July 7, 2004

Halakic

Islam, like Judaism, regards the pig as an unclean animal. Strict tradition holds that any Moslem who comes in contact with a pig before dying will be denied access to heaven and, as well, to the allotted share of willing and waiting virgins or whomever.

With this in mind, Israeli police proposed to hang bags of swine fat in buses and other public places in the hope they might deter suicide bombers. To carry this out, however, requires a rabbinical permit.

The Jerusalem Rabbinical Court cooperated and ruled that when saving lives is concerned, “there is no Halakic ban on using bags of lard in buses and other public places” that might be a target for suicide bombings. Further, it was thought to be such a good idea, that if the police do not so arm the buses, tens of thousands of ultra-Orthodox Jews might constantly be on guard carrying spray guns filled with liquid lard and, of course, would require a proper liturgy for the occasion.

Perhaps something like “The lard be with you… Let us spray”?

July 6, 2004

Cures

In the front half of the 1950s with the considerable shortage of clergy, it was not uncommon for layreaders to be appointed “in charge” of one or more of the smaller congregations. I tended to five during my three years in seminary, not all at once, though sometimes it seemed like it.

The members of these struggling cures were long suffering, to say the least. One of my seminary colleagues, intending to pray for rain in his drouth-stricken community, prayed the thanksgiving prayer for rain by accident. That Sunday’s Morning Prayer Office ended on the spot with all its misinformed joy. Kindly, his tenure did not.

Coupling these five seminary cures with my subsequent forays following ordination, I’ve more or less cultivated a total of eleven or so (counting an interim). One now houses a beauty shop, one, a funeral home, two are entirely out of business, the rest are bamming along save for one that became a cathedral by no fault of mine and now enjoys great splendor.

Not a single one has brought in the kingdom. It’s not exactly what I had in mind when it all started, but I know a lot less now and maybe understand more.

July 5, 2004

Hearing

Lucille is 85. She’s a singer. She was a founding member of the Robert Shaw Chorale. She continues to hold down an alto chair quite satisfactorily in a major church choir.

Not long ago when her hearing in her right ear became impaired, she got a hearing aid. She soon noticed that it made tones a half pitch low. Now she just sits where she can tune to pitch with her left and bams right along.

A lot of churchers nowadays have taken to claiming to be in “impaired communion” with somebody or another. This communion they don’t recognize is still there and has sounded about the same for centuries. They just may be hearing a half-pitch low.

Perhaps like the sound surrounding Lucille, who had no choice about her impairment and who also has the good sense, training, and experience, to consider sitting on the other side, they might follow suit.

July 2, 2004

Interdependence

Independence Day 2004

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 this 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.

This morning of this Independence Day, as an exceptional way of adding to our celebration and, indeed, to our sacrifice, we will offer together with these other symbols our nation’s flag, properly folded and placed in an alms bason.

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. It is not our usual custom to display our nation’s flag in this space, 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. Therefore, we must exercise care 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 the 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 live 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. 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, “Nothing of any importance or consequence took place today.”

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 Fred Buechner and appear in his “Whistling in the Dark,” Harper & Row, p 93.

July 1, 2004

Leaven

It’s not torture. It’s only abuse. They’re not prisoners. They’re detainees. They’ve no rights, only wrongs. No problem, just trust us.

Not so, say the Supremes.

Could this be the slightest hint, even the darest hope, as we were told in another era of obfuscation and malicious hooliganism, that our current national nightmare may soon be over?

Perhaps.

Now, if only the church might rediscover that its reason for being is not being, but becoming, is not itself, but its neighbor, is not to be the loaf, but to be the leaven.