June 9, 2008

The Walk

Fred Rogers wanted to meet Koko, the gorilla who had been taught American Sign Language and who had often watched “Mr Rogers’s Neighborhood.” When they met, the huge gorilla gave the diminutive Rogers a big hug, then took off Mister Rogers’s shoes.

It is only too easy to think of a neighborhood more as a place than as a relationship, more realty than reality. In our better moments, we might even call it an outward and visible sign of an inner and spiritual reality. Then maybe we’d be on to something.

To use a neighborly term, this summer’s Lambeth Conference is just around the corner. All those bishops in all those shades of purple. What a vision. There they’ll be from all over the world gathered in one place. But if what we hear is true, some of them will not even speak to one another, and some weren’t even invited. Talk about global warming.

What if we could somehow set aside all of religion’s protective security long enough to allow faith’s openness and risk to have their way? What if we could just find some way to embrace Lambeth as a kind of Big Fat Anglican Wedding and accept it as a rollicking collection of some of those neighbors God wants us to love like ourselves?

Perhaps Koko and Mr Rogers give us a clue. Why not before each plenary gathering the bishops just give one another a big hug, take off a neighbor’s shoes, and dance? Remember the Lambeth Walk?

June 6, 2008

Airplanes

The airplanes have started charging for check-through baggage and have simultaneously even stopped serving pretzels. A cartoonist the other day showed them charging for drop-down oxygen masks. Past them I would not it put.

All this together with delayed flights has become a way of life. Charging for shipping has increased the number of carry-ons. With more baggage now scattered around, one dare not leave anything unattended for fear of Homeland Securities’ insecurely collecting them along with trashing all our over-three-and-a-half-ounce treasures. This makes the layovers even more frustrating, the missed appointments and connections even more expensive, and the tempers even shorter.

Maybe we ought to rebel. Our local postal office used to offer a free first-class stamp for anybody who had to wait in line for service more than five minutes. When the postage went up last time, they stopped all over and instead bought 250,000 new “Next Window Please” signs with the profit. So a lot of the snailmailers became e-mailers. Maybe we could organize an opposition group, something like TRIF, The Revenge of the InFrequent Flyers.

On the other hand, the president thinks we’re addicted, and he’s probably right. Maybe we’re too hooked to fight back. If that’s the case, then the Middle East is just enabling our codependency all the while and would probably ban even AlAnon as a CIA plot against unknown Muslims.

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June 5, 2008

Walking

Pentecost 4/5A Mt 9.9-13,18-36

“As Jesus was walking along… ” (Mt 9.9a)

It’s all in a day’s work.

Enlist a new disciple, one with a shady reputation whom nobody trusts. Take a dinner party for the opportunity to tell people why, that only the sick need care, that mercy trumps sacrifice every time, that it’s the sinners who need attention.

Be interrupted by the local rabbi with the news that his daughter has just died. Make a not altogether graceful exit. On the way, stop long enough to heal a woman ill for years, then go and restore the child midst a mocking, flute-playing audience, wondering, perhaps, how ludicrous things can get. And wondering, as well as some have, that maybe medicine might have been a more rewarding profession than politics and preaching.

“As Jesus was walking along… ”

Might we churchers have it so good. We are so serious about ourselves. Going out for such a stroll in our way never seems to enter our minds. Or maybe it does, and we see what happened to Jesus. And maybe we fail to see how “walking along” turned out to be precisely his occasion for to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable. And to see how Matthew’s simple little pericopé, his little summing up reveals the very pattern for our ministry.

This week remembers the fortieth anniversary of Robert Kennedy’s assassination. In a collection of newspaper op-ed pieces, his children reflected on him as their father. One of them remembered that he taught them that we must build a system of justice which enjoys the confidence of all sides. That peace is not just to pray for in some distant time, but something all of us have the responsibility to create in our way every day. And that we must garner the courage to bypass all that impedes us and face the truth about ourselves as well as those we consider our enemies.

As Jesus was walking along, I wonder had he not come to something like these conclusions for his own ministry. He had long since discovered the truth about himself and the courage he needed to implement it. Perhaps the challenges we face as Anglican Christians walking along as we do may bring us to the same realities.

June 3, 2008

Clime

Our town has won another award. I don’t know where from came our previous honors Music City, USA, and Athens of the South. My suspicion is maybe from a modest Chamber of Commerce of previous years.

But not the accolade that was in the paper yesterday. We are now the sixth most polluted city in the nation. I couldn’t find either Houston or Los Angeles even on the list. Flonase and Advair and Singulaire are vying for the honor of making us their poster child.

I saw somewhere the other day that global-warming scofflaws think our climate problems are caused by sunspots. That it is unfair to blame soccer moms and their SUVs, even though our town has more than its share of both. A large portion of them come from neighboring counties where only the birds face emission tests.

There is this to say. The magnolias are in bloom, though our Little Gem looks rather scruffy. The hummingbirds should arrive shortly. The redbreasted grosbeaks have headed wherever they head. The goldfinches and the cardinals seem right at home.

The neighborhood cats nod in passing but generally ignore us, being more intent on the bird feeder locations. The squirrels seem to have thinned out, maybe because a red fox has taken up residence in one of the thickets nearby our yard. It passes by usually of a morning and closer, it seems, each day, this morning stopping long enough to exchange silent, ear-flipping greetings, for it seemed to understand when CP, the polyglot, spoke to it in Dog.

A realtor friend of ours said she sold four houses here last week ranging from $90,000 to two million, and that people from all over are moving here to this smog-filled anticlinal basin. Maybe it’s because we claim to have more bluegrass than Kentucky. Like Jane Fonda might have said on one of her workout videos, Go figure.

June 2, 2008

Listen

It simply never occurred to me that whatever I said from the pulpit of a Sunday morning would make much difference except to somebody who couldn’t remember whether or not they had turned off the oven before leaving home. The only way it did seem to matter, however, was to be careful whom I quoted. Mention “Bishop James Pike,” and I could watch the hearing aids — real and virtual — shutting down. Plagiarize him, and get nothing but praise from the narthex traffic for whatever he said that they thought I had said.

Actually, we got little comfort on the subject from our seminary homiletics prof. He said that about all anybody would remember about our preaching would be the jokes… if any… and that there should always be a few.

But things have changed. Church and state are supposed to be separated in our nation’s polity, but I guess actually only when it’s convenient. If you can’t find anything else negative to say about some aspirant for public office, check out what kind of preachments they’ve been listening to. It used to be a plus for a person just to show at church now and then in order to get a leg up on an election. Nobody seemed to care much about whether or what you believed. It is said that even Hitler believed in God. Now you can praise torture out of one side of your mouth anytime you want so long as you praise the Lord out of the other.

I suppose it’s a positive thing that people seem to be paying more attention to sermons now than ever before. From what I hear, it might be a good thing if maybe some preachers will catch on and do the same.