Rosen died in San Francisco of prostate cancer at age 78.  Known for his ‘big curiousity’ as well as his eccentricity, Rosen stepped outside conventional approaches to mission accompanied by his courage, zeal and a fair share of controversy. 

THEOLOGICAL DEFINITION: Synod

The Prayer Book Dictionary (1913) gives three definitions. Historically, synods were 1) gatherings of the Bishops of an ecclesiastical Province, 2) gatherings of the clergy of a Diocese with their Bishop, or 3) gatherings of representative clergy and Bishops from a whole Province, like the ancient Convocations of York and Canterbury. The Dictionary goes on to note that the word is also used to describe gatherings which include lay people in some parts of the Anglican Communion. What we call ‘synods’, then, are very recent inventions! What we call Anglicanism existed long before them.

GOOD QUESTION: Summer has me thinking about leisure. Has the Christian faith anything to say on the subject?

It certainly does.

The ancient gods of Mesopotamia were said to have made the human race for work. On this view, leisure can only be a way to make us more productive workers. The opening pages of the Book of Genesis say something quite different. The true and living God has made us for Himself. We are made in his ‘image and likeness.’ His purpose for us is that we should glorify Him by making the earth (and our souls) fruitful and so enter into that rest which is found in the enjoyment of Him. As the first question in the Westminster Catechism puts it: Q. What is the chief end of man? A. The chief end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever. Or, as Saint Augustine says, ‘Thou hast made us for thyself, and our hearts are restless till they find their rest in thee.’ Our rest -- our leisure -- is to glorify and to enjoy God. ‘There remains a rest for the people of God,’ says St Paul, ‘for whoever has entered God’s rest has also rested from his works as God did from his’ (Hebrews 4:9-10). Our work and our leisure are all so that ‘our hearts may surely there be fixed, where true joys are to be found’ (Collect for Easter 4, BCP, p. 194).

The problem for us as human beings is that our minds are not fixed on truth and our hearts are not fixed on what is truly good. They wander. We have lost the taste for God. So we must make a habit of lifting up our minds and hearts to his Wisdom and Goodness. That’s what the spiritual life laid out for us in The Book of Common Prayer is all about. It is to help us form the habit of continual mindfulness of God’s goodness, beauty and truth. 

Wherever you are this summer, stick with this habit. Be sure to continue to receive our Lord in Holy Communion. If you can’t make it to Church on a particular Sunday, you can always pray Morning Prayer wherever you are with the help of a Bible and Prayer Book.

God grant a blessed summer to you and yours, gentle reader. May we all find rest and refreshment not merely to return to work, but to help us to acquire a taste -- no, a burning thirst -- for God.

Rafael's The Resurrection of ChristChristians must keep their nerve: the Resurrection isn’t a metaphor, it’s a physical fact.

By Dr. N.T. Wright

EASTER WAS THE PILOT PROJECT. What God did for Jesus that explosive morning is what He intends to do for the whole creation. We who live in the interval between Jesus' Resurrection and the final rescue and transformation of the whole world are called to be new-creation people here and now. That is the hidden meaning of the greatest festival Christians have.

This true meaning has remained hidden because the Church has trivialized it and the world has rubbished it. The Church has turned Jesus' Resurrection into a “happy ending” after the dark and messy story of Good Friday, often scaling it down so that “resurrection” becomes a fancy way of saying “He went to Heaven.” Easter then means: “There really is life after death.” The world shrugs its shoulders. We may or may not believe in life after death, but we reach that conclusion independently of Jesus, of odd stories about risen bodies and empty tombs.

The Pentecost, El GrecoThe Feast of Pentecost, a Jewish festival, has taken on a new and significant meaning for Christians.  The original Jewish festival of Pentecost celebrated Moses’ reception of the Law from God on Mount Sinai.  At Pentecost we, too, celebrate the reception of the Law of God, not on tablets of stone, but rather written on our hearts.  We do not seek to obey cold laws; we do not seek to obey God out of resentment or fear; we do not seek to obey merely for the sake of obedience. 

Grace is what God gives of Himself or His gifts ‘gratis,’ that is, ‘freely’ - quite apart from any consideration of what we deserve.

GOOD QUESTION:
Why are some priests hesitant to baptize children if their parents do not worship regularly?

Presumably out of a proper and good concern to make sure that the child will be brought up to live a Christian life. If so, it is worth thinking about more closely. The concern about how a child is brought up is a concern about sanctification -- about that growth in holiness which is made possible by God’s gifts of grace. But Baptism would seem to be above all about justification -- about grace freely given apart from all considerations about what anyone does or does not deserve. This grace is the foundation of the Christian life, of all ‘sanctification,’ of all growth in holiness. All such growth and, indeed, the whole Christian life, begins and ends in God’s love for us. ‘In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins’ (I John 4:10). That is why we are baptized only once. We change, but the intention God had when he made us ‘members of Christ, children of God, and inheritors of the Kingdom of Heaven’ apart from anything we have done or failed to do does not change. Whenever clergy hesitate or refuse to baptize children, the impression parents invariably receive is that one must measure up to a certain standard in order for one’s children to merit the grace of baptism. The Gospel of grace is implicitly denied.