The Importance of the Baptismal Font In Worship Spaces

Many of you will begin to notice a change in the worship space at St. Michael’s. Starting with the Easter Vigil, the Baptismal Font will become a permanent fixture in the church, and some of you may wonder why that is.

In addition to the fact that we use it for actual baptism, the Baptismal Font is important in a worship space for three reasons: 1) it reminds us of the amazing grace that Jesus confers on us in baptism, 2) it reminds us of the commitment that we made to Jesus at our baptism, and 3) it reminds us of the Great Commission – how we are called to share our faith with others.

When we are baptized, some truly amazing things happen. We are called to die to self, and to allow ourselves to be raised to new life in Jesus Christ. This is definitely a Resurrection theme, and it is one of the main reasons that Easter is a feast day where baptism is most appropriate. In baptism, we are washed clean of our sins and are initiated into the community of faith. As part of this commitment to die to self and allow Jesus to raise us up, we take certain vows of commitment:

• We will renounce Satan and all the spiritual forces of wickedness that rebel against God.
• We will renounce the evil forces of this world which corrupt and destroy the creatures of God.
• We will renounce all sinful desires that draw us from the love of God.
• We will turn to Jesus Christ and accept Him as our Savior.
• We will put our whole trust in His grace and love.
• We will promise to follow and obey Him as our Lord.

The baptismal font will be filled with Holy Water at all times. Many choose to dip their fingers in the water and make the sign of the cross as a reminder of the sacrifice that Jesus made for us, and of our commitment to Him. I think that is a great thing to do, but I will leave it up to each of you and your own individual piety. It is in no way expected of you.

Finally, as we reflect on baptism and its importance in the church, let’s not forget the importance of the Great Commission. Having the baptismal font there as we leave the church ties in very nicely with our sign leaving the parking lot which says “You are now entering the mission field.” The Great Commission exhorts us to “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (Matthew 28:16-20) As Christian disciples, we should have an intense desire to see people baptized at our baptismal font, and at baptismal fonts all over the world. And by this, I do not mean only children. When we see others coming to our Baptismal Font to make their confession that Jesus Christ is Lord, living and true, we know that we are living into who Jesus is calling us to be – intense disciples of Jesus who are going about spreading the gospel not only in the world and the larger church, but in our own community as well.

My brothers and sisters, when you see our baptismal font in the church, let it do two things. Let it remind you of the wonderful grace given to you and the commitment you made in your own baptismal vows. And let it also remind you of your call to proclaim your faith, both in word and deed, by loving and serving others, and by calling them to baptism in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Blessings to you all in this glorious Easter Season!

Reaching the Lost!

According to the Gospel of Matthew, the last thing Jesus said to us before he left this earth and ascended into heaven was “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (Matthew 28:19-20, ESV) This is well known to many of us as the Great Commission.

Notice that in the first part of the great commission, there are four action words there: go, make, baptize, and teach. As Anglicans, we are called by the Great Commissions to two things: evangelism and discipleship. This is the reason that our vision for St. Michael’s is “Reaching the Lost. Growing the Found.” Reaching the lost is evangelism. Growing the found is discipleship.

I have found that discipleship comes much easier to Anglicans than evangelism does. In fact, many of us Anglicans who grew up in the Episcopal Church were subtly taught that evangelism was a dirty word. Other denominations did that, not us. Ironically, those “other denominations” were growing, while we were shrinking. The sad thing about it is that we were slowly taking the life out of the church, and robbing ourselves of the joy of seeing amazing miracles of God – those miracles that take place when another person comes to a saving relationship with Jesus Christ.

I want our church to reclaim that joy. While we will continue in outreach and mission to other parts of the world, I want us to become uniquely focused on sharing our faith in the Ridgecrest community. Having been at St. Michael’s for six months now, it is very clear to me that we have some amazing disciples worshipping in this place – people with amazing stories to tell and a deep commitment to Jesus Christ – and I want us to be able to share those stories with others. When that happens, others will want that amazing joy as well, and a new disciple will be born.

Starting on the first Wednesday in April (and continuing through the end of May), I will begin a teaching series called “Reaching the Lost” that will take place on Wednesday nights starting at 6:30 p.m. as part of our Wednesday Night at the Well program (with dinner starting at 5:30 as usual). Both the men and the women will be combined for this teaching series. We will be focusing specifically on reaching the lost souls of our community. The course will have several components. We will begin with an overview of what scripture calls us to do regarding evangelism. After that, we will focus on two aspects of sharing the Good News of Jesus Christ: What do we say? And how do we identify who to say it to? We will then close by looking at aspects of our culture that make evangelism challenging.

Sharing our faith really and truly can be a fun and exciting adventure – and I want it to be just that! Join us on Wednesday nights as we learn how to effectively reach the lost. Learn how we can truly live into who God is calling us to be, disciples of Jesus Christ who are actively living into their faith and sharing it with others.

Hermeneutics of a Stop Sign

For a little Thursday morning humor:

Suppose you're traveling to work and you see a stop sign. What do you do? That depends on how you exegete the stop sign.

1. A postmodernist theologian deconstructs the sign (knocks it over with his car), ending forever the tyranny of the north-south traffic over the east-west traffic.

2. Similarly, a Marxist refuses to stop because he sees the stop sign as an instrument of class conflict. He concludes that the bourgeois use the north-south road and obstruct the progress of the workers in the east-west road.

3. A serious and educated Catholic rolls through the intersection because he believes he cannot understand the stop sign apart from its interpretive community and tradition. Observing that the interpretive community doesn't take it too seriously, he doesn't feel obligated to take it too seriously either.

4. An average Catholic (or Orthodox or Coptic or Anglican or Methodist or Presbyterian or whatever) doesn't bother to read the sign but he'll stop if the car in front of him does.

5. A fundamentalist, taking the text very literally, stops at the stop sign and waits for it to tell him to go.

6. A seminary-educated evangelical preacher might look up "STOP" in his lexicons of English and discover that it can mean: 1) something which prevents motion, such as a plug for a drain, or a block of wood that prevents a door from closing; 2) a location where a train or bus lets off passengers. The main point of his sermon the following Sunday on this text is: when you see a stop sign, it is a place where traffic is naturally clogged, so it is a good place to let off passengers from your car.

7. An orthodox Jew does one of two things: a) Take another route to work that doesn't have a stop sign so that he doesn't run the risk of disobeying the Law; b) Stop at the sign, say "Blessed art thou, O Lord our God, king of the universe, who hast given us Thy commandment to stop," wait 3 seconds according to his watch, and then proceed. Incidentally, the Talmud has the following comments on this passage: R[abbi] Meir says: He who does not stop shall not live long. R. Hillel says: Cursed is he who does not count to three before proceeding. R. Simon ben Yudah says: Why three? Because the Holy One, blessed be He, gave us the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings. R. ben Issac says: Because of the three patriarchs. R. Yehuda says: Why bless the Lord at a stop sign? Because it says, "Be still and know that I am God." R. Hezekiel says: When Jephthah returned from defeating the Ammonites, the Holy One, blessed be He, knew that a donkey would run out of the house and overtake his daughter, but Jephthah did not stop at the stop sign, and the donkey did not have time to come out. For this reason he saw his daughter first and lost her. Thus he was judged for his transgression at the stop sign. R. Gamaliel says: R. Hillel, when he was a baby, never spoke a word, though his parents tried to teach him by speaking and showing him the words on a scroll. One day his father was driving through town and did not stop at the sign. Young Hillel called out: "Stop, father!" In this way, he began reading and speaking at the same time. Thus it is written: "Out of the mouths of babes." R. ben Jacob says: Where did the stop sign come from? Out of the sky, for it is written: "Forever, O Lord, your word is fixed in the heavens." R. Ben Nathan says: Where were the stop signs created? On the fourth day, for it is written: "Let them serve as signs." R. Yeshuah says...[continues for three more pages]

8. A Lubavitcher rabbi does the same thing as an orthodox Jew, except that he waits 10 seconds instead of 3. He also replaces his brake lights with 1000 watt searchlights and connects his horn so that it is activated whenever he touches the brake pedal. He also works out the gematria of shin-tav-pey (S-T-(O)-P) and takes it to mean that the Rebbe Schneersohn, of blessed memory, will be resurrected as the Messiah after he has stopped at this intersection 780 times.

9. A scholar from the Jesus Seminar concludes that the passage "STOP" undoubtedly was never uttered by Jesus himself because being the progressive Jew that He was, He would never have wanted to stifle peoples' progress. Therefore, STOP must be a textual insertion belonging entirely to stage III of the gospel tradition, when the church was first confronted by traffic in its parking lot.

10. A NT scholar notices that there is no stop sign on Mark street but there is one on Matthew and Luke streets, and concludes that the ones on Luke and Matthew streets are both copied from a sign on a street no one has ever seen called "Q" Street. There is an excellent 300 page doctoral dissertation on the origin of these stop signs and the differences between stop signs on Matthew and Luke street in the scholar's commentary on the passage. There is an unfortunate omission in the dissertation, however; it doesn't explain the meaning of the text.

11. An OT scholar points out that there are a number of stylistic differences between the first and second half of the passage "STOP." For example, "ST" contains no enclosed areas and 5 line endings, whereas "OP" contains two enclosed areas and only one line termination. He concludes that the author for the second part is different from the author of the first part and probably lived hundreds of years later. Later OT scholars determine that the second half is itself actually written by two separate authors because of similar stylistic differences between the "O" and the "P".

12. Another prominent OT scholar notes in his commentary that the stop sign would fit better into the context three streets back. (Unfortunately, he neglected to explain why in his commentary.) Clearly it was moved to its present location by a later redactor. He thus exegetes the intersection as though the sign were not there.

13. Because of the difficulties in interpretation, another OT scholar amends the text, changing the "T" to "H". "SHOP" is much easier to understand in context than "STOP" because of the multiplicity of stores in the area. The textual corruption probably occurred because "SHOP" is so similar to "STOP" on the sign several streets back, that it is a natural mistake for a scribe to make. Thus the sign should be interpreted to announce the existence of a shopping area. If this is true, it could indicate that both meanings are valid, thus making the thrust of the message "STOP (AND) SHOP."

14. A "prophetic" preacher notices that the square root of the sum of the numeric representations of the letters S-T-O-P (sigma-tau-omicron-pi in the Greek alphabet), multiplied by 40 (the number of testing), and divided by four (the number of the world--north, south, east, and west), equals 666. Therefore, he concludes that stop signs are the dreaded "mark of the beast," a harbinger of divine judgment upon the world, and must be avoided at all cost.

A New Year's Call to Prayer for Christians Under Attack

Dear Fellow Shepherds,

Epiphany greetings!

Many of us have watched and read news reports about the attacks on Christians in Egypt and Nigeria as they gathered to celebrate the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ. We mourn the tragic loss of life inflicted by these heinous acts of violence. We stand in solidarity with our Anglican and Coptic brothers and sisters in the Middle East and Nigeria who regularly face religious persecution. While persecution is never welcome or pleasant, it is inevitable for those who seek to follow in the way of Jesus Christ. Jesus bids us to pick up our cross daily and follow after him and promises that we are blessed when we are persecuted for his name's sake.

In light of attacks on Christians in Egypt and Nigeria this Christmas and in Iraq this past October, I invite you to pray for Christians living in Southern Sudan this Sunday in your local parish. This Sunday (January 9, 2011) Christians living in Southern Sudan will be deciding whether to secede from the country of Sudan to form a new independent country. Many international observers expect that this referendum will result in a resurgence of violence in an area that has already faced Africa's longest civil war (more info).

Some 3 million Anglican Christians living in Southern Sudan are looking to us, their Anglican family in North America, to support them in prayer. Please join with me in praying for persecuted Christians in Southern Sudan and throughout the world this Sunday.

Prayer:
Almighty God, in these days of terrorism and persecution, strengthen Christian communities in Southern Sudan and throughout the world with your grace and comfort. May your Holy Spirit comfort the bereaved and heal the injured. And grant that the gospel message of love, forgiveness, and redemption would be proclaimed through word and deed. All this we pray through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Faithfully your archbishop,
+Robert Pittsburgh

Oswald Chambers: Experience, or God's Revealed Truth?

These are very important words to live by, especially when modern "Christianity" tries to bring personal experience up to the same level as God's revealed word. Oswald Chambers hits this one out of the park - and to think that he wrote this long before the issues that we are currently dealing with surfaced. Sounds like words of prophecy to me.

From My Utmost For His Highest, devotional for December 21, 2010

“We have received … the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God” (1 Corinthians 2:12).

My experience is not what makes redemption real—redemption is reality. Redemption has no real meaning for me until it is worked out through my conscious life. When I am born again, the Spirit of God takes me beyond myself and my experiences, and identifies me with Jesus Christ. If I am left only with my personal experiences, I am left with something not produced by redemption. But experiences produced by redemption prove themselves by leading me beyond myself, to the point of no longer paying any attention to experiences as the basis of reality. Instead, I see that only the reality itself produced the experiences. My experiences are not worth anything unless they keep me at the Source of truth—Jesus Christ.

If you try to hold back the Holy Spirit within you, with the desire of producing more inner spiritual experiences, you will find that He will break the hold and take you again to the historic Christ. Never support an experience which does not have God as its Source and faith in God as its result. If you do, your experience is anti-Christian, no matter what visions or insights you may have had. Is Jesus Christ Lord of your experiences, or do you place your experiences above Him? Is any experience dearer to you than your Lord? You must allow Him to be Lord over you, and pay no attention to any experience over which He is not Lord. Then there will come a time when God will make you impatient with your own experience, and you can truthfully say, “I do not care what I experience—I am sure of Him!”

Be relentless and hard on yourself if you are in the habit of talking about the experiences you have had. Faith based on experience is not faith; faith based on God’s revealed truth is the only faith there is.

Jesus, The Reason for the Season

Recently, I was in a Bible Study (Men’s Fraternity, Wednesday Night At The Well) and the presenter said something that I thought was the craziest thing I had ever heard of. He said (and I am paraphrasing) “You know, Christmas is all about you. Sure, Jesus is a major part of it, but Christmas is all about you.” I thought “What an odd thing to say. Surely he must be kidding.” I thought that Christmas really was all about Jesus.

And then he took to quoting scripture. He pulled from our lessons that we will read on Christmas Eve, and started with Isaiah 9:6. “For a child has been born for us, a son given to us; authority rests upon his shoulders; and he is named Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.” Then he moved to the Gospel of Luke, and the encounter that the shepherds had with the angels. “For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.” (Luke 2:11 (ESV)).

As crazy as it sounded at first, Robert Lewis was exactly right. Christmas really is about us. It is about what our Savior Jesus did for us – and it is this that we celebrate during this Christmas season.

Christmas is called an “incarnational feast,” and it is a time when we celebrate the fact that he came down to this earth to save us. He actually took our nature upon Himself when he came down to this earth. He had free will, and he could have sinned, but he chose not to. This is one of the reasons that Holy Scripture refers to him as the “second Adam.” In effect, Jesus came to undo the mess made by the first Adam when he sinned, and introduced original sin into the Creation. By His going through life sinless, and by dying on the Cross for our sins, he made true forgiveness possible for us. By coming to this earth, he made eternal salvation possible. This is what we truly celebrate at Christmas – that by coming down to this earth, we are saved and have an eternity of glory in the presence of our Lord to look forward to. Praise be to God!

During the Christmas season, we have so many things that can distract us – things that are peripheral to the true meaning of Christmas. For the children, there are the presents. For many of us, there is the gift of family. All of these things bring joy to most people at Christmas, but they can also bring pain. Some have very little money, and thus cannot buy presents for their children. Others have lost loved ones at Christmas (as our family has with the death of Lisa’s Uncle Tommy), and so Christmas can be a painful time. There is no magical formula – no way that we can just wave a wand over those hurts and pains and make them just go away. But there is one thing that all of us can do, and it helps tremendously. We should remember the reason for the season.

Christmas is about the true gift that Jesus Christ in His glorious majesty gave to us. It is about the beginning of something really special – something that culminated with Jesus’s death on the cross and His resurrection. Christmas is about the ultimate gift – the gift of eternal life. When we focus on this during the Christmas season, we experience the joy, the peace, and the hope of living redeemed lives, living in the joyful expectation of eternal life made possible by Jesus, our Savior. Merry Christmas to you all!

Letter to Congregation RE: Diocesan Lawsuit

November 19, 2010

Dear St. Michael’s Parish Family:

I write to you today to bring you very good news on the legal front. Yesterday, the Fifth District Court of Appeals of the State of California ruled completely in our Diocese’s favor on our appeal of the Superior Court’s decision. In effect, the appellate court declared that the trial court was wrong to get involved in ecclesiastical and doctrinal matters, and instead should look at each property dispute based on matters of neutral law. This is very clearly a significant victory for us in a significant battle.

At this point, the case is back in the hands of the Episcopal Church. They can either attempt to have the ruling reviewed by the California Supreme Court, or they can amend their original lawsuit at the Superior Court level and proceed from there. What they will do remains to be seen.

It is important, though, to take this court decision in context. As you are aware, the lawsuit that is in process right now is between the Anglican Diocese of San Joaquin and the Episcopal Diocese of San Joaquin. Since St. Michael’s is a separately incorporated entity, we are subject to a separate lawsuit which is currently on hold pending the outcome of the lawsuit at the diocesan level. Once this case is decided at the Diocesan level, it remains to be seen how the Episcopal Church will proceed at the parish level, if they even proceed at all.

As your rector, I am very excited about the outcome of the appeal yesterday. It is a significant victory in a significant battle. There is much that still needs to happen, but I remain cautiously optimistic about our chances to ultimately prevail. Please continue to pray earnestly that God’s Will will ultimately prevail.

Regardless of the outcome, we will continue to be about the business of proclaiming the Good News of Jesus Christ in a world that desperately needs to hear it. May God bless you all throughout this Thanksgiving season.

Yours in Jesus Christ,

Fr. Townsend Waddill
Rector

Reflections On Advent

Why do we celebrate the season of Advent? It’s a good question, and one that we as liturgical Christians should definitely ask. We live in an instant-gratification culture that just cannot wait. Christmas seems to come earlier and earlier, often times not even waiting for Halloween to be over, much less Thanksgiving. Why should we as Christians wait when the world around cannot seem to?

The answer lies in our command to be countercultural. When the world throws out the fruit of the Spirit that we call patience, we are called to reclaim it, and to show it forth in our daily lives, even if the culture around us looks at us like we are the weirdest birds on earth.

I am always struck by the two-fold nature of the season of Advent. In Advent, we remember and reflect on those who waited on the birth of Jesus Christ. But we don’t stop there. We ourselves are waiting on Jesus Christ – waiting for Him to come again in great power and glory, and to redeem His Creation once and for all. Let’s reflect on each of these periods of waiting in a little more depth.

Whenever I think of Advent, I am always reminded of the Annunciation. It is that great passage of the Bible when the angel Gabriel comes to the Virgin Mary to announce to her that she will bear a son (Luke 1:26-38). Gabriel tells Mary that the Lord is with her, she will bear an extraordinary child, and this child will be conceived in an extraordinary fashion.

What is so exceptional about Mary? She shows great faith and reliance on God in a period of uncertainty. We see a broad emotional response in her to the news that this angel is bringing. Her first reaction is one in which she is greatly troubled. When Gabriel announced to her that “the Lord is with you,” she does not know what to make of it, and that carries with it the connotation that it could be either good or bad. Mary then moves from being troubled to being puzzled. Mary knows that she is a virgin and that there is no way that she could conceive a child. After all, she is only betrothed to Joseph. She is not married to him. The Lord tells her that this will be the work of the Holy Spirit. “And Mary said, ‘Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.’” Her response is indicative of her great faith for two reasons. First, getting pregnant as a virgin was seemingly impossible, and second, because getting pregnant out of wedlock in those days brought with it a possible sentence of death. Mary was surely on dangerous ground. In spite of this, though, she responded faithfully to the call of her God, and we as Christian disciples are called to go and do likewise.

In some senses, although we are not called to physically bear the Son of God, our story can be strikingly similar to the story of Mary – just in a different context. We, like Mary, are waiting with anxious anticipation. Mary waited on the birth of her child Jesus. We wait on the coming of the triumphant Lord Jesus Christ in glorious majesty. Mary was called to do something that was quite extraordinary, and so are we as well. Mary was called to live a sacrificial life, and so are we. Mary was called to put her complete faith and trust in the Lord, and so are we.

As we go through this Advent season, let us always be mindful of the importance of Mary’s witness as a saint of God. God called her, and when he did, she responded “behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.” God calls us to do great things for His kingdom on earth while we wait for His coming again in glory. While we wait and do the work of the Lord, may the Lord give us the courage to put our faith and our trust in Him, because we are also servants of the Lord, called according to God’s Word. May God bless you richly during this Advent season.

Engaging the Fight With Evil

“War broke out in heaven; Michael and his angels fought against the dragon. The dragon and his angels fought back, but they were defeated, and there was no longer any place for them in heaven. The great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the Devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world-- he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him.”
- Revelation 12:7-9

Recently, I was browsing around in a Christian bookstore, and the title of a book jumped off of the bookshelf and hit me right between the eyes. The book is called Fight: Are You Willing to Pick a Fight with Evil?, by Kenny Luck. I grabbed the book and began to devour it word for word.

As it became abundantly clear to me that I was called to be the rector of St. Michael’s Anglican Church, I began to reflect on our patron saint, St. Michael the Archangel. Michael is one of those characters in the Bible who is able to emphatically answer “yes” to the question posed by Kenny Luck’s book. He is an example to us of courage and perseverance.

The passage above from Revelation describes what is commonly known as the War in Heaven. Michael and his band of angels engage in a war against Satan and his minions, and Michael wins. The devil is then cast down to the earth and all evil is cast out of heaven for all eternity.

While the War in Heaven is St. John’s vision of a future event, it has implications for all of us in our daily lives. We are not in heaven fighting Satan directly, but we do fight battles against evil in our daily lives today. With Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, we are called to engage the battle, and we are called to fight to win!

Engage the Battle! Can you imagine what would happen if St. Michael and his angels had chosen not to fight to the battle? They could have made every excuse or come up with every reason not to fight. If they had fallen away from the battle, Satan would not be defeated and sin and evil might reside in heaven for all eternity. Battles between good and evil – Satan and God – happen all the time in this world. We are called to engage the battle, and to do so with courage and conviction, knowing that we have the ultimate weapon against evil, Jesus. If we choose not to engage the battle with courage and perseverance, then we allow evil to take hold in the world around us. When we choose not to fight for Jesus Christ, it creates a vacuum, and that vacuum is filled with evil.

Win! When we are called to engage the battle, we should do so in order to win! If you look at most successful fighting forces around the world, they usually have two things, good solid training, and an effective command structure that helps them strategize and guides them into how they should fight. The same is true for an army of Christian soldiers. We have the ultimate training program, God’s Holy Word. We are called to read, mark, learn and inwardly digest the Bible as our training regimen, so that we can be effective in the fight against evil. An army that is not well trained will be overcome in battle. Likewise, if we as Christian disciples are not well trained, we will be overcome in the battle against evil. Our command structure is Jesus Christ Himself, and His Church, the Body of Christ. If we stay tuned to Him in prayer, and mutual discernment within the church, we will be very aware of where and how God is calling us to fight. We will be doing His will as we fight against evil, and he will give us the tools we need to win.

In closing, I encourage you to use St. Michael as an example of the courage and perseverance in the fight against evil in all the world. God is calling. Gird up your loins and join the battle. Jesus is counting on you for his army of disciples.