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Overview
A collection of essays issued under the direction of the Standing Liturgical Commission (SLC) on baptism and ministry. Topics addressed are welcoming new ministers, reaffirmation of ordination vows, confirmation/reception, and baptismal ministry.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780898699081 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Church Publishing |
| Publication date: | 04/01/1994 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 120 |
| File size: | 962 KB |
About the Author
Ruth A. Meyers is Dean of Academic Affairs and Hodges-Haynes Professor of Liturgics at Church Divinity School of the Pacific. She served as chair of The Episcopal Churchs Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music through the conclusion of the 2012–2015 triennium and teaches throughout the Anglican Communion. She lives outside Berkeley CA.
Read an Excerpt
BAPTISM AND MINISTRY
LITURGICAL STUDIES, ONE
By Ruth A. Meyers
Church Publishing Incorporated
Copyright © 1994 Church Pension FundAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-89869-908-1
CHAPTER 1
Decoding the Obvious: Reflections on Baptismal Ministry in the Episcopal Church
The Reverend William Seth Adams
I. Stating the Problem
The Episcopal Church is reawakening to the importance of Christian initiation. The texts in The Book of Common Prayer and The Book of Occasional Services are the best signs and continuing sources of this reawakening. Clearly, the rites for baptism and the series of rites associated with the catechumenate, combined with the Prayer Book's directive regarding the public nature of initiation, the naming of baptismal days and the heightened place given the Easter Vigil in our ritual life all work to enhance and invigorate the church's baptismal practice.
In addition to these texts and rubrical norms, there are meetings, conferences and books which augment and interpret the liturgical texts, teaching and encouraging the church in its initiation practices. Among these are Daniel Stevick's Baptismal Moments; Baptismal Meanings (1987), The Baptismal Mystery and the Catechumenate, edited by Michael Merriman (1989), and the 1991 revised edition of A. Theodore Eastman's The Baptizing Community (1982). Further, in groups like the Associated Parishes and the Association of Diocesan Liturgy and Music Commissions, the Episcopal Church has people of deep concern and insight offering their gifts in pointed and programmatic forms to any and all interested.
From these and many other quarters, both within and without the Episcopal Church, efforts mount to empower the rites which make Christians, to give a true place to the complex ritual act which bestows forgiveness of sins and raises to newness of life, which seals by the Spirit of God and makes one Christ's own forever. In the face of all this, one must first of all cheer about this turn of events, and having cheered, as surely I do, then work to assist the enterprise.
It appears that the assistance I can offer is of a peculiar sort. That is, what I find myself able to do is to identify impediments to the process. In fact, I find myself convinced that the real and effectual power of Christian initiation in the Episcopal Church faces dismal prospects for true and faithful "success." This is so on two grounds, namely, spatial evidence and ritual evidence. What I intend to do in the following remarks is to examine this physical evidence with an eye to "decoding the obvious."
In a way, what I am suggesting is that what we claim about the importance of initiation is not supported by the physical, observable evidence. This failure to support discredits our claims. And if evangelism is to be central to the work we are about, then surely this rite of conversion and incorporation needs to be healthy and to tell the truth to those drawn into the fellowship of Christ.
II. Spatial Evidence
The central ritual metaphor underneath all the rites in the Prayer Book is an encounter, an encounter between the gathered community and God. This encounter is acted out and experienced in the church's public liturgy around three liturgical centers within a common liturgical space. The three centers are the place for Baptism, the place for the Liturgy of the Word, and the place for the Liturgy at the Altar/Table.
The ecclesiology of the Prayer Book sees the church as a community. Liturgically speaking, the work of this community is distributed among the several members and enacted in the gathering. The clear supposition is that the community will all gather in the same room, rather than in several rooms, as in older architectural styles. (At its most extravagant, a Gothic building had three rooms—one for the baptized, one for the choir [clergy] and one for the ordained presider.)
In addition, because the liturgical work is distributed in a functional rather than hierarchical fashion, there is no need for the space to be hierarchically ordered, though clearly one must be sensitive to the needs of hearing and seeing. This way of viewing the space requires that we abandon the older names (nave, chancel, sanctuary) and search for new ones. Interestingly enough, so far as I can tell, the search has yet to yield a really usable vocabulary.
In addition to a single room, this view of the church requires a configuration that in a tangible way sets forth testimony to "gathering around." This leads to the abandonment of the linear, rectangular building (the one modeled on the bus) in favor of some configuration several-sided around the central focus. This notion tends to create a room that is wider than it is deep. A circular configuration has attracted some, though under most circumstances I would argue against the circle on both practical and theological grounds.
If a single chamber is most congruent with the intent of the Prayer Book, the interrelationship of the liturgical centers within that space is our next concern. In Marion Hatchett's Occasional Paper, "Architectural Implications of The Book of Common Prayer," he says that the three liturgical centers—the place for Baptism, the place for Liturgy of the Word and the place for the Liturgy at the Altar/Table—"should have approximately equal dignity and prominence."
My own way of expressing this is to view the liturgical space as if it were an ecosystem, an interactive community of organisms within an environment. This way of understanding the existence and organization of space puts the interrelationship of these centers on equal footing with their own particular and individual integrity. A sound ecosystem is dependent on mutual necessity and reciprocity. Consequently, as a metaphor for the character of a liturgical space, an ecosystem establishes balance as a central characteristic.
The ambo and altar/table constitute two of the three liturgical centers which populate our liturgical environment. The baptismal space is the third, and the principal concern of this essay.
Surely there is no subject in liturgical studies more warmly or richly treated in our time than baptismal rites and theology. Human concern for identity, membership and initiation coupled with ever greater curiosity about the activity of God's Holy Spirit have brought out of us more and more powerful convictions about this rite of burial, birth and bathing.
"Holy Baptism is full initiation by water and the Holy Spirit into Christ's Body the Church. The bond which God establishes in Baptism is indissoluble." So reads the Prayer Book. Although debates still arise throughout the church as to what confirmation is, the importance and centrality of the water rite are not in dispute. Consequently, and in principle at least, there is also no debate about the importance of the ritual object which must bear the symbolic weight of our initiation theology. The rubrics imagine a place, a container, a pool of such size as to make possible the immersion of an adult.
Efforts in evidence in the Prayer Book to restore baptism to its rightful place and to give substance and symbolic power to the ritual object necessary for baptism have been fostered in large measure by a deeply held conviction about the calling of the baptized and the theological centrality of baptism. Theodore Eastman has spoken for many in saying, "baptism is ordination to the principal order of ministry." In an important book, Anglicanism and the Christian Church, Paul Avis calls baptism "the fundamental sacrament of Christianity" and "the ground of our unity." Further, he proposes a "baptismal paradigm" as the starting point for the church's own self-understanding and for conversations with other Christians. Put another way, this suggests that the faith of "the blessed company of all faithful people" should be our primary place to stand rather than to require exclusively the company of "the successors of the apostles." This would provide us an ecclesiology formed on baptism, not ordination.
The foregoing suggests that at one level the Episcopal Church's teaching about baptism works to give the rite power, centrality, and authenticity. In practice, however, and in powerfully subtle ways, the current state of the physical evidence among us puts the lie to what we say.
In the spring and summer of 1990, with the aid of the Episcopal Church's Board for Theological Education, the Conant Fund and the Episcopal Theological Seminary of the Southwest, I completed a six-month sabbatical leave. The time was spent exploring the state of contemporary liturgical architecture in the Episcopal Church. To put it minimally, I was looking to see what we are building for ourselves, and in some way assessing the current work against the architectural and liturgical assumptions of the Prayer Book.
I made formal visits to thirty-one congregations across the United States. Of the total, nineteen buildings had been built or reordered since 1980. In each visit I observed and photographed the liturgical space and made a drawing of the floor plan. In addition, by means of questionnaires designed for the purpose, I gathered information from the rector/vicar, musicians, members of the congregation and the architect/designer as to how the space "works."
With specific regard to the place for baptism (and based on this sample of thirty-one places), line drawings would suggest that typically fonts were placed near entrances, on a main aisle, in their own niche or in the "east" end near the altar/table and ambo. These characteristics, alone or in combination, suggest that these fonts were in "correct" places. At the same time, of the places visited, four had no font in evidence. Of these four, two had small tables available on which bowls were placed when needed.
Only one of the sites visited would suggest to the observer that this room for proclamation and table fellowship is also a room for baptism. The ritual object in this particular liturgical space would (almost) bear the theological weight our teaching would place upon it and would (almost) allow to happen what the rubrics presuppose. In virtually no other instance, perhaps with one exception, did the Prayer Book's renewed emphasis on baptism stimulate a more powerful spatial expression of our baptismal theology. Typically, I found small stone or wooden fonts, sometimes covered, sometimes not, sometimes containing a "candy dish," sometimes not, typically empty of water. Occasionally, it was clear to the observer that the most frequent role played by the font, particularly those near entrances, was as a place to set things, e.g., service leaflets.
During this tour across the country and the church, I was reminded again and again how powerful a symbol the altar/table is (often protected by rails, elevated spatially, adorned with special "clothing," typically approached and touched only by certain people, characterized by physical stability and permanence) and how subject to disregard the font is (hidden away or absent, minimal in size, empty, trivialized in use). I was reminded again and again that ordained people attend the altar/table and that the (typically) incidental font is allegedly the place of empowerment of the baptized. I was thereby taught that the theological claims made for baptism were seriously challenged, even undermined, by the subtle and persistent disjuncture between our claims and the physical evidence.
III. Ritual Evidence
If the spatial evidence signals an impediment to the success of our theological claims about the importance of baptism and the centrality to the Episcopal Church of the ministry of the baptized, the second stumbling block, in my view, is the difficulty created for our baptismal theology by a comparison of the baptismal rite and ordination. It is my opinion that claims about the empowerment for ministry associated with baptism will likely never find full expression so long as the rite of baptism is overshadowed by the rite of ordination. And ordination language in association with baptism will, frankly, only make things worse.
In order to make this point more clear, a "tour" of these two rites, baptism and ordination, seems appropriate. (Given my life's work in a seminary, I probably attend more ordinations than most people, certainly more than the typical parishioner, and likely more than is good for me. At the same time, the experience does give me a particularly good place from which to observe.) The following descriptions will necessarily lead to comparison.
Both of these are rites of passage, rites which are typically composed of three particular parts. The first part accomplishes the separation of the person(s) from their former status in the community; the second part accomplishes the transition, the passage intended; and the third part accomplishes the reintegration of the person(s) into the community. The transition phase is when "something happens," as it were. It is the most dynamic in ritual terms, the densest in meaning and, consequently, the most significant for our consideration. We shall therefore examine in turn the transition phase of the rites for baptism and presbyteral ordination as contained in The Book of Common Prayer.
In the baptismal liturgy, the transition phase begins with the movement of the baptismal party to the font if they are not there already. Here the water is poured if it has not already been poured and the water is blessed. The prayer formula begins in a way reminiscent of the Great Thanksgiving in the Eucharist. "The Lord be with you./And also with you." "Let us give thanks to the Lord our God./It is right to give him thanks and praise." Following a reiteration of the role water plays in salvation history, the one who presides invokes the activity of God's Holy Spirit to sanctify the water. The rite assumes at this point that there is more than one candidate so the rubrics direct that each receive the water in turn. The "watering" then follows. After all have received the action of the water, the presider "in full sight of the congregation" prays for the sustaining power of the Holy Spirit and signs the forehead of each with a cross (and perhaps oil). Supplementary rubrics say the newly baptized may be given a candle. This is obviously not central. They are then welcomed by the assembly and thus reintegrated into the community. The peace of the Lord is exchanged, and the newly baptized return to their seats in the assembly. The fact that the newly baptized have completed their transition (the passage) is fully expressed later in the rite by their admission to the fellowship of the altar/table.
We should notice that this rite is appropriately administered within the Sunday Eucharist and especially appropriate on five occasions mentioned in the supplementary rubrics at the end of the rite. Although the bishop is (historically) the normative presider, in practice it is typically a presbyter who presides.
Turning now to the rite for the ordination of a presbyter, we engage it at the comparable ritual moment, the moment of transition. All present are directed to stand, except the candidate who must kneel before the bishop, the necessary presider. The candidate is joined left and right by other presbyters. The clear supposition here is that there is just one candidate. (The supplemental rubrics printed at the end of the ordinal allow the possibility of more than one but this is obviously exceptional.) A hymn calling upon the Spirit is sung followed by a prescribed silence. The bishop offers a prayer of thanks after which he or she places both hands on the head of the candidate. The presbyters also lay on hands. The bishop then prays that God will fill the candidate with grace and power through the gift of the Spirit. Removing all the hands, the bishop continues in prayer petitioning God on behalf of the newly ordained. Following this prayer, the people are directed to respond "Amen" in a loud voice. The newly ordained is given appropriate vesture and the Bible, this latter as a sign of authority. The transition now accomplished, the process of reintegration is begun by the bishop greeting the newly ordained, who in turn extends the peace of the Lord to the assembly. The attending presbyters are directed by rubric to greet the newly ordained.
I hope I have described these rites so that their content and movement are clear. In each case, what I have described is part of a larger ritual event and each transitional phase is followed by the liturgy of Holy Communion. The differences between these rites are remarkable.
Presbyteral ordinations are typically understood to be preceded by an extended period of preparation (seminary), parochial sponsorship, testing and assessment (Commissions on Ministry and the General Ordination Exams) and an apprenticeship (diaconate). Baptisms are typically not.
Ordinations take place in public at special times, with attendance by invitation. Baptisms take place in public but typically within the conventional Sunday liturgy. Invitations are not customary. Ordinations are usually attended by clergy who are vested, enter in procession and sit in a prominent place in the assembly. This is not typical of baptisms. Ordinations are rites reserved to bishops, the chief liturgical officer. Baptisms may be, but in practice usually are not. The rite of presbyteral ordination assumes only one candidate. Baptism presupposes more than one candidate. Ordinations are frequently filled with special music and festive ornaments. This is less so with baptisms.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from BAPTISM AND MINISTRY by Ruth A. Meyers. Copyright © 1994 Church Pension Fund. Excerpted by permission of Church Publishing Incorporated.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Contributors
Preface Frank T. Griswold
Introduction Ruth A. Meyers
Decoding the Obvious: Reflections on Baptismal Ministry in the Episcopal
Church William Seth Adams
Celebrating Baptismal Ministry at the Welcoming of New Ministers Stephen
M. Kelsey
The Reaffirmation of Ordination Vows Michael W. Hopkins
To Confirm or To Receive? Daniel B. Stevick
Appendix: Rites of Initiation Charles P. Price