Like so many before me and, God willing, so many after, I was attracted to the Anglican way of being Christian as an adult. The list of things that drew me in are lengthy. In the 13 years since my confirmation and the six since my ordination, I have both doubled down on embracing the things that drew me into this holy fellowship, and have had stark moments in which the harshness of reality have set in.
In some cases, I was confronted with the naïveté of my hopes and expectations of what my family and I would find in the Anglican world. It turned out that the Daily Office experience that resided in my mind when I first arrived home in Anglicanism—an entire community praying the Office and meditating on the same Scriptures throughout the week—resided only in my imagination, at least in scale.
My unrealistic hope was that if everyone around us was praying the Daily Office, we would too. I was seeking something like holy peer pressure. I have not quite encountered this on the ground, though among the clergy team and a very faithful group of parishioners, I did. I share this not as a critique of any parish, but rather of my “grass is greener” expectations.
Other expectations or longings that drew me into the Anglican world have been exceeded in ways I could never have expected. I came into this tradition with a desire to experience a more sacramental approach to worship. What I have ultimately found is not a more sacramental approach; I discovered a sacramental universe. My mind, body, and soul have entered more fully into the world that is, the world as given.
I thought I was seeking a richer Sunday experience. What I received blew that expectation out of the water. I wanted to experience something more tangible in a worship service. What I received was an entire way of being human in a universe in which the physical world exists as a sure and certain means of communion and intimacy with a God we cannot yet see.
So, in some ways, my expectations were too high. In others, they were too low. For still others, I am stuck. There is a third set of expectations that I don’t yet know what to do with. As C.S. Lewis suggests of our desires, I am not sure if God finds these expectations too strong or too weak. Are they an idol? A grasping at attractive fruit from a forbidden tree? An attempt to have something now that we ought not have until later?
This set of expectations is easier for me to name than it is to sort out. I was looking to the Anglican Communion to be, for me, a tangible and unifying link to the Church throughout time and space. I have found myself counting on the Communion to live its life as an experiment in unity—first internally, and then rippling out into the other communions that make up the visible portion of Christ’s one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church.
I find myself thinking that if the Anglican Communion can just get its act together, then what is true about Christ’s church both ontologically and eschatologically can be more fully experienced by his people here and now.
To raise the stakes even higher on where my mind can go on this front: The hosts of my favorite soccer podcast often speak of the “Premier League scriptwriters.” Their point is that the sort of things that happen throughout a season of soccer—teams rising and falling in spectacular ways, unlikely upsets, shocking trades—sure look as though someone is scripting the most dramatic season possible.
At my worst, I do imagine—with unholy frustration—that the best scriptwriters in the world could not have come up with a more dramatic storyline than we have encountered in the Anglican Communion in the past two decades. It would be hard to imagine a writer developing a script in which the chief actors of the Communion could have acted more blatantly against my expectations and hopes.
The fact that I can let myself get to this level of frustration likely points to the reality that this is more than just an unrealistic expectation on my part. There is something deeper going on in my heart that needs to be more fully resolved, so that I can continue to serve the people God has placed before me.
As I continue that work, I have made a commitment that has thus far proven fruitful. Instead of consuming an increasing amount of news about these things, I have been committed to reading things tangentially related to the sort of issues we face as a Communion, but from eras long before ours.
I would commend three of these texts as both healing balms and wise guides for those who, like me, find themselves resorting to frustration instead of prayer and hope in this season of the Anglican Communion’s life.
The first text came to me via an epigraph attached to a letter Bishop George Sumner sent to the people in the Diocese of Dallas. The specific verse cited was Isaiah 58:12, but I have found myself refreshed in my reflection on the wider context of that passage.
I have also found De Unitae Ecclesiae by St. Augustine similarly refreshing and edifying. As I started re-reading this excellent work, I also began to hear the heart of St. Augustine ringing in the background of Fr. Matthew Olver’s “You Have Broken My Heart“ letter. We are not facing Donatism today. But we are asking similar questions that were asked in Augustine’s day: “Where is the Anglican Communion to be found?”
The third text is one that I have found refreshing, convicting, and healing many times over the years: Leaf by Niggle by J.R.R. Tolkien. If you can carve out a couple of hours to read it in one sitting, I recommend it. I hope that those who find themselves growing weary of trying to work toward something impossible in this life may find as much gentle rebuke and encouragement in this short story as I have.
Niggle is an artist in a land that does not value art. He finds himself frustrated by interruptions and critiques from his neighbor, Parish, as he works to complete a master painting of a tree. Niggle’s frustration is compounded because he can’t quite capture on canvas the vision he has for this great tree in his imagination, much less a single leaf. Parish does not help the situation, to put it mildly. He is constantly critiquing Niggle’s work, even trying to use Niggle’s canvas to repair a leak in his roof.
Niggle dies having not completed this great work, only to find that in paradise his tree was there, completed and brought to life in ways he could never imagine.
As Tolkien would have it, Niggle’s neighbor is there in paradise to see the tree, too.
Niggle and Parish—squabbling neighbors in this life—share an exchange in the life of the world to come that I find myself hoping those of us in different corners of the Communion may, too, be able to share one day:
“Niggle’s Picture!” said Parish in astonishment. “Did you think of all this, Niggle? I never knew you were so clever. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“He tried to tell you long ago,” said the man; “but you would not look. He had only got canvas and paint in those days, and you wanted to mend your roof with them. This is what you and your wife used to call Niggle’s Nonsense, or That Daubing.”
“But it did not look like this then, not real,” said Parish.
“No, it was only a glimpse then,” said the man; “but you might have caught the glimpse, if you had ever thought it worth while to try.”
“I did not give you much chance,” said Niggle. “I never tried to explain. I used to call you Old Earthgrubber. But what does it matter? We have lived and worked together now. Things might have been different, but they could not have been better.”
Fr. Jon Jordan is headmaster and Theology Department chair at Coram Deo Academy of Dallas and serves as a priest associate at Church of the Incarnation in the Episcopal Diocese of Dallas.
