Year B, Lent 3
St. Paul’s Episcopal Church
North Andover, Massachusetts
The Rev. Stephanie Chase Wilson


Let the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be always acceptable in your sight, Oh Lord, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

How many Episcopalians does it take to change a light bulb? Ten. One to change the light bulb, one to mix the drinks, and eight to talk about how good the old one was... Light bulb jokes are fun because they are not about light bulbs, but are meant to tell us something about the group being lampooned.  

Today is my second in a series of three sermons in which I will address what it means to be an Episcopalian. And no, I won’t share recipes for Old Fashions… I will, however, talk about the three-legged-stool: scripture, tradition, and reason.

Last week I spoke about the via media. The Episcopal Church is the middle way between the Protestant and Catholic traditions, ideally taking the best from both. Therefore we can hold a great variety of beliefs and still remain in one church. Our only creeds are the Nicene and Apostle’s creeds. Because what determines whether you are Episcopalian or not isn’t common belief, but common worship. Truth is found in the tension of faithful conversation. We won’t all believe exactly the same things, but we will all come together as a community, love each other, break bread, and praise God together.

So now a little more history. I left you last week with Queen Elizabeth the First and her Act of Uniformity of 1559, just after becoming queen. This new way of being church was accepted and practiced by the English people, but not everyone was happy. Primarily the puritans, the English Protestants, felt the Protestant reforms didn’t go far enough. The church was still too Catholic for them. But most people were happy a decision had been made and that God could be worshipped in peace.

By 1585 an Anglican clergyman named Richard Hooker was preaching and writing about this new English Church that was not exactly Roman and not exactly Puritan. He started articulating what the theology of such a union was.
It was from Richard Hooker that we first hear the term “via media,” which we discussed last week. Richard Hooker was also the architect of the traditional Anglican understanding of authority: scripture, tradition and reason.
You see, the Puritans believed in Sola Scriptura. This is Latin for “By Scripture Alone.” This is the doctrine which says that the Bible is the only authority for the Christian faith and life. No doctrine can be supported which cannot be found directly in Scripture or which contradicts scripture. The Bible is complete, inerrant, and infallible. This scriptural authority is available not through the clergy, but through each individual. As a result, all faithful Christians need to be literate and well versed in the Bible, since this is the way one comes to know God. This emphasis on scriptural knowledge by lay people was a great step forward and it remains a common Protestant view even today. Christian authority and truth is found through the Bible alone.

During the late 16th century the Puritans were agitating that the English Church become more Protestant, that it adopt Sola Scripture. They argued that there were too many “popish” practices in the Anglican Church, what with the clergy wearing vestments, kneeling during the sacrament, and other ritualistic things which reminded them of the Roman Church and were not found in scripture. They wanted to purify the church and the government to bring them in line with their understanding of the Bible. To make them more Protestant.

This is where Richard Hooker comes in. He defends the Anglican way and opposes what he sees are the shortcomings of the Puritan position. Throughout his discourses and writings Hooker is unfailingly inclusive and tolerant. One day Hooker had a sermon debate with a Puritan named Walter Travers who argued that all Roman Catholics are going to hell. On the other hand Hooker said, despite what he believed to be their faults, he expected to see Roman Catholics in heaven. Travers responded, the Roman Catholics believe some wrong things, so scripture automatically condemns them. Puritans would exclude people and activities from church and life that weren’t strictly scriptural. However Hooker said that even though Roman Catholics believe some wrong things, they are trying to the best of their ability and do some things right, and that is enough for God.  Hooker wrote, “God is not a “captious sophister, eager to trip us up whenever we say amiss, but a courteous tutor, ready to amend what, in our weakness or our ignorance, we say ill, and to make the most of what we say aright.”  

Hooker’s inclusiveness regarding Roman Catholics is a position Episcopalians continue to hold today. We tend to be an open church and not only in relation to Roman Catholics. The Anglican way means we don’t look for ways to exclude people because they mess up or hold beliefs we consider wrong. Ideally, we recognize that we all fall short of the glory of God and some of us hold some pretty stupid beliefs, but God still is working in us. The story is not over and God is merciful. We cannot be quick to judge.

Hooker is able to take this position because he does NOT believe in sola scriptura, scripture alone. A legalistic understanding of scripture will lead to false understandings of God. Hooker said that while scripture is a primary source of authority, it is to be understood using tradition and reason. By “tradition” he means what the church, both faithful clergy and lay people, have found to be true about God over the centuries. This includes the creeds and our worship. By “reason” he means thought, experience, and wisdom, and our own knowledge of God. If all of our life is from God, then all of our life should be used to understand God. Reason is a gift from God given to help us understand truths found both in nature and in scripture. Sola scripture is great as far as it goes, but as an authority, it is not definitive. In the end you can get thousands of different interpretations of scripture, each one claiming to be infallible and final.

But God’s truths are ongoing and new wisdom and insights through the gifts of the Holy Spirit, together with the traditions and wisdom of the generations before us, are the best way to interpret scripture and understand Christian truth. This interpretation is also not done as individuals, but in community. No one person can claim to know all truth. It is only in the faithful community that truth is found. That’s why we love to have Diocesan conventions and deanery assemblies so we can all hash it out together!

With scripture, tradition, and reason, each inform and temper the others. We synthesize information prayerfully to reach a conclusion about right Christian behavior and belief. Hooker called it the three-legged stool because a one or two-legged stool will fall. A stool needs all three legs. Any one of the parts by itself is insufficient. All three together keep us grounded in the traditions of God and God’s people, yet vibrant and alive to new revelations from the Spirit.

This is why the Episcopal Church today can take different positions on some issues compared to some other churches. For instance, we know that while the Bible gives as a story about creation, we don’t have to believe it literally.
We can use reason to observe the natural world, as Charles Darwin did, and realize that something called evolution is at work. We are not literal creationists.
We can apply science and God’s ongoing revelation to humanity to understand more fully God’s world. We can understand that the story of Adam and Eve and God’s creation of the earth were appropriate stories to explain creation thousands of years ago. This does not mean we are to abandon our God-given knowledge today and continue to endorse a literal view of this story.

I do want to stress, however, that this use of reason should in no way negate scripture, but enhance it. All discoveries about our planet, including evolution, tell of the glories of God. In addition, we continue to study and follow the Bible story of creation not as literal truth, but as truth none-the-less about God’s relationship to humanity and the universe. The creation story tells us that God created the earth, including us, that God loves all the universe, including us, and that we have turned away from God, which has brought about disharmony and suffering in the world. It has also alienated us from the Almighty. Despite all this God loves and shows mercy to us. Note that all of these truths we gain from the scriptural story of creation do not negate evolution. There is more to truth than only what is literal. The Episcopal use of scripture, tradition, and reason allows for this.

This openness to tradition and reason in Biblical interpretation is why faithful Christians can have such differences of opinion in the Episcopal Church.
Couple this with a big tent policy of the via media where we welcome this diversity while keeping it in unity, it’s no wonder that sometimes we find ourselves on the evening news. This does not mean we have an “anything goes” approach to Christianity or scripture. The creeds and traditions give us boundaries. But we believe that Christian truth will be found in prayerful discernment using scripture, tradition, and reason. A discernment where all the voices are heard so that the Holy Spirit may not be overlooked. Sometimes this discernment takes years, or generations, to work out. In the meantime we must live in the tension of worshipping side by side with Episcopalians, some of who take a dim view of reason and others who would nearly abandon scripture. Yet like Hooker with the Roman Catholics, we should not be surprised to see them one day with us in the Kingdom of God. In the meantime we should welcome them in our pews.

So what does it mean to be an Episcopalian? It means we understand Christian truth comes from scripture, tradition, and reason. These understandings are then discerned prayerfully in community, making room for the Spirit. This allows for a vibrant church, faithful to its heritage, yet open to the Spirit and the full diversity of God’s people. Amen.