SPEAKER_00: Hey, good morning, welcome back.
SPEAKER_00: And um I I see many of you are clearly trying to atone for some sins by being here on the 23rd.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, but grateful that you're here.
SPEAKER_00: Uh the goal for us to do is to try to actually do a little bit of hey, we talked about like scripture and tradition, like church history in 40 minutes, and you didn't talk about my question.
SPEAKER_00: Uh so that's part of our goal.
SPEAKER_00: First uh thing I want to recap, if you didn't mind.
SPEAKER_00: I um this happens sometimes.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna call it a junior moment, if you want, um, but this is one of them.
SPEAKER_00: Um these letters I can't believe I said this wrong last week, but um falsely attributed.
SPEAKER_00: I got this totally backward last week.
SPEAKER_00: This does not stand for in the sign you'll conquer.
SPEAKER_00: This is the first three letters of well, it's funny.
SPEAKER_00: If I wanted to write Jesus in Greek, it would look like this.
SPEAKER_00: A terminal S in Greek goes like that.
SPEAKER_00: When it's in the middle word, it goes like that.
SPEAKER_00: So if you've seen this, it looks like IHS, and it is in fact Yoda eta sigma, which is a shortening for just Jesus, if that makes sense.
SPEAKER_00: Um again, these some and and I quoted this thing last week that said this is in hoc signal, something in the sign you'll conquer, which is in Latin something it could be, but it's not Latin, it's it's Greek.
SPEAKER_00: So that that's an in oops.
SPEAKER_00: Um just as I mentioned to you last week that um for a long time now this has been the star the magi followed, uh, and it's the beginning of Christos in in Greek.
SPEAKER_00: If that's helpful to see, that's that's that.
SPEAKER_00: Um maybe just as a good reminder, this word is Christ, and really what it means is Messiah.
SPEAKER_00: So Christ is the Greek version of the Hebrew word Meshach or Messiah, which literally means in Hebrew, anointed one.
SPEAKER_00: So maybe you know the answer to this if you if you're a European history person.
SPEAKER_00: Where historically was the French king coronated?
SPEAKER_00: Does anybody know?
SPEAKER_00: To be king of France, you had to be coronated.
SPEAKER_00: Rem.
SPEAKER_00: Reims, R-H-E-I-M-S, right?
SPEAKER_00: This is true of the Thirty Years' War.
SPEAKER_00: Part of what Joan of Arc did was freed Rem from English occupation so that the Dauphine, which is like the heir to the throne, could be crowned King of France.
SPEAKER_00: Because you could only be crowned at Rem.
SPEAKER_00: That was like the the Reims in English, is how it looks.
SPEAKER_00: Anyway, that's what you had to do.
SPEAKER_00: So that you had to go to that cathedral to be the king of France.
SPEAKER_00: Well, in Hebrew, in the Hebrew tradition, the the coronation involved a crown second.
SPEAKER_00: Um, the way you became uh your coronation actually was when a prophet, probably also a priest, like in the case of Samuel, who was a prophet and a priest and acting as king, dumped oil on your head.
SPEAKER_00: That was the equivalent to being crowned at Rem when Samuel poured oil on your head.
SPEAKER_00: So the Messiah really means someone who is coronated to be a political leader, mind you, by a prophet.
SPEAKER_00: And it is through anointing with oil and not like a dab on your head, like a dumping of oil on your head.
SPEAKER_00: So just to keep in mind, when we hear that word messiah, we say like Jesus is the messiah, and the answer is Jesus is a messiah, biblically, because Saul was a messiah, David was a messiah, Solomon was a messiah.
SPEAKER_00: There were many other messiahs.
SPEAKER_00: When we say Jesus is the Messiah, we mean like truth claim capital T or Messiah capital M.
SPEAKER_00: But please know Hebrew kings were anointed with oil and that made them Messiahs.
SPEAKER_00: Does that make sense?
SPEAKER_00: And that's a tradition we have.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, Kathy, maybe Kathy Hollowell told me that the queen to this day is anointed with oil, or the king is anointed with oil out of that tradition.
SPEAKER_00: But it's not a European custom.
SPEAKER_00: This is like a biblical tradition.
SPEAKER_00: Curious to know, this is important, who makes Jesus the Messiah in the biblical story?
SPEAKER_00: Do you know this fun fact?
SPEAKER_00: It is not John the Baptist, it's the woman.
SPEAKER_00: It's the woman.
SPEAKER_00: The sinful woman.
SPEAKER_00: John uses water, that's not Messiah making, it must be oil.
SPEAKER_00: So the sinful woman or the woman who breaks the container, the alabaster container of nard worth a year's wages.
SPEAKER_00: That's like a hundred thousand dollars, she pours on his head, and that makes him the Messiah, which is arguably why that story is in the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: That's when Jesus is anointed Messiah Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Yes, ma'am.
SPEAKER_02: So you didn't have to be anointed by a priest.
SPEAKER_00: Prophet.
SPEAKER_02: Or prophet.
SPEAKER_00: See, so isn't that interesting?
SPEAKER_00: This woman is the prophet.
SPEAKER_00: And in Luke's gospel, so it's important to know.
SPEAKER_00: We got four gospels, remember?
SPEAKER_00: In Luke's gospel, she's a sinful woman.
SPEAKER_00: In Mark's gospel, she's a woman.
SPEAKER_00: Which is interesting what Luke is telling us about who can be prophets.
SPEAKER_00: That's helpful to know, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00: That sinful people can still speak on behalf of God.
SPEAKER_00: That means there's hope for me.
SPEAKER_00: And possibly you two.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, I was just kidding.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so so that was just a little bit of cleanup on those little churchy titles.
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, maybe it's helpful for you to see a little bit of other like church iconography historically.
SPEAKER_00: Um, our old Advent set, uh, we retired it because some malls um were sustained by it, um, had this figure here on the on the chasable.
SPEAKER_00: And um, that's not the letter T.
SPEAKER_00: In Greek that would be a tau, which is a Greek T, but actually that's called a Tau cross.
SPEAKER_00: So it's one way of representing a cross.
SPEAKER_00: Now, this is maybe helpful for you to know, is that this is probably much more accurate what a cross would have looked like at the time of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: So, if you've seen any movie about Jesus, it's probably wrong.
SPEAKER_00: I want to make sure you know this.
SPEAKER_00: Particularly if the cross is shaped like that and really tall, and Jesus is carrying that big old thing.
SPEAKER_00: And if you've seen one where he gets attached to a cross on his back, like supine, and then they like lower it into a hole, dead wrong.
SPEAKER_00: No way it went like that.
SPEAKER_00: Um, you just have to know the human body can only well carry so much weight.
SPEAKER_00: Has anybody here ever tried to pick up a railroad tie, just out of curiosity?
SPEAKER_00: Uh it's really heavy, you know.
SPEAKER_00: Like I would dare say it's like 225 pounds.
SPEAKER_00: Now, um, if you're like a high octane athlete, you could carry that by yourself.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you could, but you would have had to train for that, you know.
SPEAKER_00: No Joe Schmoe off the street is going to successfully mount the railroad tie to their shoulders and walk down the Via Dola Rosa.
SPEAKER_00: It's just not gonna happen.
SPEAKER_00: So the news is it didn't.
SPEAKER_00: Uh the way this worked in the ancient world is that there was sort of like a telephone pole in the ground with a notch cut out on top.
SPEAKER_00: So um, here's here's your visual.
SPEAKER_00: That's a cylinder, and this is a cylinder too.
SPEAKER_00: But imagine that there's a notch that's like two inches wide that goes all the way down into that pillar.
SPEAKER_00: That pillar is probably five foot six.
SPEAKER_00: The reason I got that number is that was the average height, apparently, of people at the time of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: So it's like a head level.
SPEAKER_00: So when people were to be crucified, what they carried was the beam that fit in that notch.
SPEAKER_00: That beam was about the size of a two by four, probably four feet long.
SPEAKER_00: That weighs, best estimate, 10 pounds, and that would be soaking wet, right?
SPEAKER_00: If you've picked up lumber, it's not so bad.
SPEAKER_00: There's nobody swarthy enough to snap a two by four.
SPEAKER_00: I just want you to know.
SPEAKER_00: Really, I mean, unless that thing has got some dry rot, you will not be snapping that two by four.
SPEAKER_00: And even if you did, your feet would be attached to that column.
SPEAKER_00: It would really just be miserable.
SPEAKER_00: I just want to make sure you know this.
SPEAKER_00: So people in the ancient world are crucified at eye level, not up.
SPEAKER_00: Anytime you see a movie or a painting where Jesus is up, that's a theological statement, not a historic one, if that makes sense.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: Just to give you a little bit of an idea, and you probably know this, there's two ways you die from being attached to a cross.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, one is uh you you asphyxiate, so you're your sort of your lungs collapse and you can't breathe, so you suffocate.
SPEAKER_00: Uh the other way, which is actually probably more common, is that your body just goes into shock and you just die.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you you just shut down, basically, and you and you die.
SPEAKER_00: Um when you hear in the gospel that Jesus was offered like a mild sedative, myrrh mixed with wine, and he declined it, um studies say that that was so you wouldn't go into shock.
SPEAKER_00: It wasn't so crucifixion wouldn't hurt.
SPEAKER_00: It's so you wouldn't die of shock, so you would die over days instead of hours.
SPEAKER_00: If that makes sense.
SPEAKER_00: Um, because these things, these billboards are right outside the city gate.
SPEAKER_00: Remember, most people live outside the gate.
SPEAKER_00: They come in to do business, they leave because cities are very small.
SPEAKER_00: Everyone's passing these, which are like billboards that say this is what happens if you mess with Rome.
SPEAKER_00: And they want that to last a long time to be an effective advertisement.
SPEAKER_00: Yes, ma'am.
unknown: What caused the change of the representation of the cross from what it was to what it is?
SPEAKER_00: Glad you asked that.
SPEAKER_00: And probably it has to do initially with the idea, Polly, that um there's a little sign up here that says, and maybe you've heard this, this is in Latin, here lies Jesus, King of the Jews.
SPEAKER_00: So trying to figure out where that goes.
SPEAKER_00: And um, it goes up there, and if you do it long enough, well, that it ends up having the same proportion of these, if that sort of makes sense.
SPEAKER_00: But please know, Jesus apparently didn't carry that placard.
SPEAKER_00: We have no idea how big it is, and and we don't really know where it was put.
SPEAKER_00: Is that helpful to say?
SPEAKER_00: Uh the other thing we don't know, and and by the way, I just want to make sure you know just a few bits about this, because we get this wrong.
SPEAKER_00: In general, if you go into a Roman church or a Roman school, you'll always see Jesus kind of like this, right?
SPEAKER_00: And usually in the Roman tradition, Jesus is physically on the cross.
SPEAKER_00: In the Protestant tradition, he tends not to be.
SPEAKER_00: There's gradients there, but that tends to be how we how we do this.
SPEAKER_00: And he's always clothed, and that would not have happened.
SPEAKER_00: People were crucified naked.
SPEAKER_00: This is to humiliate Jewish people, quite honestly, who um uh well didn't believe who had high standards of modesty against the Greco-Roman culture.
SPEAKER_00: Um again, usually it's really long.
SPEAKER_00: Remember, that's just a theological claim, not a historic one.
SPEAKER_00: Um in this reality here that I'm showing you, you don't need ladders or or anything.
SPEAKER_00: You I mean you don't need anything special.
SPEAKER_00: You need two guys, and you put that little beam in there, and then you rope somebody's arms around that little beam however you want to.
SPEAKER_00: So we don't know that people were crucified like this.
SPEAKER_00: They may have been like that.
SPEAKER_00: It's just however people chose to do it, is how it was done.
SPEAKER_00: It was up to the centurion or the soldier, frankly, to be as cruel as they chose to be.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, nails were not necessary.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, nails won't support your weight at any bone point.
SPEAKER_00: They've run simulations in this, and um you use ropes and then you add nails, frankly, for just the nastiness of it, if that sort of makes sense.
SPEAKER_00: Um, there's a problem when people are crucified at eye levels.
SPEAKER_00: So when you hear the Pharisees spat in Jesus' face, in this diagram you're thinking like a watermelon seed spitting contest like up in the air, but in the reality, it's eye to eye.
SPEAKER_00: And you can smack the per.
SPEAKER_00: You mean you you know you see it's very, very, very close.
SPEAKER_00: Um, so um like you, and you already asked the question, Polly, how do we go from the tau cross to the lowercase T?
SPEAKER_00: And I think it has to do with the placard.
SPEAKER_00: You can read a book by James Carroll called Constantine's Sword that says, interestingly enough, it's because this is shaped like a sword.
SPEAKER_00: I just think that's silly.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's an interesting idea, but I don't think so.
SPEAKER_00: Because again, Constantine did not paint that on his soldier's shields, he painted that, which looks nothing like a sword.
SPEAKER_00: Does that make sense what I'm saying?
SPEAKER_00: Um in the Eastern tradition, the cross changed, and it's got uh this as the title, Inri, Here Lies Jesus King of the Jews.
SPEAKER_00: So see, they the Eastern tradition decided the cross was shaped like that, but when you put the placard on it, it's like this, and then typically in the Russian tradition and in the Eastern tradition as well, you've got a diagonal line.
SPEAKER_00: This is because one person goes to hell and the other person goes to heaven.
SPEAKER_00: The story says there's two thieves.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, they're not thieves, they're they're insurrectionists.
SPEAKER_00: They're they're zealots or they're gorillas.
SPEAKER_00: Thieves is just a bad translation.
SPEAKER_00: Um, who are crucified next to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: So that that is a little bit of cross iconography.
SPEAKER_00: You'll see lots of different ones.
SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, on the Episcopal shield, we have this one, and that is a cross that's called the cross of St.
SPEAKER_00: Andrews.
SPEAKER_00: Now it turns out crucifixion was not invented by Romans, it was perfected by them.
SPEAKER_00: Crucifixion was invented by Persians.
SPEAKER_00: So you're thinking Darius, Cyrus, modern-day Iran, Iraq, and um they used that.
SPEAKER_00: That's a Persian cross.
SPEAKER_00: You see, again, no one can carry that.
SPEAKER_00: These are not big professional football players who are used to pushing on sleds and doing crossfit.
SPEAKER_00: These are like farmers.
SPEAKER_00: They could carry milk a long way, but not excessive poundage of lumber.
SPEAKER_00: So you kind of already have to have this permanently made to use it.
SPEAKER_00: It's like having a gallows.
SPEAKER_00: You know, every town in the Middle Ages had a permanent gallow in the city square, and you know, all executions were public.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe even compulsory.
SPEAKER_00: Would be really interesting to think about how we do this today.
SPEAKER_00: If you had to watch people in the gas chamber and the electric chair, would you feel different about capital punishment?
SPEAKER_00: That's an interesting question.
SPEAKER_00: This was extremely worse than the gas chamber and the electric chair.
SPEAKER_00: I just want to make sure you know, like in terms of duration, you'd be there, I mean four or five days.
SPEAKER_00: Um apparently St.
SPEAKER_00: Andrew was crucified on this one.
SPEAKER_00: That's the tradition, which is why he's on the Episcopal Shield.
SPEAKER_00: Remember, we use the Scottish Rite, so this is a symbol of Scotland on the Episcopal Shield.
SPEAKER_00: Just to demonstrate, here's the Episcopal Shield.
SPEAKER_00: It's got a cross, and then it's got these X's here.
SPEAKER_00: You see, and there's a St.
SPEAKER_00: Andrews Cross.
SPEAKER_00: Jumping jack.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe, but again, the evidence is hard to know because it could have been like this.
SPEAKER_00: It's whatever they wanted to do to you.
SPEAKER_00: Again, it's not like a standard way.
SPEAKER_00: Like I said, we we've got the arm could have been wrapped underneath.
SPEAKER_00: It's just whatever they wanted to do, is what you got.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: Could be Polly, like in this one, they wrap you to the two by four, and then just one guy on either end just hefted you up and dropped you in the slot, and that's that.
SPEAKER_00: Could be, they put the two by four in and then pushed you up and held you.
SPEAKER_00: That'd take more people.
SPEAKER_00: You know, I mean, so you just got to think through.
SPEAKER_00: This is not like a time where there's police, soldiers are expensive.
SPEAKER_00: They want to do this as efficiently and painfully as possible.
SPEAKER_00: That's sort of the the goal here.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: So again, you'll see you'll see this cross sometimes as well.
SPEAKER_00: If you ever go to the kneelers in our church, the kneelers have this needle point.
SPEAKER_00: There's many, many other different crosses.
SPEAKER_00: Interestingly enough, um, there's the cross of Saint John, which is shaped like this.
SPEAKER_00: And all that is is cruciform.
SPEAKER_00: So no one ever was crucified on that shape, nobody ever.
SPEAKER_00: This is because when the Knights of St.
SPEAKER_00: John were formed, they came from eight different places, and there's eight places.
SPEAKER_00: And they're still resident in Malta.
SPEAKER_00: So that's called the Maltese Cross, that little tiny island in the Mediterranean cross of St.
SPEAKER_00: John.
SPEAKER_00: So if you ever look at the Society of St.
SPEAKER_00: John the Evangelist, there's that one.
SPEAKER_00: That that's what you'll see.
SPEAKER_00: Um that's mostly what you get crosswise, just sort of so you know.
SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, the chazu that uh that I'm wearing right now has Jesus depicted as the Agnes Day.
SPEAKER_00: So it's a it's a sheep, and usually with a little flag like this, that has Yesus like that.
SPEAKER_00: I the the the Yoda Ada Sigma.
SPEAKER_00: And and Jesus is depicted again as the Lamb of God because John the Baptist says, look, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.
SPEAKER_00: And in tradition, we've sort of mapped that that Jesus is like the Passover Lamb.
SPEAKER_00: Do you know about the Feast of Passover?
SPEAKER_00: Passover is arguably like the most important Jewish holiday.
SPEAKER_00: I know you're going to say, no, it's not, it's Yom Kippur.
SPEAKER_00: If you're a regular Jewish person, Passover is the most important Jewish holiday.
SPEAKER_00: Still today.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, many people who are like culturally Jewish only keep kosher during that week.
SPEAKER_00: So, you know, this commemorates the time when they were in Egypt and God was going to deliver them.
SPEAKER_00: And there wasn't enough time for the bread to rise, so they eat flat bread.
SPEAKER_00: Please, they did not have yeast packets.
SPEAKER_00: It wasn't that yeast was bad, it was that the bread rose overnight from something like sourdough starter.
SPEAKER_00: There wasn't time for the bread to rise, so they cooked it before it did, which was why it's flattish.
SPEAKER_00: We use yeast in our communion bread because, frankly, there was yeast in the Passover bread the first time.
SPEAKER_00: It just didn't have time to rise.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: Nothing bad with yeast.
SPEAKER_00: It's all about make haste.
SPEAKER_00: So you use flat bread all week, and uh you have to do this hunting for any yeast product in your home and clean it out.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you know this.
SPEAKER_00: It's supposed to be a game.
SPEAKER_00: You play this with children.
SPEAKER_00: It's called find the yeast and get rid of it.
SPEAKER_00: You clean everything, like the inside of your oven, because yeast was in there.
SPEAKER_00: You clean the inside of your refrigerator in case the vestiges of the yeast were there.
SPEAKER_00: This is something you do today.
SPEAKER_00: Then comes time for the lamb.
SPEAKER_00: You know, back then people only ate meat on festival days.
SPEAKER_00: Animals were precious.
SPEAKER_00: If you killed a lamb, you just lost all the wool it would produce and the milk.
SPEAKER_00: So you don't want to do that often, or you you lose a lot of commodities.
SPEAKER_00: And when you're a subsistence farmer, I mean, this even in our own country, like my grandparents were not sharecroppers, but close to it, you didn't have meat every day.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, this is a more modern invention that we eat meat every day.
SPEAKER_00: Um, the animals were just sort of precious.
SPEAKER_00: So, what's the instructions?
SPEAKER_00: The first Passover is flat bread, you eat it standing up, fully dressed to go on a run.
SPEAKER_00: You've even got your hand tucked into your belt, and that lamb that you cook you're supposed to just devour.
SPEAKER_00: Scarf it down quickly.
SPEAKER_00: It's full of fat, you know, and calories because it's nutrition for the journey.
SPEAKER_00: You're getting ready to go on a long walk, and this is you loading up for the journey.
SPEAKER_00: That animal had nothing to do with your sins.
SPEAKER_00: This is important to know.
SPEAKER_00: You can read this in the Passover story.
SPEAKER_00: The animal does not take your place, the animal is strengthening your journey.
SPEAKER_00: Why do you put the blood on the doorstep?
SPEAKER_00: The blood isn't magic, the blood is the life of the animal.
SPEAKER_00: So in the ancient world, we think life is in your brain and in your heart.
SPEAKER_00: For them, the symbol of life was blood.
SPEAKER_00: And if you're Jewish still today, you can't eat blood.
SPEAKER_00: You're all of the blood of the animal.
SPEAKER_00: Has to be drained.
SPEAKER_00: So blood sausage, great if you're Irish, not if you're Jewish.
SPEAKER_00: That's because the life of the animal belongs to God, not to people.
SPEAKER_00: And if you drink the blood, you're taking the life for yourself and it's God's.
SPEAKER_00: That's sort of the Hebrew understanding of why you drain that blood out.
SPEAKER_00: So they put this on their door as a marker that this life is God's and we're ready for the journey.
SPEAKER_00: So the Lamb of God is about strength for the journey.
SPEAKER_00: And I don't want to say it's changed in the wrong way.
SPEAKER_00: This is not about wrong, it's just that we've changed it.
SPEAKER_00: A lot of times we hear Jesus is the Passover lamb, so he's like God's offering for our sin.
SPEAKER_00: But please know the Passover lamb was not that.
SPEAKER_00: No person can atone for the sin of the people.
SPEAKER_00: Only the high priest can do that.
SPEAKER_00: And regular people kill the Passover lamb.
SPEAKER_00: Does it make sense what I'm saying?
SPEAKER_00: So the Agnes Day represents a couple opportunities for us.
SPEAKER_00: One is, oh, it's like Jesus took our place and died for our sins.
SPEAKER_00: Another is, Jesus represents strength for our journey to God's promised land from the captivity we're living in.
SPEAKER_00: I think they could both be compelling cases.
SPEAKER_00: But please notice there's two and they're not mutually exclusive.
SPEAKER_00: Does that make sense what I'm saying?
SPEAKER_00: When John the Baptist says, the Lamb that takes away the sin of the world, it may not mean he's taking our place.
SPEAKER_00: It may be the one who's going to strengthen you for your journey.
SPEAKER_00: This is part of the difference between God's table and an altar.
SPEAKER_00: Do you see?
SPEAKER_00: Both and.
SPEAKER_00: In the Anglican book of common prayer, it's a table.
SPEAKER_00: In the Scottish book, it's an altar.
unknown: What does the view of blood in the Jewish tradition have to do with the union service?
SPEAKER_00: Well, I'd say it depends, right?
SPEAKER_00: Again, because of our Jewish heritage, right, um, Jewish people would cringe at the idea of drinking the blood of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: So a strict transubstantiation did not exist for a long time that the wine becomes blood.
SPEAKER_00: For them, right?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, just think through.
SPEAKER_00: If blood is a symbol of life, Jesus says, this wine is like my life.
SPEAKER_00: So be filled with my life.
SPEAKER_00: And in general, we've changed it to be filled with Jesus' death.
SPEAKER_00: In general, that's our metaphor for the blood of Jesus, that it's about his death and his blood covering us.
SPEAKER_00: And I, you know, this is true as a lay Protestant.
SPEAKER_00: What can wash away my sin?
SPEAKER_00: Nothing but the blood of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Well, I don't know why we didn't sing nothing but the love of Jesus, because like I'd rather have that.
SPEAKER_00: We actually were taught at an early age to not be afraid of like a bloodbath, which is like a terrible.
SPEAKER_00: Isn't it awful?
SPEAKER_00: This is an awful image.
SPEAKER_00: So I think sometimes we take the symbology so literally we forget to take it seriously, right?
SPEAKER_00: Jesus says, This is my life poured out for you.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, anybody who has loved you has poured their life out for you.
SPEAKER_00: We pour our life out for our children, and we don't say we bled for them.
SPEAKER_00: We might say that, like I would bleed for you.
SPEAKER_00: Really, we we might mean that literally, but what we're really trying to say is, I would give all my life force for you.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I think that's what we mean.
SPEAKER_00: So I think that's our that's an opportunity, right?
SPEAKER_00: This bread is my body, right?
SPEAKER_00: If we take that so seriously for we forget to what it's saying, right?
SPEAKER_00: This is strength for your journey.
SPEAKER_00: Strength for your journey.
SPEAKER_00: Well, I just got into theology a little bit, but I think that's related to the symbology, if that makes sense.
SPEAKER_00: I guess I decided I'd take the symbol track for a second.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe I should pause and see if there's a different thing you'd like to talk about historically here.
SPEAKER_00: Do I want to?
SPEAKER_00: Uh well Noah's acceptable, eh?
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, uh, to be honest, that's I I I do feel like I've got enough expertise to make a comment on a style.
SPEAKER_00: It's just it's it's a stylized way of making of making this cross.
SPEAKER_00: And of course, you know, um Celtic people love these unending knots that come back on themselves, so this is a sort of a way of doing it and putting a circle around it.
SPEAKER_00: Have you seen the Celtic cross?
SPEAKER_00: There's many different representations, but I but I can't speak to it well, Nick.
SPEAKER_00: Do you know about it?
SPEAKER_00: Do you do you know?
SPEAKER_00: Do you want to tell us?
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: More symbology or something different?
SPEAKER_00: Maybe let me pause for a second and talk about titles for the clergy.
SPEAKER_00: This is a changing thing.
SPEAKER_00: It's just really important to know.
SPEAKER_00: There's no uniform titles for clergy.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna put some up there and I'm gonna quiz you and see if you know who should be called by the following titles.
SPEAKER_00: Are you ready?
SPEAKER_00: Who gets called the Reverend?
SPEAKER_00: Go ahead, go ahead.
SPEAKER_02: I said if you're sending a card, I don't know the card of the Reverend Ted and Anne will be.
SPEAKER_00: And why would you address it?
SPEAKER_02: Why would you I've seen it that way before?
SPEAKER_02: I mean, he's a priest.
SPEAKER_00: Uh okay.
SPEAKER_02: He's a priest.
SPEAKER_00: Are deacons called the Reverend?
SPEAKER_00: In fact, they are.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes they're called the Reverend Deacon.
SPEAKER_00: But more often than not, nowadays, deacons, you can do it either way, but in general, I see the Reverend a lot for deacons.
SPEAKER_00: So this is for somebody that's ordained.
SPEAKER_00: The Reverend.
SPEAKER_00: Who gets called Reverend?
SPEAKER_00: So what about Reverend Ted?
unknown: No.
SPEAKER_00: Somebody with poor grammar, which means they're a Methodist.
SPEAKER_00: I'm kidding.
SPEAKER_00: This is true.
SPEAKER_00: It's grammatically incorrect to call somebody Reverend.
SPEAKER_00: They're the Reverend.
SPEAKER_02: You meant the right.
SPEAKER_00: I did.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
SPEAKER_00: What?
SPEAKER_00: Thanks.
SPEAKER_00: All right, fine.
SPEAKER_00: Who's called the Very Reverend?
SPEAKER_00: Do you know that?
SPEAKER_00: Do you know there's there's there's it's the dean of the cathedral, or any dean in a diocese can be called that, depending on the bishop's permission.
SPEAKER_00: So I'll tell you in San Diego where I came from, we didn't have convocations, nor did we have deaneries, but those are similarly the same thing.
SPEAKER_00: A convocation is a subdivision of a diocese to allow clergy networking and care.
SPEAKER_00: Usually there's one priest, not a deacon, usually it's a priest, who is called the dean of a convocation.
SPEAKER_00: And because they're a dean, theoretically, they can assume the title, the very reverend.
SPEAKER_00: Now, interestingly enough, in San Diego, our bishop said we will not have deaneries because I won't have very reverence.
SPEAKER_00: Because some people aspire to the title.
SPEAKER_00: You may say, Oh, aren't you guys different?
SPEAKER_00: We're just like you.
SPEAKER_00: We're regular people.
SPEAKER_00: In some ways, we're a little more petty than you all are.
SPEAKER_00: So some of us like to be very reverence.
SPEAKER_00: Now, this is the truth.
SPEAKER_00: If you ever were a very reverend, you were always one.
SPEAKER_00: So, my mentoring rector, the very Reverend Edward Harrison, was Dean of the Cathedral in Jacksonville, moved to Coronado, and was still the very reverend Edward Harrison, just like President George H.
SPEAKER_00: W.
SPEAKER_00: Bush just died.
SPEAKER_00: That guy hadn't been president in 30 years, but we still call him President Bush.
SPEAKER_00: So once the highest title is the one you get.
SPEAKER_00: Very Reverend is only for deans, either at, once again, cathedrals or convocational heads.
SPEAKER_00: I've never seen a very reverend deacon.
SPEAKER_00: Never.
SPEAKER_00: A dean is like the rector.
SPEAKER_00: So the cathedral is where the bishop sits.
SPEAKER_00: Literally, it refers to a seat.
SPEAKER_00: We have a bishop's seat.
SPEAKER_00: I sit in it every week, right?
SPEAKER_00: Because when the bishop's here, I don't.
SPEAKER_00: It's ultimately the bishop's seat.
SPEAKER_00: And the cathedral is where the bishop's permanent seat is.
SPEAKER_00: So it's sort of like the bishop is the rector of the cathedral, but the bishop isn't always there.
SPEAKER_00: So the dean is the rector in the bishop's stead.
SPEAKER_00: Now, typically, the dean of the cathedral tends to be one of the more influential rectors in a diocese.
SPEAKER_00: Certain dioceses name these people, they call them cardinal rectors.
SPEAKER_00: Cardinal that means counting, like one, two, three, four, five.
SPEAKER_00: So you should know in the diocese of Texas, we sometimes hear the cardinal rectors approve this, which means the ones that count.
SPEAKER_00: Let me dispel any notions you may have.
SPEAKER_00: I am not a cardinal rector.
SPEAKER_00: I don't count.
SPEAKER_00: Usually that means, if you hear cardinal rectors, it means the ones of the bigger or more prosperous congregations.
SPEAKER_00: And often the dean is meant to set the tone for liturgy and practice throughout the diocese.
SPEAKER_00: That's a changing theme because in many places the cathedral can be much smaller than some of the parishes.
SPEAKER_00: That's certainly true here.
SPEAKER_00: The biggest parish in the Episcopal Church is St.
SPEAKER_00: Martin's.
SPEAKER_00: Christchurch Cathedral is like one-fifth the size of St.
SPEAKER_00: Martin's.
SPEAKER_00: St.
SPEAKER_00: John the Divine, three and a half times bigger than Christchurch Cathedral.
SPEAKER_00: But I would tell you, interestingly enough, I think more clergy look to Barclay than look to Russ Levinson.
SPEAKER_00: I believe that.
SPEAKER_00: Russ Levinson's the rector of St.
SPEAKER_00: Martin's and Barclay Thompson is the rector, the dean of the cathedral.
SPEAKER_00: I still think we've got that idea that the dean is like, what can you get away with?
SPEAKER_00: Look at the dean, if that makes sense.
SPEAKER_00: I'll tell you more about the title rector in a second.
SPEAKER_00: Jim Liberator.
SPEAKER_00: And by the way, he's not the very Reverend Jim Liberator.
SPEAKER_00: He's not.
SPEAKER_00: Because the Bishop of Texas, I think, does not offer that title.
SPEAKER_00: And Jim doesn't assume it.
SPEAKER_00: And Stacy never did either.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know what would happen if he tried to use it.
SPEAKER_00: I think the bishop would say stop.
SPEAKER_00: Who's the right reverend?
SPEAKER_00: Right Reverends are bishops.
SPEAKER_00: How many right reverends are there in the Diocese of Texas?
SPEAKER_00: Well, it turns out the diocese has one bishop diocesan.
SPEAKER_00: And then there's two suffragan bishops.
SPEAKER_00: Suffragan, like they get to vote.
SPEAKER_00: There's another assisting bishop, and there's another bishop emeritus that does stuff.
SPEAKER_00: So there's five that do stuff.
SPEAKER_00: If you retire as a bishop, you're still the right reverend.
SPEAKER_00: But the right reverend, you hear it, the bishop is always right.
SPEAKER_00: That's our polity.
SPEAKER_00: That's why the word's there.
SPEAKER_00: They're the right reverend.
SPEAKER_00: I don't like how you do the Eucharist.
SPEAKER_00: Too bad I'm right.
SPEAKER_00: That's sort of how it goes.
SPEAKER_00: That's the right reverend.
SPEAKER_00: More about levels of bishop in a second.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
SPEAKER_00: And this is interesting to know.
SPEAKER_00: In the Church of England, and this is maybe worth before we do these other titles.
SPEAKER_00: In the Church of England, the Queen appoints all clergy, essentially.
SPEAKER_00: So she doesn't know every priest that's done on her behalf.
SPEAKER_00: And bishops, she probably didn't even know all bishops, but she consents because the queen is the head of the church.
SPEAKER_00: And the same with the Archbishop of Canterbury, selected by the Queen.
SPEAKER_00: Doesn't matter if anybody else likes them.
SPEAKER_00: Now you you know you have to use that authority carefully because if you constantly pick these people everybody hates, then they will start to hate you.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: So Archbishop Rowan Williams, picked by Queen Elizabeth II.
SPEAKER_00: Archbishop Justin Welby, current Archbishop, picked by Queen Elizabeth II.
SPEAKER_00: I'm sure she was advised.
SPEAKER_00: Now, this is actually very similar, interestingly enough, to the Methodist system which came out of the Anglican Church, which is there's like some election of bishops, but there's also some appointment.
SPEAKER_00: And quite honestly, in the Methodist system, an elder, they don't use the word priest, an elder, is assigned by a bishop to a church and moves when the bishop moves them.
SPEAKER_00: There's a little negotiating that, but theoretically, elders should be moved every five to seven years, regardless of what they want or their people want.
SPEAKER_00: And that's how the Church of England works.
SPEAKER_00: Now, in the United States, we had the revolution, we wanted the Anglican Church to make our bishop for us, they wouldn't.
SPEAKER_00: So I think that probably helped us say, well, the heck with you, we're going to live into the federalist system, which is really about states' rights and federal rights.
SPEAKER_00: And that's how the Episcopal Church really works.
SPEAKER_00: So let me tell you a little bit about states' rights.
SPEAKER_00: Um, we have somebody called the presiding bishop.
SPEAKER_00: Their title is the most reverend or primate of the church.
SPEAKER_00: That is Michael Curry.
SPEAKER_00: This is changing a little bit for you know more than 200 years, the presiding bishop had no authority over any other bishop.
SPEAKER_00: They were sort of like, not the figurehead, but the public representative for the Episcopal Church.
SPEAKER_00: But this is still true today that a bishop is autonomous in her or his diocese.
SPEAKER_00: So just so you know how this works.
SPEAKER_00: Again, you're gonna hear checks and balances here.
SPEAKER_00: The national church voted in 2015 that same-sex marriage was a sacrament in the church.
SPEAKER_00: Not just that you could do it, but it was sacramental.
SPEAKER_00: Certain bishops in their diocese said, not in my diocese.
SPEAKER_00: And they got to control that.
SPEAKER_00: So the general convention of the Episcopal Church was not binding on a bishop in her or his diocese.
SPEAKER_00: Checks and balances, state law, federal law.
SPEAKER_00: So you just consider that you can go legally buy some marijuana in cor in uh in um Colorado and be arrested by a federal marshal.
SPEAKER_00: Because it's against federal law, even though you're honoring state law.
SPEAKER_00: That's I think a similar system.
SPEAKER_00: Bishops are supposed to be elected.
SPEAKER_00: Well, they are elected.
SPEAKER_00: They're elected by clergy and lay folk in their diocese.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, we're getting ready to elect a bishop in February.
SPEAKER_00: Um, one of our suffragan bishops is forced to retire.
SPEAKER_00: So at the age of 72, you're done.
SPEAKER_00: Doesn't matter how good you are, you're done.
SPEAKER_00: She's hitting 72, and she's out the door.
SPEAKER_00: So we are electing a new suffragan bishop.
SPEAKER_00: Um, our representatives from St.
SPEAKER_00: Thomas, we're sending four, will all get to vote in a separate category from me who gets a clergy vote, sort of like the House of Representatives and the Senate, you see.
SPEAKER_00: Separation of powers.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_03: What did they do with the next 72?
SPEAKER_00: Pay them well.
SPEAKER_00: Uh because this is good to know, JP Morgan was influential in starting the church pension system.
SPEAKER_00: And uh I've heard reports it's the second best pension in the world.
SPEAKER_00: So in general, when we retire.
SPEAKER_00: Well, I think you can only be a priest till you're 75.
SPEAKER_00: And listen, I mean, you've got to really want to.
SPEAKER_00: When you're 72, you could go be the rector as a former bishop.
SPEAKER_00: You can do that.
SPEAKER_00: You can do it.
SPEAKER_00: You can do that anytime, because once you're a bishop, you're always a bishop.
SPEAKER_00: You can still be involved in ordaining people, you can still be involved in um confirming people.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, we had a retired bishop, Philip Duncan, come do confirmation two confirmations ago.
SPEAKER_00: Now, he could do it without consulting the bishop diocesan, but that can get real ugly because this is Andy's diocese.
SPEAKER_00: So that should have approval, even though it's a bishop asking another bishop for approval.
SPEAKER_00: See, remember, once you're a bishop, you're always a bishop.
SPEAKER_03: But they just I'm thinking of a Catholic priest that may be retired, and he doesn't want it to be a works.
SPEAKER_00: Doesn't matter what you want, 72, you're done.
SPEAKER_00: And if you're a priest, it's 75.
SPEAKER_00: That's a great reason to be an episcopalian.
SPEAKER_00: It is.
SPEAKER_00: It's a great reason to be an episcopalian.
SPEAKER_00: Well, I'll tell you how our pension works.
SPEAKER_00: Our pension is based on the seven highest years of conversation we got over our ministry.
SPEAKER_00: That's called the highest annual compensation or the hack.
SPEAKER_00: So, quite honestly, that's meant to help somebody who maybe serve somewhere big, take all their resources and experience, and not be afraid to go serve somewhere small, because in the end, they'll come out okay.
SPEAKER_00: Now, I'll tell you, our bishops in Texas get paid very well.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I think so.
SPEAKER_00: They they get paid certainly a living wage.
SPEAKER_00: And so it was great.
SPEAKER_00: So the bishop Dina, who's retiring, um, I don't know what her pension's going to be, but I think it's going to be just fine.
SPEAKER_00: Because she served as our suffragan bishop for a few years.
SPEAKER_00: Now, you're hearing me say the words diocesan and suffragan.
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: Um, every diocese has one diocesan bishop, one.
SPEAKER_00: That's Andy Doyle.
SPEAKER_00: And this is how tight this is.
SPEAKER_00: When Andy goes to Taiwan, the diocese went to Taiwan.
SPEAKER_00: The bishop is the diocese.
SPEAKER_00: And the bishop proves that by wearing the seal of the diocese on her or his finger, and it's something you could stamp in wax.
SPEAKER_00: So that's old, right?
SPEAKER_00: Who are the suffragan bishops?
SPEAKER_00: Well, honestly, we have to pay the national church for these people extra, but in a diocese our size, it's very big, these are people who are often bishops who get to vote in the house of bishops.
SPEAKER_00: The most you can have in any diocese is two, so then we don't stack the vote.
SPEAKER_00: You see, it's again, it's like the Senate, right?
SPEAKER_00: So you can do this and you can have two, and they're bishops, but they're not diocesan bishops.
SPEAKER_00: So that's sort of the deal on that.
SPEAKER_02: The most suffragans you can have is two?
SPEAKER_00: Yes, in any diocese.
SPEAKER_00: Otherwise, believe me, we'd have three.
SPEAKER_00: But we can only have two, and then we've got an assisting bishop who's not, who's serving, frankly, at Andy's uh what do I want to say?
SPEAKER_00: Pleasure.
unknown: I think in Canada goes all about that.
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
SPEAKER_00: Ah, yes, this is really great.
SPEAKER_00: So the Anglican Church is different from the Episcopal Church.
SPEAKER_00: We have different prayer books.
SPEAKER_00: Again, in the Anglican Church, you pray for the Queen.
SPEAKER_00: We don't pray for the Queen, we pray for the President.
SPEAKER_00: The Anglican Church bishops are appointed, here we elect them.
SPEAKER_00: So that's the bishops are in Canada, they're elected.
SPEAKER_00: But I oh excuse me.
SPEAKER_00: So the Church of the Anglican Church of Canada has some of our polity, but the Anglican Church of England has this other thing.
SPEAKER_00: So what's happened is there's different, even though we're in the really what we say is there's the Anglican Communion.
SPEAKER_00: So there's the Church of England and the Church of Canada and the Episcopal Church and these churches in Africa, right?
SPEAKER_00: And we've decided we're in communion.
SPEAKER_00: That means we've got more in common than we have apart.
SPEAKER_00: Our clergy are interchangeable even though we have different expressions, right?
SPEAKER_00: There is no Anglican church of the United States that is in the Anglican Communion.
SPEAKER_00: So maybe you've heard.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, there's these Anglican churches in the United States.
SPEAKER_00: Well, there are, but they're not in the Anglican Communion.
SPEAKER_00: That is, the Church of England does not recognize them as expressions of the Anglican Church, but they do recognize the Episcopal Church.
SPEAKER_00: It's a totally different denomination, the African Methodist Episcopal.
SPEAKER_00: Started in Philadelphia.
SPEAKER_00: Originally, that was, frankly, for black uh Episcopalians who had no rights in the Episcopal Church, because when it started, if you were black, you couldn't be priested, you couldn't be a bishop.
SPEAKER_00: So they said, well, we'll take the in general this the structure of the Episcopal Church and we'll make it the African church.
SPEAKER_00: The African Methodist Episcopal.
SPEAKER_00: It's got elements of Methodism in it, too.
SPEAKER_00: You hear that in the name?
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_01: But it was a lot like what I grew up with in the Episcopal Church, too.
SPEAKER_00: A lot of similarities.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, there are a lot of similarities.
SPEAKER_01: And a lot of Southern Baptist kind of thing going on here.
SPEAKER_00: Always depends on the church.
SPEAKER_00: I would tell you there are Episcopal churches within 15 minutes of here where you'll find screens and bands.
SPEAKER_00: Because every church is different.
SPEAKER_01: I all the way across Austin, I sent my picture.
SPEAKER_00: In general, those things popped up, in general, over two issues.
SPEAKER_00: Ordination of women.
SPEAKER_00: That's not always true, but same-sex marriage.
SPEAKER_00: And that's where Episcopal people said, we like the Episcopal Church, but we're not going there, so we'll make our Anglican thing.
SPEAKER_00: And you need to know, in general, this is changing a little bit, but when those Anglican churches started up, their bishop was in Africa.
SPEAKER_00: Like the Bishop of Rwanda was the bishop of this Anglican church in Friendswood.
SPEAKER_03: You mean like our Lady of Walsingham?
SPEAKER_00: I mean like it's a little crazy where the native issues are polygamy and female genital mutilation, and we'd rather have that than consenting adult behavior.
SPEAKER_00: And sorry.
SPEAKER_00: I'm a little bit passionate about Anglican splintering.
SPEAKER_00: A little bit.
SPEAKER_03: Is that where our Lady of Walsingham came from?
SPEAKER_00: I don't know the answer to that.
SPEAKER_03: I don't know.
SPEAKER_03: That's a big Anglican thing in the church out that way.
SPEAKER_00: Then ultimately, yes.
SPEAKER_00: Any Anglican church is essentially a splinter group that um now there is like an Anglican bishop who's like an American person, but they were consecrated by like a Rwandan or a Ghanan bishop or something like that.
SPEAKER_00: And again, they're not in the Anglican communion.
SPEAKER_00: So if you're an Anglican priest in the United States and you want to go to England, too bad.
SPEAKER_00: They won't receive you there because you're you're not in communion with them.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe.
SPEAKER_00: That's interesting.
SPEAKER_00: I don't mean I and I just I was probably a little bit naughty as a priest.
SPEAKER_00: I just told you something that was maybe bad.
SPEAKER_00: I just I do worry about Splinter Group and hey, you don't do what I want, so I'll take my toys and go home.
SPEAKER_00: I just I'm not sure that's really adult behavior.
SPEAKER_00: Um at a certain point we decide when we do that, and we do that carefully, and obviously that's why we had reformations, and we think those are good.
SPEAKER_00: So I I maybe I'm talking out of both sides of my mouth.
SPEAKER_00: Um, but it is a tough thing to belong to a church that is in not communion with other churches because you just got to run the end game, and what will there be for you?
SPEAKER_00: One of the nice things I think about belonging to a communion is you go somewhere else and there's one of them.
SPEAKER_00: You know, I mean there's like actual other people in your faith practice, which is just as nice, you know, in an increasingly mobile world.
SPEAKER_03: Mike, when you when you're doing the right stuff, sometimes I hear, at least in the Catholic Church, father.
SPEAKER_00: Does that Yeah?
SPEAKER_00: Let me get let me get to that.
SPEAKER_00: I'm almost done with the titles, and then I'm gonna hop in director and vicar, parish mission, and father.
SPEAKER_00: Um, most Reverend Michael Curry, and then I don't even have you heard about the venerable before?
SPEAKER_00: Do you know who the venerable is?
SPEAKER_00: There's only hint.
SPEAKER_00: There's only one venerable in each diocese.
SPEAKER_00: The venerable is the title reserved for the archdeacon.
SPEAKER_00: That's Russ Uxel here in Yeah, I can't say it right.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's a German word, it's impossible to say.
SPEAKER_00: Um in German, it's impossible.
SPEAKER_00: Um Archdeacon.
SPEAKER_00: So there's lots of deacons, and then there's one deacon appointed by the bishop to be the archdeacon.
SPEAKER_00: We didn't have one in San Diego, but the correct title is The Venerable.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you've heard of St.
SPEAKER_00: Bede.
SPEAKER_00: Saint Bede was deacon, he was the Venerable Bede.
SPEAKER_00: I went to St.
SPEAKER_00: Bede's for a while.
SPEAKER_00: The Venerable Bede, that's him.
SPEAKER_00: Uh I think those are actually all the titles, minus these two.
SPEAKER_00: Well, so the the I'm just going to tell you, we have these levels of ordination in the Episcopal Church.
SPEAKER_00: Like everyone's called the ministry.
SPEAKER_00: Here's everybody.
SPEAKER_00: You're all called to ministry.
SPEAKER_00: Me too.
SPEAKER_00: Some people are called to a specific ministry of service on behalf of the church.
SPEAKER_00: That is, these people are deacons, and they're supposed to represent the church to the marginalized and the marginalized to the church.
SPEAKER_00: So Saint Stephen is one of the first deacons.
SPEAKER_00: He's making sure that Greek widows get cared about by Hebrew church.
SPEAKER_00: Usually these people, I think when they're really living out their vocation, are doing things like prison ministry, just for example, because you know it's easy to forget people who are locked up, you don't see them.
SPEAKER_00: And they come back to their church and say, Don't forget the prisoners.
SPEAKER_00: You know, they they recruit mentors.
SPEAKER_00: That's what they do.
SPEAKER_00: And I want to tell you, I think when we do it right, the deacon doesn't need their collar.
SPEAKER_00: The church needs them to wear the collar because, frankly, they make us live into our values.
SPEAKER_00: Most dioceses don't know what to do with these people.
SPEAKER_00: They end up working as heads of school or they end up doing Christian education.
SPEAKER_00: And a lot of times we think, oh, we need them in the service to read the gospel and to miss dismiss people.
SPEAKER_00: We c we don't need that.
SPEAKER_00: Come on, let's be honest about that.
SPEAKER_00: So we're still trying to figure out, I think, what we do with vocational deacons.
SPEAKER_00: Do they, do they, you know.
SPEAKER_00: You got it.
SPEAKER_00: And we're working hard.
SPEAKER_00: I'll tell you, the one I knew that I thought was the best fit, and I don't want to over talk prison ministry, but this was a guy who who like had a had a big uh career as not like a middle manager, but an upper manager.
SPEAKER_00: He'd been going to prison for years because his dad had been incarcerated, and that was really important.
SPEAKER_00: So he kept going to prison and doing this and recruiting people to do these mentoring.
SPEAKER_00: He had to go to seminary.
SPEAKER_00: We require that for deacons, pretty much, whether it's somewhere like I owner or an institute, you know, like a like one of the seven Episcopal seminaries.
SPEAKER_00: And at the end of the day, you know, he knew that wearing a collar would give him a little more access to people.
SPEAKER_00: But I'll tell you, we needed that man to wear a collar because that guy was loving people in ways we just were extraordinary.
SPEAKER_00: You know, I mean, again, he made the church look good, so he still wears the collar.
SPEAKER_00: Deacons preach sometimes, but in general, his ministry is doing that stuff.
unknown: It's like outward.
SPEAKER_00: And not for pay.
SPEAKER_00: See, he didn't get paid to do that at all.
SPEAKER_00: And that can be the trick.
SPEAKER_00: If you're a vocational deacon at the age of 20, how are you going to live?
SPEAKER_00: You're either going to be bivocational, really, you know, or you're going to find a way in which you can sort of get paid to do what you do.
SPEAKER_00: Yes, sir.
SPEAKER_03: I'm not with the deacons of this biologist, but I'm aware of more also a refugee.
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
SPEAKER_00: And in San Diego, interestingly enough, Houston has more refugees now than any other city in the United States, second only to San Diego, and that recently changed.
SPEAKER_00: All people who are clergy are ordained deacons first.
SPEAKER_00: We are the only denomination that does that.
SPEAKER_00: So I was deaconed first, and then I got a separate ordination to be a priest.
SPEAKER_00: By the way, a bishop, the smallest group here, get a third ordination.
SPEAKER_00: So what's a priest do that a bishop can't do?
SPEAKER_00: This is a good question.
SPEAKER_00: As priests, we really there's the ABCs.
SPEAKER_00: We absolve people.
SPEAKER_00: God absolve you.
SPEAKER_00: The deacon says, God absolve us.
SPEAKER_00: We bless people, God bless and keep you.
SPEAKER_00: Deacon says, God bless and keep us, and the C is for consecration.
SPEAKER_00: A deacon cannot consecrate the Eucharist.
SPEAKER_00: It's the decision we make.
SPEAKER_00: Deacons can baptize people with the rector's permission.
SPEAKER_00: Deacons can celebrate weddings with the rector's permission.
SPEAKER_00: Deacons cannot consecrate oil for anointing, although priests can.
SPEAKER_00: So see that here, that word consecrate.
SPEAKER_00: We do that, deacons don't do that.
SPEAKER_00: Celebrate wedding, yes.
SPEAKER_00: Officiate wedding, yes.
SPEAKER_00: But with permission, because in general, the deacon's role is not liturgical.
SPEAKER_00: And marriage is a liturgy.
unknown: Side note, in an emergency, y'all do that.
SPEAKER_00: Yep, and y'all can also hear the sacrament of reconciliation, formerly called confession.
SPEAKER_00: You can do that too in an emergency.
SPEAKER_00: So that's the difference then between priests and deacons.
SPEAKER_00: We wear the same uniform, we're both called the Reverend.
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: I've got two ordinations in my office, both by the right Reverend Jim Mathis of San Diego.
SPEAKER_00: He ordained me on behalf of the church, you see, so I don't need another one by Andy Doyle to be here.
SPEAKER_00: When we're ordained a priest, we're priests for life.
SPEAKER_00: Interestingly enough, no priest or bishop can be defrocked in the Episcopal Church.
SPEAKER_00: Our ordination can never be taken from us.
SPEAKER_00: This is unique.
SPEAKER_00: When you were a priest, you were a priest forever.
SPEAKER_00: I can recant my vows and give it up.
SPEAKER_00: No one can take it from me.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you're wondering what happens with those bad priests?
SPEAKER_00: They get inhibited, where the bishop says, In my diocese, you may not consecrate anything which makes you unemployable.
SPEAKER_00: Because you need a priest to consecrate the communion.
SPEAKER_00: That's what we need.
unknown: But he can go to another diocese and that.
SPEAKER_00: Theoretically, yes, because you see, Andy Doyle has nothing to say to the Bishop of West Texas.
SPEAKER_00: However, you know how shaky it would be if the House of Bishops acted that way.
SPEAKER_00: So, in general, when you're inhibited one place that follows you.
SPEAKER_00: Because at the end of the day, we're in communion.
SPEAKER_00: And if we act like we're not, then we won't be.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if that makes sense.
SPEAKER_00: That's a real shaky thing when you think about rights and relationships.
SPEAKER_00: Last group, of course, then are the bishops, and what can the bishops do that priests can't?
SPEAKER_00: Two things, really.
SPEAKER_00: They can ordain people.
SPEAKER_00: You need a bishop to ordain people, including another bishop.
SPEAKER_00: And they can confirm people.
SPEAKER_00: Just so you know, right?
SPEAKER_00: Mixed system.
SPEAKER_00: The bishop owns the deed to the property.
SPEAKER_00: Now you may say, Mike, no.
SPEAKER_00: The corporation of the Episcopal Diocese of Texas owns the deed on behalf of the bishop.
SPEAKER_00: Yes, sir.
SPEAKER_03: Until the 80s.
SPEAKER_00: That's right.
SPEAKER_00: And really, that's just the narrowest degree of separation anyway, but still basically that's the case.
SPEAKER_00: Now, we have two people, two kinds of churches, and we have two kinds of priests really that serve them.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, I guess we've got a third.
SPEAKER_00: And then we have this one too.
SPEAKER_00: There's like 150 churches in the Diocese of Texas, and there's two types: parishes and missions.
SPEAKER_00: A mission is a place that either doesn't pay all of its own bills, like its light bill, pay its clergy, or does pay that, but doesn't completely pay the diocese a fair share to support the diocese.
SPEAKER_00: So every year we pay our diocesan assessment, which the diocese tells us how much it is, we don't, that's based on how many people come here and what our budget is.
SPEAKER_00: We pay that.
SPEAKER_00: And if we didn't pay that in full, we can be downgraded from a parish to a mission.
SPEAKER_00: And what's the difference?
SPEAKER_00: A parish has a rector, a mission has a vicar.
SPEAKER_00: The vicar serves at the bishop's pleasure.
SPEAKER_00: The bishop may not be pleased with the vicar anymore, and the bishop can yank them anywhere like that, gone.
SPEAKER_00: A mission does not have a vestry, they have a bishop's committee who represents the bishop's stronger interests.
SPEAKER_00: So you hear actually, hopefully you already hear the contrast.
SPEAKER_00: A parish has more self-government than a mission.
SPEAKER_00: A parish, we're one, calls their own rector.
SPEAKER_00: Now the bishop can veto, can veto a parish's call, but a bishop can't impose a call.
SPEAKER_00: A bishop can impose a call on a mission.
SPEAKER_00: That may make you worried.
SPEAKER_00: Some of y'all picked me.
SPEAKER_00: That's it.
SPEAKER_00: Now, there are a couple subclasses like priest in charge.
SPEAKER_00: You can be a parish and have a priest in charge, which is different from a rector.
SPEAKER_00: The thing is, this is part of our separation of powers.
SPEAKER_00: A rector comes in tenured, which means a parish cannot get rid of their rector unless, and it's not even the parish doing it, the rector would have to have some kind of immorality scandal or embezzlement.
SPEAKER_00: You could be a terrible priest and be driving your parish into the ground.
SPEAKER_00: Why doesn't the bishop do anything?
SPEAKER_00: They can't.
SPEAKER_00: We come in tenured.
SPEAKER_00: Them's the rules.
SPEAKER_00: Yes, ma'am.
SPEAKER_02: So if the mission has a vicar.
SPEAKER_00: Yep.
SPEAKER_02: Which is not a priest.
SPEAKER_00: It is a priest, but not a rector.
SPEAKER_02: But not a rector.
SPEAKER_02: Oh.
SPEAKER_02: Because I was trying to figure out what's the difference between a vicar and a deacon.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, a lot of difference.
SPEAKER_00: I could have told the bishop, I'm willing to be a vicar, assign me as you see fit.
SPEAKER_00: I did not sign up for that.
SPEAKER_00: I actually was maybe at one time being considered to be a vicar or even a priest in charge.
SPEAKER_00: I said, I'll pass on that.
SPEAKER_00: And we can do that.
SPEAKER_00: It may be hard to get the bishop's recommendation.
SPEAKER_00: You see, this is checks and balance.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, a bishop can say, like I can say, hey, I want to go to Omaha, and our bishop could say, you don't want him.
SPEAKER_00: So there's like, that's sort of how that works.
SPEAKER_00: Couple titles that are important.
SPEAKER_00: You hear rector, the base of that is right.
SPEAKER_00: The rector is right.
SPEAKER_00: So the bishop's not always here.
SPEAKER_00: The bishop owns the property, and in her or his absence, the rector functions like the bishop for the property.
SPEAKER_00: And this is a weird thing, right?
SPEAKER_00: If there's ever a liturgical question, who do you ask?
SPEAKER_00: The bishop?
SPEAKER_00: You ask the rector.
SPEAKER_00: That's part of our checks and balance.
SPEAKER_00: Now listen, we can get in trouble with the bishop.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't mean we're bulletproof.
SPEAKER_00: But hard to quantify that trouble.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if that makes sense.
SPEAKER_00: The rector gets to make choices.
SPEAKER_00: Like, couple comes to me and wants to get married.
SPEAKER_00: It is solely my decision if they get married on this property.
SPEAKER_00: I could discriminate.
SPEAKER_00: I could say, I don't like how you look, go somewhere else.
SPEAKER_00: And I can say that.
SPEAKER_00: Won't you get in trouble?
SPEAKER_00: Well, not really, because I can decline any marriage and not give a reason.
SPEAKER_00: I know you're saying, Mike, those rules can easily be abused.
SPEAKER_00: They can, but notice that they're also protect, right?
SPEAKER_00: They have both sides.
SPEAKER_00: So ultimately you've got to call someone to be your rector that you trust.
SPEAKER_00: Because if you don't, it's hard to get rid of them.
SPEAKER_00: This is another interesting thing, too, just to tell you how this sort of works.
SPEAKER_00: The diocese owns this property.
SPEAKER_00: I supervise the property on behalf of the diocese.
SPEAKER_00: We have a school on this property, separately incorporated, although technically the vestry owns it.
SPEAKER_00: The head of school does not work for me.
SPEAKER_00: However, it could get really crazy.
SPEAKER_00: I could say, don't come on my property again.
SPEAKER_00: That's sort of strange.
SPEAKER_00: Now, how that gets enforced is a little bit of a riddle.
SPEAKER_00: But uh that that's again a little bit of, frankly, the messiness of our polity, but also sort of how it plays out.
SPEAKER_00: I can forbid Jenny from doing any baptism or wedding.
SPEAKER_00: She cannot do a wedding or baptism without my permission.
SPEAKER_00: Same if I had an associate.
SPEAKER_00: Jenny's a curate, which is an associate position.
SPEAKER_00: Associate rector does not exist in the canons of the Episcopal Church.
SPEAKER_00: It's a made-up job in which the rector is willing to invest some of her or his authority over a parish in another person, but that's at her or his pleasure, right?
SPEAKER_00: So this is an interesting thing about being an associate or being a deacon, you serve at the pleasure of the rector.
SPEAKER_00: That's how the polity works.
SPEAKER_00: I'm very pleased for Jenny to celebrate weddings and baptisms soon enough, right?
SPEAKER_00: And deacons can do that.
SPEAKER_00: I did my first baptism as a deacon.
SPEAKER_00: Funny thing, when you read the prayer book, it says deacons really shouldn't do baptisms, and I saw that 10 minutes before I did a baptism.
SPEAKER_00: And I asked my bishop, should I be doing this?
SPEAKER_00: And his answer was theoretically, no.
SPEAKER_00: Ask your rector.
SPEAKER_00: Because really that's kind of how it works.
SPEAKER_00: And the rector was like, Of course you should be doing that baptism.
SPEAKER_00: So it was great.
SPEAKER_00: I didn't just do it on the spot, we'd already planned it, right?
SPEAKER_00: This is sort of how it how that works out.
SPEAKER_00: Um I told you, a mission has a bishop's committee.
SPEAKER_00: They represent the interests of the bishop.
SPEAKER_00: We have a vestry, and the vestry, you know what a rector wears when the rector goes in?
SPEAKER_00: They wear vestments.
SPEAKER_00: So that word comes from the people who dressed the rest the rector in the vestments, quite literally.
SPEAKER_00: They vested the rector before services.
SPEAKER_00: Now you may say that's like the altar guild or whatever, but that's where the word sort of comes from.
SPEAKER_00: The vestry isn't there to beat the rector up.
SPEAKER_00: Actually, the the vestry is there to support the rector in ministry.
SPEAKER_00: And the one thing that the vestry really has in a tenured system is they control the finance.
SPEAKER_00: So the rector could say, we're going to do this and this, and and the vestry could say, Great, as long as you can pay for it, because we're not paying for that.
SPEAKER_00: That's the check and the balance, is the funding.
SPEAKER_00: But if I wanted to say, we're going to do a marriage in the middle of a hallway at 10.30 on Sunday, that's not up to that's not negotiable with the vestry.
SPEAKER_00: Because the rector is the one who controls, you see, the liturgy.
SPEAKER_00: Does that make sense what I'm saying?
SPEAKER_00: So there's a lot of thinking like, oh, the vestry is like the board of directors, like yes and no.
SPEAKER_00: Yes and no.
SPEAKER_00: Financially, yes, and otherwise, pretty much no.
unknown: So if you're in training, I think you can try.
SPEAKER_00: Well, no.
SPEAKER_00: I mean through your training.
SPEAKER_02: Where where do you get practice doing weddings and bathrooms and things?
SPEAKER_00: Hopefully you yeah, hopefully you can do that.
SPEAKER_00: Well, hopefully you go to some and you see how.
SPEAKER_00: Other people do it.
SPEAKER_00: And then and then honestly, when you're the this is always depends how you choose to trust your folk, right?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I could say as the rector, show me every liturgy you want to do before you do it, and I'll tell you yes or no.
SPEAKER_00: And I can do that.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes I like to say, I just want to see how you want to do it, right?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's the difference.
SPEAKER_00: There's two different bits.
SPEAKER_00: But really, you learn it, as in all things, you learn it by doing it.
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you know, like I went to a few of these baptisms before I did one.
SPEAKER_00: But it was like, when I went to do it, I was like, oh.
SPEAKER_00: I I'd pointed in the book for the Eucharistic prayer, but the first time I read it, it was like I little stumbled over the words just a little bit, you know.
SPEAKER_00: Because again, we we sort of learn by doing.
SPEAKER_00: Now, most of us, most of us, if we went to seminary, and and wherever you went, uh a diocesan one or a big one, you had like an internship or you had like a ministry project that was supervised, and hopefully you got to get your feet wet doing some of these kinds of things.
SPEAKER_00: Hopefully.
SPEAKER_00: That's part of why the diocese here has a curacy program where we fund half and they fund half.
SPEAKER_00: It's to give priests an opportunity to be formed in the priesthood instead of just having to hop right in.
SPEAKER_00: I'll tell you, uh, one of our sister churches here, Grace Alvin, nice church.
SPEAKER_00: I really like the deacon in charge, who's going to be priesthood in January.
SPEAKER_00: She had to go right out of seminary into running a place.
SPEAKER_00: Straight.
SPEAKER_00: You can do it.
SPEAKER_00: You can.
SPEAKER_00: But there's challenges to it because you know what they didn't teach me in seminary are things like budgeting and stewardship drives and capital drives.
SPEAKER_00: And teach me anything about employee management.
SPEAKER_00: Because this is a thing, right?
SPEAKER_00: My staff works for me.
SPEAKER_00: They don't work for the vestry.
SPEAKER_00: The vestry has nothing to say over my staff.
SPEAKER_00: Not to them.
SPEAKER_00: They can say it to me, but they can't say it to the staff.
SPEAKER_00: Most places don't work that way corporately, but that's how we sort of run.
SPEAKER_00: And when you're just thrust into that, well, there you are.
SPEAKER_00: It's sort of sink or swim.
SPEAKER_00: It better not.
SPEAKER_00: We're we're working really hard to make sure it doesn't, because the truth is it's not really parish income.
SPEAKER_00: It's not.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, on an income statement it is, but it's a wash through to do a project.
SPEAKER_00: So we're making sure we we do that right.
SPEAKER_00: Because our assessment should not get up because we choose to eliminate our debt.
SPEAKER_00: I mean we that makes no sense.
unknown: I agree.
unknown: I was just curious.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, no.
SPEAKER_00: Again, that's the fun answer.
SPEAKER_00: Should not.
SPEAKER_00: We're working to make sure it doesn't.
unknown: Speaking of emotions, we have someone who might be them to believe that it should have another clergy.
SPEAKER_00: Oh hey, this is a great thing for you.
SPEAKER_00: Great thing for you to know.
SPEAKER_00: I can wear as how clergy wear, wear any clothes I want.
SPEAKER_00: Usually there's two collars, Episcopalians wear one solid white.
SPEAKER_00: This differentiates us from Roman folks.
SPEAKER_00: So in general, you see a solid white collar, that's a clue, Episcopal, or this one, subtly different, called the collarette.
SPEAKER_00: You see there's a white band that goes all the way around?
SPEAKER_00: I like this because I think it looks better, and quite honestly, when I go into the hospital, people know who I am.
SPEAKER_00: When I wear the solid white one, sometimes people are like, Are you a lawyer?
SPEAKER_00: I've got that before.
SPEAKER_00: So I this is this is the recognizable part.
SPEAKER_00: Um, the one trick is purple is just for bishops.
SPEAKER_00: I have a lilac shirt, it's sort of like a pastel.
SPEAKER_00: Lilac is not purple.
SPEAKER_00: If I wore purple, I'd be like impersonating an officer.
SPEAKER_00: Which wouldn't matter in Halloween, but it would get me in trouble in the Episcopal Church if my bishop was like, you're dressing like a bishop, you see?
SPEAKER_00: Hey, uh, thanks for staying for ketchup, and um see you after Christmas, okay?