Ambassadors for God: Envisioning Reconciliation Rites for the 21st Century
288
Ambassadors for God: Envisioning Reconciliation Rites for the 21st Century
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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780898698480 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Church Publishing Inc. |
| Publication date: | 11/01/2010 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 288 |
| File size: | 461 KB |
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AMBASSADORS FOR GOD
Envisioning Reconciliation Rites for the 21st CenturyChurch Publishing
Copyright © 2010 The Church Pension FundAll right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-89869-654-7
Chapter One
Under the Mercy: Liturgical patterns of Reconciliation through the CenturiesJ. Neil Alexander
"Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained." Ever since Jesus gave this ministry to the apostles the church has struggled with what this mandate means and how to ritualize the forgiveness of sins in its public and pastoral rites. Through the centuries, however, this statement of Jesus has been the touchstone upon which the church's ministry of reconciliation has been founded. In the ordinal of the Book of Common Prayer, in most editions prior to the 1979 American version, the ordination formula for priests quoted the biblical mandate in full. Anglicans believe that declaring the forgiveness of God to penitent sinners is a significant part of the church's ministry that is apostolically delegated to its bishops and priests.
At least five practices have emerged as the church has responded to the mandate of Jesus. This essay concerns only one of these practices, but it is helpful to note each of them briefly. The first is the individual before God. Can a repentant believer receive the forgiveness of God without the mediation of a third party? "Yes" would appear to be a reasonable summary of the New Testament's answer. In Matthew's gospel, Jesus instructs the believer to "go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you." It appears, then, that a believer can pour out his or her heart in repentance to God alone and receive the promise of Jesus of God's forgiveness. In practice, however, this has proven to be difficult.
A second practice is holy conversation between fellow believers. In holy conversation, a troubled believer shares (the confession) with a faithful friend who, after listening attentively to the heart of the penitent, offers spiritual care and comfort (in effect, the absolution).
The third practice is an extension of the second, pastoral conversation. Most pastoral conversation is, in fact, an informal mode of confession and absolution. The believer begins by laying out before the priest those things that are troubling his or her conscience. This is essentially the confession. The priest then offers spiritual care by deepening the conversation, pointing to the scriptures or other teachings of the church, perhaps praying with the believer to seek the direction of the Holy Spirit. This functions very much like the absolution.
The fourth practice of reconciliation takes place in the eucharistic assembly. A penitential order may precede the rite, or a simple form may comprise part of the transition between word and table. Limiting our view of reconciliation to confession and absolution misses the richer reconciling work of the liturgy understood more broadly. The liturgy as a whole is the work of reconciliation. In the Eucharist the church gathers to transact its public witness to the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, God's ultimate act of reconciliation with us. In word and sacrament we receive the reconciling gifts and graces of God in Christ and adopt an ever-renewing identity as the reconciling people of God. The celebration of the Eucharist frames for us the shape of a reconciled life and invites us to be God's reconciling people in the world. Because of this, the liturgy is replete with acts of reconciliation.
The gathering itself is an act of reconciliation. Coming together with folks who are different from us and not in every case attractive to us, and doing so regularly and intentionally as an action motivated by faith, makes showing up an act of reconciliation. Upon arrival we are greeted with waves and greetings, handshakes and hugs, all of which may be interpreted as gestures of reconciliation.
In the course of the liturgy, singing and praying together have a unifying and therefore reconciling effect. Hearing the word of God proclaimed and listening to the preaching of the gospel of Jesus brings into focus our life before God that invites us to embrace reconciliation with each other and the world. In the recitation of the creed—for us and for our salvation—we place ourselves into the sweep of the reconciling work of God. We stand together to pray for the whole world and those intercessions are a tapestry woven mostly from strands of reconciliation.
Sharing the peace is one of the principal acts of reconciliation in the liturgy. It is a time to declare in words and actions one's reconciliation with another in the name of Christ. This is not a casual suspension designed for senseless chatter, but a powerful time of encounter in which Christ's reconciling love can be present and transformative.
We come then to the table to plead the great thanksgiving and share in the ultimate sacrament of our reconciliation. We share in the Risen One not only the ultimate gift of our reconciliation with God, but the bread and wine becoming for us the energizing food that strengthens us for the reconciling work of Christ that is ours to do in the world. There is only so long one can be fed at the resurrection banquet and not feel the profound need to embody the reconciliation of God in Christ more deeply in one's life and more broadly in the world.
Although there are multiple ways to receive reconciling grace, the ability to access that grace might be impaired for any number of reasons. The rites of reconciliation are the church's pastoral response to those seeking to claim the reconciliation of God in Christ. For individual reconciliation, the church has sought to provide pastoral rites with a high degree of ritual intensification. The church has adapted such pastoral rites according to the needs of different times and places. As we anticipate further reform of the rites of reconciliation in our own day, it is helpful to catch a glimpse of the developments that brought us to where we are now.
Reconciliation in Earliest Christianity
In the earliest church, the local community, under the guidance of its bishop, controlled the shape of its own practice. Uniformity across broad geographical regions came only in later centuries and even then such uniformity may have been more theoretical than real. Even though commonalities can be observed, the details continue to differ from place to place. In an essay of this brevity, it is impossible to survey multiple rites. Instead, what is presented here is based upon a composite of the commonalities among a majority of representative rites.
From the earliest strata of Christian practice we can observe four primary characteristics with respect to the reconciliation of penitents: (1) the sin was of extreme consequence; (2) at least temporary excommunication was normative; (3) the penance was public; and (4) restoration was public and generally took place near Easter at the hands of the bishop. We will briefly examine each of these aspects.
The sin was of extreme consequence. Although the precise scholastic definitions of the various grades of sin emerged centuries in the future, distinctions were already being made early in the church's practice. What later theologians will term venial sins (relatively minor temporal infractions) were of little concern to the early church. Great concern, however, gathered around those sins that were of more profound consequence, bordering closely on questions of salvation. Adultery, apostasy, murder, and idolatry were principal among them.
Navigating the system of public penance was a perilous undertaking if one had fallen into grave sin, especially with respect to post-baptismal sin. Sins were forgiven in Holy Baptism, a sacrament received only once. The expectation was that having received such ultimate reconciliation in baptism, one's life would be holy, continually nourished by word, table, and prayer, and any need for continuing repentance—at least with respect to grave sins—was thereby eliminated. This explains in part the desire of many believers to postpone their formal initiation into the church, hedging their personal weakness against a singular opportunity for reconciliation in baptism. This also makes clear the need for post-baptismal repentance and restoration to the life of the community.
At least temporary excommunication. It is easy to overlook the enormous implications of community life in the early centuries of the church. Emerging from a Jewish heritage where personal identity was tightly interwoven with participation in the faith community, an acute sense of common life was a hallmark of early Christian practice. This new community in Christ was not only a theological construct that provided a vision for the church's mission, it was also an important means of cohesion in a hostile environment. Great caution was exercised so that notorious sinners—adulterers, apostates, idolaters, and murderers, that is, those whose lives challenged the necessarily severe boundaries of common life—were kept outside. Such excommunication was often a public act, a formal declaration that a person had violated the boundaries of the church in such a manner as to put its people and its witness at risk. The exact practice varied, but in many instances, upon confession (or without confession in the case of severe community outrage), a public declaration of sin and a pronouncement of the penance required for restoration were made so that the whole community could participate both in decrying the sin and in monitoring the evidence of repentance.
Excommunication led to a period of penance. Those who desired to return to the communion of the church were admitted to the order of penitents, a canonical discipline designed to ensure that those seeking readmission to communion knew well the severity of their sins, were instructed, were led through penitential exercises, and eventually, one hoped, were welcomed back into full fellowship.
Although the particulars of public penance varied from place to place, some of the more standard practices are noted here. The penitents wore goatskin clothing (the hide of the damned), were refused bathing privileges, were required to keep strict fasts, and were to undergo an almost endless process of physical and spiritual mortification. On Sundays, the penitents were present only for the Liturgy of the Word and its moral exhortations. In order to humiliate them further, the penitents were often required to be on display outside the doors of the assembly so that the faithful were reminded of who had sinned. Once admitted to the assembly, the penitents were often required to kneel for the prayers as a sign of their separation and humiliation instead of enjoying the privilege of praying with the assembly in the customary posture of the resurrection, standing.
Such a strict pattern of public penance was doomed to failure. The severity of the procedure and its public quality proved impossible to sustain as the cohesion of the church and its majority status became the norm rather than the exception. The rise of monasticism and the penitential quality of much monastic practice stimulated substantial theological reflection on the nature and practice of penance that would come to influence the parochial practice. The growth and institutionalization of the church also resulted in the gradual removal of the bishop from daily pastoral practice and the consequent extension of large portions of the bishop's sacerdotal ministry to an increasingly powerful presbyterate. These factors combined to set the stage for further changes in penitential practice in the early middle ages.
Reconciliation up to the Reformation
Several significant shifts took place in the practice of the reconciliation of a penitent in the middle ages, but this inquiry is limited to the two principal developments, the so-called tariff penance of the early middle ages and the carefully defined scholastic patterns of the high middle ages.
By the seventh century the shift from public penance to more private forms of penance was under way. The former pattern made visible reference to the penitent's separation from and restoration to the eucharistic assembly. The developing patterns of private penance also were related to questions of eucharistic participation, but the dynamics of separation and restoration were less visible, taking the form of a transaction between a penitent and a priest. This shift was consonant with other trends of this period in which the rich transactions of the liturgical assembly gradually were replaced by the increasing centrality of the presbyterate and the consequent relegation of the assembly to more passive roles.
In the early middle ages the ritual patterns of the Latin rite went through a long process of hybridization. The once simple and pristine liturgy of Rome went through several centuries of adaptation and revision that included a variety of texts and complex ritual practices from the far reaches of the empire. Tariff penance is an interesting example of such hybridization. From the documentary evidence, public penance never played as large a role in the rites of northern Europe, especially in the British Isles. Given the fact that evangelization was still relatively new in northern Europe, it does not seem odd that the missionaries resisted placing heavy emphasis on severe forms of public penance. Instead, more private forms of reconciliation developed that were based on an increasingly elaborate system of penitential "tariffs" imposed upon the penitents as the cost of their absolution. Such tariffs were penitential acts assigned according to the severity of the sin and the ability of the penitent to fulfill the required penance. A practice that began rather early—keeping lists of sins and their tariffs—in time developed into highly stylized "confessor's manuals" that remained in use in some circles until the middle of the last century.
There are two notable points with respect to the development of tariff penance. First, it was noted that in the earliest strata of the tradition there was a strong concern for the unrepeatable character of public penance. Because one could receive baptism only once, similarly only one chance to amend a sinful life by means of penance was possible. Tariff penance signaled a quite radical theological and pastoral shift, making it possible for a penitent sinner to receive the church's declaration of grace multiple times. The tariffs, or penitential exercises, guarded against frequent access to grace becoming too casual. Interestingly, the needs of the clergy and their personal access to acts of penitence and absolution were among the more important catalysts for this shift. Under the old system of public penitence, it was nearly inconceivable for a member of the order of clergy to take his place in the order of penitents. Similarly, given the strongly penitential contexts of some forms of monasticism, a more convenient and less involved process was necessary so that religious could have more readily available access to absolution and restoration.
Second, tariff penance marked a shift from bishop to presbyter as the ordinary minister of reconciliation. In earlier patterns of public penance, the bishop presided over the penitential rites and welcomed penitent sinners back into eucharistic fellowship. The growth and institutionalization of ecclesial structures certainly played a part, but by the early middle ages the role and function of presbyters began to undergo significant transition that resulted from changes in theological perspective. Theologies of holy orders begin to shift the attention away from the bishop as chief pastor of the local community and point rather to the centrality of a priest functioning without peer in offering the sacrifice of the Mass. This is a complex development that unfolded gradually over many centuries, but these shifts in theologies of Eucharist, holy orders, and the church were all interrelated and clearly spilled over onto pastoral and sacramental practice.
(Continues...)
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Table of Contents
Introduction vii
1 Under the Mercy: Liturgical Patterns of Reconciliation through the Centuries J. Neil Alexander 1
2 The Reconciliation of a Penitent: Some Historical and Practical Considerations Anthony F. M. Clavier 16
3 Historical Reflections on Aural Confession and the Rites of Reconciliation Meredith Kefauver Olsen Derek Olsen 24
4 Personal, Intimate, Authentic, Incarnate: A Theology of Reconciliation Malcolm C. Young 42
5 "From Lightning and Tempest; From Earthquake, Fire, and Flood": Environmental Sin and Reconciliation in the Book of Common Prayer (1979) John D. Alexander 54
6 On Becoming a Confessor Gregory Howe 70
7 Returning to Community: Confession from a Consumer's Point of View D. Huw Richardson 80
8 Everything True and Beautiful Is Always Full of Forgiveness Donald Schell 89
9 Creating an Ecology of Reconciliation: Marshaling Contemplative Resources for Rites of Reconciliation Douglas K. Bleyle Richard Valantasis 109
10 Voices of Anguish: Listening to Victims of Violence Flora A. Keshgegian 132
11 Bishop Roskam's Apology to Africa Catherine S. Roskam 144
12 Am I My Brother's Keeper? Petero Sabune 148
13 Seeds of Repentance: An interview with Holly Fulton 159
14 What Is the Problem? Robert Two Bulls 163
15 Talking Back to God in the 21st Century: A Liturgy in Commemoration of the Events of September 11, 2001, and Commentary Kathryn Rickert 174
16 Reconciliation Experiences as an E-Mass Musician: A Short Meditation Jeannine Otis 197
17 "I Ain't Got No Hope": HipHopEMass Reconciliation-Reflections and Rites Timothy Holder 201
18 A Form for Thanksgiving and Confession and a Form for Conversation and Confession Jack V. Zamboni 231
19 Prayers for Penitents and Confessors and Rites for Reconciliation of Penitents and Communities Jennifer M. Phillips 238
Editor's Endnote 250
About the Authors 258