Out of Nowhere

I have what some shrinks might call a tote-bag fetish. I’m not sure why, save it might be a spinoff from being a pack rat. I even keep tote bags inside tote bags. I especially like the ones that show some sort of identification about where they came from so I can keep track of where I’ve been.

But what I especially like is the handiness of tote bags not just for stowing or toting, but for filing. They’re more convenient than file drawers, and their contents are far more visible and accessible. I’ve not yet provided a system for labeling them, but it’s one of the things I plan to get around to one of these days.

CP’s a Myers-Briggs ISTJ librarian to my mirror imagely correct but always backwards ENFP preacherage, so it’s not all that uncommon for us to see lots of things differently. For example, she fails to see the orderliness in the way I can use the straps on my tote bags not only just for carrying them, but also for hanging them up in plain sight so that there’s no question about what is where. Few things ever get lost that way. She actually said the other day that I really don’t need either dresser drawers or closets, just door knobs. It was a rare sign of my efficiency I have often wondered if she would never notice.

Easter 3B / 30iv06

(a preachment on the occasion of the rector of St Ann Church, Nashville, TN, leaving as rector-elect of St Stephen Church, Houston, TX)

Imagine, for a moment, the shock on that first Easter when Mary Magdalene came and told the cowering disciples what she had found. They were facing what they thought to be the tragic end of their lives, their own crosses ready and waiting in the hands of the Romans. And here she comes brandishing in her hands a hope beyond their fondest imaginations. Once they got past their chauvinistic disbelief, they realized a major transition had taken place such as their world — and surely the whole world — had never seen and has never seen since.

It is all too easy rather to let the startling claims of Easter — both biblical and traditional — merely to slide by amid the lilies, the choral excitement, and the pastel eggs. I’ve never noticed that we Anglicans seem all that sanguine about debating either the empty tomb or the appearances of Jesus. Our tradition, so far as I know it, has never made it a “matter of faith” whether we take the resurrection literally or metaphorically, but that either belief is welcome, and that what truly matters is the question of what it means for us, for the church.

Which is to say that whether it is factual or not, it is no less true — and that it is always a matter of life and death. The historical Jesus said that the kingdom of God was not just future, nor even imminent, but that it had already started. There had already begun the cosmic transformation of this world from a world of evil and injustice and impurity and violence into a world of justice and peace and purity and holiness.

That is its meaning for me and, I trust, for many. And however we view its mode, that is, the manner in which it happened, it is that meaning which when the church is true to itself drives the church and our ministry of servant leadership in the world. 

In the early church, the question was not “Do you think that Jesus is Lord?” It was “Do you think Caesar or Jesus is Lord?” And if you said, “Jesus is Lord,” you just committed high treason. If Caesar is Lord, then Rome’s empirical program of “first war, then victory, then peace” would be embraced, a program that sounds only too familiar in these present times. But if Jesus is Lord, then the program would be, “first justice, then peace,” for indeed, the two would be inseparable. Whether one takes the resurrection literally or metaphorically, the meaning remains the same, that God’s Reign of justice and peace has already begun. How we embrace, embody, and implement that Reign is what matters.

And when Jesus speaks of the Kingdom, he does not speak of the reorganization of society. He speaks of what it is like to find a diamond ring you thought you had lost forever. He speaks of what it is like to win the Lottery. He tells stories, parables, catches us by surprise. He is sometimes cryptic, sometimes obscure, sometimes irreverent, consistently provocative.  Their themes were not always grave and somber, but were antic, comic, often quite shocking. 

It was the evil and sin of the empire that crucified Jesus. It is the power of God’s inbreaking kingdom to overcome evil, to bring hope to otherwise hopeless situations, to make creative transformations possible no matter what. Feminist theologians say that “God makes a way out of no way,” and this is what resurrection is about. It is the news of this profound transition that Easter is about. It is the coming together of God in God’s unending greatness and glory and ourselves in our unending littleness, prepared for the worst, but rarely for the best, prepared for the possible, but rarely for the impossible. It always seems too good to be true, when, in fact it may be just too good not to be true. It is this news, this Good News, that the Magdalen brought back to the incredulous disciples in the Upper Room. It is whenever and wherever this takes place that the church is truly becoming the church.

There is a dangerous and frighteningly ominous odor of empire once again afoot in the world both in state and church. Peace in this empirical mindset is again and as always is defined by the absence of conquest and not by the presence of justice and love. It preaches a gospel of preemption and exclusion — again both in church and state — and not one of example and enticement and ordered freedom, of right and wrong, of orthodoxy and heresy, not of good and evil. What, instead, is really important for us is to think about the meaning of the resurrection of Jesus in the present and of how the transition that took place in the disciples takes place in us. 
I believe that this kingdom presence of justice and peace and inclusiveness of which Jesus speaks has at least, might we say, its nose under the tent in this place. The consultant who worked with us this last weekend works with churches in transition all over the country, congregations often in severe internal conflict. He was frankly startled with the community that  he found here and with the capacity for change both in our leaders and in us followers already at work in this forthcoming new life for us. 

There is a saying that “coincidence” is often to be thought of as “God at work anonymously.” It is that kind of coincidence that I believe brings us to the transition we now embrace as we celebrate God’s great transition at Easter and once again proclaim that Jesus, not Caesar, is Lord. We are called to display this full life of justice-as-the-body-of-love and love-as-the-soul-of-justice in our celebration of Easter and dare not let the church’s message be only an empty echo to the world. 

Our rich history here turns now in this congregation’s life as we increasingly discover how we can be the church and what is more can help lead the church, as one biblical scholar rather quaintly said, to “take back the world from the thugs.”

(Note: This preachment has been outrageously cobbled from Frederick Buechner, Dominic Crossan, Marcus Borg, and Richard Wheatcroft because they are so good and so much smarter than I and also in such a manner as possibly to avoid the charge of plagiarism only because I have admitted it. Bibliography if you insist. — JLD)

Canon P D Quirk says that when you’ve seen one old-world cathedral and a few American lookalikes, you’ve seen them all. Their vaults, their bosses, their windows vary, but the floor plans are more than likely cruciform, and the side chapels remain about the same. It never made him all that popular.

Of course, I really can’t say that because I’ve never seen them all and probably never will. Rather do the cathedrals I have seen usually start me to thinking about the people who built them. They worked more than likely at altogether unChristian wages in all kinds of conditions and seasons and weather and light and with all sorts of risks and tools, powered largely only by themselves. 

And I wonder if it made any difference to them at all whether it was a cathedral they were putting together or just a pile of cut stones whose numbers and shapes they’d best keep in order. I like to think they knew. And cared. But that’s the kind of dreamer I tend to be.

The gospel is like that. Words, languages, made flesh like the Lord who inspired it, who proclaimed it, who died for it, who conquered the principalities who killed him for it. Who rolled a stone in their faces. And we, like the cathedral builders, are gospel builders, laying ourselves alongside the Cornerstone, our floor plans also cruciform, but never quite the same. Facing east, like the cathedrals, where the Son also rises. I hope that sometimes, at least, we care.

All theology is autobiographical. So by theologian I mean anybody who thinks about God even if not all the time and even if they don’t use God language. So, then, that allows me to think of scoundrels like H L Mencken as one of my favorite theologians. Karl Barth, the great Swiss theologian-for-sure, was said to have felt that way about Mozart. And I agree with Uncle Karl, though I rather suspect he’d not agree with me.

Anyhow, early in the merrily month of May, my beloved, dysfunctional diocese (and that includes us all from top to bottom) will try again, more than likely, I predict, unsuccessfully to elect a bishop.

This string of vote-casting experiences which started for us back in March brings Mencken more to mind than Mozart. For in one of Mencken’s revealed theological moments, he defined an archbishop as a “Christian ecclesiastic of a rank superior to that attained by Jesus.” So far as I’m concerned, he could say the same thing about a bishop or a priest, for that matter. Thus it is good to think that this is what we presume to do in a so-called episcopal election and that is to elevate someone to a rank superior to that attained by Jesus. And it is good for us to remember how ultimately silly, then, is such an undertaking. (This is where theology will get you if you let it, and let it, you should.)

I gather that Jesus was never a bishop, let alone an archbishop, maybe a substitute Sabbath School teacher, but episkopos not. In the manner of ekklesia and our stories and not all that long ago, however, rather did we come up with a Jesus riding into Jerusalem on a borrowed jackass. Now if somebody would just come riding in thataway at our forthcoming election and show us up for what we are and what we pretend and presume to do, then my prediction would be of no account.

Deciding is in vogue. Of course, it’s never been out, but The Decider-in-Chief has just now decided, so maybe we should do some deciding ourselves.

Actually, there’s really nothing new about it for us churchers. If this gospel we espouse is about anything, it’s about change. If change is about anything, it’s about deciding. And whatever else being human is about, it’s for sure about making choices and living with change. God imagined us to be deciders and started us off that way for easy. We got Eden for next to nothing as a place to live and make decisions, decisions about naming things and, of course, the decision about the apple. It turned about to be harder than we thought.

Next thing you know down the line, it was not deciding about choosing apples, it was deciding about choosing a cross. Decide, Jesus said, it’s yours, and he gave us a place to practice. We call it church. It’s no Eden, but it’ll do in a pinch.

We’ve made a lot of decisions over the centuries, but we keep choosing other things. There’s always other stuff to look after, stuff like doctrine and orthodoxy and sex and who can and who can’t do this or that. All the while the shadow of that same cross keeps lurking over all those decisions, all those councils, all those heresies and schisms, waiting, wondering whether we’d choose that cross, or not, up or down. Last I heard, Jesus’ offer to decide still stands.

Easter 2B Jn 20.19-31

That we seem to remember the disciple Thomas more for his doubt than for his faith probably gives him a lot more grief than he deserves. We call him Doubting Thomas. Braveheart Thomas might be more appropriate to his enterprise.

While the rest of the disciples were cowering full of resentment and fear that they’d bet their lives and whatever fortunes on a loser and the Romans were breathing down their necks, Thomas was out pounding the pavement, risking arrest, renewing old contacts, checking the want-ads, and looking for work. He didn’t believe the talk about Jesus, and he wanted better evidence than the behavior of his former colleagues.

But then, when he got what he wanted, he signed on for good or ill. He accepted his commission as an apostle, wrote a gospel, and, some say, started a new church over in India. “Brother Thomas’s Sawdust Trail” sounds like an evangelist to me.

We don’t have the hard evidence Jesus presented to Thomas. (If walking through closed doors with holes in your head and your side and your hands and feet can be called “hard evidence.”) John, the Gospeler, knew that, but he apparently knew something else, as well. Faith is not only always surrounded by doubt and without evidence. Faith creates doubt and evidence.

Faith is risk, and risk wouldn’t be risk without doubt. And faith that comes only after evidence is no faith at all. It is trust, yes, but not faith. Faith is that act of the will, that daring commitment that climbs out on life’s limbs and leaps. And that is all the evidence we get.

It works two ways. My faith is a kind of evidence for me and maybe also for you. And your faith is a kind of evidence for you and also maybe for me. Our faith as a community — all that touch and go — is what makes church church. The ekklesia — the called — doesn’t even deserve the name if it is not first and foremost a community of faith — and probably of doubt, as well. And there is no evidence for that — even the kind that moves mole hills, let alone mountains — until there is a pulsing, dynamic, non judging heart of love at its core.

The disciples in the upper room would probably never have convinced Thomas until he experienced the vision of the risen Lord, himself. Nor if fear is keeping us in the closet would we ever convince those who pass by. Not until we show the world by the way we love one another — a rather risky leap, itself — can our witness ever become a winsome and compelling evangel of the Lord.

For it is in that nourishing and healing love that transcends both faith and doubt, wherever such love is found, within or without these naves — and only there — and that is where the Lord is risen, where He is risen, indeed. And it is there that we find “church.”

It must surely be one of the greater of sins to rob a people of their culture — their language, their symbols, their generations, even their families. And heaven only knows what else.

We did that with the Native Americans and wondered why they turned on us, the “illegal aliens” on their eastern shores. We tried it with the Japanese during the Great Middle War (aka WW II). And of course, there are the Mexicans we sorely need to build the very fences to keep them out. Let alone how we continually marginalize the poor and exclusively drive wedges into a class system that borders on social chaos.

Now, with the remembering of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, stories are returning about how, when it obliterated Chinatown, we tried to keep things that way when the rebuilding of the city began. Only a hundred years later, who can miss the irony of how today without the Chinese bankrolling us we could hardly keep an SUV on the road, let alone fuel our pretensions to empire?

And all the while, we call ourselves a Christian nation. In the doing, we’re either blind to our own history and the intentions of our founders or we’re altogether biblically illiterate or both. Before this season once again fades away, might we listen up to Paul who got it so right when he wrote that “there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal 3.28). What an elegantly faithful way to keep Easter on our minds, seek and serve Christ in ourselves and others, and enable peace and justice in our land.

One of the reasons Eve and Adam lost their lease was that they had trouble keeping the ground rules straight. They didn’t ask to be created, of course, but if they just had to be maybe because God wanted some company, they for sure got the best of all venues in which to practice life. It was apparently just that they couldn’t manage the basic stewardship.

Now that we’ve had Moses and the prophets and Jesus as mentors and examples, things are still pretty much the same, if not even worse. We’ve forgot all about the lease and have got the silly notion from somewhere – probably from Screwtape — that we own the place and can do with it as we damn well please.

For openers, how about the climate? We can’t live much without it. There are some messy methane hydrates frozen under the bottom of the ocean just waiting to get warm enough to turn the greenhouse gases brown and twenty times more deadly than carbon dioxide. In the meanwhile, the White House is complacent if not downright paralyzed on the subject of global warming. Of course, one needn’t expect “C” students to be much on science, or on governing, either, for that matter.

But then, it was just this kind of faulty stewardship that shortened the term in Eden. Of all people, the religious right ought to know that the ground rules haven’t changed any since then, and that we’ll just keep on getting it religious wrong if we cannot come up with anyone more obedient than the current keepers of what’s left of the garden.

Our country’s leaders get scarier with every new greed-based initiative and failed commitment. Few seem to realize that that kind of behavior is ever so much adultery all the same, that infidelity in or out of the oval office wherever can assume more shapes than one.

A newspaper columnist put the current damage assessment right: “I’m afraid to drink the water,” she said. “I’m afraid to breathe the air. I’m afraid glaciers will melt and seas will rise. I’m afraid to visit California in the dark. I’m afraid the Dow will dip below 5,000. I’m afraid Russia will take leave of its senses. I’m afraid China will take leave of its senses. I’m afraid North Korea will lob a missile our way. Soon, I’ll be fearing fear itself.”

Such anxiety yearns for pastoral care and presence. Such failure of leadership calls for prophetic indictment. Such an environment calls for a church. Of course, there’s that irksome old problem of whether the Bible is infallible, whether our clergy are orthodox, and who’s shacking up with whom. There’s simply no time for justice, let alone peace.

What is truth?

Archbishop Desmond Tutu spoke to a packed audience at Vanderbilt University a few 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, but I could hear myself say, “Because you and all you say and 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 here in this tortured country.” He smiled, nodded his head, and touched my arm with gentle firmness.

When we read about Pilate’s question to Jesus “What is truth?” might we realize 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 �What is truth?� 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 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.”