March 31, 2005

Smile

“There is a very real risk that many people who read it will believe that the fables it contains are true. The church is founded on a story that some people believe and some people don’t, so the Vatican tends to get very threatened by other versions of that story, especially racier ones.”

These words, more or less, could have been straight out of the 15th century about the time Johann Gutenberg’s bestseller known as “The Holy Bible” hit the news stands and people began to find a “racier” version than previously approved. But they aren’t. They were spoken only just this last week in a press release by the Vatican’s cardinal assigned to oversee and denounce any undesirable reading that might get into the hands of the people.

The current book in question? Dan Brown’s publishing miracle, “The Da Vinci Code.” It’s already translated into forty-four languages with a mere twenty-five million copies in circulation. [For more, cf Maureen Dowd, “The Vatican Code,” NY Times, 27 Mch 2005, p 11]

March 30, 2005

Culture

Kurt Vonnegut said, “we are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be.” It’s good advice for traveling.

It came our good fortune recently to visit the Mother Country. Our first stop was a few days in Stratford.upon.Avon. We celebrated the Sunday eucharist there at Holy Trinity Church where William Shakespeare had been a lay rector.

A visiting bishop presided and preached on the story of the woman at the well, how gracious Jesus was with strangers, and how we should be, too. The Peace would be a good time to do that, he added.

Waiting, instead, until after the blessing and well into the coffee, a lady eyed us as not among the regulars and came over to say hello. On learning that we are from Tennessee, she said, “Oh, so you came over to get a bit of culture?”

CP’s a Midwesterner first, last, and always and even after forty years in Nashville, has yet to become southern comfortable. The Midwest has got all the culture it needs, thank you. But in spite of our attempts maybe to appear otherwise, to the Brits, all Americans, even southerners, are Yankees — and, I suppose, therefore cultureless. It didn’t hurt any, however, when we flashed our Kerry/Edwards ID button that read “Restore complete sentences.” That relieved the pressure somewhat, and it clearly helped with the warmth.

Another thing proved true everywhere we connected with churchers during the fortnight. The welcomes got warmer, and some even took it upon themselves to apologize for the Primates treating us ECUSAns “so badly.” None of this, however, gave us a pass on our obvious need for culture. It was just never mentioned much after we left Shakespeare’s home town. BriebJ4w

March 29, 2005

Birds

“The birds were singing happily, causing the Sun to rise,” wrote some wannabe poet.

Insipid though it may be, it’s not necessarily so. Just because birds chirp doesn’t mean they’re all that happy.

A team of Dutch scientists with nothing better to do has found that some birds are bold, some are shy, with broad personality differences that have a genetic foundation. Birders could have told them that long ago, watching the blue jays bully everybody else and the hawkish doves betray their name.

Anyhow, they suspect the same is true of us humans. Whether we like the idea or not, our moods are probably programmed, and some of us are more DNAlert than others. Maybe St Francis was on to something, after all.

March 28, 2005

IQ

In one of our illustrious prison systems in this land of punishment, this time in Virginia, there’s an inmate who’s been spared the death penalty because he’s considered retarded.

But he’s not so retarded that he persists in taking one IQ test after another. His scores rise every time he takes one. They’ve shot up, a defense expert said, thanks to the mental workout his participation in years of litigation have given him.

When he was tested last, he scored 76. The cutoff for retardation in Virginia is 70. Now, he’s eligible to be executed, and the state can get on with its business.

March 26, 2005

Easter

Easter 2005

A little girl in a small town along the Texas Gulf Coast attended the Church of Christ Vacation Bible School. She won the graduation day award for memorizing the most Bible verses. The story made the front page of the local weekly, not because of the award, but because she was an Episcopalian.

That was decades ago, but the trend seems to be picking up finally. I don’t remember there ever being so much biblical proof-texting in the Episcopal Church as of late and certainly never so much Bible reading in public as in an Easter vigil like this.

Karl Barth was one of the most outstanding theologians of our time. He wrote a whole system of thought called “Dogmatics in Outline” that made for long and ponderous reading and kept seminarians up all night. His work was carefully, almost tediously anchored in scripture.

I tell you about that, so that I can tell you about this:

Barth was once challenged in an interview to sum up his monstrous theological system in one brief sentence. He thought for a moment, then he said, “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.”

One could not find a better mantra for these times than that simple song from our childhood. With orthodoxy’s bell, book, and candle being claimed and cast about like some ecclesiastical loose cannon, it takes truly penetrating prayer to keep oneself reassured and centered in the knowledge that Jesus loves us. I find those brief words especially reassuring.

When Peter realized that Jesus was the Christ, that he was more ironic than heroic, that this meant him to be no majestic ruler, but instead, a suffering servant, he denied him on the spot. But Peter goes on in the gospel stories to become an emblem of us, a bumbling everyman and everywoman who gets everything just a little bit wrong. His most powerful witness becomes as someone who lives with Jesus and grows to maturity the hard way, the way we do, by making mistakes, some of them grievous, and learning from them all the while (Mk 8.27-38).

Though he became the Rock on which Jesus founded his church, Peter’s most profound gift to us is not an institution. It is his own journey in faith, a journey whose outlines we can trace in these ancient stories. The institution grew as institutions grow, a tangle of divine gift and human frailty, so intertwined throughout its history that one will probably never be separable from the other until the whole mess finally enters the kingdom of God.

Who, then, is this Jesus whom Peter finally discovered, not what do others say about him, not just what did Peter say about him, but what do you and I say about him? When we affirm our baptismal covenant and claim him as a companion on the way, we must gradually peel away the crusty layers of dogma in which time and the institution has enveloped and, indeed, embalmed him.

We begin with the realization that the gospels do not say in any simplistic way that Jesus is God. Jesus is portrayed as praying to God. He is not talking to himself. Jesus died. It is inconceivable to say that God can die. God did not get crucified. But when the disciples looked at the cross, they saw in it the self-giving and ultimate love of God. Jesus revealed God, pointed to God, and enabled people to see God when they looked at him. Jesus was the complete image of what God means by human being.

The great pain and fear which cripples the church is only worsened when we are confronted with judgmental doctrinal statements and biblical proof-texts. Who we are and our continued search for the answer to that question cannot be answered by creeds, but only by love, by the kind of love in the Jesus of the gospels.

Our leaders who talk so carelessly about orthodoxy, about Anglican “mainstream” and “orthodoxy,” must learn that there are real and grounded pastoral issues at stake here, not hypothetical ones. When Jesus said the Sabbath was made for us, not we for the Sabbath, he was not laying down some liturgical fact, he was making a profoundly pastoral claim about how much we are loved and how much we need to be loved, a love that can only be given, not earned by whether or not we are right.

When we look around us, we see that the faith communities who have such a committed pastoral life with their members will always be more secure and prouder to confess their identity with no need to hide behind black crepe, no need to be all signpost and no destination.

Some of our leaders unilaterally identify with schismatic movements with seeming disregard for the moral disarray and confusion that ensues. For unlike heresy which is entirely about belief, schism is about love and can risk creating before our very eyes a loveless church for whom orthodoxy means everything, a church obsessed with cloning itself and its leaders, rather than a church committed to loving God and neighbors at whatever the cost. If I should ever have to choose — and I hope I never must — I should choose without question an uncertain church that is loving over a loveless church that is blinded by its own certainty and need for self-preservation.

Such a loving community is the true disciple of evangelism, not one where there is a rigid demand for right-thinking, but where there is unqualified love and acceptance and a nourishing environment of justice and peace.

Thanks be to God. Thanks be to all those who have worked so hard to make such communities happen. Pray fervently that God will sustain those who only now begin to discover the price they have to pay for their candor, for standing up for the Good News, and pray that they may know deeply how God loves them Then let us “rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for so persecuted they the prophets who were before us.”

Somehow, I’m mindful of the movie, “Field of Dreams.” When we offer such a church, when we live such a church, they will come. And when they do, someone might just ask, “Is this heaven?” Then we can say, “No, it is only St Whosit.”

March 25, 2005

Truth

Good Friday 2005

What is truth?

Archbishop Desmond Tutu spoke to a packed audience at Vanderbilt University two years ago during Holy Week. Instantly, as he walked on stage and before saying a word, a spontaneous and vigorous standing ovation burst forth, seemingly almost without end. His hour-long address was punctuated often with such praise.

It came my good fortune to be invited to celebrate Eucharist with Bishop Tutu and his family the next morning (Maundy Thursday) in their hotel suite. The “Archbishop of the World” sat at coffee table in tee shirt, shorts, and knee-length black sox and presided over the Church of South Africa liturgy.

Afterwards, I asked him how he felt about his Vanderbilt engagement. He said he was surprised and quite moved by his reception, that he had not expected such warmth and approval in the south. Then, he asked me why I thought he got such response.

I was stunned to have my opinion sought by such a man, and I heard myself say, “Because you and all you stand for are symbols of hope and of truth. Because you together with others have shown that peaceful revolution is possible not only in South Africa but everywhere else, even for us.” He smiled, nodded his head, and touched my arm with gentle firmness.

When I heard Pilate’s question to Jesus “What is truth?” I realized once again that Jesus’ silent presence was the answer, an answer that can only be understood by faith. Thomas, the disciple, asked similarly, “Show us the way.” He was told, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.”

The question is as old as the ages, and there’s no sign that it has lost any of its vitality. Philosophers, theologians, now, even quantum physicists strive to codify it. Some even claim to succeed.

Any thoughtful person asks that question sooner or later. Why am I here? What does life and my life in particular mean? Jesus came to Gethsemane, that garden in the shadow of his cross, looking for meaning and asking the same questions. What he found is essential in our trying to understand how there can possibly be anything “good” about Good Friday. Paul put it like this in his letter to the Philippians:

“Have this mind among yourselves which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant… obedient unto death, even death on a cross” (Phil 2.5-11).

In his search, Jesus seemed always to embody the tension between religion and faith. That tension may be nowhere more evident than in the events that we commemorate during this week now passing. For in his commitment, Jesus emptied himself of all pretense in order to become a servant. Thus committed, he made Good Friday an in-your-face confrontation with both religion and the state. It was his “Yes” to God and to the cross that turned the world around.

A friend and colleague who is a priest was asked where she sees that same Christ today. Noticeably, she did not mention the church. Rather, she said, “I look for someone who has told me the truth so clearly (that) I want to kill him.”

March 24, 2005

Poetry

When power leads us to arrogance, poetry reminds us of our limitations. When power narrows the area of our concern, poetry reminds us of the richness and diversity of our existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses. — John Kennedy

The poetry of the Gospel and the Jesus parable through which its word becomes flesh are perhaps nowhere more evident than in our remembering, not merely as a fond thought, but as a radical thing done. There can perhaps be no more poetic act than Maundy Thursday’s gift and commission of sacramental thanksgiving.

It contains our recurrent arrogance both in church and state. It pries open our narrow obsessions with orthodoxy and recalls the richness and diversity of our existence and ministry. It cleanses not only our bodies, but our souls.

March 23, 2005

Wholly

This is the week of the palms.

I’ve never been so sure whether there were palms handy for the crowds to strew (straw, strow, struw?), but that something was strewn seems to be a fact, even if it was old tires. The point of the week seems to be that those who were for him last Sunday won’t be come Friday. Judas, the palm artist, has seen to that.

But we have palms. It is ours from which the tree was named. It is ours that we hold out for help and hold up in praise and press down in disapproval. It is ours that we slap with and clap with and palm off and greet with and pat with. We are the same ones who welcomed and who condemned. It is in our spiritual DNA. We’ve got to live with it, worship with it, plead and honor with it.

No wonder. Come Sunday, if we’ve really been there when we crucified our Lord and done our part, we should be wholly weak.

March 22, 2005

Lights

An ingenious couple of Sunday School teachers wanted to help their fifth grade students toward a better understanding of Lent, so they suggested an exercise.

Let us go into our rooms at night. Turn off the music and the TV. Then turn off the lights and sit there in the dark. At first, we will see practically nothing. But slowly, as our eyes adjust, we will begin to see shapes and then, gradually, more complexly defined details.

As the objects emerge into our vision, they will seem to be appearing for the first time. Of course, they were present there all along when the lights were on, but now they’re unfamiliar and newly discovered.

Moments of thoughtful reflection, of meditation, of worship, however we might call them, can be like that. They can remove the distractions and enable us to see ourselves anew and differently, perhaps our imaginations will open our vision to the long perspective of eternity.

Holy Week is such a time, a time that can “turn out the lights” for us. It can be a time to reveal us to ourselves anew as spiritual beings whose lives and identities — our humanity — are mysteriously transformed to be informed into the stuff of the cosmos.

March 21, 2005

Spin

I’ve heard that the US administration spent $254 million in its first four years to buy self-aggrandizing puffery from PR firms. It is said that at least twenty agencies made and distributed fake news segments for them to local TV stations. The word is out that there are even journalists and columnists being bought just to spin and whirl us like carnival cotton candy.

I suppose it’s no secret that OoN runs on a slim-to-nothing budget that up until now has worked just fine until recently when we took a leave of absence in the UK that cost us a bundle. Of course, it did give us some new ideas about Nowhere (the column, not the place). But when we came home to discover how much can be made by spinning, we thought maybe we might recover our losses and get one of those paid journalist’s job. Of course, we aren’t really journalists, just country preachers, but neither, we hear, are those who sell their wares to the White House press room.

Fake news seems to help our secular leaders. Being preachers and all, we could probably be good at that, and heaven especially knows old mother church maybe could use some fake news to help with the Good News. On the other hand, when it comes to puffery, our beloved primates seem to be doing quite well on their own.