June 30, 2006

Covenant

In these more recent times and in the way after our Anglican fashion, we’ve spent untold hours and money, prayer, deliberation, and pontifical (aka the bridge-building kind) energy to produce what we proudly call the Windsor Report. One might say that it is a kind of mission statement in itself, albeit a not very manageable one. But it has, indeed, become rather a litmus test, to say the least, for the commitment and sincerity of a body of Christians.

One of the WR’s proudest treasures is the idea of a covenant for Anglicans including even a proposed working draft for such a document as one of the its appendices. This so-called covenant is clearly a thoughtful piece that includes the usual careful Anglican phrasing,  pacing, and, of course, length to avoid stepping on pontifical (aka the puffery kind) toes. 

Like the firehouse dalmatian when the bell goes off, when I see the word “covenant,” I immediately think not so much Old or New, God forgive me and as stately as they are, but Baptismal, as refreshingly biblical and current as it is. And I wonder if not there is a covenant with which any Christian should have little brief.

In the tradition of less is more and perhaps also to refresh our memories, the Baptismal Covenant asks quite simply for a community life that involves apostolic teaching and fellowship, Eucharist and prayers. It calls for resistance to evil and a desire for those with lower resistance to repent and return to the Lord. There must be, of course, a life of witness to the Good News by both word and example. There must be a life of service, seeking and serving Christ in all persons. And there must be commitment to work for justice and peace among all people, and respect for the dignity of every person.

Such a covenant is generally agreed to be a relationship one might hope is initiated by God, to which a body of people could respond, as some already do, in faith. It might possibly [maybe with some internationally and globally ecclesiastical tweaking, but not a lot] stand rather majestically as something all Anglicans could embrace as a kind of peaceful and just offering, perhaps even gaining some momentum as an ecumenical movement first among our provincial selves and then, having seen our example, among others. 

Just a thought, though of course it must have a proper resolution number and be placed into the process hopper, perhaps even for the General Convention in 2009?

June 29, 2006

Arise

Pentecost 4/8B [Mk 5.22-24,35b-43]

“Do not fear, only believe.”

Jesus said this to Jairus, the synagogue leader, whose daughter lay dying. Interesting that Jairus was already doing both. His fear drove him to Jesus, and ironically, his belief drove him to Jesus. The crowd jeered. It is the way with crowds. But at Jesus’ touch and command, the child arose and walked, anyway. We need now to hear Jesus’s words. We need Jesus.

“Do not fear, only believe.”

We act, instead, as if our fear transcends our belief. For indeed, it does. Rather than turn to how belief can quench our fear, rather than turn to the faith and love and justice that our belief entails, we churchers turn again to the law, to our legislative bodies to pass resolutions, as if somehow, that will still our fear, when all it does is seem momentarily to protect us from our fear.

We remain afraid. It is the most pernicious kind of fear when we are afraid of what we do not know but think we know. We are afraid when authority goes into the hands of women or of gays and lesbians. We are afraid that it will turn into power and manipulation and patronizing as it always has in our hands. Our fear drives us to foolish statements, even childishly adolescent notions about how people should properly show their love. We are afraid that same gender parents will destroy the family. We are afraid to know that child abuse and domestic violence and divorce most often occurs in families with different gender parents.

We are not only afraid of what we do not know but of what we might learn if only we tried. We were and many still are afraid of new translations of the Bible and of our liturgies. We are afraid of illegal immigrants when we live in a land founded by illegal immigrants who rather than ask the native Americans for visas and green cards, stole their land from them, instead.

But enough of our fear. Enough of our preoccupations that turn us away from our true occupation to love, to heal the sick, to feed the poor, to bring justice and peace to all. And to embrace our belief that we take this Anglican Christian heritage and shape it — in the language of the Lambeth Quadrilateral, itself — “adapted in the methods of its administration to the varying needs of the nations and peoples of God into the unity of His Church.” Let all respect that fundamental affirmation as the several members of this Communion receive the same. Let Jesus take us by the hand and say, “I say to you, arise.” Then, let us joyfully go out together and, like Jairus’s daughter, get something to eat.

June 28, 2006

Words

The Revised Standard Version of the New Testament was hot off the presses about the time I started to seminary. It created quite a stir. So much so that an east coast country preacher made the Associated Press when he burned a copy in church one Sunday and said something like, “If the King James Version of the Bible was good enough for Jesus, it is good enough for us.” 

Words have power. They can move us to gentleness and truth or they can drive us into rebellion and chaos. They’re central to our manner of becoming human, and becoming human is what life is all about. Words are primarily symbols, icons, windows through which we can discover and grasp a greater, more central reality of ourselves, our neighbors, our environment, our God. In this sense, at least, words are holy. 

The idea is so important that Evangelist John thought it altogether appropriate — and then some — to express what he meant by Jesus, by the Word becoming flesh. He was also fully aware of how devastating a notion this is for us, how so often and maybe even more often, we simply don’t get it. To read his prologue again whenever we have the chance never ceases to challenge and inspire and remind [Jn 1.1-14].

On the other hand, to assume for words in themselves an infallibility, an inerrancy, is to destroy the beauty  of them as icons and to turn them into idols. The very first Commandment in the Decalogue stands there to remind us of that. That it is an insult to God for it risks replacing her with her creation, with the very symbols through which she reveals herself and her majesty. Even the pronoun we use for God, you’ll notice, has such power. 

That this travesty, this idolatry, has been broadcast in the name of the Judaeo-Christian tradition itself is a betrayal of what the great saga of Scripture’s story of our spiritual genealogy can mean for us. It is this kind of manipulation that blinds us to the creative energy of metaphor and of the great truths of the myths that undergird our national heritage and the laws by which we govern ourselves. The flag is such a metaphor. The Bible is such a symbol. Merely burning them says far more about the arsonist than about what they stand for, than about what we can see through them.

June 27, 2006

Ferns

CP and Southwest Airlines head jointly to Pittsburgh today (with a three-hour readjustment in Chicago). She’ll hookup with her grandchildren and their folks and then on eastward to Chatauqua, NY, for a week of frolic in the summer offerings of that gladly literate place interspersed  aboard a Flying Scot in the local lake. 

Pauvre moi? She’s not going to have me to kick around for a while. 

Back here where people are responsible and fretting over GC2006 fallout, there are the ferns, the sleeping wildflower garden, the lukens and the yews, the omnipresent deodar, the front garden, the side garden, the stone garden, the recycle and trash pickups, the newly planted yellowwood tree (two Ws?) and little gem magnolia, the herbs, the car in the shop recovering from the neighbor’s oak tree collapse, the ferns, the hummingbird feeder (will they come again? will they prefer this snarky sugar water or the natural sugar of the nearest red-blooming plant?), and the ferns, always, the ferns. 

CP is a brave and devoted gardener, daring, as well. To leave all her hard work and its lovely progeny in the hands of the Brownest Thumb on the Street and in the middle of our town’s annual summer drouth takes serenity, courage, and, frankly, questionable wisdom. It probably reminds her of the “or worse” part of those vows that got all this domestic bliss underway long ago. And, of course, it’s a testimony to the reality that love is never all that wise, anyhow. 

I can hear her now when she returns, and says, “Heckuva job, Brownie.”

June 26, 2006

Marks

Some wag wrote that the mark of the beast 666 is actually 999 in Australia. If that’s supposed to be funny, I wish people would think before they joke about things like that. There’s no telling who might be watching. When a beast makes its mark, it’s wisest to move over, for that might be its bench you’ve sat on.

Marks are symbols. Our leaders worry a lot about symbols. For example, I’d like to think that one mark of  leaders is to keep their priorities straight. Ours are off-and-on fretting about flag burning, not just any flag, but our flag. It’s apparently okay to burn anybody else’s flag, maybe even that of one of the states, for all I know. They don’t really say. 

You can even burn down holy places with bombs instead of matches, especially if you’re trying to make them over into something different from whatever they started out with. That way, you could not just burn their flag, but replace it altogether. 

But with the stars and stripes, you’d better watch it, kid. 

And I suppose that goes for missiles, too. We have silos full of missiles all over the place, but when any of the planet’s Dark Side real estate owners start doing the same thing, we get edgy. Our leaders are currently talking about maybe shooting down (or up) any alien missiles even before they get underway. But with what? Our shooters, so I hear, have yet to be proven all that accurate. So what if we miss and come to be known as the gang that couldn’t shoot straight? How would the NRA ever explain that to their grandchildren?

June 24, 2006

Metaphor

It has been said that literature is a metaphor for the writer’s experience. Life is story. We are the metaphors, the writers that tell it. Jesus was his own parable, a puzzling metaphor told so that only through the risk of faith could another understand and respond with one’s own.

God created “man” and created “him” male and female, a notion not all that easily comprehended [Gen 1.27] by the literal-minded. Like the song in “Damn Yankees,” you gotta have heart if you’ll make heads or tails of it. Metaphoric heart, that is. Without the other, the one with valves and pulse and rhythm, one needn’t bother to ask.

Mystery is altogether like this, especially the mystery this church of ours might well consider being more stewardly about. Remember, Jesus didn’t much care for the way Jerusalem treated the prophets. Let’s not leave him weeping over Columbus.

June 23, 2006

+Katharine

When I was in seminary, I thought Julian of Norwich was a guy. When I found out she wasn’t, I got curious. Then I discovered that though she seemed a bit bananas, she was yet in a lot of and maybe even constant demand for helping folk stumbling along the Way, a few centuries later, even me.

She lived in some sort of cubicle attached to the side of a church in such a way that she could still see the altar and all the while be accessible to passersby. Maybe it was a precursor to drive-in windows. They’ve proven very handy to the general public and they also offer some anonymity to them as wants it, like us addicts not only to the sauce, but maybe to some inordinary lust after power, for example.

I got a T-shirt for CP at GC2006 that says “God is not a boy’s name.” That sort of issue never seemed to bother Julian any, but I suspect she’d probably be at least mildly amused. Though I’d be the last to suggest it, maybe Presiding Bishop-elect Katharine Jefferts Schori could open a few more doors if she just let go and let Jefferts, or maybe even Jeff?

No? Just forget I ever said it. For all is well and all will be well, and all that’s well will end well or whatever. Julian said that as if she was either in her right or left mind, whenever. I believe it, and I’m even more certain about it than ever now that +Katharine by whatever name has got the con.

June 22, 2006

Asleep

Pent 3/7B [Mk 4.35-41;5.1-20]

All through the unfolding New Covenant story, it’s the daemons who are on to Jesus all along and before anybody else. Jesus is aware of this. To watch his timing, he admonishes them here and there and now and then to cool it when he’s not ready for others to know.

In this story about the possessed Gerasene, Jesus asks the daemons’ name. They are Legion. That’s a lot. They can see he’s not impressed. They know they can’t exist in a vacuum. So they plead for a new and different venue. There’s a herd of swine handily nearby, so he simply drives them out of the demoniac and into the pigs. Dorothy Sayers, the writer of note, once said of this incident that it seemed to her that Jesus took quite a casual disregard for other people’s livestock.

It’s a busy gospel this Sunday. There’s this daemon tale, and there’s, as well, the remarkable story of Jesus calming a monster storm with a mere word or two . “Peace! Be still!”

We’ve a storm, a monster storm. Like the disciples, we’re in a boat ourselves and without much of a paddle. We are all rock and roll in a world and a church thrown about by massive geopolitical tsunamis and by a spiritual ozone polluted and burned away, alien to the breath by which God created us. It’s choking us to death.

Like the Gerasene, the daemons have got a death grip. But Jesus is here with us as he was with them. He sees our fear. Our fear to change. Our fear to risk the new. Our lack of courage and wisdom to make significant choices. Jesus knows that our fear, as was theirs, is the product of little or no faith. Perhaps it’s a comforting thought for us to know that — when and if we remember it. Jesus is handy. But of course, we never seem to realize that there’s always a chance he will not only be asleep but stay asleep when we need him or at best, just be indifferent to our needs.

One of our biggest opportunities to awaken him comes every three years when we pull ourselves together and make our choices in our generally conventional way. We’ve just now had another such opportunity. Indeed, on the last day of this Convention up in Columbus, Ohio, we, too, were in more than just a metaphoric storm. We were in a literal and massive storm — thunder, lightening, the works. Jesus slept as Jesus is wont to do, unimpressed with the things that frighten us. But for neither storm did we wake Jesus up. We passed a pandering resolution, instead.

It’s surely a sign of our paucity of faith that we’re not going to take any chances. So we resolved to “exercise restraint” by not choosing, by not choosing any leaders “whose manner of life presents a challenge to the wider church and will lead to further strains on communion.” In other words, we’re not in to challenging. Don’t nobody dare to wake Jesus up. Don’t you dare.

June 21, 2006

GC11

A bishop who literally stood with the Networkers at GC 2003 and later changed his position said he started voting for Nutt Parsley in last Sunday’s PB election, then changed to Jefferts Schori. He realized, he said, that Parsley is a bishop for the present and Jefferts Schori is a bishop for the future.

It would be refreshing, to say the least, for the church to get into the present and out of the past. But for the church to anticipate and reach into the future with the kind of risk faith always includes and demands portends, in my opinion, a far more consistent implementation of the gospel. 

Talk about future. One of the more reassuring markers at GC 2006 is the numbers of youth among the deputies who not only were present, but some of whom spoke on the issues with informed clarity. Heaven knows, we’re yet a church far more elder hostel than Woodstock, but any signs to the contrary are not only altogether welcome, but — speaking frankly as an octogenarian — just comfortably somewhat on the frighteningly fun side.

The Windsor resolution bouncing back and forth yesterday that finally got voted down called, I understand, for us to refrain from ordaining as a bishop anyone whose “manner of life presents a challenge to the wider church.” I can almost hear Jesus saying, “Whew!”

 

June 20, 2006

Woman

It’s hard enough to walk the talk on one’s own, let alone in concert. Two can probably learn to tango, but a thousand or so (aka a General Convention) take a while to get the moves. Nevertheless, that’s the way it’s done if any corporate decisions will get made.

Considering all that jazz, it seems passing strange for some of us to behave as if the Holy Spirit cannot serve and inspire and bless us as well through a woman (Ed. bias: If not better) as through a man. The way some are responding to the kind of free choosers we are imaginatively created to be (cf BCP 845) in selecting Katharine to be our presiding bishop might just be construed by God to be downright insulting. Surely they’ve not forgot whom it was he chose to birth his Word, of all people.

That’s the way God got a life. Strikes me as a pretty good way for us to listen up and get one, too.