Reading Genesis 1

 

This Sunday we are beginning our series on Genesis 1-4.  We begin, of course, with the creation account in Genesis chapter 1.  In the 19th and 20th centuries, this text has been obscured under debates about how it relates to scientific claims surrounding evolution and the age of the earth.  The result of this is that the deep theological riches of this passage have been ignored and trampled upon.  As a supplement, I’m attaching a few articles that have helped me think through how to deal with Genesis 1 and how to read the bible in general.  Enjoy!

http://biologos.org/uploads/projects/Keller_white_paper.pdf

http://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/justintaylor/2015/01/28/biblical-reasons-to-doubt-the-creation-days-were-24-hour-periods/

http://www.the-highway.com/literal1_Poythress.html

 

An Ordination Sermon For Hunter Jordan

Preached on Monday June 15, 2015

It is a tremendous blessing to be asked to preach today Hunter. I want to say that I am so impressed with who you are. I wish that in some way I could take credit for the work your are going to do in ministry, but you have zealously pursued Christ and have become the man you are completely independent of any influence of mine. I am so excited about what God is going to do in your ministry that I do not feel worthy to preach to you today. But I do have some concerns and they’re not just about the length of your shorts.

As we were getting ready to process into Jason Hamshaw’s ordination service, Jason looked a little nervous. So, I tried to encourage him and I told him “Jason, just read the words in the book and it’s really hard to screw this up.” Then I thought for a moment and added to that., “everything after today, though, is very easy to screw up.” Now in today’s reading, Paul gives us a number of requirements for those entering into ordained ministry and as I’ve reflected on these I’ve added to that thought. “Ministry is really easy to screw up, but it can be hard to get kicked out of.” I mean, you really have to blow it to get kicked out of ministry even if you are totally screwing it up.

Paul’s words here not only tell us the parameters of who can be called into ministry, but they remind us of the deep burden of responsibility that ministry is. In fact, I would have to say that ministry has constituted the deepest trial of my whole life. This may sound weird or wrong, but I can remember as my dad was dying in the hospital thinking to myself “This is hard, but it’s not as hard as being in ministry.” That might sound weird, so to help us understand the difficulty of ministry, I turn to John Chrysostom.

David, Goliath, and Mother Emmanuel

I preached this sermon on Sunday June 21^st after Dylann Roof entered into Mother Emmanuel AME church and opened fire killing nine innocent African-American men and women. Although I did address this tragedy directly in my Sunday sermon, I have typed up this manuscript paying special attention to the issue of racism in our society today.

             As we move through our series on David, we come this morning to a story that almost needs no introduction; the story of David and Goliath. It would be easy this Father’s Day to address the story of David and Goliath like this: “Goliath was a giant. We all face giants. As dads, we face giants of time management, changing culture, and media saturation. David faced his giants, and if you follow these principles, you can face your giants too.” We could do this with any number of giants in our lives, addictions, disease, racism, political divisions, etc. etc. The problem is, however, that facing your giants is not the point of this story. In order to get at exactly what this story is about, let’s do some background.

As our story begins, Saul has lined up the armies of Israel against the philistine army. The Philistines were not, as modern parlance would indicate, an uncivilized and unadvanced people group. Quite the opposite is actually true. Contemporary historical accounts speak of a people group identified as “The Sea People,” or Peleset, from which we likely get the name “Philistine.” The peleset were a fierce warrior people with highly advanced weaponry and military capabilities. Ancient Egyptian records speak of them attacking Egypt under Ramses III, effectively neutralizing the powerful empire of Egypt. Many historians believe the peleset were the people responsible for overthrowing the dominant empire in the Western Mediterranean, the Hittite Empire. Not only that, but it is likely the Peleset that swept across Mycenaen Greece, destroying their civilization across the time of a 100 or so years and plunging Greek civilization into a 300 year long “dark age.” In other words, these people had toppled or neutralized the most powerful kingdoms and empires of the day.

Part V: Will the Real Anglicanism Please Stand Up? English Evangelicalism

After the Glorious Revolution for one reason or another, the British royalty began to view the church not as an instrument of spiritual vitality for the nation, but stability. Perhaps they’d seen the tumult caused by both the civil war and William’s ascendancy and they didn’t want any more of that religious squabbling. Whatever the reason, the broad church principles of Latitudinarianism became the raison de etre of the church during the Hanoverian dynasties. Thus, the church of the 1700’s was a church that was governed mainly by two pieces of scripture “Everything decent and in good order”(1 Cor 14:40) and “do not be overly zealous.”(Romans 10:2) During this time, the authorities in and over the church viewed with apprehension those who held passionately to the core doctrines of the Reformation, including the need for individuals to respond to the gospel with faith and repentance and be, in the words of Jesus, “born again.” One of the most damning accusations you could make against a churchman or priest in this age was to accuse him of “Enthusiasm”.

Many of those accused of “enthusiasm” would fit well into what we have described as “Reformation Anglicans”(with some serious differences we’ll discuss later). Men like Charles Simeon, John Newton, and Augustus Toplady led great revivals and sought not only to bring British people to Christ, but to bring the Gospel to bear in the Church of England. They were rarely greeted with open arms in the Church of England though. Simeon’s own congregation hated him and the wardens even locked up the church so no one could come and hear him preach! John Newton sought ordination in the Church of England for seven years before a wealthy benefactor, Lord Dartmouth, finally procured an appointment for him and persuaded a bishop to ordain him. Regardless of the fact that Newton turned down dozens of offers to serve in dissenter churches, almost every bishop he spoke to questioned his loyalty to the Church of England. Ever since the restoration of the monarchy in the 1600’s, the theological descendants of the Reformation have lived in the Church of England mostly on the margins.

Part IV Will the Real Anglicanism Please Stand Up? Latitudinarianism

Perhaps you read my first three posts and and you thought to yourself “This sounds very different from how my rector described Anglicanism to me!”  “I thought we were a big tent?”  “What about the via media?”  You may even have had a t-shirt that encouraged people to join The Episcopal Church because “no matter what you believe, there’s someone else in The Episcopal Church who believes it too!”  You may feel this way especially if you entered Anglicanism in North America. I would wager that many Episcopal or Anglican confirmation classes would define Anglicanism as a sort of compromise position. In the 1840’s, this compromise position was termed the ‘via media,’ the middle way. More recently, this compromise position has been termed “Three Streams Anglicanism.”  This is the idea that in Anglicanism the three streams of catholic identity, evangelical truth, and charismatic experience come together. Those who identify Anglicanism in either of these ways would have a hard time with the sort of picture I’m painting here of different camps that have vastly different theological foundations. For them, Anglicanism doesn’t devolve into silly arguments over churchmanship or theology. We are a big tent! There is room for all here!

Part III: Will the Real Anglicanism Please Stand Up? The Scottish Non-Juror Influence on North American Anglicanism

This is part three in a series on how Anglicanism has viewed itself in different times and different places.  Look here for part I and here for part II.  

A few years ago, I was setting up our chapel for a worship service. We don’t have a pulpit in the chapel, so we use a sort of moveable podium when we need one. This podium had been set up right in front of the altar (which, by the way, was set up not as a table, but an altar). One faithful woman questioned this. “Wouldn’t it be more Anglican to move the pulpit to the side and have the altar in the center?” Behind her question was the assumption that resides in many American Anglican churches, that High Churchmanship has a greater claim to being legitimately Anglican than Reformation ideas or even broad Anglican Evangelicalism. If what I have said about the history of Anglicanism so far is true, then how did we get here?

In order to understand how we got here, we must look at a particular movement within Anglicanism that doesn’t tend to get a lot of attention, even though it has profoundly impacted Anglicanism in North America. At the end of the Carolinian period, James II succeeded Charles II as King. Many had already suspected Charles II of having Catholic sympathies. James confirmed their suspicions when he converted to Catholicism. In response, James’ detractors in parliament invited his Protestant son-in-law, William of Orange, to invade England and oust the Catholic King. William accepted the proposal and came to the throne in what has come to be known as The Glorious Revolution, due to the fact that James fled before any blood could be shed.

Will The Real Anglicanism Please Stand Up? Part II

High Church Anglicanism

“Are you high and hazy or low and lazy?”  “They are low church, so they have, like, guitars and a praise band.” “I’m pretty high church. I love all the smells and bells.”  “I like the low church stuff, cause I’m just more of a casual person.”  “I’m glad we’re going back to a more Anglican way of doing things here and emphasizing traditional worship more.”  High Church and Low Church. This distinction is one that Anglicans will be all too familiar with. Unfortunately, the history behind this distinction has largely been lost so that today when people talk about “High Church” and “Low Church” they do so referring mainly to taste. The problem with this trend is that it ignores the significant theological differences that underpin High Churchmenship, Reformation Anglicanism, and Anglican Evangelicalism.

Today we consider the “High Church” movement. English seperatists (those who wanted the Church to be disestablished from the government in England) originally gave this name to those who advocated strongly for an Established Church of England, but more and more it came to be identified with those who would have been known as ‘Conservatives’ during the English Reformation because of their desire to hold on to more of the traditional elements of the churches teaching and practice. High Church Anglicans are sometimes identified historically with Archbishop of Canterbury, William Laud. This movement dominated the Church of England from the reign of Charles I until the Glorious Revolution.