June 16, 2005

Clippers

Flying at 30,000 feet with my seat belt obediently, but needlessly fastened, I was toying with a troublesome cuticle, clipperless. I tried to envision how a terrorist might use a pair of nail clippers to take over an airplane. It was not easy.

Just imagine a graduate of a mother-of-all-hardships obstacle courses in the remote deserts of one of those -stan countries walking across the stage at his commencement and being handed, instead of an AK-47, a pair of Revlon’s finest. Resplendent in their neatly polished iguana-skin scabbard, carefully engraved with both his name and date of graduation, as they were, his resentment yet left him with a complete lack of motivation. Of course, he had no choice but to accept them.

Even an eventual celestial reward of seventy-six virgins equipped with adequate supplies of lamp oil could hardly compensate for such an insult.

June 15, 2005

Conch

Several decades ago, our hostess had brought home from some south sea island a large conch shell. It held a prominent place on the mantle over the fire place and obviously an equally prominent place in her teenage memories of virile native boys who could make with it great resonant, Wagnerian sounds.

The business and professional women of our parish met each spring for a picnic lunch on the lawn of her home overlooking the woodland hills of the East Highland Rim. This was my first meeting with them into my nascent rectoring. Little did I know of the conch shell, let alone that it would become something of a test. Our hostess told its story to our silent audience and added emphatically that nobody had ever been able to blow it quite like those island natives when she’d first heard it. I thought I detected a faint blush as she recounted her warm memories.

Then, she turned to me, and, in a taunting voice, wondered if perhaps “our new rector” would like to try. The assembled women laughed in mild anticipation, then became very quiet as she handed me the shell.

I put it to my lips and blew, then suddenly, “the hills were alive with the sound… ” of the south seas. The astonished gasp of our hostess and, as well, through the audience, was almost palpable. My years as a trumpet player had never served me so well.

June 14, 2005

Death

We have to depend on Jesus’ “been there and done that” and Paul’s vivid imagination to know anything about what pertains on the other side of death. That’s not an altogether bad thing, for they’re outstanding references, we’re fortunate to have such access, and besides, too much knowledge…

In between time, the best way I’ve found to stay in touch is by prayer. I’ve a long list of dead folks I pray about. I don’t know so much that I pray for them as if I need to or they (or God!) need to have me call them to God’s attention. Maybe so. But it makes more sense to me to realize that praying about them is also praying about me and reminds me of how in our way, they are such an important part of my life then, here, and now.

There’s the family I knew and never got to know — among the many of whom is my beloved son and his mother. There’re the mentors, their patience, their wisdom they left for me and with me. There’re the friends through thick and thin. There’re the great writers and musicians. There’re the teachers and preachers. There’re the national and international good guys and bad guys, some who inspire, some who anger (and, I suppose, that’s a kind of inspiration it in itself).

Some religionists and anti-religionists, as well, don’t believe in prayers for the dead. I’d like to know why and what they think such prayer is about. Some other apparently very devout souls baptize the dead, and without their brilliant genealogies, we’d be at so much of a loss knowing and loving our heritage. I learn from them.

Maybe that’s what all prayer, centric or eccentric, is about. Connecting. Learning.

June 13, 2005

Humor

Humor is not comedy. The difference between humor and comedy is the difference between the one that lasts forever and the one that evaporates almost on contact. Humor gives, comedy takes. Humor has character, comedy, mere personality. Humor doesn’t fool around, and that is the ironic paradox.

This mystery in which we live and which we call life (as if we know what it is) draws on irony to reveal its story. That’s why life often seems to mean the opposite of what it seems to mean and requires we give it special audience for understanding, audience that takes the risk of understanding. Faith is a pretty good name for that risk.

Humor reminds us that everybody sooner or later and maybe more often than not is sometime exhausted, wicked, afraid, frustrated, and desperately alone. That is its perspective and its restorative power, its healing energy over life’s menaces. By identifying us and identifying with us, humor can be redemptive.

Humor always wishes us well, and there is much to say for that. At times, it may condemn us and make us livid, often embarrass us, but always it instructs us, informs us, not simply pedantically, but by shaping us and giving us form, preparing us to receive it, breathing spirit into our clay. Humor unites us with ourselves, our neighbor, and with the roots of life, the awesome mystery of beginnings and endings, purpose and destiny, love and fear.

Humor works best through story. Such story takes a mythic form that creates our worlds for us, that reveals to us our role in the drama, and that prepares us for it, as well. Listen to the parables of Jesus. And don’t just listen to them, envision them, put them on. Be the lost sheep. Be the mustard seed. Be the importunate woman banging on the judge’s chambers. Be that guy on the other side of the road beat within an inch of his life. There can never be enough of that kind of humor. Maybe one of the big impediments in our national life and for sure among us churchers is that we just don’t get it because we’re too damned serious.

June 10, 2005

Preach

Pentecost 4/6A Mt 9.35-10.15

We Episcopalians take not a little pride in what we call “apostolic succession.” By that we mean something that often seems like some ghostly filament dangling down through the ages. Somehow, it’s got our name on it and connects our parsons with these very twelve that Jesus commissioned and sent out into the boonies to preach the gospel, the ones Matthew writes about today. Of course, we wouldn’t be presumptuous or anything like that.

That’s about as far, however, as any similarity goes. Jesus sent them out with next to nothing. He said, “Take no gold, nor silver, nor copper in your belts, no bag for your journey, nor two tunics, nor sandals, nor a staff… and if any one will not receive you or listen to your words, shake off the dust from your feet as you leave that town” (Mt.10.9,14).

We 21st century wannabes look a bit more like apostolic success than did they. It takes several major vestment houses to keep us suited out, and, as you know, one can never tell a bishop (aka apostle, they like to think) from an acolyte without a staff (aka crosier) heaven only knows. Those guys were collared by Jesus, not by Almy or Whipple.

Turning into our driveway coming home one afternoon around the shank end of Lent, we were greeted by two suits, Bibles in hand, standing on the front stoop. They said they wanted to introduce us to Jesus. I said, thanks, but we’d met him already. They said they wanted to read some Bible to us. (Apparently they’d forgot the part about shaking the dust off their feet.)

I invited them out to our parish for the Easter Vigil and said we’d read the whole Bible to them or at least enough of it that it would seem like it. They said how long will that take. I said you ought to know. Wiser — and more polite — than I and unlike our liturgy writers, they said they couldn’t do it in one night. We wished them well, thanked them again for their effort and for their staying power.

I’ve never been all that sure why people like that offend me so. I couldn’t — better, wouldn’t — do what they’re doing. Yet they’re not all that far off the mark of Jesus’ commission to his disciples, maybe just cleaned up more.

I thought afterwards that I’d rather keep this story and my behavior pretty much to myself. Then I remembered this Jesus they’d wanted to tell me about, the same one who’d already forgiven me so much and now, I hoped, could probably manage at least this one thing more.

We churchers — and I’m for sure a lesser satrap among that “we” — will do almost anything to avoid having our noses rubbed in the gospel like this story does. We never cease to run out of diversions. They’re not excuses, of course, they’re reasons, but we’ve done so many things to the church since these first disciples — including making it like it is rather than how it was — we have to have all these reasons to avoid too much time pushing doorbells and telling about Jesus.

“Preach as you go,” Jesus told them, “saying, ‘the kingdom of heaven is at hand.’ Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out demons. You received without paying, give without pay.” It was a tall order. It remains a tall order. Forty millions of us have no health insurance. Changing that would be a good place to start healing the sick. We’ve for sure forgot how to raise the dead, even our own programs. Leprosy? AIDS? Demons, now there’s something we could get our hands on — the military-industrial complex, sexual discrimination and patriarchy, hunger-making systems and poverty, desert-making systems and global warming — demons all, permeating and polluting our spiritual, social, and political environment.

Maybe notions like preaching about the proximity of “the kingdom of heaven” confuse us. It’s understandable that we try to avoid and deny them with jokes about Peter and the Pearly Gates. Such will be around forever, more than likely. But until then, try on the idea that wherever the brokenness of the world is being mended, there is present the kingdom of heaven. Then let us get some compassionate glue and sutures, stop worrying about who’s on first, and start patching. There’s not much question about where to start. Maybe for me, I might start looking for those suits, or, at least, their Bible.

June 9, 2005

Simple

I’m told of the Alzheimer’s-addled mother whose daughter had to put her into a nursing home. The first week there, she took her to a nondenominational chapel service. Mom had never been a churchgoer, even as a child, as far as anyone knew. At the chapel service they began to sing “Jesus loves me…” and this aged woman (in her 90s), who recognized none of her family members and was just barely hanging on, began to sing along, word for word.

Karl Barth, the famed voluminously loquacious Swiss theologian, was asked once to sum up his megasystem in a few words. It is said that he replied almost instantly, “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.”

June 8, 2005

Priority

“I have not placed reading before praying because I regard it more important, but because, in order to pray aright, we must understand what we are praying for.”

Angelina Grimke, U S abolitionist and feminist, wrote this in 1836. I’ve not the faintest idea why, lest, perhaps she was feeling defensive about her prayer life. I’ve never thought about prayer and reading that way, but I have certainly thought about prayer and writing that way.

There’s this. Which comes first, prayer or writing, varies almost from day to day. Both make me more alert. Writing, for being constantly on the watch for the ludicrous and ironic wherever, for it is there, always, waving its flag. Prayer, for bringing me into a deeper sense of myself and God and those with whom I am connected.

Each morning I read my prayer list. Family, neighbors, those living alone, clergy and lay colleagues close and distant, friend and foe, the dead. It grows almost weekly as I remember anew or as someone dies anew, as I do and they do now more and more. They and the other characters, those who move across the stage of the biblical lections, seem more and more alive, less and less distant, more into the problems and joys we all have in common, less and less on some kind of inside piety race with God and vocation. As well, with the songs as canticles and psalms of the Morning Office.

With apology to Ms Grimke, I can say that I have not placed writing before praying because I regard it to be more important, but because, in order to pray aright, I must understand what I am praying for. Writing does that, whether it comes before or after. It is always a note with you and me in mind, giving substance and shape to prayer.

June 7, 2005

Nash

Ogden Nash made a living by writing short, silly poems that were witty, unconventional, and respectful of the reader’s intelligence. So said a NY Times review of a new Nash biography and then quoted one:

Let’s think of eggs.
They have no legs.
Chickens come from eggs
But they have legs.
The plot thickens;
Eggs come from chickens,
But have no legs under ‘em.
What a conundrum!

The biographer writes that the poem is accompanied by an anecdote. The sultry actress/singer Dorothy Lamour of all the old Hope and Crosby road pictures and South Pacific sagas refused to read the rhyme on a radio show because she apparently thought that “conundrum” was a dirty word.

Times change, I suppose. Nowadays, I suspect that most, with the possible exception of the Vatican, would probably wonder what’s sarong with that.

June 6, 2005

Spells

Spelling bees always intrigue me. Spelling English words is surely an abomination to the Lord. That a seemingly increasing number of them are not-English-and-becoming-English doesn’t much help matters.

On the other hand, the fact that English is a veritable linguistic pot pourri is hands-down cause for rejoicing if for no other reason than how remarkably exciting language reflects God’s way with us and hopes for us. Like writer Toni Morrison said, language makes us human. Furthermore and in my opinion, John Evangelist could not have found a better metaphor for the Incarnation than that the Word became flesh, nor can we for our own DNAbled human becoming.

Spelling bees somehow bring all this into focus. Those marvelous youngsters who participate in them are such splendid microcosms of what this is all about. That is why, in the midst of the anxiety, the puzzlement, the wonder, the astounding range of knowledge shown in each contestant, the savoir faire of one young lady struck me as so stunningly pleasant and joyful.

Like all the others, she had asked about etymology, pronunciation, sentence usage all wrapped in the usual accompanying anguish. Then suddenly, she relaxed, smiled, twinkled her eyes, and caught us all — including her interrogator — completely off guard when she asked, “Would you please spell it for me?”

June 3, 2005

Sin

Pentecost 3/5A

Jesus said, “For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners” (Mt 9.13)

There’s an ironic similarity in Jesus’ description of his mission as he understood it and a cartoon by Peter Arno of New Yorker Magazine and Addams Family fame. Arno, in one of his frequent send-ups of the clergy, crafted a scene showing two young priests seated in a sumptuous, walnut-paneled study, sipping brandy and smoking cigars. One was saying to the other, “Do you ever wonder where we’d be were there no sin?”

Jesus knew for sure that his presence and vocation was not God’s reward for a virtuous people. He knew, as well, that it was our sin that called God’s hand for our redemption. But sometimes I wonder whether that fact is all that clear for us. If what I hear so often in church circles, we put a lot of stock by our own righteousness. We call it orthodoxy and we practice it at length by our pretentious exclusiveness. How much, indeed, do we enjoy the benefits, the prestige, the walnut-paneled study, the Pharisee’s pride of believing ourselves the ecclesiastical conquering heroes. And how painfully Jesus must weep, as he once said, like a mother hen over our unstewardly lack of attention to our own Jerusalems.

“For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.”

This simple phrase drives a stake through the heart of the self-righteous piety in both church and state in our time. We churchers should know better. But when the state starts talking piety, we can rightly sense the odor of a deceptive opportunism. When will we lament — as surely does Jesus — over what has come of our prophetic mission to indict such smug righteousness wherever we find it, even — and especially — where we find it among ourselves?

We are a separated people. The power of our sin is that it pushes us away from the world, from society, from the church, from nature, from each other, and ultimately from ourselves.

It is difficult to conceive of a time when that gap has ever been wider. It drives a wedge between us and our government. It decimates the churches and renders impotent any possibility of a prophetic ministry. It increasingly spins the nations of the world apart from any possibility of a mutual trust whose communal energy might better serve all humankind.

Sex separates us, but only to the degree it does not draw us closer as humans, but merely unites bodies and leaves them empty as a consequence. Whether we’re religious or not, our dwelling on our differences only widens the gap and decreases any prophetic presence. The separation resulting from our unilateral arrogance as a nation speaks for itself of its sinfulness.

Jesus’ call to us in our separation is to help restore us to ourselves. And doing so, to enlist us in his call to all. As for the righteous, well…