The ritual I most enjoyed was the nightly commentary from my children. I have a daughter, 20, who is a collegiate athlete, and two sons, 16 and 12. They each had their favorite sport and their take on the day’s events and trending news. I noticed that, unlike previous Games, the athletes that were trending on back porches and social media were not necessarily the ones who broke records. For instance, I remember Flo Jo and Greg Louganis from the ’80s and ’90s. I remember Carl Lewis. I also remember the buildup in 1992 around Dan and Dave, two American decathletes. Of late, we have Michael Phelps, Usain Bolt, and God bless Simone Biles. These were all athletes who surpassed the elite level to a pantheon that would feel right at home on Mt. Olympus.

My children, however, talked about three athletes in particular: Pommel Horse Guy, the Turkish Shooter, and the Australian Breakdancer. Pommel Horse Guy is Stephen Nedoroscik, a 25-year-old American gymnast who specializes in the pommel horse and won the bronze medal for the event. The Turkish Shooter is Yusuf Dikec, a 51-year-old silver medalist in air pistol shooting from Turkey. The Australian Breakdancer, I imagine we all know by now, is the 36-year-old academic Dr. Rachael Gunn, who did not earn a single point in the competition.

Pommel Horse Guy and the Turkish Shooter won my children over. Nedoroscik is a self-described nerd who wears glasses except when he’s on the horse. When he takes them off, he squints toward the platform as if he’s looking for a Rite I liturgy at a diocesan event. Dikec is the Gen-X hero with a “whatever” attitude, casually walking to the event without any special equipment or clothing. He wears a T-shirt, specs from LensCrafters, and aims like a latchkey kid who played a few hours of Duck Hunt on the Nintendo in 1987.

Their authenticity was a breath of fresh air. One got the impression that is exactly who they are with no filter and no influencer strategy. It was not lost on me that my children focused on this. Every new generation becomes the most marketed-to generation in history. I thought I grew up with a lot of commercials, but my children have grown up with advertisements generated toward their browsing history, their shopping habits, and even (you can’t convince me otherwise) conversations had within earshot of the phone. The result is they are, for the most part, quite savvy to things being sold to them.

Rachel Gunn seems to be a different story. I honestly don’t wish to pile on to what is already a pretty heft pile of criticism. Her breaking routine was curiously bad, so bad that many have speculated her Olympic debut was really a cover for academic research or some other, non-athletic, motive. However pure her intentions or rigorous her Olympic preparation might have been, her routine felt affected and contrived. One might even argue that it was, to some degree, disrespectful. In short, it  seemed to lack authenticity.

I think there is a lesson for the Church in all this. I think we need more of Stephen Nedoroscik and Yusuf Dikec, confidence to be exactly who we are. Neither of them entered the Olympics to procure business deals or to grow their brands. Rather they came to win the medal. That singular commitment, along with the fact that they didn’t necessarily fit the perceived mold of Olympic athlete, grabbed our attention and subsequent admiration. According to an article in The Guardian, Rachel Gunn admitted that she couldn’t beat the other performers based “on what they do best, the dynamic and power moves.” Instead, she thought she had to be creative and artistic. Fair enough, and I defend her on this. However, the result did not look like breakdancing.

I am afraid the Church in all its structures — General Convention, diocesan, and parish — feels it cannot compete for the attention and allegiance of the people, so it tries to be unnecessarily creative and artistic. The result is that it often doesn’t look or feel like faith, much less authentic Christianity. The real challenge is that within those structures, we may have forgotten what authentic Christian practice is. In some cases, many decades may have passed since it was last modeled. If the Church were to be Pommel Horse Steve or Turkish Shooter, we would simply focus on why we are here: to glorify Jesus Christ through a transformed life.

We don’t have to be creative or artistic to grab the attention of our communities. Saying prayers daily and publicly and in person will be radical enough. Our sanctoral calendar is so messed up, likely in part because very few communicates actually live by them, preferring to post on social media the day’s feast or saint instead of remembering them at the altar.

When Stephen Nedoroscik took off his glasses, he didn’t need to see the pommel horse. He had been around it so much, he could feel his routine and the space around him. We should be like Yusuf Dikec, and just walk up to the challenges in our culture and pull the spiritual arrows from our quiver, knowing that our accuracy is not based on resources or other accoutrement, but fidelity.

We should be the same with our Christian disciplines and prayers. Amid the noise and anger around us, we should be able to find refuge in the movement and beauty of the Christian at prayer. Doing all of this will make us stand out. We may not like the attention we receive, and it will most definitely come with opposition, but no one would be able to accuse us of trying to be what we are not. The Church should rightfully be concerned about the staggering rise of the “nones” and young adults who are running away from faith. If my children are a fair sample of their peers, what they would find refreshing and inviting is for the Church to do what the Church is supposed to do and be what the Church is supposed to be.

The starter kit for Anglo-Catholics necessarily includes a handful of Vanity Fair prints from the late 19th century. Newman, if you can afford it. Arthur Tooth behind bars is a must. And, of course, Alexander Mackonochie, the first priest of St. Alban’s, Holborn. “He makes religion a tragedy, and the movements of his muscles a solemn ceremony,” reads a caption.

The stories of Fr. Mackonochie of St. Alban’s and Fr. Charles Lowder of St. Peter’s, London Docks, are legendary in Anglo-Catholic circles. By faith, prayer, and old-fashioned eccentric stubbornness, they built churches that are revered as Anglo-Catholic shrines. In their day they were a refuge for deprived areas, bringing color to a world that was dark and gray, and giving hope that the glory and splendor of the love of Jesus Christ was offered equally to them as to the wealthy on the West End. They defied the odds, and often their bishops, in establishing thriving Anglo-Catholic churches in areas unwanted and overlooked. Can it happen today?

That is the question John Wallace asks in Anglo-Catholic Church Planting: Can It Work? Based on his research for a Doctor of Ministry degree, Wallace compares and contrasts church planting in the Victorian age with today. His opening chapter makes more sense in a Church of England context, and American Anglicans might be confused at first about terms and controversies between Fresh Expressions and Parish Church defenders, but the point is easily discerned and relatable in any context: there are disagreements on how to help the church grow.

His chapter summarizing the Anglo-Catholic movement and history is fair, but brevity prevents him from exploring many important nuances, figures, and watershed moments in Anglo-Catholicism.

The most interesting part of the book offers the biographies of two Victorian church planters: The Rev. Richard Temple West and Richard Foster. These two men are interesting choices. Temple West founded St. Mary Magdalene in Paddington at the invitation of the vicar of All Saints’, Margaret Street. While West was not as well-known as Mackonochie or Lowder, his biographer was T.T. Carter, a light in the Anglo-Catholic movement with considerable wattage.

Foster is a new name to me. A wealthy London merchant, he supported and funded several churches, but was not apparently active in the Anglo-Catholic movement or politics. In fact, I’m not sure he would have identified as an Anglo-Catholic. What is shared between these two men is an unwavering commitment to expanding the church, and using all means at their disposal to aid their goal.

Wallace spends the longest portion of his book exploring three modern case studies. This section most reflects his Doctor of Ministry project. Like the Victorian examples, these examples are interesting choices. Two of the three are already established extensions from a parish or benefice, and the third, while an actual church plant, is only loosely Anglo-Catholic and ultimately became a part of an evangelical parish. While they are interesting in their own right, I’m not sure these examples shed light on the original question.

Wallace’s conclusions are what one might expect. An Anglo-Catholic church plant, like any church plant, needs commitment from clergy and community, a clear vision, and — most of all — money. A Victorian comparison is, perhaps, unfair. The great Anglo-Catholic shrines, led by priests who now frown at us from Vanity Prints, were often built by the patronage of one benefactor. Their parishioners came to church out of devout faith and social duty. The priests were often independently wealthy and almost always bachelors. They were also men who sacrificed themselves to such a degree that most died prematurely.

In doing the research and writing the book, Wallace keeps an important question alive: why not plant Anglo-Catholic churches? His examples may not have been the clearest and his definitions may be broad, but the question is still very much sound. We would do well to learn from the Victorian examples (and others). Can it work? If we want it to.

Yannaras is strongly influenced by the German phenomenologist Martin Heidegger, who challenged the philosophical status quo by demanding we stop taking existence as an epistemological given and start asking — what is is? What do we mean by existence? In one of Heidegger’s famous examples, he asks us to consider the hammer. Sitting on a workbench, we could come up with all sorts of descriptions of the hammer. It is wood and iron. It is hard and smooth. All of these would be correct, at as descriptions, but it doesn’t address what the hammer is. We know the purpose of the hammer, we know its essence, by picking it up and attacking nails. Then we understand the purpose of its materials and balance. We understand its essence through our experience.

Yannaras builds on this and baptizes it, acknowledging that the only way any human being knows anything at all is through personal experience. Existence, being, can only be known through an object’s mode, or how its essence is hypostasized (made existentially real). Yannaras argues that for God and man, the mode of existence is personhood. He is quick to repeat the etymology of person, which is to turn one’s face toward something/someone. A person, therefore, is relation. Relation is what makes us existentially real. We can’t know God apart from our experience of him.

Yannaras supports his position with a convincing use of Scripture (beginning with the personal encounter of Abram with God in Genesis 15) and the church fathers. We only know God through the persons of the Father, Son, and Spirit. There is no “stuff” of God that precedes personhood. In other words, God’s essence isn’t something that we can think on apart from his personhood. There is no essence of God apart from personhood, or at least it is not knowable apart from personhood. God’s mode of existence is love. That is not to say that God possesses the highest expression of love but that God is love. Love is his existence.

St. Augustine had real insight into this ontology when he wrote that if God is love, then he must exist in a Trinity of persons: Lover, Beloved, and Love. God chooses to exist because of love and he chooses to create because of love. He is not bound by his nature to do any of this, including existing. This, for Yannaras, would not be freedom. Freedom is existence without any precondition from nature. The glory of humankind is that we were created out of love for love. The distinctive mark of humanity, the part that is made in God’s image, is the capacity for freedom, to transcend the limits of our nature by choosing (or rejecting) God’s love. Our mode of existence is relation.

I have tremendous respect for and interest in Yannaras because I think understanding existence as relation has potential in reframing the abortion conversation, which is undeniably deadlocked through fear, caricature, and distrust. In our debates about personhood, we are potentially making the same mistake that Yannaras (and Heidegger before him) accused the school of philosophy of committing — taking for granted the definition of existence. Definitions of personhood all seem to focus on accidents, or ontics, and not fundamental essence. The result is our definitions are moving, inconsistent, and — with respect — ultimately grounded in what is expedient. Yannaras, for instance, asks: How can we define personhood by self-awareness when self-awareness is by definition subjective? Can we objectively define what is subjective?

What makes a person is relation. Other created entities use relation for life. Relationships are used for security, shelter, and reproduction. Persons are unique in that we are called to use relation for life as relation. We discover the fullness of our personhood not in survival, but in relation. We are made from and for the love of God. Our existence is the result of sexual union of mother and father (this adds commentary to Jonathan Mitchican’s critique of IVF). We are nurtured through the relation of mother and womb.

Our stages from conception to birth are physical and mental development of a personhood that is not tied to ability or cognition. Made in the image of God, we are called to transcend all of those limits and know life in Jesus Christ, or theosis. The clearest image of this is the Annunciation. The incarnation of the Word of God followed the assent to relation by the Blessed Virgin Mary. The Word was made flesh at the moment she said yes. The child in the womb is the result of relation and will flourish thanks to relation, or not. She was created by God for freedom to choose his love or to choose a path without it. To circumvent that opportunity, at a most ontological level, seems anti-choice.

Not to press this point too far, and Yannaras doesn’t say this, but relational ontology can be found in the most fundamental elements of the physical world — the atom. The basic building block of matter is the trinitarian union of neutron, proton, and electron. It should not be lost on us that the most destructive force we have ever known is the intentional severance of that structure in the atomic bomb. We are not going to agree on an ontic definition of personhood, and we see this clearly in the messiness of state legislation since Dobbs v. Jackson. With relational ontology in mind, perhaps we should instead look within the experience of ourselves. What does it mean for my personhood if I actively seek to sever relation? And I’m not just talking about embryos. What did J. Robert Oppenheimer quote from the Bhagavad Gita? “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” At what point do I, through my choices, become a biological entity and not a person? That is the most pressing question.

The 2007 Super Bowl was about corporate tickets purchased for important clients, who likely didn’t even care for football (I was asked by the rows behind me to sit down during the opening kickoff). It was about Chicago playing at a pre-game party where I saw rappers and Wayne LaPierre mingling in the same crowd. It was about Prince at halftime (which was wonderful if you saw it on television). It was about money. It was about everything except, perhaps, the game of football.

This year’s Super Bowl was the most watched television event in American history, with an average viewership of 123 million. The shining silver Lombardi trophy, polished over four months by Tiffany and Co., has become our nation’s mirror. What did we see this year when nearly half of the country tuned in to see our reflection? What was staring back at us? Anger. If social media are the best we have for a society’s pulse, it was racing. Outrage at the anthem(s), the halftime show, the commercials, Taylor Swift, etc. The most shocking image was the Kansas City Chiefs’ tight end Travis Kelce screaming in the face of his head coach while knocking him off balance. There were no smudges or streaks on this Super Bowl mirror. The reflection was flawless.

Why are we so angry? When I have confessed wrath, past confessors have suggested my anger is a projection of self-loathing. I am angry because I have not let the love of Christ envelop me. When I’ve offered similar advice in the confessional, I can feel the penitent recognize, as I have, the liberating truth of that counsel. We need to let ourselves be loved.

With this in mind, I think the “He Gets Us” commercials deserve another look. I’ve gone back and forth with these ads and I’ve read numerous takes and critiques, some of which raised fair and thought provoking points.  Mike Cosper of Christianity Today said in a tweet that the “He Gets Us” commercials are a Rorschach test, and I think he is right. If you want to see woke messaging in the ad, I’m sure you can. If you want to see a creative invitation to discover Jesus Christ, you can do that as well. Mainly, fitting the theme of the Super Bowl, people were just angry.

Personally, I liked the commercial, even if it wasn’t perfect. To be fair, I doubt there has ever been a social media post I’ve made on the church account where I did not later critique and others cringe. I’ve moved heaven and earth to scrub from the internet those hip and edgy YouTube videos that I made in the early 2000s. Crafting a message in an evolving medium that stands the test of time is nearly impossible.

I watched the foot washing commercial when it aired, and I’ve gone back and watched it several times since then. Every time I’ve watched it, I realize something is not there that I assumed was. For instance, if you asked me on the night of the Super Bowl who was washing feet in the ad, I would have said Jesus. But Jesus was never in the ad. I am confused by the critique that Jesus only washed his disciples’ feet and that this ad misrepresents Our Lord. Jesus commanded his disciples to wash the feet of others, “For I have given you an example, that you should do as I have done to you” (John 13.15). I first assumed the abortion-clinic scene was more pointed. But when I watch it again and again, one does not know if the woman changed her mind and did not enter the clinic or if she did and regretted her decision, or none of the above. But regardless of her hypothetical decision, should she be denied the love of Christ? In any scenario, those feet will carry a heavy burden, and should they not be washed in the name of Jesus?  Was it a nuanced presentation of the mystery of Christ? No. Could someone have legitimate critiques? Absolutely. Is it a reason to get angry? I’m not convinced. I’ve never had a million people, much less 123 million, listen to me preach but when the nation tuned in to see its angry reflection in the spectacle that is the Super Bowl, it heard, for 30 seconds, that Almighty and Everlasting God hatest nothing that he has made.

Why are we so angry? In Mark 9.38-41, St John tells reports to Jesus that a man was casting out demons in Christ’s name. John, with other disciples, forbade him because he was not of their number. Jesus corrects John, saying that whoever is not against them is for them. The following verses, I think, are the really important ones for this conversation. Jesus reminds us of our responsibility not to cause scandal and cause those who believe in him to sin. The greater misrepresentation of Jesus Christ has been the lack of charity in his Name in response to “He Gets Us” than the actual 30-second commercial. If we are not careful, we will mirror the line-crossing behavior of Travis Kelce screaming at his coach. If we are not careful, we will also echo how he justified his behavior by saying we, too, are just passionate and we want the best for the Church and the proclamation of Gospel. When in fact, we are just angry, have no self-control, and violated a boundary. In our sin, we are also hurting others.

I think we should revisit “He Gets Us” and ask why “He Gets Us” angry? I found myself challenged and asking if I am quick to show mercy and love, even before a confession of faith and before and declaration of repentance. I found myself realizing that I need to take off my shoes and allow my pride to die and let those around me love me, who have been so desperate to do so. I need Jesus Christ to wash me. I need to trust that he got me, gets me, and will always get me.

That first address to his players on December 5 went viral and sports fans and writers were polarized on the approach. When I first read the tweets and watched snippets of the speech, I fell on the side of those not impressed, my reaction no doubt influenced by my previous impression of Sanders as self-centered and brash. Furthermore, I felt bad for the kids who would be displaced. They committed to the University of Colorado because the University of Colorado had made a commitment to them. I thought Sanders was bad for college football, and I assumed that in short time, this experiment would be over. But then I watched the whole speech.

The seven-minute address was more sermon than speech. He began and concluded by talking about how he understood his calling from God. The rest of the time he listed the sins of the Colorado football culture; an acceptance of mediocrity that had poisoned the outlook of two decades of players. “I have a problem when young men with everything in front of them don’t believe,” he said. He told the players they had an opportunity to make a real, substantial difference in life and that they could rescue their mothers and their friends from difficult circumstances, but they had to first believe. “There’s a spirit that’s around this team that is not traditional and in some kind of way you guys have accepted it and you’ve begun to be complacent.”

Like the best in black preaching, his voice rose with alliteration as he said he had been sent to “restore, replace, re-energize.” He directly challenged what he saw as detrimental to the culture that would produce successful football players and men. He concluded the homily, um, address, by telling the players that some of them didn’t want this unique opportunity and didn’t love the game. “Is that you?” he asked. If not, Coach Sanders was going to bring men who were smart, tough, fast, disciplined, and had character. He asked them to repeat those words. “Is this you?” he asked again. Thus endeth the Sanders Sermon, and at the end, I was a convert.

The Church is not a football team, and as good as a preacher he might be, Sanders is not a bishop, rector, or warden. But could there be, underneath the gold jewelry, cameras, and sunglasses, an important lesson?

I recently followed the path of a footnote and came upon the book Two Friends by Dora Greenwell. Published in 1862, it is a very Victorian conversation between two friends on life, faith, and the practice of Christianity. The protagonist’s interlocuter, Philip, described the power of Christian community: “To know, as I do, looking over the country at this moment, till my eye rests upon the remote edge of the horizon, that there is a poor man or woman living there who believes, and loves, and prays, makes me a happier, abler Christian.”

Philip then compares Christian community to nature. Ice cannot become water or water to steam until the whole has been raised to a certain temperature. Philip gave thanks for those Christians, few as they might be, that prevent the whole of a society, or village, or family, from freezing solid. “How much Christian energy and love disappears, sinks below the surface, in this way, depressed by the low level of the surrounding atmosphere.”

I think that is an extraordinarily helpful image. The church and society have long been sustained by the prayers and witness of the faithful few. Because they refused to give in or give up, the Holy Spirit has used them to warm the body just enough so it doesn’t freeze solid. That image also works both ways. In order for transformation to happen, as in water to steam, the faithful few need the spiritual heat of the whole body to join them.

On Christmas Day, 1969, Fr. Joseph Ratzinger gave a radio address titled What will the church look like in 2000? In it, he prophesied a smaller, more faithful Church. The address is worth reading, and has aged well: “From the crisis of today the Church of tomorrow will emerge — a Church that has lost much. It will become small and will have to start afresh more or less from the beginning. … In contrast to an earlier age, it will be seen much more as a voluntary society, entered only by free decisions. As a small society it will make much bigger demands on the initiative of its individual members.”

Joseph Ratzinger, Philip from Two Friends, and Deion Sanders are all in agreement: a committed few will change everything. There is no virtue in being small for the sake of being small. I am convinced that the reason people are drawn to megachurches is not because of the praise band, the lobby latte, or the acrylic lectern. People are drawn because they discover people who want to be there. There are people who aren’t ashamed to speak openly about prayer, discernment, the Bible, and their personal experience of Jesus Christ. If they want to be steam, they know they need heat. Martin Thornton was right when he wrote, “There is nothing so contagious as holiness, nothing more pervasive than Prayer.”[1]

Is not coach Sanders on to something? He walked into an environment complacent with stagnation. One could almost hear the words of Jesus to the Church of Laodicea: “I know your works, you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were cold or hot! So, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew you out of my mouth” (Rev. 3:15-16). To change that environment, he had to set a new, higher expectation. To realize that expectation, he needed individuals to set the example. His approach has been controversial and while he enjoyed success early this season, his team as fallen short of his lofty prediction. He has, however, likely changed college football. Are we courageous enough to look at our own culture? Do we believe enough to change it?

Again, the Church is not a football team and I do not want to take this metaphor too far. The church is open to all who desire Christ, there is no question or debate on this issue. No one is kicked out because they don’t pray enough, give enough, or read the Bible enough. But those Christians, nominal, lapsed, poorly formed, what have you, need a burning core to raise their spiritual temperature. Our priority, our commitment, needs to be to the committed. The future of the healthy parish will be built on the foundation laid by faithful Christians who are committed to the catholic faith, which necessarily means they will be not only open to, but desirous of, the transforming love and grace of Jesus Christ. The heathy parish will need missionaries to raise the expectation, change the culture, and be the example. They will be on fire by the Holy Spirit, sent to prevent the Church from freezing solid.

[1] Pastoral Theology: A Reorientation, page 24