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Ye are built upon the foundation of the apostles,
Christ himself being the chief corner stone.
Ephesians 2:20

            Today we celebrate the feast of the apostles Simon and Jude.  According to tradition, after the descent of the holy spirit at Pentecost, the Twelve Apostles left the holy city for various missionary destinations, leaving the church of Jerusalem in the care of James, the brother of the Lord.  The apocryphal “Passion of Simon and Jude” relates the preaching and martyrdom of these two Apostles in Persia, but, in fact, the only thing we know about either of these two persons is that Simon, called “the Zealot” in Luke’s list of the Twelve (6:15), had once been a member of that radical Jewish sect. 
            So what is an apostle anyway?   According to the account in Acts of the election of someone to take the place of Judas, there is the requirement that the candidates should have been “with us all the time that Jesus was with us, from the baptism by John until his ascension” (1:21-22).  This would exclude Paul, whose conversion on the Damascus Road took place after Jesus’ death.  It would seem that some of Paul’s contemporaries did deny him the title of “apostle.”  He protests vehemently, “Am I not an apostle?  Have I not seen Jesus Christ our Lord?” (1 Corinthians 9:1).  In the Didache “apostle” seems to mean any itinerant missionary. 
            And what is meant when we profess belief in “one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church?”  For some, an apostolic church is one with an apostolic succession, that is, a church whose bishops stand in an unbroken line going back to those consecrated by the apostles themselves.  In 1896 Pope Leo XIII declared Anglican orders “ completely null and utterly void.”  But, ironically, at the same time that we were being unchurched by the Pope, some Anglicans were unchurching other Protestant denominations, because they did not have bishops. 
            When Martin Luther was unable to find any bishop to ordain clergy for his reformed church, he undertook to ordain clergy himself, although he was only a priest.  He declared that what made a church apostolic was not apostolic succession but apostolic doctrine.  The fact the the Anglican Church now enjoys full communion with the Lutheran Church seems to imply that we accept Luther’s position on this matter. 
            The concern about apostolicity is a concern about identity, for who we are depends on where we have come from.  Was the Church of England founded by Christ or by Henry VIII?  The concern for roots extends to our personal lives.  Specialists in DNA research have recently offered to trace our ancestry back for many generations, in one highly publicized case, even as far back as Genghis Khan! 
            But our roots are not just about DNA.  Being rooted in Christ does not mean that we are physically descended from him, or even that our church was founded by him.  It means that we are in touch, through Christ, with God, his Father and our Father (John 20:17), and the one in whom “we live and move and have our being” (Acts 18:28).  If we are so in touch, then we too can claim the title of “apostle” and go forth to bring others to the faith which we profess.           

October 28, 2007

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