February 21, 2006
Feet
A specialist has been defined as a person who knows more and more about less and less until she knows all there is to know about nothing. God may be such a specialist. You gotta hand it to her, for look at all she had to know about in order to create what she did out of absolutely nothing.
The Anglican Communion used to be like that, if you allow that it’s mostly this side of heaven and not all that organized. It was made up of a lot of autocephali each with just enough spiritual DNA in common to keep it all running. Actually, it seems a lot easier to concentrate on Jesus that way, without all the worrying about and fussing over orthodoxy.
Of course, there seem always the creeds to contend with. They’re surely more than nothing when it comes to anybody agreeing as to what they mean. But they would probably fall apart without Jesus, and, without Jesus, God would have an even harder time getting through to us, the prophets not withstanding.
I looked at a website the other day of a church that seems to be trying to have its cake and eat it too. I was looking because its rector is one along with three others scuffling to be the next bishop in what more or less used to be our diocese. His parish claims to have one foot planted in something called the Anglican Communion Network, an outfit that from the looks of it seems to be more interested in orthodoxy than God, certainly than people, and the other foot planted in the Episcopal Church in the USA, an outfit which seems more of the Anglican type, which is to say that it cannot agree all that much about anything but loving folk and even that seems at times up for grabs. If the Network continues its drift apart from the church like now, I should think that such foot-planting could get downright precarious.
Anyhow, when it comes to naming, I prefer “church” to “network” if only because it means being gathered together and not just tangled, which is what network suggests. The one requires dirt and boundaries to locate itself, the other, just lots of money (which, of course, is not all that bad).
God used dirt, but never bothers to say where it came from. Or maybe it was just playdough which is about as ubiquitous as one can get. I’m biased enough and a bit self-serving, however, to think that it came, would you believe, out of nowhere.
But if it’s any help, I remember Jesus claiming to have been around a long time even since before Abraham, but if he knew or cared not ever much talking about where the dirt came from. If anybody could have asked God, surely he could have, had he not been such a respecter of persons, a way of life, come to think of it, we’d do well to plant both feet on.
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