Out of Nowhere

A reader wrote: “I’m curious about whether you use this OoN thing for the stuff which doesn’t preach, but still needs to be said.”

Whether or not something “preaches,” I take to mean at least does it exegete the text minimally and extrapolate it maximally and does it tie down with a zinger about peace and justice and love. I rather think that most of the OoNs, whether they accomplish that or not, certainly have that in mind along with a subtle reminder of the irony that marinates our society and that eludes so many.

Some satire and parody are of the stuff of good preaching. Delivery — if it turns out to be a “pulpit event” — must be standup comedic (not so much comedy as comedic) with the kind of pace and timing of Hope and Crosby and Carson and sometimes, when they’re on their game, Leno & Letterman. Some of the best preachments these days that I hear and see are done by Jon Stewart on Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show” and in a somewhat less salty way by Roger Rosenblatt on the NewsHour. I’ve not yet seen Al Franken’s new venture on Air America, but I have hopes.

When preaching is really on a roll, God takes it to cast out the daemons into the nearest and handiest herd of swine.

Those champions of orthodoxy who tried to present one of their fellow bishops with his head a few years back assured us at the time that this was no “heresy trial,” but only a matter of alleged deviation from the discipline of the Church.

The Ecclesiastical Court found no relevant discipline or, for that matter, any “core doctrine” involved. The sign-on Guardians of the Faith had simply wasted a lot of the Church’s money and a lot of their time away from the work they were elected and ordained to do.

The Church’s discipline (its constitution, canons, and polity, et al) in general is a lot simpler than its doctrine, which is labyrinthine enough. As fuzzy and frustrating as law and order sometimes is, it doesn’t hold a candle to the magnetic and amiably challenging ambiguity of grace and love. Perhaps that is why we so often delude ourselves with squabbles about orthodoxy and sex, committee meetings and mission statements, decades and brocades, rather than getting on with the inclusive and immediate love and justice Jesus preached about.

Any parent knows that diversion is one of the more effective weapons for raising children. So does any prelate who apparently either incapable of or prefers not to separate patronizing from pastoring. The current distraction with no-risk evangelism by the numbers and with quotas and goals, for example and albeit under the noble guise of biblical commitment, is enough to make a used-car dealer proud.

Any excuse, it seems, to keep our minds off making love.

My Saturday mornings somehow lack luster without hearing Scott Simon’s NPR Weekend Edition and its accompanying news analysis with Daniel Schorr. His acutely perceptive essays, the interviews, the human-interest stories, the subtle, on-topic musical segués, and more, challenge and elevate our common humanity and remind me of how essential is the place of such radio in it.

One of Simon’s essay/reflections was about a onetime interview with the British actress Diana Rigg and how he was so utterly charmed and fascinated by her that he could hardly attend to the assignment at hand. I had the opportunity to meet him in person not long after hearing that.

I introduced myself and instantly told him how very much I’d appreciated that story and how I, as well, had had an incurable crush on Ms Rigg ever since her role as Mrs Peel in “The Avengers.” His quick wit was never more palpable, for immediately, he responded, “Ah, that’s it! All the while I was interviewing her, she seemed distant, distracted. Now, I know why. She was thinking of you!”

I keep waiting for a rerun.

Pentecost 13/17C (Lk 14.1,7-14; Heb 13.8)

Our leaders — both sitting and aspiring-to-sit — talk as if wars are inevitable. And they may be right.

“Sitting” speaks of our being prepared for the “wars of the 21st century,” almost as if they’re all on some grand calendar or plan to which he alone is privy. “Aspiring-to-sit” says that wars must be fought with “sensitivity.” “Vice-sitting” says that’s about the silliest thing he ever heard of all the while his audience cheers and hoots.

But if wars must be fought at all, and they seem as certain as sin, the notion that they be fought with sensitivity appears to be, by far, the most appealing. The same is true of any conflict, even for the most innocent domestic spat, especially if there’d ever be any resolution. Sensitivity in battle? Such irony.

Jesus says, love your enemies. We make a covenant in our baptism to “seek and serve Christ in all persons,” and there’s no exception made for enemies. Nothing can be more loving than to seek Christ in another, to be sensitively aware of his presence in that person. And the sleeper in all this is that nothing can ruin a good scrap better than Christ suddenly making the scene. What a refreshing — and frightening — reality. For this means at least that our commission is not to “take Jesus” to others, not to jam Jesus down their throats as some would believe, but that he is already there and usually in the place where our pride least suspects him to be.

Today’s gospel is not about war, but it is about the kind of pride that leads to war and about the kind of sensitivity that can help us find another way. In Jesus’ challenge, he makes with the commonplace to speak of the un-commonplace, with the obvious to call our attention to the not so obvious.

Jesus tells stories first of a guest at a marriage feast, then of a host at a dinner party. He reminds us that we are here at life’s table by invitation, which is to say by grace, a clear message that we not only are welcome, but that we are also to use that gift as welcomers.

Once being invited to such a place — and realizing what this new relation with God is — comes again the irony that to enjoy it fully, to enter into the celebration, to come to the party, is to give it away, and to become the host at the next one. Further, to become the host not to the swells who can return the favor, but to the not-so-swells who cannot.

The letter to the Hebrews adds a twist, that to show hospitality to strangers may lead to entertaining angels unawares, a not unenviable way to seek and serve. Hebrews then adds a word about hosts. “Remember your leaders,” Hebrews adds, “those who spoke to you the word of God; consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith.”

The header on one of the newspapers about the missing “Scream” candidly reported that “Trust is the museums’ antitheft device.” The trick, the story added, is to find a balance between access and security. They found it at the Munch Museum in Oslo simply with a couple of hooks, a wire, and a nail… and, more than likely, a level.

Motels can hardly be thought of as museums, but they do seem to treasure their art. They go so far as to bolt their displays to the walls, though, from the looks of them, it’s never altogether clear why. Motel art is like visual “elevator music,” the kind you always get after the computer puts you on hold and tells you “this call may be monitored for quality assurance,” but from the substance of it, apparently never is. Actually, the motels ought to honored if anybody ever steals one of their paintings, then they should give their interior decorator a raise.

Anyhow, the Munchies over in Norway are to be praised. Even if they did lose another “Scream,” they did so honorably. After all, if we can’t find a balance between access and security, how can we ever expect the United Nations to work?

That old, timeworn notion of a consensus fidelium a lot of us got brought up on doesn’t get much press these days. Rather is it those oxymoronic cousins Anglican and biblical orthodoxy, the current darlings of the breakaway crowd, that we hear about more often.

Our doxies just don’t line up like some might wish, but then along comes a “lesser feast” like today’s Louis, king of France, 1270 AD, and we’re reminded that there is something — and someone — else to which the church might direct its attention.

Those who know about such folk say that Louis was a man of unusual purity of life and manners… sincerely committed to his faith and to its moral demands. It is said that the one word that summarizes his character is integrity.

Coincidentally, he also “crusaded” in the Middle East, but only because such was expected by the piety of his time and actually what he did was of little “historical consequence.” What really mattered was that he was unusually free of the bigotry of his age, had an intelligent interest in theology, and was primarily concerned to put Christian ethics into practice in both his personal and his public life.

If it weren’t for the consensus of the faithful that reminds us of these distant kin of ours and honors them (even though this one was French!), we’d maybe be prone to think that there isn’t any other way but ours.

Bartholomew was probably as surprised as the next guy when Jesus chose him as an apostle.

Nevertheless, there he was, without a miter to his name, charged with a nonstipe job to heal sick and raise dead Jewish dropouts, including cleansing any who were leprous and exorcising any demons that got in the way. It was a tough and dirty job, but it was one that Simon, the Samaritan sorcerer, was willing to die for and more than likely wished he had (Mt 10; Acts 8).

It all helped start what we get so carried away with that we call it “apostolic succession,” but with more trappings and fewer exorcisms. We seem to prefer and claim the mainstream and pretty well forget the creeks and rivulets where the other itinerant mendicants who loved their Lord prayed and preached and simply settled for a little apostolic success here and there, now and then.

They did, however, most of them, end up with a red-letter day on the calendar. But whatever that’s worth, it cost them a bundle.

(This is a rerun from St Bart’s Day’s OoN of a year ago. There’re no plans to issue it as a DVD, however.)

“Vanity” seemed such a strange name for a table when, as a child, I first saw one at my paternal grandmother’s house. It was small and lace-trimmed, with the faint aroma of talcum dust. As I would learn later, not only did the word tell of such a table, but of a “compact,” a small case or handbag for holding toilet articles also called an “etui” (fortunately for crossword puzzlers).

On my grandmother’s vanity was a tantalizing picture of a woman seated at a similar table gazing at herself in a small mirror. In her reflection, she saw there a human skull, strangely configured from her own presence and immediate surroundings. The sight chilled me in utter fascination. I didn’t know then about narcissism, didn’t even know the word, but now I wonder if perhaps my grandmother may have kept that picture there as a kind of necessary warning provided by her own Baptist conscience.

At memory moments like this, there comes to me “out of nowhere,” as it were, that if not for the facility and ubiquity of the cyber world, I’d remain an altogether unpublished writer. It’s also a fact that were it not for those of you out there who let me know from time to time, I’d not only be unpublished, but also unread. I’m reminded again now why this whole procedure of short and more or less daily essays (”blog” is so ugly and nauseous a word) is sometimes quite rightly called the “Vanity Press.”

Pentecost 12/16C (Lk 13.22-30)

Sister Mary Anselm was meeting with a small group of us, reflecting on a forthcoming episcopal election in our diocese. She mused, “What we really need is someone who, crosier in hand, will walk throughout the entire diocese, teaching and journeying toward the see city.”

Fat chance, someone said. Fat bishop, chortled another. Maybe Mary Anselm had Luke’s story in mind. “Jesus went on his way through towns and villages, teaching, and journeying toward Jerusalem” (Lk 13.22). Maybe not. At any rate, her counsel is both ancient wisdom and, for the fortunate, refreshing daily discovery. Its practice, however, is altogether unlikely as widespread as it might be.

But it is an admirable way to consider ourselves and our lives in Christ, whoever we are. Teaching and journeying. Sharing by word and by deed as we move through each day… continuing “in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers” (BCP p 304).

Teaching and journeying. They are so much a pair, these two. Anyone alert to life’s journey, life’s dailyness, and in the least curious about it, cannot help but learn, and then teach. My writing friend and colleague Barbara has got herself a new pacemaker and not without considerable fear and discomfort. Yet, she’s given it a name it and she writes about it, typing temporarily with only one hand, and she celebrates the joy in such things, learning, journeying, teaching.

I’ve just now got a new acrylic lens in each eye, only six millimeters in diameter, pacemakers for vision, replacing what God put there in the beginning and I clouded over by my ribald longevity. I’ve not named them, but Barbara inspires me to. So far, they are only Left and Right (and “make sure you use the eye drops appropriately and on schedule”). The world, the cosmos, the newspaper, the Book of Common Prayer, the laptop (the omnipresent laptop!), all have sudden new life.

Teaching and journeying.

It is not easy for some of us to learn that life comes only one day at a time. It is so easy to forget the wisdom of Sister Joan Chittister that “Nothing we do changes the past. Everything we do changes the future.” Journeying — and journaling, its companion — always ring changes on that counsel. It is a foundation stone in twelve-step programs, warning us to honor, but not live in the past, to create a new past as we change the future, and, for good measure, to walk our talk.

Jesus learned, affirming and reaffirming, keeping patience with us, long-suffering with us on his way to his ultimate suffering for us. In his walk, someone inevitably asks, “Lord, will those who are saved be few?” It is not an uncommon wonder. He answered with a story, a rather stern and challenging story. How might we answer such a question?

A priest turned to see a man standing in the doorway to his office. The man said, “Reverend, I want to be saved.” For his effort, and, as well, for his risk, the man was treated to a 30-minute lecture on the proper use of the word “reverend.”

I hope we might improve on that, teaching and journeying. But I wonder, for in my earlier years of expecting to bring in the kingdom single-handedly, I could easily have been that priest.

A former employee needed some information about his crisis-care insurance carried over in his retirement. He called the insurance company, gave them the name of their client (his former employer, one of the state’s largest). He was put on hold so he could get a lift on some of Kenny G’s old elevator music for a while.

Finally, an agent came on the line and said she couldn’t find any file at all for the client. The man insisted, repeating the name, “The Metropolitan Nashville and Davidson County Government.” “Oh,” the agent said, then put him on hold again so he could hear the next few tunes.

After a while, the agent returned, said she’d found the file. The man wondered out loud whether it’d been lost or what? “No, not at all,” said the agent. “It was filed right there where we put it… under ‘The’.”

Stories with obscure morals make me uneasy.