truth that will set us free. We do not need to wait to open our eyes and see and open our ears and hear and be believing and not doubting. We are invited even now to handle and touch holy things.

The body is the instrument through which we receive and express feeling and emotion. When we are embarrassed we blush. We burn with shame or with anger, we are sick with love or grief. It is not for nothing that we speak of “gut feeling.” The Resurrection life will be a life full of feeling, full of joy and peace. This joy and peace will not be a forgetfulness of this life but our sadness and grief transposed to a new key. The depth of suffering will by the transfiguring mystery of Christ’s suffering be the depth of joy. But we do not have to wait to begin to feel the life of the Resurrection. When we confess our sins and receive God’s forgiveness, our suffering turns to joy. When the hurts that others have done us are brought to Christ’s cross and seen in the light of how we have hurt Him, anger and hate begin now to turn to forgiveness and compassion. His love for the Father and His love for brothers and sisters is offered to us now, and here and now we begin to feel the life of heaven.

Our bodies are the means by which we worship and by which we serve. We bow our heads and bend our knees, or we stiffen our necks and turn away. We stretch out our hands in worship to God and in service to each other, or we use our hands to steal from God and from each other. In the life of the Resurrection we shall be able to perfectly express worship to God and perfectly love and serve each other. But God does not want us to wait to begin to taste of that life. Even now He wants to give us the hands of His Son, hands of sacrificial service and loving adoration.

Our bodies were given to us that we might know and love God and love and serve each other. Our bodies were given to us that we might know love, peace, joy and the abundance of God’s blessing and God’s creation. Our bodies were created fair and pure. Our bodies were created for righteousness and holiness. Our bodies, our memories and emotions have become marked and scarred by sin and evil. We are scarred by what we have done to others and what they have done to us. Our poor frail bodies are impotent in the face of death. He has died our death and offers us His life. He has clothed Himself with our body of sin that He might clothe us with His body of righteousness; now in this life imperfectly but really and truly, and in the life of the world to come completely and perfectly. If we come to Him now and to His church now, hungry for this life that He brings up out of the grave and which He is breathing into us now, we shall find a confidence in saying, we believe in the Resurrection of the Body. For we shall know however through a glass darkly the sort of thing of which the creed speaks. We will know because we will have already received new eyes and new ears, new heart and new hands, a new character and a new expression, a fuller communion with God and a richer fellowship with each other. We shall be fitted for a new life in the new heaven and new earth that Risen Lord will bring to pass when He returns to bring all things to their perfection. And when at last we come to die, then shall this saying have come to pass,”O grave where is thy victory, O death where is thy sting.” ‘Then shall this corruption put on incorruption and this mortal put on immortality.” Let it be so. Amen.

My Passion for Ministry

The Heart of Jesus Christ

The Diocese of Dallas asked in their questionnaire, “What is your passion for ministry?” This picture which was originally purchased in the bazaar in Tehran by a member of my last parish, figured prominently in my answer which is below. The man who left me this in his will was a Liberian diplomat who was exiled by the famous Sargent Doe coup. He was a profound Christian man. When I first saw this image I did not imagine it would become so important to me. 

I was given a rug with a picture of Jesus woven somewhat in the style of the velvet paintings you can buy at a county fair. Jesus stands looking out with very big eyes that seem to follow you, and he has his cloak pulled open with one hand and with an in-turned finger of that hand is pointing to his heart. His heart is on fire, on fire with love for God and with love for his brothers and sisters. There is a cross over his heart, for whenever this heart on fire with love of God and neighbor appears in this world it is a crucified heart. His heart is circled with thorns, a tourniquet of our thorny resistance to the love of God. He is pointing to his heart with one finger and with the index finger of an outstretched hand he is pointing at us. He says, I think, “I have come to give you this heart which is on fire with love for God and love for your brothers and sisters and which is crucified and which nevertheless beats against all resistance so that you might give it to others.” My passion for mission and ministry is that people might fall in love with God, and have formed in them the heart of Jesus Christ.