March 17, 2008

Dignity

Just last month, a 36 year old father of three came home from work, walked off the commuter train, crossed the tracks, and deliberately placed himself in the path of the oncoming train. He was killed instantly. Later it was learned that he feared he was going to be “downsized.”

My family lived through the Great Depression of the late twenties and early thirties, the four of us barely getting by. Similar stories then were not all that uncommon. Today’s subprime market’s collapse leading to severe unemployment and foreclosures is seen by many financial gurus as a confirmation of an impending financial disaster not unlike the one my family lived through. Many of these experts are deeply concerned about widespread unemployment and the crippling indignity which always comes in its wake. This young father’s suicide may be a tragic parable of our times.

We are a day into Holy Week. The gospel of Jesus and the great saga culminating in Easter at heart tell another parable, a parable of hope and abundance, a parable of peace and of justice. There is every reason to believe that our congregations will swell in these immediate days and that more than the usual number may be in search of these very gifts, those realities of which our invitation to the Passion and encouragement of its redemptive healing assures them.

That we would welcome them instead with our obsession with sex, with some quick-fix covenant, and with how many bishops it takes to depose another is to our shame. It is an embarrassment to God. For the church is called to be, and the church must be, especially in these times, an embodiment of this gospel parable rather than merely one more religious institution bewitched and bollixed with the fear of its own survival.

Instead, the church must turn to its commission to be both pastor and prophet in these times. For this parable is one not only of compassion and nourishment, but, as well, one of prophetic indictment of the very divisive forces in our society that bring about these current conditions that humiliate and denigrate ourselves and our neighbors.

I cannot recall when in recent time have the commitments in our Baptismal Covenant been more central to our ministries. We have embraced those and must and can be ourselves refreshed by our fellowship and by our liturgies, by our resistance to evil, by our repentance, by our proclamation of the Good News of God in Christ, but above all in these days by a Christ-seeking and Christ-serving leadership that strives for justice and peace and most importantly the respect and dignity of all.

The church is the family where these things can and do happen, indeed, the church is the family where they must happen. The church is the family where women and men can be loved until they can come to love and respect themselves and then come to love and respect others. It is this we must offer and this to which we must find the winsomeness for it to become irresistible.

Richard Wheatcroft is a good friend and colleague. He has put this ministry, this parable for dignity, like this: “In the Liturgy of the Eucharist we come to kneel before the Altar to receive the body and blood of the crucified and risen Jesus. Kneeling on the same level, side by side, we are all equal. The clergy are servers distributing of bread and wine equally to all. All receive the same amount of bread and wine. When the priest says, The Body of Christ, the bread of heaven, I hear The Body of Christ, the bread of justice. When a chalice bearer says, The Blood of Christ, the cup of salvation, I hear The Blood of Christ, the cup of compassion. Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer writes, ‘It is in food and drink offered equally to everyone that the presence of God and Jesus is found. But food and drink are the material basis of life, so the Lord’s Supper is political criticism and economic challenge as well.’”

By the grace of God and with Jesus’s presence, we must make that happen.

March 14, 2008

Editing

According to Webster’s New Collegiate, an obituary (L. obitus = deceased) is a “notice of a person’s death usu.(sic) with a short biographical account.” I am not all that sure what is a biographical account of a death, whatever length, but our town’s papers charge by the word, anyway, so the shorter, I suppose, the better.

I mention this because CP decided recently that we should probably get about writing our own obituaries while we are still able and more or less coherent, and that we shouldn’t be leaving them up to somebody else who maybe was not all that well informed. I think she probably read this in some AARP or Church Pension Group material. Furthermore, neither should their length matter whatever the charge, she said, as we’d more than likely be paying for each other’s, sort of, you might say, like as a last tribute.

Somehow, I didn’t exactly get right on it as she didn’t seem to be doing much about hers either. I wondered whether my being older than the hills might have had something to do with her procrastination. Anyhow, I finally went ahead and wrote mine.

Even though I had heard that a newspaper’s obituaries are usually written by youngsters just out of journalism school, I took the New York Times as an example, presuming they’d probably hired the better students. But that didn’t prove all that helpful because when I compared the “short biographical account” of my death to their typical and longer ones, I got rather depressed when it dawned on me how little I had accomplished and what little influence I had had in all these years. Finally, and not all that easily, I got something done. I ran it through my printer and left a copy on CP’s desk without comment.

Several days went by, and I began to wonder had she seen it or maybe had she even read it if she had. After all, it had been her idea in the first place, and I was rather proud that I had coöperated at all, for it hadn’t been all that easy. Finally, I asked.

Yes, she’d read it, she said. Well? I said. Well, she said, You left a lot out, so I took the blue pencil to it. (The kind editors are said to use, I suppose.) When she began to tell me what I’d left out, I was overjoyed. I didn’t know she’d remembered. It was almost like a second honeymoon, save for the editing part, the purpose, and all.

March 13, 2008

Stoned

Palm Sunday catalyst 2008

Pharisees> “Teacher, rebuke your disciples.” Jesus> “I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out” (Lk 19.39f).

Every geologist knows that rocks talk. Every road-cut, cliff, and valley river bank is a veritable Baedeker that the present is the key to the past, that some kinds of language speak louder than words, or to put it a bit fancier, that ontology recapitulates phylogeny.

When Jesus and John Baptist talked about the deafening silence of the stones, they were on to something long before the 19th-century Brit engineer William “Strata” Smith discovered geology and changed the way the world listened to itself.

John said the stones could “raise up children of Abraham” ever so well as those who bragged about being his kin (Lk 3.8). Jesus charged that if the people along the Boulevard of Palms didn’t themselves hail the King, “the very stones would cry out” (Lk 19.40).

It’s interesting how the creationists and the intelligent designers claim the fossils are only Satanic ruses to deceive us, and all the while it’s downright ludicrous how the little petrified bugs are just another way of God’s saying in his own Paleontology 101-ic Jovian way, “look at me and what I’m up to.” The more we learn about the cosmos and how all its stuff including us is the same only clobbered up differently, how in spite of our good looks, we’re only 90% or so water, the more we’re amazed at the way God imagines it all to be and become.

The stones haven’t got a lot of freedom, but they make it up with efficiency. By the grace of God, we’re pretty near as free as the birds, but about as inefficient as anything can get. Then we do have a way of getting ourselves stoned and pretty thoroughly bollixing it all up in our most inefficient ways.

Whatever. I get a charge when John and Jesus get into geology. As old Jimmy Durante used to say, It’s enough to “warm the cocktails” of a geologist’s heart.

March 12, 2008

Julian

When I started to 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 constant demand for helping people who were stumbling along the Way. Me included.

She lived in some sort of loo-like 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, both of which have proven very handy to the general public and which, as well, offer some anonymity to them of us as wants it, like, for example, some with a not-so-ordinary lust for power? The church might take seriously to the idea.

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 Katharine could open a few more doors if she just let go and let Jefferts, or maybe even Jeff, and not only fool some more seminarians, but a few primates, as well.?

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 it in either her right or left mind. I believe it, and I’m even more certain about it than ever now that Katharine by whatever name has got the con.

March 11, 2008

Bidness

Our town depends a lot on the tourist trade. You know, Music City USA and even Athens of the South and all. This makes for one thing the taxis a lot of bidness. Not to mention the guitar stores and the ubiquitous guitar-carriers usually walking the streets. 

As it is, it’s our taxi drivers that have come to notice of late. It is claimed by some that they’re not being conversational enough, and depending on where they come from, that they don’t speak much English. Depending, as well, on where even our visiting American tourists come from, neither do they themselves speak a lot, at least not the sort one hears like from around here. Chamber of Commercial interests are increasingly troubled by these complaints about the taxi drivers and whether tourists can find their ways to the stores and other entertainment so they can spend their money which is all the same.

The drivers are also being criticized for being rude. I don’t know how anybody can tell, there being this language gap and all. Some linguist once did a study of conversations and found out somehow that only seven percent of our exchanges are communicated by words, thirty-eight percent by tone of voice, and the rest by body language. I don’t know how one can tell riding in a taxi, the driver usually in front, the rider usually in back with the traffic noise. Of course, there are such things as shrugged shoulders.

The Pulitzer novelist Toni Morrison says (I know, I quote her a lot, especially this) that it is language that makes us human. I don’t think she said what kind of language or whether she considered that even trees are said to have a  sort of communication themselves. If we would just take into account that our being human is perhaps held more in common by most of us than is our language, and that we all have some kind or another, maybe even sappier than the trees, it might make for a better world all around, one increasingly as it is made up a lot of tourists and taxis. 

March 10, 2008

Spring Training

Spring training is underway, so it’s time for OoN’s seasonal tribute to the Great American Game:

THE PITCHER
by Robert Francis

His art is eccentricity, his aim
How not to hit the mark he seems to aim at.
His passion how to avoid the obvious,
His technique how to vary the avoidance.
The others throw to be comprehended. He
Throws to be a moment misunderstood.
Yet not too much. Not errant, arrant, wild,
But every seeming aberration willed.
Not to, yet still, still to communicate
Making the batter understand too late.

March 8, 2008

Monster

“Monster” is back in the news and not with all that much favor. I can’t see why all the fuss.

I remember it fondly from the jazz world. Man, that guy’s a monster on the tenor sax! Or in sports. She’s a monster three-point shooter. It is always used as quite a compliment.

And then there’s the job-search people Monster.com. I’ve never figured out what that name has to do with employment practices and am too lazy to do the research. But isn’t it just possible it’s use on the campaign circuit could have been a word of praise? One of Hillary’s big claims is all the jobs her presidency will provide — several million if I remember correctly. If I ever heard of monstrous, that’s for sure It with a capital “I”.

Pretty dot common place, too, maybe even, I’d say.

March 7, 2008

Selma

It’s March 7th.

It’s the forty-third anniversary of Selma. It’s also the forty-third anniversary of my first Sunday in a big, fat-cat, downtown, over-my-head southern parish not all that distant from Selma, Alabama, where I’d meant to be and wasn’t.

I had even more severe delusions of grandeur in those days, believing all the stuff I’d heard about church and ministry and “career.” I lament when I see around me there are also those who do so yet.

But it wasn’t all rock-and-roll. By the grace of God, some of us had already escorted students through Texas picket lines.

It was over then, but nobody was admitting it. Like some haven’t admitted it yet. Like some are even now wondering and planning how they can use it in a presidential election. Like Selma and all the others had never happened — and the fire hoses and the dogs and the beatings and the whips and old Bull — and Viola and Jonathan and Medgar and the others.

It’s March 7th, and some still march.

March 6, 2008

Treat

Lent 5A Jn 11.1-53

“I am the resurrection and the life” (Jn 11.25).

When Jesus heard that his good friend Lazarus had died, he treated us to the shortest verse in the Bible: “Jesus wept.” It was also, of course, the answer to one of the oldest of the trite trivia questions.

But on this same occasion, Jesus also treated us to the knowledge that in one way, at least, he’s not all that different from us. It’s called grief. It’s universal. It’s rock-bottom human stuff. His friend died. It broke his heart. We’ve been there and done that.

And there’s even more. In this gospel story of John’s that surrounds this short verse, this mutual, affirming identity, there’s enough distancing mystery to last a lifetime, and there’s nothing if at all trivial about it. Jesus not only weeps when he is saddened, but in short order, he overcomes it. And he doesn’t resort to Ms Elizabeth Kübler-Ross’s five-step grief recovery process, as grand and nourishing as that is.

He just raises his friend from the dead. And in doing so, he also treats us to the knowledge that in another way, at least, he’s so radically different from us as to make us give up altogether. And then, as if all this is not enough, he adds a by-the-way — “I am the resurrection and the life.”

And we Christians can take that reality to the bank along with the grief.

I find it well at times like this to remember that our faith is a corporate faith. We affirm a first-person plural creed every time we get together. The God in whom we profess belief is present in the entire gamut of our experiences as well as in the experiences of others with whom we share and from whom we learn. This corporate faith is sustained, informed, and inspired by Holy Spirit, by God’s very special agent and presence of community. The God I don’t believe in, the God I do believe in, the God filtered through my experience and yours would unlikely be identical to or maybe even analogous to the God affirmed by the community. Yet this God is the same God as Jesus’s God who, when asked, turns Lazarus out of the tomb and unwraps him to start his new life and give this traumatic story a more or less happy ending.

It seems important to me to remember that when Jesus weeps on this occasion, it may not be so much out of his love for Lazarus, as the Jews presume, but out of his possible sorrow for their indifference to the life that is present in their midst. His life. Himself.

“I am the resurrection and the life,” he says. So it is with life, the Life that is Jesus, the Life that Jesus is. This life, as John Evangelist understands it, is eternal life. Whatever else that means, it is never satisfactorily defined quantitatively. It is not a matter of time on end. For it is quality time, not just chronology, calendar time, but special event, turgid-with-meaning kairos fat time. And it is not just one-way time. It is two-way time, give and receive, blesséd time.

For it is time that consists not only of receiving God’s love and justice as it is present in Jesus then and there. It also consists in accepting our own role as missioners of love and justice in the world for Jesus in the here and now. And here’s the knockout punch — we, too, are resurrection and life as those through whom Jesus confronts and engages this world of neighbors with whom we are made whole and share his redemptive grace.

March 5, 2008

Sunbeams

It’s Lent and it has been for a while, so everybody at my church is already talking about Holy Week and Easter. The schedule came in the email only yesterday. It made me wonder whether Lent has become just another time of anticipation or whether it is as I suspect it should be a time of introspection and taking a shot at the possible rearrangement of priorities.

I’ve never been all that good at “keeping” the season or being penitent at all, for that matter. Not that I don’t have plenty of reason. I grew up a Baptist, however, so about all I knew about Lent was when some of my classmates showed up at certain times with smudges on their foreheads. That wasn’t much, and I wasn’t very cosmopolitan if that was what one had to be to know about such things. Actually, it was not until got into seminary that I found out that the narthex wasn’t called that because of where the church doors would be if they were on a compass rose.

Now I know after all these years that the forty days of Lent haven’t always been forty days but once were shorter. I always thought they were forty days, save Sundays, because that’s how long Jesus stayed in the wilderness, although I suspect he stayed out there Sundays, too, or maybe he counted the Sundays unlike we don’t.

What I suspect now is that Jesus went out in the wilderness for forty days or whatever to find out what it means to be Jesus and found out it wasn’t all that common or promising as a vocation. Considering the way we lay so much on him, you’d have thought he already knew. But knowing what we know now, it’s no wonder he wants us for a sunbeam which seems the least he could ask.

Any way you look at it, we’ve never treated him all that fair, certainly never as fair as we expect him to treat us. Maybe Lent’s a time we can reconsider how we do that and how it might becoming of us to become us. I suspect he could tell us a thing or two about how to do that.