Sunday the 8th at 10a.m. the Suffragan Bishop of Dallas, Paul Emil Lambert, made his first visitation to our parish to celebrate the mysteries of our salvation, to preach God's Word, to confirm and reaffirm and to remind all of us that we ALL belong to something larger than The Episcopal Church of Saint Thomas the Apostle.While lay folk belong to one parish or another in/of The Episcopal Church, all of you are members of something larger than your local parish ... you are Episcopalians, not only St. Thomasites. ... you are a part of the whole Body of Christ and belong to that part of it which we have come to understand more fully, of late, as the Anglican Communion. The Anglican Communion is one strain of the Church Catholic that contains among other Provinces, The Episcopal Church in the United States of America: ECUSA.
Because we live and breathe and have our being at St. Thomas the Apostle on the corner of Inwood road and Mockingbird Lane in Dallas, Texas, all of us may be tempted to understand our parish church as "The Church" ... as how God's Church is and ought to be. We too easily forget our connection and responsibility to the broader Church, sometimes even forgetting our connection to parishes quite near by, sometimes forgetting our connection to the local Diocese and the National Church.
We Episcopalians like to tell ourselves that we are not "congregationalists," local parish church=es which function as if they were a law unto themselves. Congregationalism has been creeping into the fabric of The Episcopal Church more and more. While it is fine for parish X to have a certain "personality," it is not fine for it to flaunt the teachings and essence of The Episcopal Church. It is not fine for parish X to ignore what is basic to the broader church and go its own way. We exist because the Diocese of Dallas created us and the Diocese of Dallas exists because The Episcopal Church created it. Some would add that the Anglican Communion created the Episcopal Church lll and therefore it exists because of the Anglican Communion.Scholars wil differ about the truth of that last statement. Until our late unpleasantness, most of us in the Episcopal Church had rarely heard of The Anglican Communion. and clearly did not think it dictated what The Episcopal Church ought and ought not do.
You all belong to something larger than St. Thomas the Apostle. You are all members of the Body of Christ as it finds expression in The Episcopal Church. Bishop Lambert comes to us in part as a sign of our unity with all other Christians locally and throughout the world-wide Anglican Communion. His hands will be the ones to touch and bless and welcome the promises of those being confirmed and reaffirmed to signify that they belong to something bigger than this local parish.
St. Thomas the Apostle Parish does have its own personality, its won characteristics, its own charisma, but unless we remain faithful to the broader Body of Christ, to The Episcopal Church, we do a disservice to ourselves and any who might come among us sweeking to be a part of the Church Catholic Come celebrate our unity with all other members of God's Church no matter their particular local understandings and expressions of God's love and truth.
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