January 16, 2004

Messiah

Someone asked the other day about the “spiritual and emotional climate” when Jesus appeared. It’s a question for the Jesus Seminar guys who do a splendid and revealing job with it. But it does seem to me that it was not all that dissimilar to today. There was a disconnect between people’s lives and people’s expectations of Messiah.

Life was routine piled on routine — little travel, few variations in the daily round, occupation passing from father to son, women carefully circumscribed, familiar scriptures read in familiar places, thought-patterns and moral codes grounded on stories told many centuries and many conquerors ago.

Reactions to Jesus suggest that they expected Messiah to be beyond routine and yet to affirm routine. That is, he himself would be extraordinary — a great warrior, perhaps, a charismatic leader, a worker of miracles. Their lives, on the other hand, would remain untouched. Messiah would make things better, but not different. He would preach with power, but not say anything new. He would unseat the domination systems, but with an eye toward restoring the old yesterday, not launching a new tomorrow.

It is a familiar human theme. We want the music to be excellent, but are surprised when it moves us. We want our congregations to thrive, but not to meddle. We want life to improve for our neighbors, but not at our expense. We want the benefits of maturity, but not the burdens. We want God to be on call, but not ourselves.

The genius of what Jesus did, it seems, was to be there and by being there, to transform daily life. Instead of putting on a grand show, he interrupted the routine, showed better ways, asked new questions, ignored much-valued barriers, gave new names to the familiar.

He came to the wedding in Cana of Galilee, not to create a sideshow and then depart, like a magician who briefly entertains at a children’s birthday party. His purpose was simply to be there, and by being there to make all things new, even to spike the punch.

The gospel, like life, is mostly about about change and choice with love thrown in to surprise us out of the cranky inevitability of it all.

January 15, 2004

Preaching

Thinking about preaching.

For my first, we seminarians drew texts out of a hat. We were to preach to our classmates and faculty at one of our daily Morning Prayer offices. I drew John 3.16, the one that’s so popular on placards [along with “Hi, Mom”] at football games when the TV pans the crowd.

I spent some 25 hours researching and writing and editing and trashing. When the day came, I had a zinger.

Afterward, we gathered in one of the classrooms for “feedback” time. [The comic strip’s Kudzu asked parson Will B Dunn, “What is feedback?” Dunn answered, “Feed the chickens early in the morning. Go out later in the day and get feed back.”]

I had a different experience, but just as memorable. The Dean said, “Splendid homily, had it been delivered in a British cathedral at evensong to a group of your fellow dons, but, for heaven’s sake, don’t ever unleash on one of our local congregations.”

John 3.16 remains safe, untouched, and unblemished by my homiletic hands to this day.

January 14, 2004

Santa Claus

There was a Santa Claus at the Jewish Community Center this year. Nobody seems to know how he came about being there, but nobody seemed either to mind.

And when it comes right down to it, why should they, particularly so long as the ACLU never found out. If anybody was ever ecumenical, it was Santa Claus. Nothing in the old St Nicholas patron-of-children legend says he discriminated against kids, anyway, except maybe on how well they tended their noses.

Santa’s a universal symbol with that red suit and immense girth and all. This year, he even showed up in people’s front yards as a kind pumped-up blimp that had lights inside. There was one down the street from us that seemed to wave when we drove by.

Last night, however, our neighbor’s Santa, deflated, was just a red and white blob lying out in the yard like a misplaced tarp. Maybe the ACLU was on to something after all.

January 13, 2004

Free speech

In one of its more civic-minded moments, the Ku Klux Klan offered to participate in the Missouri adopt-a-highway cleanup program. The State Department of Transportation said,Thanks, but no thanks.

The U S Supreme Court in one of its less civic-minded moments ruled that the State of Missouri may not so discriminate against the Ku Klux Klan. Even though to many, the idea of the Klan’s name on one of those signs is aesthetically disgusting, most realized that the Supreme’s decision is a victory for free speech and equal protection under the law.

Nobody questioned, however, the MDT’s right to name the highway. The Klan now regularly cleans up a section of the newly-christened Rosa Parks Freeway.

January 11, 2004

Baptism of Jesus

NOTE: Preachment for Epiphany 1C [Lk 3.15-16, 21-22]. OoNtolerably long. — JLD
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Perhaps nothing so identifies Jesus with us, nor us with him, as does his baptism.

The tender and touching nativity stories of Christmas evoke in us a warm and universal, but often distant compassion for him and his family. John’s brilliant philosophical apologetic that the Word became flesh stuns us with awe.

But Jesus’ baptism reveals for us how deeply he identified with his people… how he crossed the Red Sea out of slavery with them, how he entered into the Promised Land with them. In his baptism, he accepted their heritage and their hopes as his heritage and his hopes.

So, in our baptism, do we identify with him in this same heritage and with the hopes of all those who have followed him down through the centuries to this very day. In his baptism as in ours, the rubber meets the road and we fast-forward into this new season called Epiphany. Here we are, alongside the three kings, riding camelback across the desert on the way home. What in God’s name do we say about where we’ve been and what happened to us there? Yes. It’s show and tell time in the neighborhood.

Stephen Prothero has written a new book which tells some of the ways we’ve answered that question. It’s called “American Jesus: How the Son of God Became a National Icon.” We’ve covered the spectrum with our answers, he says — from the second-person-of-the-Trinity Christ of the Creeds to Thomas Jefferson’s Enlightened Sage shorn of miracles, resurrection, and divinity, from the amiable, countercultural hippie-cum-rock-superstar fostered by the “Jesus freaks” of the 1960s to the willowy “sweet savior” given us by Currier and Ives and described by Dorothy Sayers as the “household pet” of little old ladies and pale curates.

One worries, he suggests, with all these assaults on the Christian tradition together with the disintegration and misuse of the biblical foundation, that this Jesus, the Lord of the marginalized and forlorn, may soon become the man nobody knows in 21st century America [NYTimes, 8i04, p B9].

With those in the church in these times who are so imprisoned by their obsessions, with their squeamish uneasiness about some of their own colleagues, and with their lashing back in anger and judgment, fear and denunciation of the very tradition that has nourished them through the ages, we, too, may be distorting the image of Jesus ourselves. This Jesus of ours could soon become the man nobody knows not only in 21st century America, but in 21st century Christianity, as well.

It is, indeed, show and tell time.

Let us return to his baptism for a moment and listen to what God’s commanding Spirit proclaims to the world — “Thou art my beloved son; with thee, I am well pleased” [Lk 3.22]. Now hear this! Jesus is what God means not only for the fulfillment of human being but by the very meaning of being human.

Here is the image as God intends it, the image in which we share in our own creation, and the same freedom which we are given as Jesus was given to accept God’s calling as the church, the Body of Christ in the world. Or not.

We, by grace, freely receive that commission, just as we, by grace, may freely reject it. Will it be the church’s Jesus or the American Jesus? Will Jesus become the man nobody knows and we the people everybody knows as empty, introverted narcissists, navel-gazing our way into eternity?

We prayed in today’s collect a moment ago, God… “grant that all who are baptized into [Jesus’] Name may keep the covenant they have made, and boldly confess him as Lord and Savior” [BCP p 214]. We embrace that in our Baptismal Covenant. There is no holier order and there is no more strategic evangelism than this and the way it gathers into itself all the dimensions and hallmarks of Christian life and mission.

Listen again to the great verbs. Continue in what the apostles have begun. Persevere in resisting evil, and failing, return to the Lord. Proclaim the Good News in both word and example. Seek and serve Christ in all persons. Strive for justice and peace. What does it mean to be a Christian? There’s the answer.

We’ve not made a contract to carry that out. We have made a covenant. A contract is by law entered into with clear and equal understanding and agreement as to the terms or conditions, results, consequences, and implies not only cooperation, but compromise. If broken, by either or subsequently abolished, it no longer pertains. A covenant is by grace initiated by one with others and even if broken, yet endures. A broken contract ends. A broken covenant lives on. Our Baptismal Covenant is a relationship initiated by God, to which we respond in faith. Once made, it is eternal, broken or not, and may always be healed and restored by forgiveness, reconciliation, and return.

This church is founded on that covenant with God, not on a contract made up in Truro or over in Dallas. It is founded on a promise not to make life easier or more orthodox, God knows, but to make life more purposeful, more meaningful, not for self-serving, but for serving selves. When we are baptized, we say “Yes” to that covenant. Just so, did Jesus. So how do we use such freedom? By hoarding it or by giving it away?

We shun political action in the church at our own destruction. As most frequently practiced, politics is about power — who has it, who doesn’t, and over whom it is exercised, with rewards to the shrewd and the strong. It can and often does become a natural nursery for greed. From this does it get its scarlet name. Not often do those who practice it remember that the word means “of the people” and that therein is the true authority that can be led to implement the community which grants it to be utilized for the fulfillment of God’s purpose.

Our mission, our authority is not about telling people how, but about showing people how, not only about answering and providing, but also about creating an environment in which we and others can become and fulfill God’s image within us. Will it be the American Jesus or it will it be the Jesus with whom we are baptized into new life?

January 8, 2004

Taking out the trash

Making the weekly trashcan run down our memorably steep driveway to the curb is one of the better things CP and I have done together. To avoid a fall, it requires balance, coordination, and timing — important hallmarks to enrich any domestic relationship.

As this is the second carnation for both of us, I can’t speak for her earlier years, but this sort of bliss was not always true for me.

During the first few months of my diaconate when I was inordinately [sic] proud of the clerical collar, I was a touch too self-conscious wearing it for outdoor household chores, like, of course, taking out the trash. It became a mild, but persisting annoyance and not without its own appropriate dialogue.

It was the practice in my diocese at that time for the bishop to entertain each newly ordained deacon and spouse with dinner and an overnight at the bishopric. [We never called it that, but just so you’ll know what I mean.] When it came our turn and as we drove up and parked out front, here comes the bishop, clericals and all, carrying out the trash.

If only our bishops still showed that kind of leadership.

January 7, 2004

Care for the church

A fellow presbyter writes, “Just tell me why that we really, really, really care about the Church? It’s been a burden of mine since I was ordained.” I take it that his burden is the question, Why do we care, not Why should we care.

Well, it’s not easy to care for an ambiguity [unless you just revel in linguistic tar-babies]. The Church is the mother of all ambiguities, unless we count life, itself. But then it is life that prepares us for the Church. For either one, if it’s answers you want, forget it.

“I am the way, the truth, and the life,” Jesus told Thomas. I suspect we’ve never been satisfied with that answer and just plain embarrassed to say so. Rather do we pull out answers where there are no answers, and like the nursery rhyme kid with the plum (his name is geriatrophied somewhere in my memory) get altogether nauseously proud of ourselves. Then that’s the kind of church that we make, and then divide and divide and divide, always looking for answers that fit the questions and pretty soon accepting our own answers, forgetting the questions, and also what Jesus told Thomas, then anathematizing anybody who dares ask one again.

Somebody a lot smarter than I once said that the gospel is ironic, not heroic. He could have said that about Jesus, as well. Until we discover and accept and embrace the messianic irony and answer Jesus’ prayer that we all be one in spite of ourselves, and until we stop the hero worship and get to work, we’ll continue this battering-ram search until we’re wasted. The history of Christian thought says we’ve been doing that for centuries, always picking up the pieces and starting over and over, but never accepting the irony.

Here’s a long quote which is, I think, relevant to the question. Reinhold Niebuhr, one of the masters of irony, said it in his *The Irony of American History.* It goes like this:

“The final wisdom of life requires, not the annulment of incongruity, but the achievement of serenity within and above it.

“Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be completed by hope. Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be made whole by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we are fulfilled by love. No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as it is from our standpoint. Therefore we must be healed by the final form of love, which is forgiveness.”

That’s why we care for the Church, because in such caring together, connected, it’s the best floating crap game around. Even Nathan Detroit would have loved it, maybe even did. God does, and that’s reason enough. You do, and that pleases God.

January 6, 2004

Common prayer

William James said it. “Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing.”

From the looks of all the gravitas in the church these days, we’re running pretty short on both. There’s precious little common sense and not all that much laughter, although there’s more than enough of the ludicrous to go around. The only dancing I’ve seen is on needles and pinheads. We seem never to get over taking ourselves so much more seriously than our work.

I wonder if maybe the cure for this could be right under our noses. Might common prayer and a sense of humility be the same thing, moving at different speeds… a sense of humility, just common prayer, dancing?

Nothing so well defines us as the Book of Common Prayer. In the cycles and crises of life, it tells the world [and us] who we are and what we believe about God and ourselves and how we’d like to think we relate to one another. Maybe, if we listen up, it can also center us into enough humility to experience an incredible lightness of being, which strikes me as a pretty good way to talk about common prayer dancing.

Our prayer is common, not empirical, our worship collegial, not pontifical, our faith corporate, not manipulative. If we look at it like that, we just might discover after all that our vocation is to be Heaven’s colonists seeking an indigenous ministry.

January 5, 2004

Clutter

The garden sleeps, but the house is wide awake. CP is an ISTJ. When the yard does not so need her, there’s always the house. But I am an ENFP. So what does that tell you?

It is that time in our lives when we simply must decide what is clutter and what is not. “We’ll simply not leave it for the children.” True, they’ll not have any problem at all with such choices. But like on almost everything, we make different decisions about clutter.

As the song sings, love is lovelier… the second-time-around, but our clutter has never been merged. Hers. His. Like the towels and the children and the tooth brushes.

Perhaps a good place to start is the “file system” [aka stacks] in my study. I will do that today. I will. I will. As CP says, “Or else.”

Like Epiphany, “else” looms again.

January 3, 2004

January 3

Douglas, the fir, was dismantled yesterday, lights and all, and awaits its trip to the shredder and ultimately the city park walking paths. Deodar merely smirks, rooted, its proud lights intact, at least until Epiphany. After all, one may not enjoy that “timber of the gods” birthright and expect no responsibilities.

On the other hand, the rest of the yard “sleeps.” CP says that’s what the Brits call horticultural dormancy. [She adds class to OoN.] There’s much brown, only the green of the laurels, the the cedars, and one lone hemlock carries the mantle through winter. And a so-far winterless winter it continues with no complaints from me.

For example, our driveway exceeds the sanest grade limitations ever laid down by any civil engineer in her right mind. Were it an interstate highway, the 18-wheelers would require ski-lifts. When it ices over, it is merely for watching and neither walking nor driving.

Someone asked whether tomorrow (January the Fourth) is the tenth or the eleventh day of Christmas. It wasn’t one of the merchants in the mall. They’re getting ready for Easter.