August 18, 2004

DuBose

George W Bush and John Ashcroft have more hits on Google than Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther, and William Porcher DuBose combined. All of which shows that OoN is a classy publication with a well-informed and efficient research department, and even more that Google knows not only where the bread is, but on which side it is buttered. Of course, it could also mean that on the scale of stirring up things DuBose doesn’t rank all that high. So much for objective reporting.

Terry Holmes* writes about WPD as the most original theologian ECUSA ever produced. He tells of a time a while ago when most preachers had more than plenty to say about Satan and the evils of sin. During that time, someone commented to DuBose that in his best-known work “The Soteriology of the New Testament,” he mentioned Satan only once. DuBose laughed at this comment and added, “I hope I spoke of him kindly.”

As a matter of fact he did, Holmes adds, and says, the Southern mind (of which DuBose was a product), when it cuts through all the romanticism, knows that the angels and daemons live in close proximity to one another.

As indeed, they do, in me and you and the fellow over in the next pew. Maybe that’s why we so confuse the little apprentice daemons who simply cannot understand why we humans always seem to choose the lesser of two evils.

It is good to celebrate Will DuBose today and to wish he was still around to counsel us on our current crazinesses.

(* “What is Anglicanism?” Morehouse, 1982, p 27)

August 17, 2004

Perspicacity

I recently ran across the announcement published by the Diocese of Newark a few years ago when they started out looking for a new bishop. In the light of the present obscurity of the gospel characteristic of so much ecclesiastic navel-gazing, I find their concept altogether refreshing. Any diocese out there on the make these days, might give it good space in their search.

Newark announced: “Women and men of all racial and ethnic backgrounds, of all sexual orientations, and of all four orders of ministry are encouraged to apply. We seek someone with grace, maturity, a sense of humor, a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, compassion, leadership, empathy with the poor and the dispossessed, liturgical perspicacity, and a good mind.”

Giving up on a “sense of humor” and a “good mind,” I wondered what might be a perspicacious liturgy, then I remembered what I thought might have been one. It was a presbyterial ordination I attended a while back. The mitered, bejeweled, and becoped Episcopal Presence preached, crosier in hand throughout. In the center choir aisle stood his two six-foot-four matched canons, a side-by-side arsenal, complementarily bevested, arms crossed punjabily, expressionless eyes sweeping and secret-servicing the congregation (we were not in or of his diocese). I thought, he probably did not even consider applying to Newark.

“Perspicacity” is not of my common parlance, so I looked it up and found “acute mental vision or discernment.” I really hate to admit it when I’m wrong.

August 16, 2004

Blueberry

I had my left eye decataracted this morning, but just between us, I did it so I could get another one of those St Thomas Hospital special blueberry muffins. This time, I saved the wrapper just so I could report to you where you might find one without having to go to so much trouble.

When I became less visually impaired, however, I discovered that one alone has 350 calories, 16 grams of fat, 60 mg of cholesterol, and only 500 mg of sodium. This, of course, is after already osmosing a bucket full of saline solution IV for the better part of an hour. My next medical memo will probably come from the cardiac wing.

The docs take an oath to do no harm, and I might as well, too. So I’m not telling you where they peddle these blueberry muffins, save to say that on overdose, they’re for sure to die for.

August 13, 2004

Peace

Pentecost 11/15C (Lk 12.49-56)

Luke said that Jesus said, “Do you think that I have come to give peace on earth?” (Lk 12.49-ish) and Matthew added for good measure, “I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.” (Mt 10.34)

From the way these two figured it, the Prince of Peace had had it. “You want peace? I’ll show you peace.” Anybody who’d thought it was all rock and roll from there on out had to have got another think coming. It reminds me of the critic whose ire was also up when she reviewed a complete dramatic production in only one sentence. “The scenery in the play was beautiful, but the actors got in front of it.”

Peace and justice and love makes for splendid scenery, indeed. And there’ve been moments of late when we can almost sense its breaking through into action. But then we Christians can’t handle it and get in front of it. Like Gandhi said, “I’ve no brief with Christianity. It’s the Christians I cannot abide.”

If Jesus doesn’t just plain zap us soon, then it makes one wonder if he’s paying attention. No, I take that back. It’s just that maybe you can, but I simply cannot understand grace and love. I know it couldn’t be the sweeping paternalism and mindless offers of tranquility that masquerade for so much of the Christian religion in our day and time. It’s certainly not the schmarmy patronage and goody-two-shoes father-knows-best-ism of the Network panderers. But the scenery of the Good News is back there somewhere if these pretenders would just clear the stage.

Dorothy Sayers lamented how this Jesus is so often made into a “household pet for little old ladies and pale curates,” reminding us of those bucolic portraits that line the walls and counters of so many “Christian” bookstores. I can’t imagine Jesus would have a lot of patience with his peace being conjectured as this serene, chicken-soup caprice of the gospel.

Peace on earth and good will to all? Were the angels smoking dope? Prince of Peace? Is this simply a misnomer? “The peace of the Lord be with you… ” Is it all mere liturgical fakery?

Well, yes. Until we realize, as Frederick Buechner put so well. “(T)he contradiction is resolved when you realize that for Jesus peace seems to have meant not the absence of struggle but the presence of love.” SHALOM means fullness, having everything you need to be wholly and happily yourself. Maybe it does take a sword and major surgery.

The church can be such a presence and simply and devastatingly recall us to the beautiful scenery of loving God and neighbor and self, then firmly remind us to let God… and get out of the way to sing the old hymn that got it so right. “The peace of God, it is no peace, but strife closed in the sod. Yet let us pray for but one thing — the marvelous peace of God.” (1982, hymn 661)

August 12, 2004

Texas

I was born just north of the Hill Country and on the edge of the Edwards Plateau in Texas. I was always inordinately proud of it until I took on enough maturity to realize that bragging about it is in poor taste, so that’s not what I’m doing now. Jingoism is offensive in any translation. Texas-style jingoism may be the worst of all, though it lost some of its edge when Alaska was admitted to statehood.

I never would wear cowboy boots, however, because I was never a cowboy. I did ride a horse bareback once, but fell off when she ran for home. I roped a calf once, too, and got dragged near senseless before I figured out how to let go. You can see, the Texas ambiance (though I’ve never heard it called that) wasn’t a good fit.

Even though Texas has a lot to be proud of, I’d not qualify as one of the lot. But the novelist J Frank Dobie, the historian Walter Prescott Webb, the naturalist Roy Bedicek, the governor Ann Richards, and the columnist Molly Ivins would. There’re some even more prominent people today who proudly claim Texas citizenship, but at least one of them I know about maybe should reconsider it, for, as they say over there, he’s mostly all hat and no cows.

August 11, 2004

Foolishness

There’s an old Franciscan prayer that often comes to mind these days. It strikes me that we could take a page or two from it as we anticipate the big November election. It contains a veritable “platform” of expectations not only for ourselves and how we’ll make our choices, but also for the candidates and how they’d manage the big issues that face us all.

To hear it discussed and debated would be a welcome change from the commercials that just attempt to make one candidate look good at the expense of making another look bad. It might enable us get under the pettiness and show some real gratitude for this nation we’re called to govern.

The prayer asks God to bless us with discomfort at easy answers, half truths, and superficial relationships, so that we may live deep within our hearts. It asks for anger at injustice, oppression, and exploitation of people, so that we may work for justice, freedom, and peace. In turn, it asks God to bless us with tears to shed for those who suffer from pain, rejection, starvation, and war, so that we may reach out our hands to comfort them and to turn their pain into joy.

And then it concludes quite simply and realistically when it says, may God bless us with enough foolishness to believe that we can make a difference in this world, so that we can do what others claim cannot be done.

Would it be unrealistic to ask our candidates to consider such an approach to their aspirations to lead us and to us as we decide how to elect and follow them? Somehow, from what I’ve heard about our nation’s founders, I’ve a hunch they might think this a pretty good idea.

August 10, 2004

Cataracts

When I was a lad, it was a wonderful year. I read about a cataract in an adventure story, looked it up, and found out it is a waterfall. Now that I’m much longer in the tooth than in ladhood, I read through cataracts instead of about them.

They’re hell to pay, especially at night with that arrogant-SUV-halogen-headlight crowd. So I’m getting them fixed, right eye yesterday, left eye, Monday next. I’ve hung out around clinics and surgical suites a lot, mostly professionally, but more than enough as the center of attraction. This ophthalmology crowd is hands-down the most user-friendly team of professionals I’ve ever, might I say, seen.

They move with skill, certainty, and gentle graciousness through a maze of Walter Mitty-like pocketa-pocketa machinery that makes one want to stay there forever. And then, they give you a hot blueberry muffin and a cup of coffee. God is good.

August 9, 2004

Fall Guy

Martha Stewart was convicted and sentenced for lying. Apparently, it was reported, not so much for why she lied or even that she lied, but for where she lied — in a courtroom at trial before a judge.

The judiciary is one of the three checks and balances in our remarkable constitutional government. It’s comforting to know that there remains at least one of these where truth-telling has some purchase, though I should think our founders had that in mind for all three.

Maybe we’d find a little more efficiency were the practice to catch on. It’s a shame, though, that Martha had to be the fall guy when there are so many others who’d have made such a bigger splash.

August 6, 2004

Treasure

Pentecost 10/14 (Gen 15.1-6; Lk 12.32-40)

Forever and ago during my naval aviation flight training days, a fellow cadet received a note from his girl friend back home. It said, simply, “Dear Treasure: Read Luke, chapter twelve, verse thirty-four.”

No one of us could call up just what that might be about. Most of us weren’t even all that sure what “Luke” was. Somebody thought it might be in the Bible, but nobody had one, so we had to scramble to finally turn one up in the chaplain’s office. Hurriedly, with his help, we found the reference. It said, “For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”

“Dear Treasure,” his friend had written. We not only thought he was a pretty lucky guy to get a cryptic love letter like that, but we also gained a new curiosity about what else we might find in that book.

Today’s lessons are about Abraham’s faith and God’s promise and about what they and we hold dear, but they turn on what Jesus said about treasure and heart. They are about where and what is our treasure, and about the reality that whatever is most valuable to us is always the place where our hearts will be, the place that will command our ultimately loyalty.

That this is only human is not to belittle it, but to put it precisely, I believe, where God wants it to be. God promises us the freedom to choose, and it is how and what and whom we choose that makes all the difference. Jesus tells his disciples — and, in turn, all those of us who promise to follow them — that it is God’s “good pleasure” to give us the kingdom, to offer us that intimate and healing relationship with her on which to build our lives. In turn, and if we would be stewards of that gift, Jesus reminds us that we must set our priorities straight, and that where that treasure is, there will be our hearts.

This says much about the place of the church in our lives. Is the church merely an association where we share a common interest, where our relations are largely external? Or is it a community where we share our common humanity, where our relations are largely internal? Is it simply one more denomination where faith is a system of doctrine to which we assent in order to be members? Or is it a corporate body where faith is “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Heb 11.1) and with which we receive one another wherever we are in that on-again, off-again search?

In associations, in spite of the pleasure of like-minded and often self-serving interests, the members are not significantly changed by their relationship. And in associations, any leverage or influence we might have is simply sidetracked by the principalities and powers in our society.

On the other hand, in communities, traditions, language, and family customs mold the mind and strengthen the character of each member, renewing them as they mature, enriched by their uncommon interests. And through such communities there comes a security and subsequent authority not only to risk loving God and our neighbors, but also to stand firmly for justice and peace, to indict the principalities and powers in their tracks, and to give good and unswerving purchase for our presence.

The church is not about telling people how and judging the results, but about showing people how and rejoicing over the results, not about answering and providing neat solutions, but about creating an environment in which people can become and fulfill who they are and who they believe God wants them to be.

As Abraham discovered, we are born into such a relationship through promise. For us, our becoming is through the promise made in our baptism. Such a promise is a unique blend of covenant and hope. Its grammar is always not just of the doing, but of the being, not merely of a common mind, but of a common will.

Recall, if you will, how all the big covenant liturgies are community events with the congregation’s integral support always affirmed with a resounding “We will!” This promise, this unique blend of covenant and hope has not only place, but direction, not only a present phenomenon, but a future authenticity. And promise is always surrounded and embodied in an ambiance of purpose, of goal, of cause. We promise with one another, but we are always bound in the company of God by his promise and by ours.

Now that I think of it, had I begun this preachment with some salutation, I should have liked it to have been, “Dear Treasure…. “

August 5, 2004

Listen!

Twice God the Father affirmed Jesus his beloved — at his baptism and on the Mount of Transfiguration. The first with all the pride of a loving parent. The second with all the impatience of whether the disciples would ever get it right.

We will read and hear this in tomorrow’s propers: “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!” (Lk 9.35b)

The church is called to be a listening community. When we gather, there is much to hear. Great stories of our long family history. Thoughtful prayers. Better than average hymns. And, of course, each other with mutual greetings, exchanges, and catching up (all better left, I submit, until after the carefully rendered preludes and postludes and all that goes between).

Our good liturgy also wisely offers us moments following the lections, during the prayers, after the fraction, and others when we can simply be silent, listening, reflecting on what we have heard or seen, awed by the majesty of the possibility once again of having access to God.

The prophet Isaiah once admonished us in one of his more provocative ways to “Seek the Lord while he wills to be found… ” (Is 55.6a) Listen for him, as well, in the sound of gentle stillness.