January 19, 2006

Organize

Epiphany 3B (Mk 1.14-20)

God and the devil are walking along the road together. God sees something lying there and picks it up. The devil says, “What’s that?” God says, “It’s the truth.” The devil says, “Give it to me, and I’ll organize it.”

Today’s gospel tells the story of Jesus selecting his disciples. It’s a story of both good news and bad news. The good news is to witness the apparently willing surrender of all that these men held dear — work, family, perhaps even their lives — for the uncertainty of whatever it might mean to follow Jesus. This kind of an act is one that might embrace us all. The bad news is to witness what are probably the first steps, albeit it nascent ones, in the organization of truth, an act that does for sure embrace us all.

A colleague of mine once introduced himself. He said, “I am a member of no organized religion. I am an Episcopalian.” I wish this were true, but of course, it is not. Nevertheless, there is a strange and uniquely Anglican spin on the Gospel that we might just remind ourselves of from time to time. It would go something like this:

Perhaps our most important and distinguishing mark is corporate prayer, with thanksgiving (we also call it Eucharist) at the center of our worship. All that we do and the way we attempt to understand what we do grows out of this, our corporate worship, powered by grace in gratitude.

We discover God’s will for us in Scripture. But also in tradition, as says one of our prayers, “joining with the heavenly chorus, with prophets, apostles, and martyrs, and with all those in every generation who have looked to (God) in hope.” We take this Scripture and this tradition and through our rational capacities we strive to understand these things. They are brought together for us in the shape of the liturgy, that is, the work of the people, so that we can share mutual trust with our inheritance.

We distrust judgmentalism, biblical literalism, election, predestination. These ideas lead to division, then hatred, alienation, and even killing. We embrace inclusiveness, moderation, and toleration. To follow these leads to collegial and spiritual enrichment.

We live comfortably with ambiguity in our tradition, and we do not require certainty in all things. We argue. We fight. But then, we come together once more for Common Prayer and Eucharist. This is our way. We seem actually and rather quaintly to prefer vagueness and imprecision. We practice a generous and forgiving orthodoxy, an ordered freedom. We are the oxymoron of the Christian view of things.

Don’t we wish. But there is hope.

There’s an Episcopal parish that, so I’ve heard, includes among its actively pledging, attending, and serving people, a group whose members have one other thing in common — they do not believe in God. That’s a pretty good step in the direction of inclusivity, might we say? For whether or not it is, what better place for atheists to be? It is good not only for them, but also for the rest of us in all our many stages of belief and disbelief.

A congregation at its best is a place where atheists may not only freely challenge theology by their mere presence, but where, as well, they may learn enough about theology to provide real substance for their disbelief and fend off a few challenges, themselves. Then, there’s always the outside chance that they may be loved so much they’ll have to wonder why on earth why.

Our sciences show us over and over with convincing and commanding evidence the great biblical truth that we human beings and all of creation for that matter are members one of another, whether we choose to be or not. What we believe, that is, what religion we may or may not practice has very little to do with it. That we cannot know absolute truth and certainty and, as the devil would have it, cannot organize it, is an idea that’s next to impossible for some folk to accept.

Nevertheless, it’s a model of community to which we all might well aspire. It’s part of this Anglican Communion’s “ordered freedom.” It is a delightfully redundant diversity with a graced pragmatism about it all. We proceed, do we not, by the way of “probable persuasions.”

Frank Griswold, the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church for whom we pray regularly in the Liturgy, claims as his rule of life these words once spoken by a Roman Catholic archbishop from South America:

“The bishop belongs to all. Let no one be scandalized if I frequent those who are considered unworthy or sinful. Who is not a sinner? Let no one be alarmed if I am seen with compromised and dangerous people, on the left or the right. Let no one bind me to a group. My door, my heart, must be open to everyone, absolutely everyone.”

This, of course, must not only be true for our bishops, but it must also be true for ourselves and thus for the church. For it is our fear that prevents us from being such a community, not our welcome and affirmation of diversity. If I must choose, and I hope never to have to, I would choose without question an uncertain church that is loving over a loveless church that is orthodox.

January 18, 2006

Rocks

It was news to me as a budding student of geology that petroleum is a rock. Any combination of two or more minerals, hard or soft, the teacher said, makes a rock. For example, rocks are like the words, minerals, the alphabet. For another, petroleum gets its name from the same Greek word that Peter gets his.

Without much ado at all, Peter’s sudden public realization that Jesus is the Christ gets on the calendar today as his “confession.” Rome puts a lot of stock by him as their foundation and the reason for their apostolic success, but now that they’ve abolished Limbo and are next to canonizing Judas, even they may have run out of convincing copy.

Noticeably, as the covenant story unfolds, it’s the daemons, not Peter, who are on to Jesus all along. Strangely, he never gives them a new name, only tells them to get lost in a herd of pigs, thus taking, as no less than Dorothy Sayers herself once said, a rather casual disregard for other people’s livestock.

January 17, 2006

Markers

I don’t recollect ever hearing of a redoubt until moving to our town. Being in the south and all, we’ve got cast-iron markers all around town remembering where the Yankees clobbered us a hundred and forty years ago at some redoubt. Or then there’s also the sign over in Holy Trinity Church’s front yard that points out how our visitors stabled horses in the nave.

There’s a certain amount of moss and magnolia pride in these markers even though they don’t bring up one’s finest moment. On the other hand, being where we are in this land, we’ve also some more recent and more prideful notices of where the sit-ins took place a century or so later. It’s a strange feeling to read history in cast irony that took place well into one’s own lifetime.

MLK’s memory being invoked this month brings a lot of that back. On the day after his death, we celebrated his life here with an inter-religion liturgy at the downtown RC parish that their bishop, the editor of the local paper, and I crafted on a long distance conference call the night before. Later that night, we mimeographed the service outline over where I was rector, but we didn’t tell the vestry. Redoubt, you know, means “secret place.”

January 16, 2006

Humours

Some, not many, have wondered from time to time about how come Out of Nowhere. Well, let me tell you, it’s like this.

Once upon a time and not so long ago, our forebears in the practice of medicine thought that the humours were pretty much what life was all about. They postulated four: yellow bile, black bile, phlegm, and blood. (Aargh. We’ll get past this shortly.)

The old medics presumed that too much or too little of one or the other could unseat a balanced life and thus, as a consequence, make one ill. Therefore, it was said that to be healthy was to have a good “sense of one’s humour,” meaning something like, to say the least, not be so hard-nosed and uptight.

Later on, the English playwrights took these theories of the humours* to put an Anglican spin on things and, as well, produce a whole literary corpus of their own brand of sit-coms, as it were. Dominance of one humour over another produced an eccentric character, hence, a more risible stage effect. So it was that humour, once specific to a medical state, came to mean, after all, something to laugh about.

Maybe the docs were right. Humour is pretty much what life is all about, that is, when we’re not taking ourselves so seriously and when we realize that humour is what often transcends and, in effect, seems to run across all kinds of boundaries and always to connect us so well. In the Koran, it is written, “He deserves paradise who makes his companions laugh.” (Note to wiretappers: I didn’t actually read the Koran to find this out.)

In our sometime aloof manner with words, we Episcopalians call this connecting up the consensus fidelium. It’s sort of like what Riders in the Sky call the “cowboy way.” It has a lot to do with our preferring our prayer to be common, not empirical, our leaders collegial, not pontifical, and our faith corporate, not manipulative. It’s a good way to keep from losing one’s sense of humour.

In a manner of speaking, these more or less daily segments called Out of Nowhere are contrived to have, I trust, an element of humour in them, humour that takes any number of forms, but which is corralled and connected mostly by irony. Now in their third year, they are an assemblage of little stories, pericopés. Some of them actually took place at a time and place, but like myth and story as a whole, all of them, after a fashion and in their way, are true.

*It seemed more consistent this once and as they always seem to know best, to use the British spelling.

January 14, 2006

Sensitivity

Our local NBC outlet pulled The Book of Daniel because, they said, our town “is a particularly religiously sensitive city.” Well, it’s true. We do have a couple of major religious publishing houses and a church on practically every other corner, usually opposite a bank or a liquor store, occasionally, but carefully, at the mandated distance from a topless bar on down the street.

The station said they got a lot of complaints and not just the canned kind, but real “quality” comments of substance. Actually, they said, none came from Episcopalians or from the bishop’s office. No surprise. I’m puzzled, however, why the Lions Club apparently has remained silent.

I watched the whole two hours of the pilot. It made me wonder if the script had not come from the DSM-IV, the owner’s Baedeker used by shrinks so they don’t get lost keeping track of what’s currently the vogue in mental dysfunction. On the other hand, that’s life, and there’s no sense being in denial about it. 

It should be well-known that we Episcopalians are members of no organized religion and that we put a lot more stock by forgiveness than permission (cf grace and merit), so why should anybody be surprised with Daniel. I’ve been a priest for fifty years or so and have run across most of the human behavior that shows up in the program, just not always in the same place and time.

I suppose I ought to complain about censorship and freedom and all that, but then I’ve got to keep in mind my town’s reputation for religious sensitivity. Besides, my main problem with the program  (picky-picky)  was mostly that at one point the priest had his chasuble on backwards and that the bishop was wearing her mitre, if on the right head, still at the wrong time and in the wrong place. Our town’s religious vocabulary, however, might not pick up on things like that. 

On the other hand, if somebody had started unbuckling their Bible belt, it would have been a different matter altogether.

January 13, 2006

Shredfully

I gave CP a power leaf shredder for Christmas two years ago. Not being one to rush into things and wanting it to season for a while, just last week, I started trying to assemble it. 

It’s got a separate funnel on top into which go the leaves on their way to the chopper. The instructions say the funnel’s two halves are just sort of to “snap” together. When (and if) assembled, the large end is about two feet across, the small about a foot. After trying ad infinitum to connect it up it single-handedly (aka with two hands), I looked up the website. It had a Chatty-Cathy place, so I asked How on earth? Soon, I got an answer. Karl said I was not the only person who’d asked. I was comforted. He said it usually takes four hands, that is, I presume, it has to be done double-handedly. 

So we tried that, CP and I, and actually used our own four hands to get it together. It was an interesting domestic project, not exactly marital bliss, but closer than usual. The question now, is transferring it intact out to the potting shed where remains the rest of the machine and wondering will it survive the rigors of being attached. 

Realizing that suspense is essential to readable and exciting fiction and that fact (which this is) is stranger than fiction, it seems best that the rest of this saga wait until the ultimate shredder is  not only assembled properly but also carrying out its appointed present-participial task. Stay tuned.

January 12, 2006

Guileless

Epiphany 2B (1 Sam 3.1-20; Jn 1.43-51)

Whenever I drive by one of those churches with a big marquee or standing sign out front and see somebody’s name on it in four-inch letters followed by the word “Minister,” I cringe a little (maybe with a touch of envy, as well!). There’s a lot of theology in such a billboard. There’s theology about leadership, theology about vocation, theology about servanthood, not to mention expectations about who does what in that place the sign is telling about, maybe even who’s in charge. Or who’s not in charge.

“Minister.” It’s a common mistake we make all the time. To call the leader of a congregation its minister as if he or she is not only the only one and there are no others, but is also to relegate that great vocation to one person whom for all intents and purposes contains, represents, and includes the ministry in that place.

Now, I’m pretty sure that’s not what is meant by such a sign. The folk there in that church might be quite surprised to discover that anybody would interpret it that way. Yet, there it is for all to see. And there it is maybe even for that congregation to explain and in the explanation to discover all the richness in why they are there at all on that corner with those big buildings and all that choice, tax-free real estate.

The story of Samuel and Eli we read this morning is about ministry. It’s one of the more charming bits of Old Testament lore (1 Sam 3.1-20). Eli’s practically blind, staying pretty much to himself, leaving Samuel to keep watch in the temple over by the ark of God, maybe the same one Indiana Jones went looking for a few centuries later. It’s a story about ministry, about Samuel’s wondering whose calling him and then finding that God is calling him to be a priest and a prophet and subsequently one day to take Eli’s place in the succession and have the dubious honor of naming Israel’s first king.

And then over in today’s gospel, there’s that story about Jesus and Nathaniel which is also a story about ministry (Jn 1.43-51). Philip brings Nathaniel to meet Jesus and tells him along the way that Jesus is the real thing, the Messiah they’ve been waiting for all these centuries. Then he adds, almost as if to apologize, that Jesus is from Nazareth, of all places. Hearing this, Nathaniel blurts out the question we’ve all used at one time or another about somebody we think of not much worth. “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”

Well, yes and no. We get the answer to that later as the Jesus narrative unfolds. But for now, it’s something of an exchange between the two. Jesus overhears Nathaniel, of course, just like he seems to overhear everything whether we like it or not. And Jesus says, “Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile.” Nathaniel finally comes to his senses, realizes in whose presence he stands, and the story moves on. His name doesn’t appear in any of the lists of the twelve apostles. Some say he was also called Bartholomew, and as you know, that name does show up. At any rate, he probably never forgot his gaffe about Nazareth and may never have known what a memorable phrase he left for our continued use.

We’d like to think that ministry hasn’t got a lot to do with where one comes from, though there seem to be exceptions now and then. But it is useful in its practice to have little or no guile, no deceit, though from the looks of things, some would probably argue that point.

“Who are the ministers of the Church?” our Catechism asks, then answers just as forthrightly: “The ministers of the Church are lay persons, bishops, priests, and deacons.” Then as the query goes on asking what is the ministry of each of these, the answers all begin with the same definition before moving into particulars: “The ministry of (fill in the whomever) is to represent Christ and his Church.” (BCP p 855)

We’d do well in the church to set aside for a time the notion that deacons, priests, and bishops are “holy orders,” somehow to be taken as more blessed and sanctified than the laity. And we’d do well to remember that no order nor ordination vow is holier than that by which we are commissioned and will to embrace and follow in our Baptismal Covenant. All Christians share that holiest of orders, and any subsequent “refining” of it is quite another matter.

As Nathaniel came toward Jesus in all earnestness, maybe with his yarmulke on crooked and his dog-eared Torah under his arm, Jesus said, “Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile.” One could look far afield to find any better qualifications to meet the Prayer Book Catechism’s notions about ministry — “to represent Christ and his Church.” — than a commitment to one’s Bible and tradition and a life without deceit and, as Nathaniel reminds us, realizing that not every vision is what it seems.

January 11, 2006

Understand

I believe it was my old friend and mentor Canon P D Quirk who once told me, “Never question the truth of what you fail to understand, for the world is filled with wonders.” Surely it was he, for if it was not, the saying is so like him that for lack of someone else to whom to ascribe it, I am comforted merely to settle for him as the source.

Accepting that simple wisdom is of great value to me. For to understand something is not for to be able to define or describe it, but for it to have meaning, to urge one toward maturity. Description and definition have their place and are quite useful in a more scientific way. But there is too much finality about both, a determination that makes them more signposts along the way than the way, itself. It is the way, and following it, where there is meaning. For life is more exploration than experiment, it is searching for where, not tinkering with what. 

There is so much that we fail to understand that just may be understood fully by our neighbor or by those who came before us. Jesus did not ask us to understand, but to love. And in loving, perhaps gradually to understand. I think I shall try this out on Quirk one of these days, but not anytime soon. 

January 10, 2006

Conversation

I remember on the front edge of my diaconate hearing a monk who was rather taken with himself say that fiddler crabs were created simply to glorify God. I was not especially impressed, thinking that there’s plenty of creation available to accomplish that task without those goofy-looking little beasts racing across beaches in what seems utter mayhem.

We’ve never been invaded in the uplands here by fiddler crabs, but the plethora of squirrels will serve just as well. I’ve never documented their seasonal schedules, but there right now seems a superabundance. 

Let alone that they ruin the roots and tubers in the garden, it’s when they take a liking to the  potting shed’s shingles and redwood siding that mystifies me. CP puts out mothballs to try to discourage their ventures in the yard. Then they simply remove them to the neighbor’s yard, but not without leaving the place smelling like my grandmother’s old store room.

Some may debate whether or not God ever gets lonely. Not I. But then, omnipotence and omniscience may well leave little ground for diversion. Being stuck with only human beings for conversation often taxes even human beings into yearning for an occasional moment of privacy. Knowing how to talk fiddler crab could have its benefits.

January 9, 2006

Pride

There’s an old adage that when you’re thrown off a horse, it’s best to get back on it and ride. I’ve been trying to apply that principle to my Schwinn stationary bike.

Of course, the last time I rode it, I wasn’t thrown off, I just got off — gingerly. My legs gave out well before my lungs started in on the asthma two-step. I doubt if I ever even got up to that pulse level determined by subtracting your age from some mystical number set by the National Institutes for Health or whomever.

Maybe what I need is one of those mechanical bulls one finds in saloons. They’ll throw a person half way across the room before you can get a hold on the reins. But then, there’s not much cardio-respiratory exercise in that endeavor, just a large exposure of one’s pride.

Pride is probably what exercise is all about, anyway. More endurance. A better pectoral girdle. And abs, for heaven’s sake, abs. Like that guy on the underwear package, those I bought at the Christmas sale that are the next size larger than the ones I threw away during Advent.

Back to the Schwinn. I don’t believe in New Year’s resolutions, mostly because there’s less demand on my guilt that way. But like Archie Bunker always said, one of these days…