u/Happy_Thurifer

I know this reading about the Canaanite woman came up in the Episcopal Church's lectionary this last Sunday. I think we rightly read the Gospel of the Canaanite woman for liberationist themes, and I'm wondering if there is a way to do it that also keeps in balance certain key Christological ideas—for instance that Jesus Christ should be called Immanuel, God-with-us (Matt 1:13), that he is the fulfillment of the law (Matt 5:17), that he is innocent and sinless (Matt 27:24; 2 Cor 5:20–21; Heb 4:15). Perhaps this comes close:

>Jesus, seeing this sin arise among his members, does what Jesus always does: he takes this sin upon himself. He loads this sin upon his own shoulders, places it on his own burning lips—but somehow he does this sinlessly. This is what he always does: he takes our sin while yet remaining sinless. We do not see this. We do not understand this. And so like Pilate, like the high priest, we reckon Jesus Christ a transgressor, just like the Prophet Isaiah said we would. We judge him. We judge him for he says, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” Never mind that he says this the way a rabbi or a Socratic teacher proposes a thesis—so that it can be refuted and shred to bits by the disciple, so that the disciple will grow in their own strength and power. (And indeed, that is what the Canaanite woman does.) But more than a rabbi or a Socratic teacher, Jesus acts like the God he is: taking the evil that breeds death and division, and throwing it into the fire of faith that is his own life in the heart of the Canaanite woman.

193 years ago today, the Oxford Movement began when a gentle, retiring poet and priest suddenly found the fire in his belly, suddenly couldn’t stand seeing the Church manipulated by the State, suddenly couldn’t remain quiet while society treated theological truth with a genteel and cultured indifference. That priest and poet turned protester was named John Keble (1793–1866). And it was his sermon “National Apostasy” that lit the fire of the Oxford Movement. A quote from the piece as it reflects on that sermon:

>no matter the ecclesial or national emergency, the task remains the same: to sanctify ourselves, each other, and the entire world through a life of steady, unassuming devotion. At every moment, through our acts of prayer and our deeds of justice, we are free to cultivate “an awful sense of God’s presence in all.”

Do people think that Episcopalians have a somewhat inauthentic perception of Eastern Orthodoxy? I'd highlight this passage from the article in particular:

>Perhaps we [Episcopalians] are prone to the “musical heresy.” Perhaps we are too quick to buy prayer ropes, to put up icons, to listen to the loop of a chant playlist on the streaming service of our choice. We think of Orthodoxy as an aesthetic experience, one that can be easily purchased, acquired, replicated—shorn, of course, of whatever displeases us. We do not need to look at the absolutism, the pogroms. We read The Brothers Karamazov as if it is possible to have Zosima without Ferapont. I have seen Episcopalians scowl endlessly at the violent uses of the Holy Scripture, but then gush at the beauty of icons—as if the icons had never been taken into war as spiritual technologies of victory. Within this conception of Orthodoxy, there is nothing to repent of, there is nothing unclean. Arriving at the fallacy of this thought shows that we are very far from engaging with a real tradition—for a real tradition means being stuck in arguments we find unpleasant and unsolvable, histories that we cannot shake, it means being surrounded by others who inhabit the tradition so differently from us that we cannot believe that we pray to the same God. In other words, genuinely encountering Orthodoxy would feel a great deal like genuinely inhabiting Anglicanism—not as it is written about in idealistic essays, not as it is put forward by this party or that, but as it actually exists: a frail and fractious thing, an earthen vessel from which the grace leaks out and waters the earth, despite itself.

It seems that the "hard truths" are: 1) Anglicans, they’re just not that into you. 2) The reasons for separation keep on shifting. 3) Sometimes you have to choose.

But the piece is worth a read to find out what is meant by all that.

The history of the Anglican and Orthodox churches is fascinating. People bickering over whether priests should have beards, theologians kissing publicly during twentieth-century theological conferences, very optimistic diplomats setting out in utter, bunny-eared optimism to create unity in the Church and getting their hearts absolutely smashed. You hate to see it. And yet you cannot look away. I think anyone interested in the Episcopal Church's vocation to ecumenism will enjoy this interview.

I wonder if anyone here ever heard Orthodox priests talk in a sort of dismissive way about the conscience. I've even heard the claim that following the conscience is "Protestant" and not Orthodox in some way. There's this demand for obedience at any cost. But that is just so toxic. I hope that this article can refute some of that stuff.