The Church Shorn (Penitential Advent 2 of 2)

John the Baptist
St. Mary's Episcopal Ashe County

The Episcopal Church is not John the Baptist. The Episcopal Church is the sheep, or in this case maybe the camel, that needs to be shorn to provide clothing to the prophets in our midst. The stark reality being that if we look at the balance of the Episcopal Church in our history and our current culture we do not live in the valley that must be filled... we live in the mountain and hill that must be made low. We exist in the space that must be shorn.

The issue is that too often we want to focus on the context of the individuals in our pews. Without any doubt in each of us, no matter how privileged we are in the system we inhabit, there are distinct valleys that must be lifted up. Places that the cycle of systematic violence we all inhabit have worn raw. These places need to be filled and must have a time of fulfillment. Part of Advent's call is to provide a space for that.

This cannot happen, however, in an individual context unless it happens on a systematic context. If a machine is consistently wrenching a set of cogs too hard, forcing them to wear down to nubs much faster than expected, to replace the cogs will not solve the problem... the entire machine needs to be recalibrated if it is to be sustainable and safe. This is why in Advent we have to ask ourselves how are we, as individuals and a church corporate, needing to recalibrate our own places in the machine in order to prevent the wearing down of others. What mountains and hills create our foundations that are denying foundation to others?

This is a question of how do we need to be shorn, how do we need to be worn down, how does part of us need to be taken away... so that others might be clothed, so that others might be brought up, so that others may have vital realities added. This is the question of how do we confront and dismantle the privilege so often inherent to the Episcopal Church, and many Episcopalians, and bring an end to the oppression that such maintains. This is the Penitence of Advent.

The Church Pregnant (Penitential Advent 1 of 2)

Mary Great with Child
St. Mary's, W Jefferson, NC

To the woman he said, many are the pangs, many are the throes I will give thee to endure; with pangs thou shalt give birth to children.
                                                                                    -Genesis 3:16b

We speak of Advent as a time of hope, and that is a true statement... but we must also speak of Advent as a time of pangs and throes that we must endure. When we seek to strip the penitential nature out of advent what we are in fact doing is abandoning the pregnant Mary to the desert. We want to gain the hope her trials have bought us but not share the cost of the act that brought that hope.

As a church we are the bearers of Christ in the world. We are the church pregnant with the expectation of Christ's coming again. That means to be church we should be in the midst of pangs and throes that we must endure. That means as individual christians we should be in the midst of enduring pangs and throes as we live lives in proclamation of Christ Crucified. These pangs and throes are at many points indeed our own, but we are equally called to enter into the pangs and throes of others. To be Christian is to be both the pregnant and also the supportive spouse to those around us. We are each others midwives.

For too many decades we have sought to shunt the pangs and throes out of church, this has been especially true in the transitions we have made around Advent, when the realities of such should be most pressing. We have erred toward making the church a place where we can bring and recognize our hope only but not our tribulations. We have erred in making the church a place where the tribulations of the world are given a momentary relief but not borne and brought to fulfillment in Christ. In our hopes to create a space of comfort for all we have failed to create a place that requires the comfortable to enter into the discomfort of others.

We have become, to readily the spouse that does not endure the pangs and throes of childbearing and childbirth. We too often refuse to be midwives for the pangs and throes of those around us... to aid in the bearing of them so that we may truly enter into the Hope of Christ. It is only by entering into these realities, by making them our own, that we can become the Church Pregnant and truly bear the Hope to the world. This is why we must live into the penitence of Advent because pangs and throes are being endured in our midst and in our lives and only by bearing them with each other can we truly find the Hope inherent to the season.