Category: theology

cat toys for theologians

wonderfulexchange4 Comments

Little bits to play with in an idle moment —
all from the Theology and the Arts conference on
The Offence of Beauty at St Mary’s.

(What follows is what I heard.
It may even be what was said.
Apologies to anyone I’ve misquoted or misunderstood.)

Trevor Hart:

‘Beauty will not submit. It blesses us even as it refuses to give its name.’ (possibly quoting Kant??)

‘A Christian account of beauty cannot ignore evil, nor offer escapism, but it offers another story of salvation: human reality bathed in the light of God.’

‘We experience beauty as interruptive promise and anticipation… Our experience of beauty is an eschatalogical glimpse of what things will become.

Grant Macaskill

in a song on place, journey, relation to God:
‘So close to you
so far from you
a million miles of healing still to go.
You draw so close…’

Peter (a composer & theologian whose full name I never heard) talking about (or quoting) Messiaen:

‘Beauty is that degree of the awesome that we can still bear.’

Bernard Beatty

(and this time, I know he did not mean what I heard, though I knew what he meant too.)
‘the baroque eliminates orientation.’

‘that’s what I believe. And I am wrong because…’

Robert Jensen

‘God is unknowable because we cannot catch up with his revelation — because his outpouring of beauty never stops, it is never caught up with. Precisely because God is making himself known to us, he is always ahead of us.’

speaking of Ezekiel and kavod:
‘When the Lord throws his weight around, his weight is his shining’

‘Ezekiel’s vision of the shining man… is the same vision as the Transfiguration: Glory that arrives.’

‘God’s beauty is not the infinite serenity of his being (c.f. David Hart), but the infinite drama of his life.’

‘the enterprise of shocking the bourgeois has been running since the nineteenth century. Surely, if it hasn’t worked by now…’

‘Ezekiel… now, that man can drive you nuts.’

bliss

wonderfulexchange2 Comments

Today has been as close to perfect as it gets. Blue sky, white clouds, lots of theology lectures to go to, and a chance to watch the tide roll in on my favorite beach, favorite dog at my side (don’t tell Molly).

I have often thought about coming to St Andrews for the Theology and the Arts conference, but have never quite found the time. A kindly grant from the bishop meant that this year it has happened — and I suspect will happen again and again hereafter.

A lot of a priest’s time is spent teaching — one on one, and in groups, we teach about prayer, scripture, theology, liturgy and even (when it is absolutely necessary) church history. I learn a lot through the process — people bring different perspectives and different questions. But much of the material is very basic. So it is a delight to come away to a conference where I am out of my depth, working right at the edge of my comfort zone, amidst people who know far more than I do.

I am not the only priest at the conference, but I think I am the only ‘parish priest’. That’s fine by me. But I bet there are other priests out there who would love this as much as I do. And as the day went on (and we moved from the expert lectures to the post-grad/ budding academic papers) I realised that I wasn’t really so far out of my depth. There were things that I knew from parish life that simply hadn’t occurred to some of the people around the table. And I was quite pleased when someone tried to challenge a paper on the grounds that it wasn’t nuanced enough — the nuanced argument being the one my congregations got in a sermon a few weeks ago. (I didn’t think it was nuanced. It just seemed obvious from where I was standing.)

I have always believed we need to hold church and academy together, but have assumed that it is largely academics with Christian commitment who have to build the bridge. Perhaps we need more than that. Maybe we need church people to dabble more in theology and go to conferences like this.

It is great fun.

Especially in sunny and splendid St Andrews.

(And Trevor Hart can still pack more into an hour lecture than anyone I know.  If you ever get a chance to listen to him, don’t pass it by.)

theological quandary

wonderfulexchange14 Comments

I have been brooding on the theology of the reserved sacrament again. Or rather, the lack of theology.

I find myself in the awkward position of having to support and encourage a pattern of worship I’m not sure I understand. Indeed, I’m not sure that the church as a whole has come to an understanding of this — though I hope I’m mistaken. What are we doing when — week after week, as a normal pattern of worship — our main service is Holy Communion from the reserved sacrament?

I have asked this before. So let me be more specific.

1. In Holy Communion from the reserved sacrament, how does a person’s self-offering relate to the offering of the eucharist?

When we celebrate the eucharist, I assume (and teach) that we offer ourselves to be broken and transformed in and through the offering of bread and wine, and the receiving of communion. At a celebration of the eucharist, there is an authentic correspondence between our self offering and the liturgical action. Things really change.

But when the service is from the reserved sacrament, the bread and wine have already been offered and transformed. How does our self-offering fit with that? How is it liturgically expressed? Are we in danger of losing the sense of self-offering in the eucharist if we are not clear about the differences between celebrating the eucharist and receiving pre-consecrated bread and wine?

Or am I just missing something about the theology of the eucharist?

2. What does it mean for the same congregation to receive communion time and again from the same celebration?

This is thankfully not our practice in Dunoon — apart from the few who come on a Thursday to enable the celebration, who then receive again on Sunday (for the once a month service from the Reserved Sacrament). But recently, I learned of a church which very seldom sees a priest through the winter. The last priest there in the autumn consecrates lots and lots of bread and wine. The congregation then take communion from what is reserved each week until a priest comes again.

I do not know what this means.

Dear readers, will you please help make sense of this for me? And will you help us have this conversation more widely in the church? I know that it’s a hard thing to do on a blog, but unless you want to play with Wiki’s, it’s the best forum we have.

Please pass this post on to all of your theologically savvy friends. I welcome responses in the comments or by email.

I am also linking a sermon I preached last year, when I tried to explain the custom of Holy Communion from the Reserved Sacrament to the congregation in Dunoon. (And do stop to admire the irony of my preaching a sermon that was pastorally necessary, when a year on I still don’t really understand a bit of it.) I am not at ease with the sermon, and there may be things in it you can correct, but it offers some perspective for those new to this (all you city dwellers spoilt with endless priests, for instance.)

I used to think this was a fairly marginal issue — and that Communion from the Reserved Sacrament was rare as a main Sunday service. I now think that it is becoming a normative pattern of worship in many parts of our church, and I’m not sure we know what we’re doing.

sister church

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A rare moment of ecumenical blessing today on Bute.

A much loved member of the St Paul’s congregation is dying.  I was going to see him today and — depending on how he was — intended to offer last rites.  Half way to Bute, I realised I’d forgotten my oil stock.  Three quarters of the way to Bute I had a message from his daughter saying he was worse today.

So, in sudden concern that our time was limited, my warden  rushed off before the morning service to ask the Roman Catholic priest if he would let me use their oils.  He sent her back with a full stock and blessings.

Now, I know it seems simple enough — what’s a bit of oil between churches.  But remember this oil is blessed by the bishop.  It is sacramental, and (depending on your perspective) even a sacrament.  So this was a very real bit of ecumenical sharing.

In the end, the person was much better than he had been, and we decided to wait till tomorrow for oils and eucharist.
Which means he can have piskie-blessed oils after all.  But I’m thankful I learned today that sacramental gifts would be given and shared.