confirmation 2 sacraments

Well, you guys have either a high pain threshold or a high interest, and I'm grateful you're back for number two.

So uh what I've got planned for us to talk about today are the sacraments.

Um but maybe I should make room in case you've got questions from history, like we did two weeks ago, or like, uh when are we gonna talk about what I want to talk about?

I just want to make room and see if there's things I didn't plan to cover or or things that would be a good use for your time.

Are the recordings available?

The recordings are available.

So if you're looking for the recording, which we made two weeks ago, it's on the sttaec.org, so the church homepage.

If you go to readings and sermons, there'll be one that says confirmation one, history.

And then like tomorrow afternoon, there'll be confirmation two sacraments.

So usually within 24 hours, I'll get these, I'll get these posted.

So if you you miss one, you can do it.

And I have a few people who can only do this remotely because they've got other commitments or they're out of town, and that's fine.

And I just want to remind you confirmation is not what you click a bunch of boxes, it's the bishop blessing the faith in you.

So I don't need you to come to these classes, uh, but if they benefit you, and I hope they will, that's kind of why we we offer them if that makes sense.

The thing I can't do is confirm you any other day or time than December the 7th at 10:30 here.

Now we can, if you can't come that day, we'll have you go to St.

Christopher's or Grace Alvin when the bishop's coming, because only a bishop can do this sacrament, right?

It's not a rite, it's a sacrament.

And I'll sort of talk about that in a second today.

Um, so again, I don't need you to jump through hoops.

That's not what this is about.

Uh, but hopefully the the the classes give you a good perspective on the episcopal church that ultimately you're being confirmed or received or renewed into.

Right?

A lot of times, and just to mention this, uh even a couple years ago, I had people say, like, yeah, I want to be confirmed into Saint Thomas.

And that's not what this is.

You're confirmed into the Episcopal Church, which is in 17 different countries.

Then the Anglican church is in the rest of the world, right?

So, like, you're not making a confirmation to St.

Thomas.

You can be a member here or not, without being confirmed.

This is really like, hey, I'm finding my uh spirituality, my Christianity represented in the episcopal framework, and I want to be confirmed into that church capital C, not this church lowercase C.

Of course, this church lowercase C is hopefully an icon, a representation of the bigger church.

But I'll tell you, for example, and I said this last time, but I think it's just good to know like not every Episcopal church is open and affirming.

That is, not every Episcopal church will celebrate same-sex marriage.

We will, but many of the people in our convocation won't.

And I don't mean that they're wrong, I just mean there's diversity, right?

We, while I'm the rector, and and you'll hear about this I think next week when I talk about governments, will never have a projector screen in our sanctuary.

Never.

And one of our sister churches uses one every week.

It's not because one of us is right and wrong, it has to do with style and congregational history and ethos, right?

Some churches have no pews.

I actually love our pews.

I love having pews.

I don't want chairs that I can shuffle, even though that gives you option.

And as you'll hear when we talk about governance, the rector gets to pick, and I'm picking no to screens and I'm picking no to pews.

The next rector may change that, and that's because you might change or the leadership might change, and you make those changes sort of together if we do it well.

Uh, any other questions or comments?

Sorry, I that was way too long of an answer, Danny.

So, one thing I would love to hear, and I'm sure you're gonna cover it.

When I um went to, so when I was in high school, I went to a Catholic high school, they celebrated Mass.

Yeah.

They very much believed that they were actually taking the physical body and blood, if I'm not mistaken.

Um I would love to hear the differences in this tradition.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's actually how I want to frame the whole the whole conversation.

Okay, let me dive right in.

Um, you you might know this because we talked about reformations last time, right?

Particularly in the 1500s.

And ultimately, we ended up with three different ways of understanding sacraments as a result of the reformations.

Now, let me let me talk about two words sacrament and um and the three ways those get represented.

So, accordingly prayer book.

Now, our prayer book, which we'll cover in a couple of weeks, has a lot of things in it.

It has the collect we pray every Sunday, which is meant to be a guide to the scriptures.

It has how to do a baptism and an ordination and how to do the Eucharist.

It has prayers, and we'll pray one this morning for veterans.

Like it has prayers that we can pray to guide our common prayer.

So you can use the prayer book or not at home.

It's not meant to replace spontaneous individual prayer.

It's meant to say how do we pray in common?

Like when we're gathered together.

Um and uh in the back is something called an outline of the faith.

And we'll talk about this a little bit more, but I want you to hear in advance.

It does not contain the outline of the faith, it contains an outline of the faith.

And when we get to the word sacrament, the prayer book says a sacrament is in an outline, an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace.

An outward sign of an inward grace.

I'm gonna tell you, I don't even like that definition.

I think that's the definition for a symbol.

A symbol is an outward sign of an inward reality.

I think a sacrament, and look, I don't have to argue with the prayer book because the prayer book's not telling me what's right and wrong, it's saying here's one way to do it.

I think a sacrament is a way of participating in God without exhausting what it means to participate in God.

So we have seven that we say are sacraments.

And I'm gonna tell you there's more than seven in my life.

Education is sacramental to me.

And it doesn't show up as a seven, right?

Christian service is a sacrament to me.

It's a way of participating in God.

And there's other parts of God out there too.

Like it doesn't cover all of what it means to participate in God, but it is participating in God.

So I tell you, I've got at least nine in my book, right?

We've settled on seven, not to say these are the only ones, but these are the ones we hold in common.

Right?

So part of what our prayer book and part of what our church tries to do really well is say, listen, let's just agree on a basic foundation, and then you can build adjacent modules.

You can build as high as you want.

This is part of what we do with the Bible.

We say the scriptures hold all things necessary for salvation, but they don't hold everything that's related to salvation.

I've had epiphanies from reading To Kill a Mockingbird that I did not have reading the book of Numbers.

And that's okay, because the scriptures don't have everything, they have everything necessary, right?

So this is a little bit more of the like the umbrella levity we have in the Episcopal Church.

Now, when the Reformations happened, they were three positions on all sacraments.

The first is where our Roman brothers and sisters have settled into, and it's called transubstantiation.

Maybe you learn this in European history class or you've heard this before, change of substance, right?

And what it really means is that it's this weird philosophical category that says not only does the essence change, the essence changes, uh, but we don't know about what Aristotle calls the accidents.

So when Catholics celebrate the Eucharist, they're gonna tell you it literally becomes the body and blood of Jesus, even though it still tastes like wine and bread.

If you could pull the chemistry out, it's no longer whatever wine is, it's now blood of Jesus.

So it doesn't taste like it, but it literally is.

That's called transubstantiation.

The radical reformers like Ulrich Zwingli and uh the Anabaptists, they said nope, the only change is symbolic.

It only changes if you think it does.

So yes, it literally changes, only changes if you think.

I mean, that's relative change, relative to you.

We took the middle road, and it's a little confusing.

This is what Martin Luther said.

He says consubstantiation.

And you might think that means no change.

That's usually how we define it, but that's not right.

What Luther says is, no, it's still wine and bread, it's still wine and bread.

And Jesus is really present in those things.

But we can't say how.

Now you can think whatever you want.

Here's what I love about the Episcopal Church.

If you think it's the literal body and blood of Jesus, great.

If you think, nah, it's still bread and wine, but Jesus is somehow in there in a strong way, great.

Right?

So there's like three ways of understanding every sacrament, and the Eucharist is a great way to start, right?

Because that's the one we've heard about in history.

Is it literal?

Is it symbolic?

Is it mystical?

Consubstantiation really means mystically present.

Now, let me tell you how we recognize the real presence of Jesus in the church.

And I think we've said this before in sermons if you've heard that.

If there's leftover wine, we can't pour it down the sink.

That's what you do with common things, right?

So we have to do something uncommon with something that's uncommon.

We either drink it, we return it to the earth by pouring it out, like on the grass, or we have a special sink in the sacristy that doesn't connect to the sewer.

It's a pipe that goes like 10 feet underground, and the wine returns to the earth.

And we take it so seriously, we don't just pour the chalice out, we rinse it with water and then pour it out.

So we get all of that special stuff out.

And say a prayer.

And say a prayer.

And there's churches I've been to that are part of the Anglo-Catholic tradition that do the dishes in front of the congregation to prove we're treating it separate.

What I mean is not only does the priest consume all of the wine or the deacon or the acolyte, then they put the water in there and they swirl it and they drink that in front of everybody.

And then they take like a wet purificator and they wipe it to make sure there's no residues of the real presence of Jesus in that cup.

And that does not imply it was literally flesh and blood.

If you're Catholic, you do all the same things, but with the conviction that it is actually blood you're drinking.

And if you're low or evangelical, you probably don't share a common cup.

And it's probably juice, not wine.

You probably get a little one-ounce pour that you can hammer and you can even put it in the pew when you're done.

I mean, I'm just I grew up that way, right?

That's that's what it is.

And what's interesting is if you grow up on the low end, some symbolism, symbolism can tell you you can damage yourself if you don't take this with the right mindset, right?

So remember, it is what you make it, and if you don't make it right, it can hurt you.

Like if you don't like come to God having confessed your sins and you take the Eucharist, you hurt yourself.

The Romans tell you that too.

This is so holy that if you touch it in an impure way, it defiles you.

And most Episcopalians say, look, it's meant to convey grace.

So, like, if you're in a wanton state of immorality and sadness, you probably need more, not less.

So, like, don't come perfect, come in neat.

And that's in general how we do the real presence at the Eucharist.

There's a couple hinges, right?

In the Roman church, it's called Mass.

Some Anglican churches use the word Mass.

That's okay.

Usually we settle on the word Eucharist, and it's a Greek word which means it is with joy that I give myself to you.

Usually we just call it Thanksgiving.

So the way we understand the Eucharist, it's a rite of renewal.

We do it every week, not once in your life.

Like you get to do it over and over and over and over and over again.

And we usually think, ah, the Eucharist, that's a time when we're thankful for God.

But I would suggest to you, more than your thankfulness for God, God is thankful for you.

Even when you're not thankful for God, God is thankful for you.

Boy, I need more grace like that.

I mean, again, we can talk about literal magic and we can talk about real magic.

So, what do we do?

We share God's table.

Like God invites you to have a meal with God, and kind of what we say is look, there's regular bread and wine, and that nourishes our body.

And the real presence of Jesus will nourish your entire person, your spirit, your body, your emotions.

Like whatever you can't quantify is meant to nourish all of you, and that's what the real presence does, and we're called to do it every week.

So that's the Eucharist.

We offer it to kids who have not been confirmed and who aren't members here.

We do.

As soon as you want it, you may have it.

Now every family decides when their kid should have it, right?

Sometimes we say, we want kids to understand what they're doing before they do it.

That's okay.

I have a lot of sympathy for that.

That's the symbolic position I grew up with, and I hold a lot of that myself.

What we do here is we say, you can have whatever you want, and every couple of years we offer a class called First Solemn Communion, which is meant to train children a little bit more of what it has meant to Christians, whether they've already been taking it or want to take it for the first time.

And yes, they can wear white clothes, and you know, they come up first and they and they kneel, and it's like a five-week class that's Christian ed.

It's really sweet.

Because both ways are equally valid and great.

Questions about the Eucharist?

So um, I guess we sort of touched on it and then ago, but like at some point this falls within governance, right?

Which I can talk to later on.

Because I remember in my Episcopal Church growing up, uh I want to say baptized Christians or a lot of reasons.

Yeah.

I I think we can speak to this like straight up.

So there's been a constant back and forth between the House of Bishops, which is like the House of Lords, or the Senate, and the House of Deputies, which is like the House of Commons in England or the House of Reps in the United States.

The House of Reps, every three years when we meet at council, which is the biggest democratic gathering in the world, it gets bigger than everything.

Like there's 10,000 delegates that come for like eight days.

If that's not what I want to do.

But anyway, they do it, right?

And and so the House of Deputies consistently votes communion is for anybody who wants it.

And the House of Bishops continues to vote, it's for the baptized only.

So there's dense there's tension between the Lords and the Commons.

Now I'll tell you that our bishop gets to give me directives.

The bishop gets to tell me you cannot use goldfish for communion.

And he does every year.

Can't do it on purpose.

Okay, fine.

I'm I'm not gonna use that.

I don't totally get it, but okay, that's fine.

Uh and our bishop has told said very clear, this is the position of the house of bishops, and I don't expect you to ask everybody coming for communion if they've been baptized.

So what I hear is pastoral discretion and latitude, which is what I often.

And I think most bishops believe in pastoral discretion and latitude, regardless of their personal position, right?

Because we're not a church that gathers in uniformity, we try to gather in unity.

And you're allowed to have strong feelings about either position.

Some people think baptism literally changes you.

That's called transubstantiation.

Some people think that God would like to nourish you with grace whether or not you've been baptized.

That's me.

Because the real presence might lead you to baptism or not.

Yeah, please.

Uh, being a Catholic.

What's your position or region of sin?

Well, any priest and any Episcopalian can believe whatever they want.

But I'll just tell you, when I looked at my daughter, the minute she was born, there was nothing wrong with her.

She was beautiful and perfect just like she was born.

She doesn't have any sin gene.

And I'll tell you, my daughter, from the moment she was born, entered a society that is full of racism, ageism, sexism.

She learned to communicate in utero the way I do, which is sometimes very sharp and sarcastic.

So I would tell you my daughter was born in sin.

Social reality, not ontological reality.

She is born in the real presence of sin.

She is not literally a sinner.

I don't know if that makes sense.

It comes down to uh what I like about what you're talking about here.

I mean about being you know, united.

Yeah, I I think, and this is what I want us to hear when we get to confirmation.

Again, it's not confirmation.

You don't have to sign on to 51 points of doctrine for the bishop to confirm you.

My last church, one of the ladies who got confirmed, she said, Look, I don't know what I believe.

Except I know coming here makes me a better human being.

That's probably the best answer I've heard as to why somebody comes to church.

I don't know what I believe.

Except these are loving, generous people, and coming here makes me better.

That's the wrong answer doctrinally, but I think it's the right answer in faith.

Because at the end of the day, there's days I don't believe in anything, if I'm gonna be honest.

And there's days I believe everything.

And then most days are lived in between, and what I do believe is coming together with respect and love makes me a better human being.

Yeah.

So if you want to believe in original sin, great news you can't.

And great news you don't have to.

Yeah.

And you may have already covered this.

I apologize if you have a.

Yeah, what I love about the Diocese of Texas is I don't have the bishop have to have to ask the bishop's permission to use any like right.

So it turns out there's two in right one, there's four in right two in the prayer book we have printed, and then there's another two the National Church has put available online for free.

What they're trying to do is avoid repenting the reprinting the prayer book because that's really expensive.

So there's additional resources online, right?

So there's two more Eucharists, they're called enriching our worship.

So there's a right five and a I mean there's a prayer E and an F.

I've written my own prayer, which we used two weeks ago.

I call It's right three, but uh what the prayer book does is says, Here's the bits you need to have in the Eucharistic prayer.

You need to say, But this is my body, you need to say this is my blood, you need to say this is a memorial, a memorial for our redemption.

Like you need to say those things, and and then whatever you say is gonna work.

And at the end, somebody other than you, as the priest, needs to say amen.

So I can use anything out of the South African book of prayer because it's part of the Anglican Communion.

I can use the New Zealand right.

I don't need to ask Bishop Doyle to do that.

We and mainly that's because we have a lot of diversity within the prayer book itself, and then there's even more outside that the National Church has said authorized check.

So I can just use that.

Now, none of those say this is literally the body and blood of Jesus.

None of them say that.

I was going to a church in a in a in a like degentrified area, right?

So, like, sorry, white flight happened, neighborhood all of a sudden was full of people who were homeless, who were refugees from Birmingham and Mar.

Like they they and they became Anglicans in refugee camps.

And then they came here and were resettled.

So like these women would come and they'd put a lace veil on their head for communion.

And then there were some of the older white women who grew up where you put on gloves to come to the rail.

Like you didn't wear them the whole service, but when you came to the rail, you put on your white gloves as a symbol of like purity and etiquette, right?

So I went to this church, having grown up with a little tray of the little like two-ounce grape juices, right?

And it's like my first Sunday, and I'm kneeling next to this very distinguished 80-year-old white lady who puts on these white gloves and has upper length pearls.

She kneels to my right.

And to my left is this refugee from Burmese and Marr who puts on this lace cloth as a way of covering her head to receive the Eucharist.

To her left is a guy who slept outside the church last night.

And to be honest, he probably just wants the coffee hour donuts and cake, but he would feel bad just going to that.

So he comes to the service to get the food.

I mean, I don't know that for sure, but that's my impression.

And we all drank out of the same cup.

And that like did more for me spiritually than the little cups ever did.

Because it said, this person who's more sophisticated than I am, this person who's running for their life, this person who's homeless, we all get to be one.

And that was the real presence of Jesus for me.

I'm not making that up.

Like those are my observations.

And being one with them, which I would never do in a college or university or even my job, it happened at the rail.

And I just felt the real presence of Jesus.

I mean, I don't know what to say.

Like drinking out of the same cup is a really big deal to me.

And I'll let you know too, since I mentioned that, there's a lot of commentary on what's safer.

Dipping or drinking.

And um, I don't know the answer, except there's never been uh an outbreak of disease, including COVID, attached to drinking out of the cup.

Never.

And I'll also let you know the dirtiest thing in your body are your hands.

And you might think if you dip well, you're good, but I'm just gonna tell you like, I hold that cup, and sometimes people are washed in the blood of the lamb, right?

So I mean, I just want you to know this is what we do.

And in case you're wondering why we use port wine, it's because it's a higher alcohol percentage than regular wine.

Why do we use silver?

Well, Mike, it's gold plated.

They both do the same thing, they're both inherently antimicrobial.

Why do we use a purificator?

Because the thing that corrupts the antimicrobial is fat that comes from lip gloss and lipstick.

So we wipe that off and we spin the cup every time.

You vote with your heart, but you know, I've got two doctors here, one drinks and one dips.

Medical communities divided.

Whether you drink or dip, it's one cup, not a hundred.

And that's powerful for me.

Like symbolically, an outward sign of a visible grace for me.

That's an outward sign, one, of an inward and spiritual grace.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Anybody else what the Eucharist has meant to you or questions about what it might mean?

Christine?

Thank you.

Um, in order to overcome and make that noise in the background.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Yeah, so I mean, there's really like kind of two positions people tend to take.

Not only two, but these are the main two, like, uh, like this is Jesus taking our place because we're naughty and we deserve a spanking, and Jesus took our spanking.

Or this is food for the journey because the Exodus is happening.

God's like, how about you leave your bondage and you need some energy to do that?

So here's a table for nourishment, or here's an altar for sacrifice.

And we hold both together in the prayer book like relatively well, because truth be told, it it may be both, right?

And you may find yourself more on one than the other.

I rarely find myself completely in one or the other.

And that's what I love about our tradition.

And I will tell you, we used to have a day school here, and uh, we were the only school period in the diocese.

Maybe I shouldn't say this publicly, where our kids served each other.

Like I was not gonna have, you know, our our like 75-year-old verger come and serve our kids.

Like our kids, it's a school and it's episcopal school.

Like we can train them what this means and how to serve it.

And I'll tell you, most of the kids did better than adults because they knew they were doing an adult job.

And this is why the kids still serve today if they choose.

Like I give them priority, because my thought is if kids grow up being members of the body of Christ, then when they grow up, they were already members of the body of Christ.

Like they didn't have to wait to be included, they got to do it whenever they want.

And I've never seen an adult do this, but when we were serving our pre-K3, I mean, you're talking about like munchkin height.

One of the kids with no instruction, no prompting, knelt down so that the three-year-old could see what they were doing.

I've never seen an adult be so intuitive with how to include other people.

I've never seen an adult do it.

And then I saw another kid, because we would come to the during Lent, we would have the kids kneel at the rail if they wanted to to receive.

Normally they'd just come in a line and sit down.

During Lent, they'd come kneel at the rail.

And one kid copied that boy, and she got down on her knees, and then she crawled on her knees around the rail.

At no point did she get up, she knee shuffled on the hard surface so that everybody could see in there.

That's why I have kids do it because adults aren't that creative.

I mean, just and then that inclusive, like it, I've got a picture of the kid in that conference room kneeling down to serve somebody else the chalice so they can be included.

To me, that's the real presence of Jesus.

Okay, we could talk about communion a lot, but I better move to the next major sacrament, which is called baptism.

So we've got two majors, like they're for everybody, and we've got five that we call minors, which are like for some people.

The other major is baptism, right?

And if you're a transubstantiationist, there's something inherently wrong with you, and in baptism you're born again.

So if you're Roman, I'm not putting this down, you're born inherently a sinner, like you have a you have like a sin gene in your DNA, and when you're baptized, that gene flips somehow and you're different.

Like your being is literally different.

If you're assembled, right, baptism means what you think it means.

Which means if if you don't like mean it with all your heart, it didn't work.

The real presence says it's not something God needs us to do, it's actually something we need to do.

So when I talked to my day school kids, I said, look, what do you do with regular water?

You clean yourself, you get hydrated, you nourish growth in plants, right?

And boy, it's Texas, and sometimes you just get hot, so you've got to jump in the pool, right?

So, so so what do we say?

Well, probably those four things in another way.

Boy, I need growth.

I need nourishment to grow spiritually and in my mind and in my heart and my love.

So I need hydration.

Boy, sometimes I get hot.

I get hot.

And uh God, help me simmer down, right?

Like, cool me off.

Literally, in my other parts, right?

Boy, this stuff I want to wash off, and that could be sin, but that could also be guilt and it could be remorse.

Sometimes we got exposed to things, and Hal and I talked about this a lot yesterday.

Moral injury.

Like if you were a veteran in a combat zone, you got moral injury, period.

Right?

Should you have to carry that completely your whole life?

I don't think so.

It'd be great if God could help wash that off.

You've been abused, you didn't earn or deserve that, and it'd be great if God could help get some of that burden off of you, right?

So washing stuff off isn't just stuff I did wrong.

It's wrong.

Washing off wrong.

And um what was the other well, hydration and growth are kind of the same thing, right?

Now, we baptize infants here.

John Wesley's the one who said this.

John Wesley said, you know, the truth is, whether you want God or not, God's always with you.

You have no choice.

And look, infants have no choice.

And I think the sign and the symbol is this little kid may never may hate God and God will never leave them.

So their choice is irrelevant because God's chosen you.

And I'll tell you, baptism means more, I think, for the people not getting it than the people who are getting it.

Infants aren't going to remember that.

We're going to look at it and we're going to make these vows that say we'll respect the dignity of every human being.

When we do the wrong thing, we'll repent and return to the Lord.

We'll continue to come back together, even though we think we could do better ourselves.

Like those vows are really important.

And as I've said before, I love that we have a shell because infants get to be the pearl in God's oyster.

And look what God does with things that are irritating, makes them beautiful.

And the birth of Venus, like, is this image of like, look, you're being reborn in our eyes.

Not literally, transubstantially, but with the real presence of Christ, which is in you.

We call this a rite of passage.

So you get baptized once.

If you were baptized Mormon, God's grace still worked.

You don't need to be re-baptized because they got stuff wrong that we get right.

We say that God's grace, if your priest was a jerk, the baptism still worked.

Because it was God, not the priest.

I got baptized when I was 10 because my church said we had to be adults and we had to know what we were doing.

I didn't know anything when I was 10.

I mean, I could get baptized every week again because I've learned more.

But God's never going to leave me once is enough.

We do immerse people because John the Baptist didn't sprinkle.

He pushed people under the water, and some people think he might have held them to the point of death so that they really had to face their own mortality and reborn.

I don't know what to think about that idea, but I've heard it, right?

John the Baptist didn't use shells.

Those actually came from the Camino de Santiago, where people came from all over Europe to Santiago, where St.

James's bones were.

And then they took another 50-mile walk on their knees to what they thought was the edge of a flat world, like the end of the world, and they brought back shells and they said to their priest, look, shells from the end of the world.

And the priest said, Oh, baptism is like how you go past the end of the world.

Let's use those.

So that's the shell tradition.

But this whole idea of needing to be born again and renewing that vow, needing to be born again isn't because God needs it, it's because we need it.

Like no matter how many times I get right with God, boy, I sure find myself in a quick minute getting really mad at somebody driving 20 miles an hour in this neighborhood.

Like I live here.

Your golf cart does not need to be in the middle of the street.

Like, I just want to drive 25 miles an hour.

There's no reason that you won't let me do that.

I gotta be born again a lot.

So I think we have to ask ourselves a question.

Do you need the baptism to change you to be worthy to come to the table?

And I'm gonna tell you, I don't think so.

I think baptism is not a thing God needs for you.

It's our chance to digest an inward and spiritual grace, to participate in God without exhausting what participation in God looks like.

Just me as your priest.

Other clergy would tell you different things.

We get to, because I don't have to sign a statement of faith.

Anyone want to share questions or comments about your baptism or baptism in general?

Like what's been meaningful for you?

Especially for lovely for adults.

The back half of that thing is the response.

Which is really lovely.

No matter who it is up there, it's always that's always a that's a nice experience.

I love that baptisms to me are they're pretty awesome.

They're pretty fun.

That's it's nice.

They're enjoy they're uh they're joyful sitting in the cheap seats.

Yeah.

And you just lodge your memory, I feel like I need to share.

Sorry.

Um churches will baptize you four days a year, period.

And so if you can't make one of those, well, there's next year.

If you want to know what those days are, it's like the Sunday after Epiphany, which is like somewhere around January 12th.

It's the Easter Vigil, which is like the Saturday before Easter or early in the morning on Easter.

It's Pentecost and it's all Saints Day.

And if your family can't come one of those days, then come next year.

We don't do that.

We say this is a family event, so when it works for you, it works for us, right?

But I get it.

There's there's four days a year, and we try to group people and do more than one.

So there's something lovely about being baptized in community.

But I do want to say a thing about Eucharist and baptism both.

This affects both symbolism and transubstantiation.

So my last church during the summer we didn't have a choir, we'd hire bands, and the bands would come, and there'd be like a Celtic band, and there'd be like a bluegrass band.

And one time the Celtic bands up there playing, and they've got their son up there who has Down syndrome, and they're Roman Catholic.

And my practice was always to serve the band first, right?

So that then they can play, right?

And then we serve everybody else while they play.

So we get to the kid with Down syndrome, and I and I put this out, and like he'll know what to do, and his mom starts crying.

He's 35 years old.

And after the service, she said, Our Roman church will not give him the Eucharist because he's incompetent.

He doesn't understand what he's doing.

So he can't have it.

And I just gonna tell you it's wrong.

He understands he's being left out.

He understands he's being left out.

And this is my position too.

When do you really know what baptism is doing for you?

I mean, when do you really get grace?

So if you have to know it, when will you ever get it?

So I find the real presence in not knowing.

And God loves us.

Yeah.

I appreciate that.

Um growing up, I I grew up in a much more rigid, you know, thing.

And so even from being a very little kid, I was afraid of both of these things.

Very afraid, very nervous.

And it you know, it probably took me 40 years to stop being nervous to get communion just like it was just amazing to me to be afraid of it, even when my mind knew differently.

So I I really appreciate that the Episcopal Church, at least this one and many of them hold these things much, not hold them loosely in terms of not respecting them, but but hold them more loosely.

I'd like to hope that we hope we respect them so much that we don't deny access to them.

Because we're not the adjudicators of grace.

Somebody said to me this week, like, oh, we just need to give grace to people.

Grace isn't ours to give, grace belongs to God.

We either recognize it or we don't, but we we can't give grace.

We can't confer dignity on somebody.

God already gave them dignity.

We recognize dignity or we don't.

This is that simple.

Well, I I think, which I think puts me in the real presence category.

Okay, that gives me 15 minutes for the minor sacraments.

Now, look, because we started baptizing infants, right?

What we decided is we need another sacrament for when the infant grows up, and they say, My parents claimed this for me, and I want to claim it for myself.

That's confirmation.

I mean, that's really what it is.

Maybe you were baptized as an adult.

I've seen people get baptized and confirmed the same day.

Interesting.

Like that can happen.

And and confirmation really isn't like magic.

It's not something God needs you to do.

You can be on the vestry without being confirmed.

You can be a member without being confirmed.

Confirmation is this thing where you say, like, look, I thought about this.

I've tried to think as best as I can, and this is what I want to do.

And I don't just want to do it, like, I want someone to bless my doing it, and that somebody is the bishop.

So you can look at what the confirmation rite looks like.

It's in the prayer book.

We'll go over it when we do the BCP.

Um, but that's it.

And we call that a sacrament, and we call that a rite of passage because you only get confirmed once.

You can renew.

Your vows.

Some people are already going to do that.

You can renew, just like you can remember your baptism.

That's why we have a holy water font.

So you can remember being baptized.

Even if you've never been baptized, you can remember it.

So we've all been baptized by the Holy Spirit.

I mean, that's what we say.

So that's where confirmation came from.

My rule is I like to wait till you're 16.

Because you only get to do it once.

And if you do it when you're 12, I mean, the odds are you got 60 more years with no more sacraments.

So like I'd just like your brain to develop a little bit more so you can kind of say it's what I want to do.

I don't hold that as a hard fast line, but I like 16.

I mean, like, probably 26 if you're male and 24 if you're female.

I mean, that's whatever, you know, but like I kind of like a little life experience to know.

Look, I've been out there, and this is what really what I want to do, I think.

So confirmation.

We do this other thing called unction, which means anointing people with oil.

That's a rite of renewal.

So renewal.

Unction Eucharist, passage, baptism, confirmation.

In the Hebrew Bible, uh, and this is still true, when you're crowned the king of England, you do get a crown, coronation, but the thing that makes you the head of the Church of England is when the Archbishop of Canterbury pours oil on your head.

So when David and Saul and Solomon and all the kings of the Hebrew Bible were made king of Israel, we don't know if they wore a crown.

What we know is a prophet dumped oil on their head.

Um, so the New Testament says, Are any of you sick, pray for them who are sick and anoint them with oil?

And my suspicion is that what this means is at our weakest, at our worriedest, at our most in fear, we're meant to be treated as royalty before God in the community.

So we show that you're not without grace.

We show you deserve it because you're in need.

So, unction, which I will do anytime you want.

In fact, I believe in Advent we're going to start offering anointing with oil in the chapel during the Eucharist.

So, like you can come in and say, I look, you can tell me what you want me to pray for or not, and I'll anoint you with oil and put my hands on your head.

The oil and magic, I I ask God to do something special with it, right?

So, why would you ever put regular oil on your head?

I don't know why you would, unless you've got really dry skin.

So, why would we put special oil on?

God, I'm dry.

I am dry spiritually.

I'm dry in the relationship with my spouse, with my parents.

I am so afraid of my job.

I've been sick and I don't think I'm gonna get any better.

These are the moments where you get unction, where somebody doesn't have to be a priest, uh, puts oil on your head in the shape of a cross and lays hands on your head, and there's something amazing.

How many people in your life touch your head?

My spouse, uh, my kid.

That's about it.

Somebody touching your head, trying to offer you love and presence, care, and compassion.

I feel sacramental to me.

In this way, not in these ways.

Repeatable.

You could do it every week.

And I knew people who did it every week.

So that's unction.

We also do it at the time of death, but we we don't have extreme unction as a sacrament.

It's just anointing with oil.

Period.

Um, we call marriage a sacrament, and hopefully it's a rite of passage.

Like, you don't do it every week.

And we get we make these vows knowing what we know.

And sometimes we didn't completely know what we thought we knew.

So we don't think in the Episcopal Church that you better make that work even if you're being abused.

We don't think that.

Because I'm gonna tell you, that leads to death.

And there are pastors who will say, take the beating because Jesus was beaten for you, and I just think that's sinful and wrong.

So I can marry you three times if you end up divorced.

Your spouse dies, it doesn't count.

But if but if you need to get married a second time, I write a letter to the bishop saying why I believe this is gonna work.

And the reason I do that is so that the bishop can tell people, oh, your church doesn't even believe in the sanctity marriage.

Look, you're letting divorced people get remarried.

The bishop can pull my letter and say, here's why they deserve it.

Here's why they deserve it.

It's not so the bishop can give me permission, it's so the bishop can defend the sacrament between two people.

I'm just gonna tell you, I don't think it's right that you get married when you're 20.

It doesn't go well, and now you're supposed to be without intimacy the rest of your life.

That makes no sense to me.

None.

And if you're married more than three times, you can't be a priest.

So we do hold this a serious business and not to be entered into lightly, and things don't always work out.

So that's marriage.

It's not for everybody, which is why it's a minor sacrament, right?

Some people are married.

Ordination's a sacrament.

And ordination is meant to be once for all, right?

Like it's it's a rite of passage.

So um we have three levels of ordination.

Like if I became a bishop, I would get ordained three times.

I would get ordained to the diaconate, which means I'm supposed to represent the church to the world and the world to the church.

Like what do deacons do?

Well, they visit people in prison, they deal with foster kids.

They deal with people you don't want to deal with.

I mean, let's just be honest, right?

And they remind us God cares about these people that are easy for us to not care about or see or remember.

Like, deacons should be the biggest pain in your ass.

Because they should say, you say you care and you're missing immigrants.

You say you care, right?

But you're despising poor people because they're poor.

That's the call of the deacon.

I was ordained a deacon.

I couldn't live that life because I'd be depressed.

I just couldn't.

So then I got an or another ordination to the priesthood because I believe in offering the sacraments, and that's what priests do.

We offer six and a severant sacraments.

The only five.

The only things I can't do are ordain people and confirm them.

That's the right of the bishop.

So if I became a bishop, God help the world, then I would get a third ordination to bishop, and I could offer all seven.

So we say ordination never changes.

I can, the bishop can say, Mike, you've committed a crime, you've stolen money from the church, you've had an affair, you've got a DWI.

You may no longer offer the sacraments in my diocese, and I can't take your priesthood away because I didn't give it to you.

God did.

So we're priests forever, but we may lose the ability to exercise our priesthood.

I hope that makes sense.

I don't get defrocked.

I cannot be defrocked.

I can lose the ability to offer the sacraments in the diocese of Texas, which means I can't do them anywhere else, just to be honest, right?

If I get inhibited, I need another bishop to reinstate me.

And I'm a priest forever because God made me a priest.

Humans' bishops didn't.

I think that's the real presence.

Every other tradition I know of, you can be defrocked.

Your ordination can be stripped from you.

Nope.

The exercise of your ordination can be stripped.

Your ordination cannot.

That's really interesting to me.

And then the last one we do is a rite of renewal.

So again, what are the rites of passage?

You're supposed to do them like one time only.

Baptism, marriage, ordination, confirmation.

What do I get to do often?

As often as I need?

Eucharist?

Unction?

And here's the last one, number seven, reconciliation.

We used to call it confession.

But we want the confession to go somewhere.

We don't just want to like spout off what's wrong with us.

We want to be reconciled to God and our neighbor in the world.

So, reconciliation happens every service, where I say, let's confess our sin before God and our neighbor.

And then you think whatever you think, and I say God absolves you whether you feel like it or not.

Sometimes you need more.

Sometimes you need to say, Listen, like I get that, and I just need to tell another human being who's gonna for a moment represent God embodied.

Look, I cheated on my spouse, and I, you know, like I've told them, and I I'm just like I'm dying inside about this.

And then I get to say, look, I'm a regular human being, I got my own problems, and I just want you to hear God's voice and mine for a second.

God wants you to lay that down.

God doesn't need you to be ashamed the rest of your life.

So I learn from it.

It's okay that you're sorry, but lay that burden down.

And pretty much what we say, I mean, I'm gonna tell you for me, if you come to reconciliation, it's a given, I'm going to absolve you.

You should never worry that I'm going to say, oh, no, that was too much.

Like, nope, God can't forgive that.

It only works if you know the priest is gonna say, I hear that, and God doesn't want you to live in a place of death.

So, like, let's let's lay that down.

And I'll tell you from me, you can only confess a thing once to me and you can't confess it again.

Because once I absolve you, that worked whether you feel like it or not.

Now, you can rack up other stuff and come confess that.

But like, if you confessed, you cheated on your spouse, and I absolve you, you don't get to tell me that again.

I mean, I guess unless you do it again in a different way.

But we don't confess the same thing twice.

Because whether we believe it or not, God believes once is enough.

I find the real presence there.

Very rarely do two people say, God, we hate each other and we want to be reconciled and we need the right to help us.

Usually I do this one-on-one.

We don't use a booth because we've decided it's important that you look at another human being face to face so that you can see another human being say, God just really would love for you to lay that down.

I was just wondering, you know, when you talk about sin as not like something that we did wrong, but something heavy that we carry, maybe how if reconciliation applies to that?

Boy, I sure think reconciliation is the way that veteran soldiers who have killed women and children doing their duty, reconciliation is the right that helps remove the residue of their moral injury.

Like we're the only culture I know of, Christian culture, that doesn't say warriors go through terrible things and they need a way to lay those things down.

So, my next book will be about an alternate way to appreach approach appropriate approach reconciliation.

That's not a laundry list of I plagiarized a poem in the sixth grade, I told my mom a half truth, instead of like there's another way to approach it, which is like I was abused.

I saw this thing that I can't get out of my head, and it's dominating my spiritual life.

Um I can't sleep because I keep thinking I should have put my kid in school A in the third grade, and I left him in school B.

Regret, remorse, residues.

I mean, it's not magic, but I sure think reconciliation is a milestone that says, look, God's absolved me of that.

So I'm gonna live into absolution.

Depends on your priest.

So some priests will say, no, this is only for moral things you know you did wrong.

But I hopefully we're we're not like that.

Hopefully, we're like, look, I mean, that's a burden you've been carrying.

And and I mean, it was just what if you could lay that down?

Think what you could do with that energy.

Like you could put that energy into like the world and to like love and grace instead of being weighed down with shame and even guilt.

Like and I like the book is gonna tell you, maybe you start with me or with Sean or some other priest, and and hey, like you might need other stuff.

Like other cultures get this right.

Like a sweat lodge is about like physically sweating crap out, you know, like that's a thing.

And writing stuff in a book and closing it or burning it, like humans have found that really helpful for a long time as a way to representationally rid ourselves of stuff that's draining, like apps running in the background, which is what I think shame and residues and guilt do.

Yeah, those are the sacraments.

And and I finished just on time.

So next week, let's pick up if you have experiences of the sacrament or questions or comments about the sacraments.

Boy, I can't help myself, I just tend to talk too much.

Um but but thanks for being a part of this.

Yeah, and thanks for for those of you who did share.

I'm really, really grateful to hear your experiences with these.

Okay.

See you next week.

Thanks.

Thank you.