Mediant*
Okay, so: I’m a huge Star Trek fan. Growing up in a very Fundamentalist environment, I wasn’t allowed to watch a ton of TV growing up. But my parents were (inexplicably) major Trekkies. So Star Trek—particularly The Next Generation—played an enormous role in my childhood development.
“Man, Christianity is metal as f—!” I won’t finish that sentence here, but you get the gist. I laughed out loud when I got that text from my friend Jay. He meant it as a compliment. Jay didn’t grow up religious at all; so I was explaining Lent and Ash Wednesday to him and telling him about the reminder of our own sins and mortality that we gather today to mark our foreheads with. And he was a fan.
It’s somewhere between a grimace and a look of pity—the face people make when they learn that I grew up in churches that took pride in labels like ‘fundamentalist’ and ‘Evangelical.’ And it’s completely understandable given that the face of Christianity for many in America is the fire-and-brimstone Evangelical preacher proselytizing on street corners. There are some things I do actually value about my Evangelical childhood. I got to know the Bible really well and learned to pray off-the-cuff. But the Evangelical approach to “sharing the good news” was not one of those gifts.
“Are you free? Are you really free? How do you know?” It was a helluva way to start a college class. And when my professor opened the PoliSci seminar by basically asking us to define the concept of freedom, at first I braced myself for a heady lecture divorced from reality. But while the question may have been framed in big, sweeping terms, the discussion that followed actually revealed pretty quickly that freedom is far from some vague abstraction without any tangible meaning for our lives.
I had a magic couch in my basement growing up. In the universe of make-believe that my sister and I created, that beat-up, old couch transformed into so many things: a castle, a spaceship, a stage for our plays. One day, that couch was a boat on the water, as my little sister and I threw a big crocheted blanket over the side “fishing” for the Beanie Babies strewn on the floor. I was so captivated and immersed in our imaginary work, that my grandmother’s voice didn’t even register at first. But when I realized she was calling us upstairs for dinner, I leapt to my feet and jumped towards the stairs…only to fall flat on my face with my toes tangled up in the “net” I was leaving behind in the “boat.”
“So, uh… what’s next for you?”
When I got sober and realized that if I wanted to stay sober, I’d need to leave my graduate program, it felt like I was fielding this question constantly.
“What’s next?”
Filtering out the frustration-fueled profanity, I’d deflect by saying, “I don’t know. We’ll see.” Because I really didn’t know what was next. I was at a fork in the road, but I didn’t know what path to take—what path God wanted me to take. And I didn’t know how to even begin figuring that out.
Life is chock-full of those transitions—moments when we are faced with the question of what’s next. We graduate; we get laid off; we lose loved ones; we retire. And we say, “I don’t know what’s next. We’ll see.”
But how will we see?
On November 30, 2022, the primate of The Episcopal Church, Bishop Michael Curry, who is not known for particularly high churchmanship, presided at a service of Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament in Washington, DC. It might be surprising to see an Anglican bishop leading such a peculiarly ‘Roman’ devotion. But Eucharistic Adoration (by which I mean various forms of paraliturgical worship of Christ present in the Eucharist), has gained a significant foothold in the Anglican Communion today. Prominent Anglo-Catholic parishes regularly offer well-attended services of Exposition and Benediction. For the last six decades, the Episcopal Diocese of Fond du Lac has hosted an annual Eucharistic Festival to foster adoration of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament. And the strictures of the COVID-19 pandemic have sparked interest in eucharistic devotions even among some self-consciously low church Anglicans.
More Protestant-aligned critics are understandably concerned that the rise of Adoration among Anglicans is incompatible with the church’s Reformation heritage. The legacy of the Reformers is undeniable and unavoidable, and their insights ought to prompt careful examination by Anglicans of the liturgical theology and pastoral practice of eucharistic adoration. But I would argue that, with due attention to history, the flowering of Anglican eucharistic devotions need not be rejected as paradoxical or problematic. Indeed, intentional cultivation of these devotions offers significant spiritual benefits within our contemporary context.
The last couple of hours before company arrived were always a mad frenzy at my house growing up. Maybe yours too? We each had our job. Mine was always sweeping out the entryway (I think partly because it kept me out of the way). In eager expectation, we cleaned the house and seemingly surface in it to prepare our home for the guests who were coming.
