Faithful Remnant?

by Bishop George Langberg

So here we are, keeping the faith whole and intact, even when that puts us at odds with the world around us, worshipping as our parents and maybe our grandparents did, using a [liturgy] last revised when much of the man-made stuff around us existed only in science fiction, and singing only church music written before World War II. Are we simply a leftover from a bygone era – a sort of living anachronism – or are we the “faithful remnant” of the true church?

“Faithful remnant” is a term linked with the prophecy of Ezekiel, and when I was searching for its origin, I came across a “Message for the Faithful Remnant” on a conservative Christian site which began:

In a day when "bigness" is exalted and "smallness" is despised, when it seems that the righteous suffer and the sinners prosper, when compromise flourishes and obedience to the Word of God is looked upon with disdain, what a blessing it is to be reminded that God knows all about the situation of his faithful remnant and that He has special words of encouragement for them. God's faithful remnant should not expect the approval of the world, false prophets, or disobedient brethren. Our desire should still be to have His approval: "Well done, thou good and faithful servant."  

Those encouraging words do sound like they were written just for us, don’t they? As long as we keep the faith and have God’s approval, why should we care if we are small, little-known, or even despised by other mortals who don’t have the good sense to appreciate or join us?

Before we get too comfortable, however, let’s backtrack about 2,000 years. Speaking to his followers after the Resurrection, Jesus said, “Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.” He further ordered Peter: “Feed my sheep.” In these two instructions, Christians received their marching orders – to build up the church by carrying the Gospel message into the world, and to tend and nourish the resulting flock.

A few days earlier, “on the night in which He was betrayed,” Jesus gave us the sacrament of His Body and Blood, saying, “Do this in remembrance of me,” and that same night He prayed that His followers would all be One as He and the Father are One, so that the world would believe that He had been sent by the Father.

The early church took all of these instructions very seriously, and it grew from a tiny sect into a dominant force in the world by reaching out, preaching to and converting those around it. It nourished its members through teaching and by gathering frequently to celebrate the Blessed Sacrament, and it maintained unity, keeping its house in order with the several Great Councils of the Church.

This “undivided church” came apart at the beginning of Christianity’s second millennium with the division into Eastern and Western churches, and during the last 500 years or so, the Western church has undergone many further fractures, resulting in the literally hundreds of Christian denominations we have today.

We, too, are the product of those fractures, and without rehearsing the events which produced the Church of England and, much more recently, the Continuing Church, we can make the case that our branch of the greater Church was born out of dissension, so we shouldn’t be surprised when we don’t all agree. The critical question in such disagreements, however, is not just a matter of who is right and who is wrong, but one of how faithful we are to our Lord’s explicit instructions to His Church. Let’s apply those instructions as a set of tests.

Our liturgical tradition and practice might well earn us a better-than-average grade in the “Do this in remembrance of me” area, although we are generally better at the doing than the remembering part, i.e., we are better at liturgical practice than at personal Eucharistic devotion.

As far as feeding the sheep is concerned, we could probably expect a passing grade there, too, at least concerning most of our preaching. Although some of our churches offer little beyond the Sunday sermon, many have ongoing bible study groups, Sunday Schools, and other educational offerings for young and old.

Our performance in the area of carrying Christ’s message to those outside the church, on the other hand, is less impressive. We have some new and growing parishes, even one erecting a new building as we speak, but there is much work left undone, as is evidence from the unchurched people all around us and the empty seats in our churches. Many of us still hold to a view of the church as a taken-for-granted part of the social order, harking back to a time when clergy were automatically considered community leaders and church was an integral part of the day-to-day lives of the vast majority of the population. Those days are gone, and a church’s failure to recognize that fact is a sure path to oblivion.

The other dead-end street is a sort of “club” mentality in which the parish church is seen as a comfortable little social club - a place to gather weekly with friends for worship and socializing. Adding outsiders is thought of, at least unconsciously, in negative terms, since it could introduce people with whom we might be less than comfortable, or even worse, people with new ideas who might want to make changes to the closed little world we have built to our liking.

The parts of the Church which survive will be those whose members recognize that they need to set aside old images of the church as a built-in part of the social order, or as a peaceful refuge from the storms of life, and begin to think and act like missionaries, always ready to revise or even scuttle their own plans in order to respond to the needs of the lost and shipwrecked souls they encounter. If we don’t make that shift, we’ll simply disappear, but more tragically, men, women, and children will be lost because we failed to carry out our God-given commission.

Our shortcomings as evangelists are sobering, but the worst grade on our report card is for our performance related to the unity of Christ’s Church.  Jesus’ prayer that his followers be one had an attached purpose - that the world would believe that He had been sent by the Father. It follows that the direct result of the fact that we, His followers, are not one as He and the Father are one, is that much of the world does not believe that He has been sent by the Father.  In other words, our dismal performance regarding unity keeps us from bringing others to Christ. The empty seats in our churches are the fruits of our failure to take Christ’s plea for unity to heart.

This direct connection is reflected in the question often asked of missionaries and evangelists: “Why should I listen to a Christian when you people can’t even agree with each other?” The problem, however, exists at every level of the church, and we see the same dynamic at work when people, who may be initially attracted to what we stand for, are turned off by the petty quarrels, turf battles, and warring egos so prevalent among those claiming to be “Traditional Anglicans.”

We may all agree, in general terms, that Anglicans are called to be both Catholic and Evangelical, but most of us know from direct experience that everyone has their own set of “hot buttons.” Even the most seemingly enlightened and reasonable among us have some things on which we won’t budge. Thus we hear complaints from people who love and miss Morning Prayer and complaints from others who have to put up with it from time to time. We hear grumbling about clergy who insist on using the Missal and grumbling about those who don’t, protests about boring and stodgy music on the one hand and non-traditional music on the other.  

We have people who would be thrilled if we were to adopt the 3-year lectionary, now used by just about everyone except us, and people who would leave the church if we made that change or did anything else not strictly in accord with “1928.” We have clergy who claim faithfulness to that book, but who never conduct a service without changing certain parts of it to suit themselves. Bells and incense, Bible translations, vestments, seminaries, Alpha courses – name a topic and we can have an argument about it. In every Diocese of the ACA, we have people who are thrilled about our attempts to achieve a degree of unity with other parts of the Church, and those who are dead set against the process. At any good-sized gathering of our church, if we announced a formal agreement of intercommunion with Rome, or probably even with another Continuing Church, some would shed tears of joy and others would walk out.

I confess that more than once in dealing with all of this as a bishop, I have recalled Moses’ question to God: “What shall I do with this people?” (Ex. 17:4). I’ve also prayed in words which sounded much like his prayer, “Lord, this is indeed a stiff-necked people; yet pardon our wickedness and sins, and receive us as your own.” (Ex. 34:9)  I guess it’s all part of what Augustine and others refer to as “the burden of the episcopacy,” but I have felt more than once that the best preparation for a bishop would be several years of experience as a kindergarten teacher.

The problem is not that we have different preferences or opinions, but that we lack a sense of proportion and we allow those preferences, sometimes involving the smallest details, to trump the greater good of the Church - even, as in the issue of unity, the clearly expressed will of Christ. It’s as if we are saying to Jesus himself, “I don’t care what you want. It’s my church and I’ll decide how things are done here.” Lord, have mercy upon us, and forgive our foolishness and our arrogance.

It’s not your church, my church, or even the Archbishop’s or the Pope’s church – it’s Christ’s church, and he has told us what he wants it to be. I can think of no way to describe the notion that your preferences or mine are more important than the clearly-expressed will of Christ other than to call it the epitome of arrogance.

Our TAC has embarked on a journey toward unity in direct response to Jesus’ prayer that all of his followers be one. As we, and those with us in this quest, attempt to correct past mistakes, we will undoubtedly make some new ones. Because of our personal failings and the sinfulness we share with the rest of humanity, we can be sure that the road ahead will include bumps, unexpected turns, and steep hills. Furthermore, whenever we commit to do God’s will and place ourselves in His hands, we can never know in advance exactly where He will lead us or how He plans to get us there. The one thing we can be sure of, though, is that if we place too much weight on our own ideas, preferences, and predispositions, and not enough on the guidance of the Holy Spirit, our obstinacy and interference can sabotage the process. My prayer is that all of our work together may be in accordance with Christ’s will for His Church, and I close with some words taken from His prayer for you and for me on the night before he was crucified for us:

(Father,) I have manifested thy name to the men whom thou gavest me out of the world; thine they were, and thou gavest them to me, and they have kept thy word. …  I have given them the words which thou gavest me, and they have received them and know in truth that I came from thee; and they have believed that thou didst send me. 

Holy Father, keep them in thy name, which thou hast given me, that they may be one, even as we are one. … As thou didst send me into the world, so I have sent them into the world.  And for their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be consecrated in truth. I do not pray for these only, but also for those who believe in me through their word, that they may all be one; even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that thou hast sent me. … The glory which thou hast given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one,  I in them and thou in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that thou hast sent me and hast loved them even as thou hast loved me.  (John 17.6,8,11b,17b-23, RSV)

We are used to saying, “Lord, hear our prayer.” Now Jesus says to us, “My people, hear my prayer.”

-- Excerpted from Bp George Langberg’s Address to the DNE Synod 2005, Portland ME