June 30, 2005

Craving

Craving

So much of our energy with regard to God these days seems spent more on control than on faith.

At some deep level, our increasingly pervasive and inordinate concern for doctrine, theology, and some elusive thing called “Anglican orthodoxy” seems grounded in distrust. We want faith to be a dependable system, not a risk. We want assurances of its benefits and proof of its performance. We have our eyes on the prize, not on the Giver of the prize. Do we ever ask ourselves to whom rather than to what do we want “the faithful” to be faithful?

When we gather in our communities, we insist on negotiating contracts to protect our interests. We’re edgy about calling them contracts, of course, but what else are we doing when we argue about ownership, liturgical norms, and leadership, when we demand covenants, commitments, letters of agreement, pledge statements, creeds, and job descriptions?

In Episcopal Church polity, when it is exercised properly, legitimately, and with its built-in balance of authority, justice at least has an outside chance. This pontifical craving to be right and fear to be wrong which permeates so much of the rest of our global Communion not only compromises such a process, it also insults our Creator who imagines that for us to be human is to give us freedom of choice.

Next thing you know, somebody will suggest we do a background check on God.

June 29, 2005

Forgiveness

One of the things learned in twelve-step recovery programs is that addiction is largely if not altogether a self-diagnosed disease. It’s a useful assumption that makes one leery of diagnosing the next person, eg, judging who needs therapy and who doesn’t.

Whether the vice-president is addicted maybe to power or his office or whatever is up to him to figure out, but that he knows about the rest of us he made pretty clear when he said the other day that “liberals” would recommend therapy for the 9/11 bad guys and “conservatives” would recommend war. The usual mantra about this being a Christian nation was apparently lost on him in all the stir together with the niceties about whether the Ten Commandments, kept or not, belong out in the yard with the flamingoes or in the house by the wall clock.

Jesus told the rich fellow enquring about his salvation and claiming he’d kept all the commandments and maybe even carried them around in his wallet to go and enter a sell order as soon as the market opened and then give it all away. When it came to our enemies, rather than suggest we war on them, Jesus recommended we love them. If I remember correctly, he didn’t mention political parties.

Forgiveness and reconciliation is sticky business and reminds me of a message I once saw on a cocktail napkin. I can’t imagine what I could possible have been doing with it, but there it was, right in my hand. It read: “To err is human, to forgive is out of the question.”

Like most good humor, that saying’s of a truth. Forgiving a wrong — even one of our own — may be one of the most difficult choices we human beings ever face, and that, for some of us, we never make. Not the least of the reasons for this reluctance, I suspect, is not only the pain of bringing it up and wrestling with it, but that the meaning of forgiving and forgiveness is pretty confusing stuff.

So at the outset, maybe it’s best to get rid of the notion that to forgive means also to forget. Neither does forgiving mean that wrongs have no consequences nor any need for punishment or that these things can be altogether dismissed.

To forgive or to reconcile means at least that a relationship be kept open. Even hostile communication is better than none. At best, it means that a relationship might be restored to a healthy and productive state. In his speech last evening (28vi05) the president played the 9/11 card over and over again apparently to justify his bellicosity as if we need to be reminded about something that few are likely ever to forget. But as we go through all the rituals and ceremonies recalling this terrible wrong that has been committed against us and, lest we forget, committed against all humankind, may we never lose sight that as hard as it might be, this is also something we must inevitably come to forgive. Otherwise, so much for this notion of a Christian nation.

It’s up to us, of course, and to God’s grace whether we ever forgive anything or not. Yet, it is still ours to give it our best shot, not only for our own spiritual wellness, but for that of our nation, and ultimately for that of the entire world. We must remember. We must never forget. But we must, as well, forgive. Sure, it’s a burden, but we are not somehow exempt, and it’s also a blessing. The reason is quite simple.

Karl Barth, the great Swiss theologian who wrote tediously and unbearably long volumes, was asked to sum up his theology in one sentence. He answered, “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.” The reason we must forgive is that simple. “Because I said so” is a reason every parent uses when their authority is questioned. We must forgive — and especially forgive our enemies — because God says so.

It was that way with Jesus. It is also the prime jewel in the gospel covenant we made in our baptism. The Lord’s Prayer plants forgiving in every liturgy we celebrate. But the reason is also simple because it’s right. It’s ultimately the sanest way for people, whatever their religion or lack of it, wherever they hang or don’t hang the Ten Commandments, to live together in harmony.

But we’re not talking about individuals in a family or a congregation where love and forgiveness might be readily accessible, where the steps outlined in the gospel just might be followed. We’re talking about a whole country. But just as countries or nations make clumsy at loving their neighbors, just so are they altogether maladroit at forgiving. But there is a way.

We are a nation already proven vulnerable precisely because our commitment to liberty and justice has been used as a terrifying and devastating weapon against us. But the irony is that it is these very principles, themselves, at national and international levels, that are the stuff of forgiveness and reconciliation. Loving never has cured vulnerability and never will.

We must ask, then, How does a nation enter into reconciliation? What are the instruments of justice and liberty? How are they manifest? By vengeance? By isolation and withdrawal? By denial and arrogance? By breaking promises? By dissimulation? It should be obvious from our own personal experience that these not only prolong, but as well intensify hostility and resentment and postpone any possible resolution into a peaceful community, whatever the size — two or two billion.

In our Declaration of Independence we made a startling offer. It had as much to do with our nature and with what we wanted to become as a nation as almost any other of those great documents that signaled our founding. In the prologue, we expressed that “a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that (we) should declare the causes which impel (us) to the separation (from Great Britain).”

And then we said, as we outlined our grievances, “let (these) facts be submitted to a candid world.” And then, near the end, we appealed to the “Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions…”

For this nation to enter into a mode of forgiving and a desire for reconciliation, we must first keep our own founding commitments clearly in mind and what is more, practice them. One of the most important steps we can take in that direction is not to let our fear and its ensuing anxiety and anger and resentment, no matter how justified, distort our system of government, our capacities to use it fully and honorably, and our vision to be and become who and what we are.

This American political experiment is currently on precarious times. Not only is it in jeopardy from without, but, as well, in peril from within by an all too casual, passive, and permissive manipulation of its impressively balanced systems of justice.

So let us take this heritage and this commitment once again to ourselves, renewing our covenant and reaching out in all the ways we find appropriate for us, and, as well, call on our leaders to enlighten the minds and stir the consciences of all. We’ve spent untold billions on war, and millions have died over the ages. Might those billions have been better spent on preventing poverty and genocide and on adequate health care and clean air? Sure, keep the Commandments like the rich young fellow, but cash in the wealth and give it away. For justice is always compromised precisely as forgiveness diminishes. War never has winners, only losers.

The message on the cocktail napkin was mighty close to accurate. So, until we can rise to these challenges, let us keep in mind that God’s criteria are not only good behavior, but primarily love and justice and peace for all, including our enemies. And if all else fails, remember the words of St Paul as translated through no less than Oscar Wilde of all people, “Always forgive your enemies. Nothing annoys them so much.”

June 28, 2005

Gurney

One of the true pleasures of life is to be left nude under a thin sheet on a gurney in a cold hospital hallway. There, to study and meditate on the ceiling, largely to be ignored, occasionally to be bumped, suddenly to be pushed up to speed by disembodied hands and rolled rapidly and inexplicably away to some mysterious place where the ominous Walter Mitty pocketa-pocketa odiferous sounds reside, all the while praying and hoping that they’ve got the right guy for the right forthcoming procedural experience.

Further, it is especially conflicting for an intuitive extrovert who knows that so many medical types have to face life unfortunately constrained by mere sensate introversion. On the other hand, I am led to believe that what such an experience does provide is a renewed perspective on reality. It can reach the naked inner eye would we but let it, the place where life is no longer so filtered, where the deer and the antelope play, where seldom is heard a discouraging word, and the skies are not cloudy all day.

I have never found such a time, albeit the pity, a very comfortable venue for conversation.

June 27, 2005

Gardens

God never promised us a rose garden. Of course, Eden and Gethsemane figured mightily in the ways things turned out, but it was the gardeners who made all the difference. According to Paul and some poetic license, both were named Adam, First and Last, just to keep the story straight.

First couldn’t cut it alone in spite of all the supporting flora and fauna. Landscaping was simply not his bag. So with a bit of thoracic surgery, God gave him a partner. That only served to distract him and ultimately to cost him his lease.

Last was another matter. He found his garden, it didn’t find him. He had plenty of friends, but when it really mattered, he, too, was alone with the same vocational crisis he’d had all along. When he made his choice, it turned the world around.

What happened to the gardens is not altogether clear.

June 24, 2005

Swords

Pentecost 6/8A

Jesus said, “Do not think that I have come to bring peace on earth; I have come not to bring peace, but a sword” (Mt 10.34).

Jesus never asked to be worshiped, nor did he seek grandeur. He always pointed beyond himself to God. He taught in those mystifying riddles we call parables because life is a parable as are we who live it, as mystifying a riddle as anybody can possibly conceive and only he has solved.

He taught not to persuade us to believe in him or in God, but to excite our imaginations to take the risk of faithfulness by looking wolves in the teeth, and thus to discover responsible community with new ways to understanding, to true commitment, and to being the people of God.

His gospel is a story, a model of truth and justice, love and reconciliation, inclusiveness and healing, and maybe even more importantly, of civility and good humor. It teaches us less how to live than how to die. Such a course seems always to divide people, even families and churches. And yet, it is inevitably a singularly appropriate owner’s guide for how to live with fear. We’d be masters to be so creatively inventive ourselves.

We cannot remind ourselves often enough that these first apostle/messengers were, as are we, members of the laos, the laity of the church, the people of God. We are commissioned by God’s grace to that same fellowship in our baptism.

Our Roman Catholic sisters and brothers are finally discovering the biblical authority of the laity and demanding of their leaders to match their extensive privileges with an equal responsibility. They reach for something we’ve had all along, but increasingly allow to be depleted by the overwhelming clerical arrogance of some.

Don’t you wonder — more often of late — if there is any way adequately to describe the folly that causes us as a nation, as a world, and most inexcusably as a church, systematically to undo all these great gifts of both Earth and Heaven, Bible and tradition? And don’t you sometimes pause as to why we repeatedly take a pass on our stewardship?

May our calling help us see that fear shrinks us, harms us, and renders us incapable of acting on our own behalf. It exposes us to manipulation by those who attempt to use us to their own glory and deny their responsibility to lead us with vision and selflessness. The church can and must show that the way to counteract such fear is only by love, by striving to be the community Jesus envisioned and commissioned us to be, and by demanding of our leaders and of ourselves the justification of this privilege.

For the moment in these absurd and perilous times, however, we must stay with the irony of peace and sword, and realize that at least, we can embrace the trickster, the buffoon, the miscreant who lives in us all. Then, in the better part of wisdom and innocence, be allowed in love to laugh at evil and, as well, at ourselves. Maybe, after all, it’s not such a bad way to go.

June 23, 2005

Tempo

A musician friend reminded me the other day that Arturo Toscanini put it this way, “To some it is Napoleon, to some it is a philosophical struggle, to me it is allegro con brio.”

It strikes me that this perspective might be useful for all those who find themselves in such a bind over the Episcopal Church doing its damnedest to translate canon law into love and justice. I’ll give it to all those 800-pound primates who currently are so concerned about our spin on the gospel that when they vow to guard the faith, etc, they at least have in mind similar goals, maybe even sharing in their propagating ever so often.

If so, and it’s difficult to concede, then their Napoleonic behavior and their obsession with orthodoxy are getting mightily in the way of moving on with Jesus’ allegro con brio. on the road to Pentecost. It’s a simple, perhaps occasionally exhausting tempo for us geriatrics, but all it means is not only fast, joyful, and cheerful, plus all the above doubled in spades. Of course, not without some occasional harmony thrown in for the balance.

June 22, 2005

Rendering

Caesar probably never enjoys the Christians any more than when they come to town for one of their conventions. For one thing, they are tourists just like any other sight-seekers, and the welcoming tax on the hotel rooms and all the other take-home reminders is preciously high. All that makes for lots of rendering in his direction.

During most of the year, we tout ourselves as “Music City USA” and the “Athens of the South” (we’ve a Parthenon, too, and in far better condition). But the Southern Baptists are here this week to remind us that we’re also called the Buckle on the Bible Belt and not for naught. When these 40,000 “missionaries” hit town, they start ringing door bells for Jesus, and we get out our Bibles for their annual dusting.

Of course, there’s always the jaundiced among us who wonder whether all these Christians pick up on the irony that we call the place where our big pro football team plays not a stadium, but a coliseum.

June 21, 2005

Regime

When the people in the world of the Bible experienced what they called principalities and powers, they were discerning the actual spirituality at the center of the political, economic, and cultural institutions of their time.

Few today ever consider spirituality either that way or in those places as anything other than a vacuous synonym for religion, a more or less irrelevant matter left to its practitioners. A further phenomenon is to presume that if it’s spiritual, it must therefore be good, thus to overlook the daemons that lurk not only in our societies, but also in ourselves, for they, too, are “spiritual.” That we allow all this to happen is to our ultimate peril.

But we allow it anyway, even encourage it in our public education systems with their disdain for the libraries and the humanities and the arts and the world’s religions. That we do so has perhaps never been more obvious and recklessly careless than it is today.

All this leaves an empty space in the way we live, a space into which rush the daemons of denial and grandiosity, pleasure and distraction, and whatever else is at hand, thus rendering impotent the possibility of any creative stewardship of our lives.

Something of that order is happening now not only in the Middle East but in our own midst, as well. A vast miasma is emploding around us, and we seem helpless to know what, if anything, to do about it, save respond in violence. This, I suspect, is a result not only of our misunderstanding, just plain ignorance, and, even worse, indifference to how these spiritual energies, these principalities and powers, work in all societies.

Will we, as do so many, surrender to the usual crippled understanding of spirituality as merely another organized and irrelevant religion? Or will we welcome God’s Holy Spirit to renew us again as church, letting that presence fill the space in our lives, feed our energies, spur our enthusiasm, encourage and direct us, give us confidence and hope? We can stand here in our religious puffery or we can embrace Holy Spirit in hand and heart. Then go out into the marketplace, into the crowd, into the swirl of pilgrims seeking God. The Spirit did not fashion for the disciples a nest, where they would feel safe and comfortable. The Spirit set them on fire and drove them into the wilderness of the streets.

Dan Corrigan was one of our church’s more devoted and exciting bishops. In the old 1928 prayer book days, there was no “dismissal” at the end of the Eucharist. So he would stand at the altar, pronounce the closing Blessing in all its solemnity, pause for a moment, and then, in his great, booming voice, literally shout at us what we need so to hear today, “Get up! Get out! And get lost!”

June 20, 2005

Doublecrossed

“Plus fours” is a term for those loose and baggy sports knickers made four inches longer than the ordinary ones. ‘Tis the pity that they’re probably pretty much a thing of the past, for they had their place.

There was a time when, for guys, knickers marked a major transition from short pants to long. There was also a time when they were de rigueur on the golf course. Remember the Payne Stewart days? Victorian bishops wore a little bit trimmer variety, but now, they’ve begun to put the plusses elsewhere. (My paid-up prosaic license allows me occasional segués like that.)

Have you noticed how those cute little crosses are showing up more and more on the fronts of episcopal signatures and the rears of mere priest’s? It’s almost as if we need some sort of warning cum admonition lest someone might unfortunately forget. Few and far between are those rare birds who when ordained or consecrated somehow avoid becoming infected by the malady of terminal narcissism that leads to such an affectation.

But with archbishops more and more in our faces these days, we’re seeing two where before there was only one. It’s all to wonder if that means we should be wary of getting double-crossed, or possibly even that a new variety of plus fours are on the way back.

June 18, 2005

Sparrow

Pentecost 5/7A

“Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground without your Father’s will… Fear not, therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows” (Mt 10.29,31).

There are the pictures at the end of the News Hour with Jim Lehrer. Soldiers, marines, men, women, usually smiling, some of them made at graduation or commissioning, others, less formal, all more than likely made to send home from war to the family, to the local newspaper. Surely, at the time, without much thought of dying. Yet, always the pictures “as they are made available, and as their deaths are confirmed.”

In its denial, the Administration, to put it mildly, takes exception to the pictures being shown in this way. Neither do they approve of the pictures of the flag-draped caskets. The president — the one who sent them all there in the first place — does not attend the funerals, but sends “condolences,” which is to let those who grieve know that he “feels with them their pain.” It makes one wonder, considering that when he had his chance, he found a way out and apparently felt no pain about that. He must take us for fools, as if to say that all wars are red, white, and blue and never black.

It is now common knowledge that enlistments in the military are falling off noticeably, recruiting is getting more desperate, and quotas have not been met for some time. Perhaps it is one of the more hopeful signs of our times that just as we get into these patently pointless wars does the willingness of Americans to serve in the armed forces decline. On the other hand, to meet these declines, the Army hands out more and more seductive sales pitches to high school undergrads, most of whom are too immature to make informed decisions about killing and being killed. Only to be followed by the more candid message recruits get once they’re in. A staff sergeant asked a group of 150 infantrymen-in-training, “Does anybody know what posthumous means?” A few hands went up, but he answered his own question. “It means ‘after death.’ It means some of you are going to get medals, but only that way.”

The seeming inevitability of war as an alternative in the human scheme of things is a brutal reminder of our failure. It is not only a failure in our human relations, but a failure, as well, in our individual vocations as human beings. It is an insult and an impediment to God’s imagining of who we are and who we are to become. It is also the symptom of our loss of any sense of personal worth. Perhaps we go to war, and even claim to justify war as clearly some do, to compensate for that loss, to try to restore our ego by identifying ourselves with the glorious banners of our country.

These conditions are even more especially a sign of the failure of us churchers to rise to and assume the true ministry of peace and justice to which we are called. To be sure, we set aside national holidays to remember the millions of us — let alone the millions of our enemies whom Jesus told us to love — who have died in our wars. And then we settle by defining peace in terms of the absence of war thus furthering the tragic irony of enslaving our lives that we might be free.

We can surely do more than that. We churchers might first of all cease our own internal wars and reënlist all that energy with the passion of Jesus in service to his gospel of the sanctity of life so that we can unilaterally relinquish our political privileges and exemptions so to disentangle ourselves from the not-so-subtle stroking of our so-called “faith-based initiatives.”

Perhaps then we can assume our rightful sacrifice by standing in prophetic indictment against a culture whose very nature is to make war. Perhaps then can we more faithfully align ourselves with the God who created us and who grieves not only over our reckless abandon with human life, but even with each sparrow that falls to the ground.