WILLIAM WHITE

First Bishop of Pennsylvania, 1836

Sts. Matthew & Mark, Barrington, R. I.

Friday, July 17, 2026

 

Before the American Revolution, Church of England congregations in the thirteen colonies were under the direct jurisdiction of the Bishop of London. There were no bishops in the colonies, partly because the British government was reluctant to grant such autonomy to colonial churches, and partly because many in the colonies were adamantly opposed to the idea.

 

Once the colonies became the United States of America, however, it became imperative to provide an American episcopate for the newly forming Episcopal Church. The first American bishop was Samuel Seabury of Connecticut, who was consecrated by the Scottish nonjuring bishops in Aberdeen in 1784.

 

Three years later, in 1787, having been elected by the dioceses of Pennsylvania and New York respectively, William White and Samuel Provoost sailed to England. There they received episcopal consecration at the hands of the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, the Bishop of Bath and Wells, and the Bishop of Peterborough. Since episcopal consecration traditionally requires the laying on of hands by at least three bishops, the Episcopal Church now had the requisite number to continue its own episcopal succession.

 

William White was born in Philadelphia in 1747 and educated at the College of Philadelphia, now the University of Pennsylvania. After being ordained deacon and priest in England in 1770, he returned to Philadelphia in 1772 and first served as an assistant, then as the rector of the Church of Christ and Saint Peter.

 

When the American Revolution broke out in 1776, unlike many of his colleagues who sided with the British, White took his stand with the revolutionaries, serving as Chaplain of the Continental Congress from 1777 to 1789, and then as Chaplain of the United States Senate.

 

White served as the first Bishop of Pennsylvania for forty-nine years from 1787 until his death in 1836. He also served as the Episcopal Church’s first and fourth Presiding Bishop. During all this time, he continued as Rector of Christ Church, Philadelphia. (This was before Episcopal dioceses had the financial resources to support full-time bishops, so bishops generally also served as rectors of prominent parishes in their dioceses.)

 

Unlike some of his contemporaries, White did not travel widely in his large diocese. He was well respected, however, for his support of charitable and philanthropic societies in Philadelphia and for staying in the city to tend the sick during outbreaks of yellow fever, when many wealthy residents fled to the country. He also ordained the first two African American priests in the Episcopal Church, Absalom Jones and William Levington.

 

Most of all, White left his mark on the Episcopal Church by his influence on the shape of its Constitution. Against his contemporary Samuel Seabury, who wanted the Church to be governed solely by a House of Bishops, White insisted on a General Convention comprising representatives of both the clergy and the laity from each diocese. And against those who wanted each diocese to be governed solely by its bishop and a synod of clergy, White insisted that Diocesan Conventions should also include lay representatives from each parish, who would participate in electing new bishops. Largely due to White’s influence, the Episcopal Church today has a mixed form of church government, in which bishops, clergy, and laity all participate together in legislating and decision-making.

 

William White is buried under the chancel at Christ Church, Philadelphia. His rectory, the Bishop White House at 309 Walnut Street, is part of Independence National Historic Park and is open to the public via guided tours.

PROPER 11, YEAR A

July 19, 2026

Sts. Matthew & Mark, Barrington, R. I.

 

Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43

 

At this time of year, weeds are a major problem in our gardens, lawns, and flowerbeds. I’m no gardener, so when I see a flowerbed beginning to choke on weeds, I resist the temptation to try to do the weeding myself. In my horticultural ignorance, I’d probably pull up what look like weeds only to discover later that they were among the most valuable plants in the garden. Better to rely on landscapers and gardeners, like my wife, who know what they’re doing.

 

In today’s Gospel, both Jesus and his listeners know all about weeds. A certain invasive and toxic weed, known as darnel or tares, closely resembles unripe wheat. Mistaken for wheat and baked into bread or brewed into beer, darnel is hallucinogenic in small doses and deadly in larger doses. Roman law explicitly prescribed punishments for the crime of sowing darnel in someone’s wheat field out of malice or revenge.

 

As the householder in the parable tells his servants, once darnel has invaded a wheat field, it’s futile to try to weed it out. It’s nearly impossible to tell the two plants apart in their early stages of growth. Moreover, their roots are intertwined, so you’ll likely pull up a lot of good wheat with the bad weeds. Better to wait until the harvest, when they can be distinguished, sorted, and separated, and the ripe wheat gathered into barns while the tares are bundled as fuel for the fire.

 

Of course, Jesus is not merely dispensing advice on good farming techniques. He’s teaching about the Kingdom of God. He’s helping his followers understand and deal with the evil they encounter in both the Church and the world around them.

 

In the traditional interpretation of this parable, the enemy who sows the weeds is the devil, and the weeds represent those Church members who seem somehow to obstruct and thwart our Christian life together. The Methodist preacher Will Willimon describes these weeds in our midst: “Weeds are the people who come up with great ideas for programs but never follow through, so we’re scurrying around at the last minute, trying to pull things together. Weeds are the rumormongers who pass along a damaging bit of gossip . . . Weeds are the demanding souls who drain all [a congregation’s] energy . . . and then leave in a huff, saying they want to find a more caring church.”

 

No doubt, we can each add our own pet complaints about people who keep our corporate life from being everything we believe God intends it to be. Sometimes, we might even be tempted to think we’d love to weed them out if we had the chance.

 

In the late fourth century, Saint Augustine of Hippo drew on this parable to oppose the heresy known as Donatism. The Donatists were a group in North Africa who sought to purge the Church of all notorious sinners. They believed that those who committed serious sins after baptism—particularly the sin of denying Christ to save one’s life during times of persecution—could not be forgiven and should be permanently excommunicated.

 

Against this rigorist vision of the Church as an exclusive society of saints, Augustine argued that the Church is really a hospital for sinners. The weeds and tares grow together, and it’s not always possible to tell which is which. Appearances can be deceiving. Moreover, unlike weeds and wheat, people change. At the last judgment, many of those we admired as good and holy may turn out to have been the worst sinners, and many of those we condemned as notorious sinners may turn out to have been the greatest saints. So we’re called to avoid rushing to premature judgment and to leave it to God to sort the wheat from the tares in the end.

 

In the meantime, we live in an imperfect Church, in an imperfect world, full of imperfect people: what Augustine called a mixed field of wheat and tares growing together. In this situation, God calls us to be faithful, to grow in grace, and to cultivate several basic dispositions we need to become the people he calls us to be.

 

The first of these necessary attitudes is patience and tolerance. Many people we encounter day to day bore, irritate, and annoy us—whether by stupidity, insensitivity, rudeness, or a simple lack of consideration. We don’t have a choice about that, but we do have a choice in how to respond. We can either get all worked up and angry or choose to overlook it and let it go. We’re called to cultivate the virtue of forbearance.

 

The second necessary disposition is the willingness to extend the benefit of the doubt. For example, we walk into a room where three or four of our friends are talking, and as soon as they see us, they stop. At that point, we can assume the worst: that they’ve been saying bad things about us behind our back. But maybe the truth is that they were planning a surprise birthday party for us. While it may be just as foolish to get our hopes up by always assuming the best, Christians are nonetheless called to give the benefit of the doubt whenever possible, and give puzzling situations the best possible interpretation until we’re proven wrong.

 

And the third necessary disposition is the most important of all: the willingness to forgive. Sometimes other people really do hurt us. Yet the definitive mark of Christian community is mutual forgiveness. 

 

When I first arrived in Rhode Island from the Mid-Atlantic states 26 years ago, a priest friend warned me to be careful. He said that New England culture can be judgmental and unforgiving. It’s all part of the region’s Puritan legacy. Writers such as Nathaniel Hawthorne and Robert Frost have noted the Yankee tendency to stand aloof, maintain reserve, and hold grudges! 

 

Thankfully, I haven’t always found that to be true. But to the extent that it is true, we’re called to be countercultural. As fallen creatures, the more time we spend together, the more likely we are to hurt one another. But in a truly Christian community, we do our best not only to treat one another well, but also to forgive one another when we fail to do so. We often boast about what a caring community we have here at Sts. Matthew and Mark, and it’s true. But the real challenge is also to be a forgiving community. That’s something to think about when we say the Lord’s Prayer: forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.

 

To sum up, in this mixed field of wheat and tares, we’re called to practice patience and tolerance, to give the benefit of the doubt when possible, and to forgive when necessary. We thus wait in hope for the final harvest, when God will do what only God can do: separate the wheat from the tares. May we then be found among those who “shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father.”

PROPER 10, YEAR A

July 12, 2026

Sts. Matthew & Mark, Barrington, R. I.

 

Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23

 

Forty-five years ago, I approached the rector of my parish to discuss the possibility of going to seminary to prepare for the priesthood. During the long conversation that followed, I asked what sorts of personal qualities he thought a priest should have. He replied by telling me what the rector who’d sponsored him for ordination had told him. A priest, he said, needs a high tolerance for failure. About four out of five things that you try to do in the parish don’t work, at least not as you’d hoped and planned.

 

I found this answer both surprising and unsettling. Both he and the priest who gave him that advice were well known for being competent, methodical, well-organized, and effective rectors. 

 

Over the years, however, I’ve come to understand what he meant. Parish ministry brings its share of frustrations and disappointments. In retrospect, though, I do think that he was exaggerating. It’s not really four out of five things: maybe more like two out of three.

 

The Parable of the Sower in today’s Gospel calls that long-ago encounter to mind. A sower goes out to sow. But, as the parable explains at length, not all the seed yields grain. Some falls along the path, where it’s eaten by birds; some falls in stony ground, where it can’t take root and is scorched by the sun; some falls among the thorns and is choked by weeds. Obviously that sower also has a high tolerance for failure.

 

This parable answers an implicit question that must have been on the minds of many of those that Jesus was addressing. If Jesus is so great, then why aren’t more people following him? The same question persisted in slightly different form in the early Church: if Jesus is the Messiah of Israel, then why have so many of his own people rejected him? And if he’s truly the Savior of the world, then why do so many of the world’s people refuse to accept him as such?

 

From time to time, we may even be tempted to ask a similar question in this parish: given all that is so indescribably wonderful here at Sts. Matthew & Mark, why aren’t more people here? In every generation of the Church’s history, people have asked that question in one form or another. Not: what is attracting those who are here, but rather, what is making others stay away?

 

I think that Jesus tells the Parable of the Sower to address precisely this sort of question. The images of the Sower and the Seed bear multiple layers of meaning. At one level, we can think of the Sower as God the Father sending his Son Jesus, the Word Incarnate, into the world. At another level, the Sower is Jesus, proclaiming the Kingdom of God among his people Israel. And at still another level, the Sower is the Church, preaching the Gospel and calling the world to faith in the Lord’s death and Resurrection. In each case, however, not everyone’s able to hear, understand, and respond to the message, just as some types of ground are unable to receive and support grain-producing seed.

 

Yet, the parable assures us, it’s all okay. It’s all good. Never mind the seed that falls along the path, or on the rocky ground, or among the thorns. In the end, what’s important is the seed that falls in the good soil and brings forth grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, and some thirty.

 

A crucial bit of background for understanding this parable is that a good yield for grain-bearing seed in those days was seven or eightfold. So, our Lord is clearly describing a miraculously abundant crop that more than makes up for all the seed that’s wasted.

 

To put it another way: in the long run those who hear and receive the Word grow and multiply in amazing numbers. The final success vastly outweighs what seem the present failures. 

 

The parable challenges us to take the Sower as our model and guide. It’s been said that the single most important sentence in this parable is the first one: A sower went out to sow. 

 

In other words, the sower doesn’t stay home and keep the Word of God to himself. Nor does he worry about how much seed he’s wasting. He doesn’t try to verify whether this or that patch of ground is good soil before he sows it. He just ambles along, slinging the seed hither and yon. Bad agricultural practice, perhaps, but the economics of God’s Kingdom are so different from the economics of this world.

 

We’re called to share the Gospel in the same way: not worrying about whether our witness is falling on receptive or deaf ears. Instead, we do what we can, and leave the results to God. At times it may seem that our efforts are going to waste. But then some seed falls on good soil in places where we least expect it, and sprouts up to an amazingly abundant harvest.

 

So, the other side of the advice my rector gave me about needing a high tolerance for failure is that sometimes God surprises us with totally unexpected success!

 

When I was in seminary, on my very last Sunday in the parish to which I was assigned for fieldwork, a young man who’d recently started attending that parish approached me during Coffee Hour and thanked me for something I’d said to him about two months earlier. Those words, he said, really changed his life. The irony was that I couldn’t even remember the conversation, let alone anything I’d said to him, and I had to ask him to remind me!

 

In the years since, that same pattern has recurred. Particularly in moments when I’m feeling discouraged or demoralized by some apparent failure, someone thanks me for something I said or did that brought about some major breakthrough in their life—in a way that I least expected and often had no idea about at the time. But according to the Parable of the Sower, that’s precisely how God’s Kingdom works.

PRISCILLA AND AQUILA

Sts. Matthew & Mark, Barrington, R. I.

Friday, July 10, 2026

(tr. from July 8)

 

According to the Acts of the Apostles, Aquila and his wife Priscilla were Jewish Christians living in Rome. During the reign of the emperor Claudius (41-54), the Jews were banished from Rome, so Aquila and his wife left and settled in Corinth. A short while later, the Apostle Paul arrived from Athens preaching the Gospel. Having made the acquaintance of Aquila, Paul began to live at his house and labored together with him, making tents. 

Aquila and Priscilla became Paul’s devoted disciples. They accompanied him to Ephesus, and remained there while he went to Jerusalem for the feast of Pentecost. At Ephesus, Aquila and Priscilla heard the preaching of a newcomer from Alexandria named Apollos. While he had been instructed in the fundamentals of the Faith, he knew only the baptism of John; so they took him aside and explained the faith to him more fully.

 

After Claudius's death, the Jews were permitted to return to Italy, and Aquila and Priscilla returned to Rome. Paul writes in his Epistle to the Romans, “Greet Prisca and Aquila, my fellow workers in Christ Jesus, who risked their necks for my life, to whom not only I but also all the churches of the Gentiles give thanks; greet also the church in their house.

In these early days, before there were separate church buildings consecrated for worship, the local Christian community would meet in the homes of its members; and these words suggest that Priscilla and Aquila hosted one of these house churches. In Rome today, you can see the Church of Saint Prisca on the Aventine Hill, built in the fourth or fifth century over the dwelling traditionally identified as their home.

 

According to tradition, Paul made Aquila a bishop in Asia. Priscilla accompanied him and assisted him in his apostolic work, and they eventually died together as martyrs.

 

In recent years, Priscilla and Aquila have been held up as a model for Christian spouses. In his General Audience of Wednesday, February 7, 2007, Pope Benedict remarked, “We honor Aquila and Priscilla as models of conjugal life responsibly committed to the service of the entire Christian community. And we find in them the model of the Church, God's family for all times.”

 

SAINTS PETER & PAUL, APOSTLES

Sts. Matthew & Mark, Barrington

Friday, July 3, 2026

(Tr. from June 29)

 

 

According to reliable tradition, both Peter and Paul spent their last days in Rome. After they’d arrived separately and taken up residence, a momentous event took place in the year 64 AD during the reign of the Emperor Nero. On July 18^th, a Great Fire broke out and raged for five days, destroying large parts of the city.

 

In the days that followed, rumors spread that the fire was the result of arson instigated by Nero himself – either in a fit of madness or as part of a plan to clear space for his building projects. Nero needed to deflect such accusations quickly, and the city’s growing Christian population provided a convenient and vulnerable scapegoat.

 

According to the Roman historian Tacitus, the authorities rounded up a vast multitude of Christians. He writes: “Mockery of every sort was added to their deaths. Covered with the skins of beasts, they were torn by dogs and perished, or were nailed to crosses, or were doomed to the flames and burnt, to serve as a nightly illumination, when daylight had expired.” The number of those who died in the persecution has been estimated as nearly a thousand.

 

According to one account, when the persecution broke out, Peter was escaping from the city when he met Jesus coming towards him, again wearing his crown of thorns, and carrying his cross. Astounded, Peter asked, “Domine, quo vadis?”—“Lord, where are you going?” Jesus responded, “I am going to Rome to be crucified again.” 

 

Peter then knew that he had to return to Rome, come what may. When he was sentenced to crucifixion, he requested that it be upside down, declaring himself unworthy to suffer the same death as his Savior. His body was buried on the Vatican Hill, in the place over which the high altar of Saint Peter’s Basilica now stands. 

 

Saint Paul likewise died a martyr in Rome at about the same time, possibly even on the same day. As a Roman citizen, Paul was granted the privilege of a quick death by beheading. The execution occurred three miles south of Rome, at a place known as the Three Fountains. Paul’s body was buried nearby at the place over which now stands the Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls.

 

In the end, Peter and Paul died as they lived, bearing witness to Christ. Today’s commemoration affords us the opportunity to give thanks for their lives, witness, and teaching. May Saint Peter and Saint Paul pray for us; and may God grant us strength and courage to persevere until our lives’ end in the faith they handed down to us.

PROPER 9, YEAR A

Sunday 5 July 2026

Sts. Matthew & Mark, Barrington, R. I.

 

Romans 7:15-25a

Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30

 

This weekend we have celebrated our national Independence. And today’s readings invite us to reflect further on the meaning of freedom.

 

The contemporary world tends to define freedom in negative terms as the absence of any external restraints on our thoughts, speech, and behavior: the ability to say and do whatever we want without having to answer to anybody. When I was a teenager, for example, I waged a relentless war of independence against all the adults in my life who wanted to curb my freedom to smoke, drink, go out without saying where I’d be, and stay out as late as I wanted. This negative drive to free ourselves of all accountability is typically adolescent; it inevitably gets us into trouble; and sooner or later most of us—most of us—get over it.

But freedom also has a positive meaning.  Imagine a young woman who’s known from the fifth or sixth grade that she wants to be a lawyer.  Pursuing her chosen profession entails years of grinding study to get good grades in high school, college, and law school, until she finally passes the bar, lands a job in a law firm, and gets started on her career.  And that’s only the beginning. For her, freedom is the ability to fulfill her calling. But notice that this type of freedom severely restricts her liberty to do whatever she wants whenever she wants. When there’s an important exam in the morning, it’s not a great idea to go out partying the night before. If the opposite of freedom is servitude, then all those years of study and self-discipline represent a kind of servitude, but one that leads to a far greater freedom.

 

In the Christian understanding, true freedom is the ability to fulfill our calling to know, love, and serve God in this life and to enjoy him forever in the next. And what keeps us from this freedom is not so much any external king, governor, legislature, or magistrate, as the internal spiritual bondage that we call sin. 

 

The irony is that our culture tends to think of sin itself as a form of freedom. So many petty rules of morality seem to have no purpose other than to prevent us from having fun and being happy. But that’s not what sin means in the biblical worldview. It’s something much deeper and more insidious than just breaking the rules.

In today’s epistle, Saint Paul vividly describes sin as a form of spiritual slavery. Its power is such that even though we know and want to do what’s right, we end up doing what we hate. Sin catches us up in patterns of self-destructive behavior, from which, try as we may, we cannot break free by our own efforts. Understood this way, sin is the opposite of freedom. True freedom is first of all freedom from sin: freedom to become fully the people that God created us to be. 

 

In today's Gospel, Jesus says, "Take my yoke upon you and learn from me … for my yoke is easy, and my burden is light." Here, the word “yoke” refers to a wooden beam placed over the neck of an ox or mule. The animal’s harness is fastened to the yoke, which is connected in turn to a cart or a plow.  So, when you put a yoke on an animal, you subject it to your control, and make it work to serve your purposes.

 

In the ancient world, the yoke was also a symbol of political and personal servitude.  Slaves were said to be under the yoke of their masters.  The Jews longed to be free from the yoke of Roman rule. But in his Letter to the Galatians, Paul writes of slavery to sin as another yoke: “For freedom Christ has set us free; stand fast therefore and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.”

 

In biblical times, moreover, a yoke referred not only to a contraption for harnessing animals but also to a crossbeam laid across the backs of prisoners during forced marches.  So, Jesus took his yoke upon him when he carried the cross on the road to Calvary.

 

True freedom is costly; it requires sacrifice. But as Christians we believe that our freedom from sin and death has already been won by Christ’s own sacrifice of himself on the cross. And his exhortation to take his yoke upon us and learn from him is really another form of his invitation to take up our cross and follow him.

 

So, our choice really is between two yokes: the yoke of sin, or the yoke of Christ. Like a yoke, the Christian life subjects our unruly desires and passions to God's will. When we take Christ’s yoke upon ourselves, we renounce our liberty to serve our own pride, greed, luxury, ambition, and self-will. Conversely, we oblige ourselves to do whatever God asks of us even when it's the very last thing we feel like doing in that moment. 

 

Yet Jesus says, "My yoke is easy and my burden is light." What can he possibly mean by this? Well, on another occasion he criticizes the scribes and Pharisees, saying that they "make up heavy loads and pile them on the shoulders of others but will not themselves lift a finger to ease the burden." By contrast, Jesus makes his yoke easy and his burden light by sharing them with us. When we take up our cross, he’s right there, shouldering it alongside us. Otherwise, its weight would crush us.

 

The choice between the yoke of sin and the yoke of Christ is not unlike the alcoholic's choice between the yoke of the bottle and the yoke of abstinence. One leads to darkness and destruction, the other to light and life. One leads to slavery, the other to liberation and freedom.

 

So, on this Independence Day weekend, we remember that true freedom consists in knowing, loving, and serving God in this world and enjoying him forever in the next. This freedom cost our Lord nothing less than death on the cross to set us free from the power of sin and death. It costs us everything as well when we take up our cross and follow him. Still, Jesus promises us, “My yoke is easy and my burden is light.” 

 

One of my favorite Collects, from the Daily Office of Morning Prayer, reads: “O God … to know you is eternal life and to serve you is perfect freedom.” By taking Christ’s yoke upon us, we discover and experience for ourselves that service which is perfect freedom.

PROPER 8, YEAR A

Sunday 28 June 2026

Sts. Matthew & Mark, Barrington, R. I.

 

Matthew 10:34-42

 

Tomorrow, June 29th, is the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul, Apostles and Martyrs at Rome. And today’s Collect and readings are those appointed for the Sunday closest to June 29th. So, it’s not surprising that they emphasize the theme of apostleship. Let’s listen again to today’s Collect:

 

Almighty God, you have built your Church upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone: Grant us so to be joined together in unity of spirit by their teaching, that we may be made a holy temple acceptable to you…

 

So, on the Sunday closest to the Feast of the Apostles Peter and Paul, we pray that we may be unified by apostolic teaching and thus be built into a spiritual temple acceptable to God.

 

The Gospel readings over the past few Sundays have come from Chapter 10 of Saint Matthew, in which Jesus chooses and commissions the Twelve Apostles. It begins with Jesus calling them and giving them authority to cast out unclean spirits and to heal every disease and every infirmity. Then he charges them to travel from town to town and village to village, preaching that the kingdom of heaven is at hand, taking nothing with them but the clothes on their backs, and relying completely on the hospitality of those to whom they’re sent.

 

As for those who offer such hospitality, in today’s Gospel, Jesus declares, “He who receives you receives me, and he who receives me receives him who sent me.” 

 

The underlying Jewish concept is that of a shaliah (shall-LEE-ach), a Hebrew word meaning legal emissary, representative, or agent. A shaliah is someone empowered to speak and act in the name of the sender—so that in interacting with the shaliah, one is interacting virtually with the sender.

 

Incidentally, the noun shaliah comes from the Hebrew verb shalakh, to send out. And the standard translation of shalakh in biblical Greek is apostellō, “to send,” and the Greek translation of shaliah is apostolos, or, in English, “apostle”— “one who is sent.”

In the New Testament, then, the Apostles are emissaries sent by Christ out into the world, authorized to speak and act in his name. An Apostle is thus a representative person, one in whom the sender himself is virtually present and active. When we receive the Apostle, we receive Christ himself. As Jesus says in today’s Gospel, “Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me.”

 

This concept grounds the doctrine of apostolic succession. As Christ sends the Apostles into the world, so the Apostles eventually transmit their responsibility and authority—to preach, to administer the Sacraments, and to govern the Church—to their successors, the bishops. 

 

There were some key differences between the Apostles and the bishops. First, that the Apostles were eyewitnesses to Christ’s Resurrection, an irreplaceable office. Second, while the Apostles generally exercised an itinerant ministry, traveling from place to place to preach the Gospel, bishops generally remained in one place as the Church’s leaders there.

 

So, in each city or town where the Apostles planted the Church, they consecrated bishops to be their local representatives. And in turn, by prayer and the laying-on-of-hands, these original bishops handed down their office to their successors, and their successors’ successors, down through the centuries to the present day.

 

Our parish and our diocese belong to the Episcopal Church. Sometimes we hear it said that the word “Episcopal” designates a church governed by bishops. But that’s only half true, since both clergy and laity actively participate in our church’s governing structures. No, the real claim being made, the real gift being celebrated, is apostolic succession: the presence in our midst of bishops who serve as successors to the Apostles.

 

Just think: When we were confirmed, the bishop laid hands on our heads with prayer for the strengthening of the Holy Spirit’s gifts within us. That sacramental action incorporated us into an unbroken chain going all the way back to Christ’s Apostles. It signified our participation in what the bishop represents: namely, the Church’s unity throughout the world, and the continuity of our faith with the apostolic faith handed down through the centuries.

 

When I was ordained to the priesthood, thirty-three years ago, I knelt before my bishop as he prayed and laid his hands on my head. At that moment, I received God’s commission to preach the Gospel and administer the Sacraments as a priest of the Church. But this commission came not from that particular bishop—nor from the local congregation, nor from the Diocese, nor from the entire Episcopal Church—but ultimately from Christ himself, by way of that long line of bishops going back to the Apostles.

 

By the Sacrament of Holy Orders, bishops, priests, and deacons become Christ’s public representatives in the Church today. This is emphatically not to say that ordained ministers are infallible or perfect. On the contrary, we’re all profoundly unworthy of such a high calling. But it is to say that despite our many imperfections and shortcomings, Christ has promised to be present and active in his Church through the ministries of those whom he’s called and sent.

 

Moreover, through the Sacraments of Holy Baptism, Confirmation, and the Eucharist, Christ calls and sends all Christians into the world in his Name. The reason why he calls some of us into Holy Orders is not to give us special privileges, but instead to use us to build up, strengthen, and equip the whole People of God. 

 

So, in a manner corresponding to our many and varied vocations, Christ calls and sends each of us, lay and ordained alike. As the Church’s members, we’re an apostolic people: Christ’s representatives and emissaries in the world. And to each of us alike, Christ addresses the words in today’s Gospel: “Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me.”