 | ||||||||
| Rev. - BBC - Season #1 Ep. 2 "Jesus is Awesome" |
The Rev. Canon Jeremy Haselock is the retired vice-dean and and precentor of Norwich Cathedral. He is also a Chaplain to the Queen. (This introduction takes me to a level of Anglican esoterica from which I may never escape!)
Canon Haselock wrote in the Summer 2020 edition of The Anglican Digest :
" I adore our church. I see it wilting before my eyes,
failing to rise to the occasion, failing to realize there is an occasion to rise to, It has become obsessed with process, terrified by risk, incapable of hearing
dissenting voices. It has become a bureaucracy . . . "
Wilting.
Canon Haselock is reflecting on the Church of England's response to covid-19 epidemic, but it also applies here. In spite of our attempts to resurrect the "Jesus movement", the Episcopal church is known more for our religious aesthetic and an emphasis on
self-care. So, like museums, theaters, and gymnasiums, we are closed.
I am embarrassed that we are non-essential.
I agree, the church is not the building. But what if you wanted to go to a place made holy by decades of celebrated births, marriages, and deaths, a place consecrated much as the bread and wine is by, time after time after time, retelling the story and repeating the gestures of Jesus of Nazareth? What if you wanted to go there and pray for the plague to pass by your house, only to find that house locked up?
We have spent the last fifty years moving the Holy Eucharist to the center of the church's liturgical life. Did we mean that? If "Zoom" morning prayer and an on-line coffee hour is really sufficient to sustain a community, why open back up at all? Sell the building. Stay "virtual". Tell the clergy to go with "Webex" office hours. Let somebody else take homemade peach ice cream to a sheltered cancer patient.
The church could have redeemed itself by dramatically increasing the number of hours it opened its' food pantry, or hosted National Guard staffed mobile "pop-up pantries", as did the Church Women United here in town. The Episcopal church might have done that, if it hadn't earlier in the winter closed its pantry in search of a more "relational" model of helping the poor which unfortunately never materialized. Our local food bank moved an astonishing 990,000 lbs. of food out into a community where the April 4th. unemployment rate was up 7,748.3% from last year.
I grew up a Roman Catholic, regaled by largely apocryphal stories of priests rushing into burning buildings to save the Host, and inspired by the mostly true stories of Father Damien tending lepers and Mother Teresa feeding beggars. A website link to "Heart/Soul/Mind Yoga" is good. A prayer service on "Alexa" is handy. But isn't there somebody who sacrificed something for someone?
Some churches will break now; will literally go broke. Our diocese has a large endowment, so it will probably just wilt. It will loan money to drooping congregations. College work is close to my heart. The Indiana University campus ministry sent out a letter looking to raise funds to cover a 55% reduction in its diocesan support, and recruiting new board members willing to work without interim leadership. That ministry will sag.
If you have never watched the BBC's Rev (Hulu, Prime, Britbox) with Tom Holland and Olivia Coleman, you have missed a fantastic satire of a particular church, a disappearing vocation, and a flagging institution which may not be long for this world. I wish the Rev. Adam Smallbone would have had a chance to deal with the pandemic. The response we picked cries out for parody.
