Out of Nowhere

Independence Day 2009

It has been said that to sacrifice something is to make it holy by giving it away for love.

In the Eucharist, the place at which that action is perhaps most graphic is in the moment of offering bread and wine and money. In our congregation, we call additional attention to that with two short prayers through which we ask God to join with us in making holy what we are sacrificing, what we are giving away for love. We may not always be so conscious of this, but there it is, anyway, what the church has meant to do for twenty centuries.

On Independence Day or the nearest Sunday, as an exceptional way of adding to our celebration and, indeed, to our sacrifice, we offer together with these other symbols our nation’s flag, properly folded and placed in an alms plate. This reminds us that we are one nation under God.

Most of us are aware that there are many ways to display the flag, each with its own meaning. When it is to one’s right as in the president’s oval office, it symbolizes allegiance. When it is flown upside down, it is a sign of distress. When at half-mast, it is to indicate mourning. When a flag is torn, stepped on, or burned, the message is rejection and rebellion. When a flag flies at full staff, the announcement is peace, victory, rule or whatever adjective you might speak to the situation at the time. In our parish, it is not our usual custom to display our nation’s flag in our chancel, though such is far from uncommon in many churches.

Whatever way we incorporate our national symbol, it is well to keep in mind that Hebrew and Christian scriptures record two problems about patriotism as always having plagued the People of God. One is to become so conformed to a culture and its ways so as to merge the two, rather than bringing the culture into the ways of God. The other is to allow the rule of God to be replaced by the rule of the State. Consequently, we must exercise great care with how we use our national symbols.

We Christians are believers in the incarnation, and it is thus not always easy to separate the issues from the people or the symbols who embody them. Patriotism — about which these days some of us hear more than enough and others never enough — is one of those very important issues which we incarnate and which is not all that easy to separate from the person or the symbol that embraces it.

Few of us, I suspect, would deny that we are patriots. We may find it easier to say what that does not mean for us than to say what it does mean. One thing we all have in common on the subject, however, is the Declaration of Independence. It seems to me always useful — especially this time of year and in these perilous times — to read it thoughtfully as Christians, and perhaps to discover anew what our founders had in mind when they undertook this great American political experiment by which they told us what patriotism meant for them.

On the celebration of our nation’s birthday each year, National Public Radio broadcasts a reading of the Declaration of Independence. Their announcers, reporters, analysts, and essayists each follow in turn reading a short, self-contained passage. The familiar voices are nameless, and one can only guess whose they are. The anonymity seems not only tantalizing, but somehow appropriate, as well. I like to imagine our founders as they wrote and shaped this great proclamation maybe having read it aloud similarly as they sought to get the feel, the rhythm, the power, and the authority of it.

Hearing it in this way even more convinces me that, for whatever and surely well-intended reason, the document seems strangely misnamed. I believe it might better have been called a Declaration of Interdependence, instead. It may be well for us to imagine it that way in these difficult times of another, newer, but not all that different national crisis.

Clearly and well, of course, the Declaration establishes us an autonomous nation among all the world’s geopolitical states. That, in itself, is daring enough. But it continues uniquely and refreshingly to proclaim a new and radical political relationship not only with its own citizenry, but also boldly and courageously with all the earth’s peoples who care to join in such a venture. It takes an incarnational view of the very nature of human being and of the body politic as itself a faithful way to render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and unto God the things that are God’s.

We have just now lived in a time when independence has come to mean the license to run amok unilaterally. The founding sense of the Declaration seems scandalously misunderstood and to be masquerading alone as codependency here, as sexual, ethnic, and political insularity there. These distortions recklessly affect not only individuals and families and our thoughtful and creative governing system of checks and balances, but regions and nations across this entire planet, as well. We seem to be abandoning the very corporate nature of the stewardship which this founding document affirmed and for which it called.

The answer to all this is not, I believe, some blind, unquestioning loyalty which is no loyalty at all, but an out-and-out denial of one’s citizenship. It is not the impudent display of flag lapel pins all the while blatantly ignoring the Constitutional systems for which that pin stands and which one has vowed to protect and defend. Rather is true patriotism to love our country enough to see that in a nuclear age it is not going to survive unless the world survives. True patriots are no longer champions of Democracy, Communism, or anything like that but champions of the Human Race. It is not the Homeland that they feel called on to defend at any cost, but the planet Earth as Home.

If in the interests of making sure that we don’t blow ourselves off the map once and for all, we end up relinquishing a measure of national sovereignty to some international body, so much the worse for national sovereignty. For there is only one Sovereignty that matters ultimately, and it is of quite another sort altogether.

Oh, and there is a tidbit which we dare not overlook after a reading of the Declaration of Independence. It is that King George III entered into his journal on that vital July 4, 1776, “Nothing of any importance or consequence took place today.”

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Note: The useful reminders about ways and meanings of flag displays came my way from Pepper Marts, churchman, veteran, writer, and rattler of stained glass out in New Mexico. The splendid reflections on the meaning of patriotism belong to Frederick Buechner and appear in his “Whistling in the Dark,” Harper & Row, p 93.

It was Trauma City when our town’s swishy university discovered that all the door locks had come from Yale. Trouble was the keys had, too, so it was a campus-wide piece of bad PR all around. Certainly, the development office’s call on Schlage proved to no avail. It was almost as bad as the time a grant application misspelled Procter and Gamble.

I’ve recalled this event largely because keys, and by implication locks, are suddenly in the news. Specially keys to cities, an honorific frequently given to some dignitary usually either by the mayor or her representative. Not so with us and the Iraqis. Finally, TBTG, we’re moving out, but only from the urbs to the hoods.

So what did we do? We gave back the key, a big symbolic key to the mayor or his look-alike. Humor, thy name is irony. Over here, we’ve been bailing out eroding municipal infrastructures with megabucks, and now all we do is give a key, albeit a fancy one, to cities whose infrastructures we’ve spent the last six or seven years megabombing.

The church has been into keys ever since Peter got his set to the Kingdom. Trouble is, when Peter got them, let himself in, and might even have been prone to lead us all, Rome changed the locks. So far as I know, no Pope has ever offered a key even to the Archbishop of Canterbury, let alone to the Vatican and certainly not to the Kingdom.

Nothing is said that I know of about anybody making copies of Peter’s keys, but surely, to be on the safe side, somebody must have either tried to or are still trying, like some Anglo-Catholics I’ve met. What Jesus did with them after his Ascension, I suppose only his mom knows.

Grace and law together don’t make it much in the news. Law gets a lot more mileage, as does the possibility and fear that empathy will somehow stop it from being law. Then, too, it seems somebody’s always wanting to go so far as to change the Constitution to suit their preferences because they can’t understand why everybody else doesn’t have or need to have the same ones. But then stuff rendered to Caesar never seems to be all that grace full.

We got our planet — and universe for that matter — as mostly a matter of grace about which we did very little if anything to provide. Now that it’s coming unglued some of us have enough moxy and maybe even gratitude (there’s that grace again) to want to make a few laws to protect it from the other some of us who couldn’t seem to care less or maybe haven’t enough smarts to know the difference. If whatever’s inside the cells in our bodies started poking holes in their walls, it’d be something like what’s happening to the atmosphere in which we take for granted to move and have our being. The we’d really get fired up.

Steward comes from sty ward, the keeper of the styes, and you know what kind of shape they’re usually in. Maybe this tired, though perennially favorite churcher word can take on new meaning at the Big Fat Anglican Wedding out in Anaheim when we gather next month to make laws and resolutions intended to incarnate grace, though I’ve not a lot of hope about it.

The PB came to our town this past weekend. She was here to celebrate the 150th anniversary of our parish, an anniversary that we’re relishing, (and that my good friend of the Cambridge/Ely UK plateau jests at from the 800 year-old parishes he services as a Reader in the CofE).

In Bishop Katharine’s short and tumultuous three years in office, her mystique as a pastor has become increasing clear. When her pontifical peers have been too insecure to converse with her and have insulted her, instead, she merely absorbs their hateful energies into caring and nourishing energies of her own and then gives them away.

One of her stops while here was a short visit with our diocesan clergy, precious few of whom attended I regret to say, that illustrated her pastoral abilities even more profoundly. It is, of course, what we need most, shepherding. We cannot all be prophets, but she can be not only a prophet but a prophet whose obvious love for people transposes into justice and peace by her mere presence. This church, especially those of us in this stressed diocese, is more fortunate than it sometimes seems to have the capacity to appreciate, let alone to understand.

Unobtainium is a material that is unobtainable mostly because it doesn’t seem to exist.A word maven column that I read says the name incorporates the suffix common to chemical elements in order to suggest some desirable substance either that isn’t at all or else is so rare that even folding money can’t get you any. It’s also a potent excuse, of course, for non-delivery. If only you had some, you can lament, there’d be no problem.One must be careful, I was warned, to distinguish between unobtainium and handwavium. Handwavium refers to a way of ignoring the laws of physics, among others, as if one might banish an insuperable impediment by simply waving a hand at it.The Star Trek series makes great use of handwavium. The familiar replicator, the transporter, and the phaser come to mind. Faster-than-light space drives which, of course, can’t exist at all, take handwavium for granted and speed on their way.Naturally, things like this eventually work their way into the church. At this very moment, the Breakawayers, having got where they are with unobtainium and, as well, being overburdened by it, are making great use of handwavium by simply phasering canon law into oblivium, another entity which, for some, is no problem at all.

Pentecost 4/8B [Mk 5.22-24,35b-43]

“Do not fear, only believe.”

Jesus said this to Jairus, the synagogue leader, whose daughter lay dying. Interesting that Jairus was already doing both. His fear drove him to Jesus, and ironically, his belief drove him to Jesus.

The crowd jeered. It is the way with crowds. But at Jesus’s touch and command, the child arose and walked, anyway. We need now to hear Jesus’s words. We need Jesus.

“Do not fear, only believe.”

We act, instead, as if our fear transcends our belief. For indeed, it does. Rather than turn to how belief can quench our fear, rather than turn to the faith and love and justice that our belief entails, we churchers turn again to the law, to our legislative bodies to pass resolutions, as if somehow, that will still our fear, when all it does is protect us for a moment.

We remain afraid. It is the most pernicious kind of fear when we are afraid of what we do not know but think we know. We are afraid when authority goes into the hands of women or of gays and lesbians. We are afraid that it will turn into power and manipulation and patronizing as it always has in our hands. Our fear drives us to foolish statements, even childishly adolescent notions about how people should properly show their love. We are afraid that same gender parents will destroy the family. We are afraid to know that child abuse and domestic violence and divorce most often occurs in families with different gender parents.

We are not only afraid of what we do not know but of what we might learn if only we tried. We were and many still are afraid of new translations of the Bible and of our liturgies. We are afraid of illegal immigrants when we live in a land founded by illegal immigrants who rather than ask the native Americans for visas and green cards, stole their land from them, instead.

But enough of our fear. Enough of our preoccupation that turns us away from our true occupation to love, to heal the sick, to feed the poor, to bring justice and peace to all. And to embrace our belief that we take this Anglican Christian heritage and shape it — in the language of the Lambeth Quadrilateral, itself — “adapted in the methods of its administration to the varying needs of the nations and peoples of God into the unity of His Church.” Let all respect that fundamental affirmation as the several members of this Communion receive the same.

Let Jesus take us by the hand and say, “I say to you, arise.” Then, let us joyfully go out together and, like Jairus’s daughter, get something to eat.

One doesn’t have to be the least curious at all to wonder about Naked Hiking Day on the Appalachian Trail. I hope that at least the rules of the Forest Service allow one to wear shoes and socks and to take along more than the usual amount of deep woods anti-bug and sun screen.

It’s a mystery to me on the face of it, but that the Governor of South Carolina would disappear and as well be suspected off hiking on Father’s Day of all days — and all the while allow his state and his family to languish — is more than I can even imagine. But then my imagination is usually put into service in other directions.

Take naked. There’s Adam and Eve and all the trouble they caused when the figment of their imaginations put them over the edge and out the EdenGate. Salomé came close as she dropped all those veils as the music went on and led to John’s demise. Then there’re the topless bars. I went hopefully to one once only to discover it was actually in an outdoor garden with only a pergola for the vines and “ceiling” fans.

If the Appalachians can do it for a day, maybe it’s a thought for one of the forthcoming General Convention’s legislative days and all the gender talk it’ll have there. I hope the deputy from somewhere in New England will be there this time so she can take the microphone, scold us mildly, and once more remind everyone that gender is for words and sex is for people.

In a NYTimes interview, clarinetist Artie Shaw, 84 at the time, was asked how he felt about the rivalry between himself and Benny Goodman. He said he thought Goodman was too intense. He said, “Benny plays the clarinet and I play music.”

Shaw quit his big band in the fifties, said he was played out, but tried a comeback in the seventies only to give up again, said, no matter what I try to do, all the public wants is “Begin the Beguine.” His first record for Victor featured an arrangement of “Indian Love Call” of which he was quite proud. In those days of 78 rpm’s, one side would feature what the artist thought would be a hit with a “filler” or “throw away” on the flip side. The filler was Cole Porter’s “Beguine,” one of the largest selling records ever.

I don’t know what this has got to do with anything. I could never quite make up my mind about Shaw and Goodman, but it was always a rich subject for young wannabe jazz players to fuss over. We were very much into Dixieland two-beat in those days, as if we were some sort of know-it-alls. On the other hand, if it weren’t for my own ambivalance, I might suggest that the story sort of illustrates something about orthodoxy and some other kind of doxy. I can get less ambivalent about that. Are you with me?

In 1956, the two-year old Brown decision legally desegregating the public schools was enforced at the small state college where, fresh out of seminary and collared green, I had just been appointed as our church’s chaplain.

At registration time that fall, African-American students, many of whom had day jobs, came in considerable numbers to register for night classes only to find campus entrances blocked by picketers carrying signs, baseball bats, and ax handles. As the word spread, the campus Methodist chaplain, the Presbyterian campus worker, the rector of our downtown parish, and I met, got our signals together, and walked students, one on each arm, through the pickets onto the campus and to the Registrar’s Office. There were more than several hundred clergy in our southern town.

State lore often recounts with pride that it never takes more than one Texas Ranger to settle any size misunderstanding. I was comforted to note that in addition to the presence that night of a few dozen of our local finest, there were not one, but two Rangers. We were comforted, but not all that much, for it only made things look more ominous. It is not easy when lore is questioned.

The next morning paper’s front page pictured us brazen clergy at work and surrounded by pickets. Later in the day, my bishop called, said, “Looks like you’re having quite a time over there. I’m getting a lot of unsympathetic callers wondering why I sent you where I sent you in the first place, and why don’t I send you somewhere else.” I mumbled something very unprophetic.

He said, “I know you’ll probably have to make some quick decisions, and I just want to let you know that whatever they are, they’re also mine. Just let me know as soon as possible so I’ll be able to say what we’re doing. Be safe.”

Nine years later, that same bishop became the Presiding Bishop of the church. He said at that time, “A bishop’s job is to keep his church family on the firing line of the world’s most desperate needs and to learn to accept the exquisite penalty of such an exposed position.”

It only took one bishop for such leadership. How greatly the church and I miss him and, as well, his kind.

Newsweek’s Jon Meacham was on the telly to celebrate his winning the Pulitzer for American Lion, his new book about Andrew Jackson. In his interview, he said, “History to a country is like memory to a person. Without it you can’t know where you are or where you’re going.”

Memory may be one of the most important gifts we humans have, not uniquely, but especially so for Christians. It is one of the things that makes us human and what God showed us in Jesus and what he both imagines and wills us to be, rememberers.

When the dying thief on the cross said to Jesus, “Remember me when you come into your kingdom,” he may have prayed the most intimate prayer that anyone can ever pray. It was not unlike Jesus’s own prayer for us as we discern our own Way into that same Realm with him. “Do this in remembrance of me.”

Maybe one of the closest things we can do to what God wills for us is to study history. Without it we for sure can’t know where we’ve been, where we are, or where we’re going. Anybody who can’t manage history or has no curiosity about it must be satisfied to be caught in the briar patch of the now with no plans for elsewhere or elsewhen. History plus imagination is what makes us story people, once-upon-a-time, it-was-a-dark-and-stormy-night people.

Every celebration of the liturgy is storytime. Genealogy time when we hear about our kin and how they responded to God’s will for them from the wondering awesomeness of it to the incarnation of it to the stumbling about with it. It starts each week at the Eucharist with memory time, reunion time.