July 31, 2008
SJ
Today’s the feast day of St Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Society of Jesus, whose members are called Jesuits. He wrote Spiritual Exercises, a book of meditations, prayers, and various other mental exercises designed to strengthen Catholic faith. In 1534, Ignatius and six others founded the Society of Jesus in a crypt in Paris, France.Two members of a monastic order (name undisclosed by executive privilege) argued about which was the most favored order in the eyes of God. To settle their dispute, they prostrated themselves before the high altar at dawn and remained there throughout the day praying for answer. As dusk gathered about them, a small card came floating down from the upper reaches of the sanctuary and landed just within reach.Hastily, they picked it up. “All orders are equal in the eyes of God,” it read. It was signed, “Jesus Christ, SJ.”
July 30, 2008
Talk
After years of hiding the fact that the love is gone and the last child moved out of the house, Mom and Dad announce that they are getting a divorce.
The kids are distraught and hire a marriage counselor as a last resort at keeping the parents together. The counselor works for hours, tries all of his methods, but the couple still won’t even talk to each other.
Finally, the counselor goes over to a closet, brings out a beautiful upright bass, and begins to play. After a few moments, the couple starts talking. They discover that they’re not actually that far apart and decide to give their marriage another try.
The kids are amazed and ask the counselor how he managed to do it. He replies, “I’ve never seen anyone who wouldn’t talk during a bass solo.”
After some considerable years playing on dance bands and for other type musical performances, this story is painfully true to my experience, not only for bass solos, but for that matter, almost anything else.
I pass on this piece of hilarity because I’ve found the same to be true for the musician’s postlude at the conclusion of a liturgy, especially on Sundays. A pianist, organist, or other instrumentalist can spend hours preparing for a service and start the postlude, only to find it to be a signal for a congregation suddenly to burst into an impossible din of vocal cacaphony, hymnals thudding to the floor, shuffling chairs, opening and closing doors, interrupting other congregants who may be yet at prayer, and whatever.
What possesses us to do this is beyond me. It would be unthinkable to behave this way as we enter and prepare for a worship celebration. Why do so many take the unwarranted license to do so at the dismissal? If you just can’t stand the postlude and show some appreciation and courtesy to your church musician, then exit yourself to the coffee minute where you usually have to shout to be heard.
On second thought, anybody having marital problems could be invited to stay until the postlude finishes.
July 25, 2008
Jacobus
Tradition has it that James, whose feast is kept today by some perhaps, was the first of the twelve to be martyred.
The New Testament letter attributed to him, considering its plethora of hortatory imperatives, mostly takes the form of a preachment, maybe one reason for his early demise. In fact, it’s a style that for some continues to pay the rent, especially if the eminently successful and carefully coifed TV evangelists mean anything at all.
With Peter and John, James was apparently on an inside track with Jesus, being chosen to witness both the Transfiguration and the agony in Gethsemane. Of course, that he slept through most of the best parts of both doesn’t commend him all that well, but might buy him a pass to Lambeth.
He and Paul took conflicting spins on faith. For Paul, faith is the believer’s loyalty to the Christ, a way of life. For James, it’s more or less assent to theological statements, pointless without works and as difficult as it is for some to come by, hardly a work in itself. Such perspectives remain very much alive today in all the current wrangle separating the sheep from the goats.
Martin Luther disdained James’s reflections and preferred a Bible if not without him, at least without his journal. It was Martin who called his work an “epistle of straw.” On the other hand, maybe he’d have consented to its being kept in the canon if he had only realized that if James had been a bit more hip, what he really meant by “faith without works is dead” was simply “don’t let the grace grow under your feet” (Jas 2.17).
July 24, 2008
Parables
Pentecost 11/12A
Patience has been called a minor form of despair disguised as a virtue. God is usually very generous with it. If you ask for it, you’ll more than likely get it. And you’ll probably be sorry.
I don’t know about you, but Matthew has been testing my patience these past few Sundays. He’s been in what might be called ”parable-of-the-kingdom overload,” reporting Jesus telling one parable after another. There’s been the parable of the sower, the parable of the wheat and the tares, and now, today, the parable of the mustard seed, the parable of the leaven, the parable of the pearl of great price, and finally, the parable of the indiscriminate net, the one that that catches all sorts and conditions of fish. Finally, the twelve who’d been his upfront audience all along, sound a bit like they’ve run out of patience. They ask, in effect, What’s with all these parables?
Jesus takes a breath, maybe somewhat out of patience, himself, and answers with this: “To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God, but for those outside, everything is in parables; so that they may indeed see but not perceive, and may indeed hear but not understand; lest they should turn again, and be forgiven” (Mk 4.10-12). I hear that, and I wonder, Does that include us? Does that include his church? These wall-to-wall parables and all the others here and there sound like a mystery wrapped in an enigma. When we don’t get them, does that mean we’ve not been given the secret of the kingdom? Is it not the kingdom we are supposed to savvy and to tell others about?
What are we to think? The disciples get the password to the kingdom, and all the rest of us churchers are handed the parables to do with the best we can lest we figure it all out and get saved? What can we say, then, about the parables and about the kingdom of God? We can say this: A parable is a small story with a large point, not with a lot of points all over the ballpark like an allegory. You can easily miss the point altogether if you start assigning people and things to the parts like a stage production. A parable is not an allegory.
Many of the ones Jesus told reveal the intriguing irony so common to and so revealing of the ways of God. They make a statement of facts readily enough, but in a mystifying way that tends to an exclusiveness intended only for an inner circle, just as Jesus says. Some of them illustrate that a foolish question deserves a foolish answer. The disciples’ question reminds me of one put to Louis Armstrong when a fan asked him, “Pops, what is jazz?” only to hear him answer, “Man, if you gotta ask, you’ll never know.”
Parables are ripe with metaphor and are indeed often metaphors in themselves. There’s a lesson herein for any who would need to make Scripture into some infallible verbal inerrancy only to render it altogether impotent, to rob it of its poetic beauty and power, and indeed of its parables, of their truth.
At any rate, like jokes and jazz, if you’ve got to have parables explained, don’t bother. Parables are not to be explained, they are to be understood, and like most of the important things in life, they are understood only by our opening ourselves to them and listening with wonder and imagination and the faith that undergirds these presents, participating in them in a way, accepting this freedom as the gift from God it is intended to be.
Parables, Jesus seems to be saying, are not stories that cause or intend us to be faithful, but stories that open themselves to us through the eyes and ears of whatever faithfulness we can bring to them. We are to find the meaning in them. In other words, these parables of the kingdom do not exist in and of and for themselves, but for to give God a place, a room with a view to maneuver in our lives.
In one of his delightful theological ABC books, Frederick Buechner says things like this… The parables of Jesus are not historical allegories telling us how God acts with us, neither are they moral example-stories telling us how to act before God and towards one another. They are stories that shatter the deep structure of our taken-for-granted world. In the parable of the Laborers in the Vineyard, the legalists are outraged when Johnny-Come-Lately gets as big a slice of the worm as the Early Bird (Mt 20.1-16). The point of the Unjust Steward is that it’s better to be a resourceful rascal than a saintly schlemiel (Lk 16.1-8). In the parable of the Talents, spiritually speaking, playing the market will get you further than playing it safe (Mt 25.14-30). [Wishful Thinking, pp 66f]
Parables remove our defenses and make us vulnerable to God. It is only in such experiences that God can touch us, and only in such moments does the kingdom of God arrive. At such times we best realize the startling irony that true security is the serenity that comes from accepting insecurity as our mortal lot. The thoughts and stories in the Bible do not furnish easy assurance, but awaken and challenge us with their contradiction even of each other.
And so what of the kingdom of God, the freight these parables are designed to collect and to move and to deliver? What would these stories have meant to Jesus’s audience? First, their primary and essential reference is to the sovereignty of God conceived in the most concrete possible manner, that is, to God’s activity in ruling. The kingdom of God is the authority of God expressed in deeds. It is that which God does that reveals to us that God is king. It is not a place or even a community ruled by God nor even an abstract idea of these things. The kingdom of God is the activity of God as king and places the major emphasis on those acts wherein and whereby God’s sovereignty is made manifest. Once again, the parables and their devastating challenges to the status quo provide room for God to reveal these acts in our lives. W H Auden put it like this, “You cannot tell people what to do, you can only tell them parables; and that is what art really is, particular stories of particular people and experiences… ”
Perhaps their most important relevance in these times is to remind us that biblical morality is not about sex and abortion and gay marriage. Biblical morality is about caring for the poor and dispossessed, about our stewardship of the environment, about our life together in communities where justice and peace are as welcome and tangible as when the sun also rises. The Lutheran bishop and scholar Krister Stendahl spoke most winningly, I think, of the message of the parables when he said, Wherever and whenever the brokenness of the world and our life in it is being mended, there is present the kingdom of God.
Jesus reminds us as he did the disciples, parables are not told to convince or convert us to God, but to enable us through our faith to understand God’s presence and to make room for God, for us to find meaning in our lives, to realize that all along Jesus is God’s parable, and that we by our own faith-filled imaginations can become parables ourselves. That is at least one of the secrets of the kingdom that has been given to us.
July 23, 2008
Systems
Once, I was only a tangent to Systems Theory. It was when I was spiritual director (honest, that’s what they called it because they thought “chaplain” sounded too religious
July 23, 2008
Serenity
Reinhold Niebuhr’s so-called serenity prayer is really a prayer about change with peace and courage and wisdom wrapped around it.As we face change, maybe our hearts and our heads get a bit out of synch and have to play catch-up with all the new venues coming down. But they’ll regain their balance and their creative energy as before. They always do. They always have. That is the nature and endurance of the church, the rock of Jesus’s naming and choosing.It is well to remember Isaiah and others like Molly Ivins and to recall how with whatever capacities left to us we stand in their stead. We need but look to PB Katharine on the verge of an exciting and demanding new time for herself and for church women and for the church together with whom God will make all things new. It’s a damn shame. But come to think of it, it’s the same way God had to get Jesus born.Pray, then, for the resources of serenity and courage and wisdom, reach deep into them, ferret them out, praying for what we know is right, then take our good and nourishing time to help make it so. God loves us in spite of us. That’s not apt to change, but remembering and relishing in it is the way God prepares us for all the other changes she has in mind.
July 14, 2008
Kingdom
Krister Stendhal, New Testament scholar and Lutheran bishop, puts it like this: Wherever the brokenness of the world is being mended, there is present the kingdom of God.
I find that most appealing and wonder often at its ramifications. I’m careful to note that he didn’t imply that if it’s still broke, God’s not there, only that God’s kingdom may not be there.
However you put it, there’s surely something to say for the relationship between God’s reign and mending or might we also say, healing. Healing, not curing [which is another story], but healing is what this is about. Being made whole, being complete, requires God, in this life, at least, to close the gaps that keep us short of being a bit more passionate for our pains, a little more alive, a little wiser, a little more beautiful, a little more open and understanding, to fulfill us, in short, to help us become a little more human.
Stendhal’s reflection seems also to say something about the Christian privilege and covenant to witness. So often, witnessing is taken only to mean telling one’s own story in faith, what one’s take or one’s church’s take on the Good News might be at any given time. All that is well and good, but, I’m sure you’ve found, not always so welcomed by one’s audience.
May not witnessing also mean something like that of a witness providing evidence in a courtroom. We churchers don’t seem to be much in the habit of looking outside our own institutional salvation-periphery for God’s kingdom. As much a part of the broken world as we obviously are, we imply — quite ludicrously — that one really needn’t look any further. Witnessing, if it would be at all winsome, is surely more than that.
Perhaps telling about the kingdom of God could mean telling about wherever we see the brokenness of the world being healed, wherever we see signs of the kingdom — peace, justice, and love — manifest, wherever people are becoming free to choose, more loving, more creative, more reasonable, more in harmony with the creation, itself. Maybe, if Paul be correct, even more foolish, maybe even so foolish as not to let mere things like gender blind us to God’s reign, God’s healing in our lives, and especially God’s healing in the lives of others. There, we might say with something like reckless abandon, is God at work.
July 7, 2008
Rock and roll
The omnipresence of the presidential wannabe campaigns and the occasional intrusion of critical problems like the economy and the wars have a way of excluding the real news when it comes along. I’m not talking about Wimbledon and the so-called All England hoopla which got plenty of coverage and was still not all that newsy coming out like it did depending, of course, on who’s your favorite. What I am concerned with is the goings on over in Kentucky and Ohio.
Kentucky officials have charged an Ohioan with pilfering a rock and have started an outright border war. Indian Head Rock is a mossy eight-ton sandstone boulder that divides the two states. The news story reported that an Ohio historian raised the rock from the Kentucky side of the Ohio River and took it to Portsmouth, Ohio, where it now sits ignobly in a city garage. A Kentucky grand jury has indicted him.
Indian Head Rock is claimed to be an “object of antiquity,” the removal of which is a felony that carries a sentence of up to five years. The historian being charged claimed the rock had been submerged in the river and largely forgotten for the better part of a century. Kentucky is seeking revenge for the removal of the rock, whose crude etchings and graffiti have long figured in Portsmouth’s local lore. On the other hand, the rock has lingered on an official Kentucky antiquities list since 1986. State officials say it is a protected artifact and that such cannot be removed without a permit from the University of Kentucky’s archeology department.
“We’re not fighting over a rock,” said the state prosecutor. Instead, he implied, that it’s a matter principle not getting a license for the move. A Kentucky state representative from Louisville said that “Clearly, there’s a different set of values in Kentucky than apparently exist in Portsmouth, Ohio.” The Ohio historian being charged called the affair a “bizarre Appalachian tale,” and added, “Every day is a new day with this rock.”
There is, of course, a certain truth in the way time passes for Indian Head Rock. Each day has been a new one now for some 300 or so million years since its parent sandstones were deposited during what was probably the Mississippian geologic age. Be that as it may, OoN’s political reporters were unable to reach either of the presidential aspirants for a statement. Their spokespersons, however, strangely enough agreed that the problem was all rock and roll to them.
July 5, 2008
Liberty
An OoN thought for our nation this weekend…The lines at the base of the Statue of Liberty are from Emma Lazarus’s 1883 poem, “The New Colossus.” Here is the complete text:Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,With conquering limbs astride from land to land;Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall standA mighty woman with a torch whose flameIs imprisoned lightning, and her nameMother of Exiles. From her beacon-handGlows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes commandThe air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.”Keep ancient lands your storied pomp!” cries she with silent lips.”Give me your tired your poor,Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”
July 4, 2008
Interdependence
Pent 8/9A Independence Day
It has been said that to sacrifice something is to make it holy by giving it away for love.
In the Eucharist, the place at which that action is perhaps most graphic is in the moment of offering bread and wine and money. In our congregation, we call additional attention to that with two short prayers through which we ask God to join with us in making holy what we are sacrificing, what we are giving away for love. We may not always be so conscious of this, but there it is, anyway, what the church has meant to do for twenty centuries.
On Independence Day or the nearest Sunday, as an exceptional way of adding to our celebration and, indeed, to our sacrifice, we offer together with these other symbols our nation’s flag, properly folded and placed in an alms basin.
There are many ways to display the flag, each with its own meaning. When it is to one’s right as in the president’s oval office, it symbolizes allegiance. When it is flown upside down, it is a sign of distress. When at half-mast, it is to indicate mourning. When a flag is torn, stepped on, or burned, the message is rejection and rebellion. When a flag flies at full staff, the announcement is peace, victory, rule or whatever adjective you might speak to the situation at the time. It is not our usual custom to display our nation’s flag in our chancel, though such is far from uncommon in many churches.
Whatever way we incorporate our national symbol, it is well to keep in mind that Hebrew and Christian scriptures record two problems about patriotism as always having plagued the People of God. One is to become so conformed to a culture and its ways so as to merge the two, rather than bringing the culture into the ways of God. The other is to allow the rule of God to be replaced by the rule of the State. Therefore, we must exercise care how we use our national symbols.
We Christians are believers in the incarnation, and it is thus not always easy to separate the issues from the people or the symbols who embody them. Patriotism — about which these days some of us hear more than enough and others never enough — is one of those very important issues which we incarnate and which is not all that easy to separate from the person or the symbol that embraces it.
Few of us, I suspect, would deny that we are patriots. We may find it easier to say what that does not mean for us than to say what it does mean. One thing we all have in common on the subject, however, is the Declaration of Independence. It seems to me always useful — especially this time of year and in these perilous times — to read it thoughtfully as Christians, and perhaps to discover anew what our founders had in mind when they undertook this great American political experiment by which they told us what patriotism meant for them.
On the celebration of our nation’s birthday each year, National Public Radio broadcasts a reading of the Declaration of Independence. Their announcers, reporters, analysts, and essayists each follow in turn reading a short, self-contained passage. The familiar voices are nameless, and one can only guess whose they are. The anonymity seems not only tantalizing, but somehow appropriate, as well. I like to imagine our founders as they wrote and shaped this great proclamation maybe having read it aloud similarly as they sought to get the feel, the rhythm, the power, and the authority of it.
Hearing it in this way even more convinces me that, for whatever and surely well-intended reason, the document seems strangely misnamed. I believe it might better have been called a Declaration of Interdependence, instead. It may be well for us to imagine it that way in these difficult times of another, newer, but not all that different national crisis.
Clearly and well, of course, the Declaration establishes us an autonomous nation among all the world’s geopolitical states. That, in itself, is daring enough. But it continues uniquely and refreshingly to proclaim a new and radical political relationship not only with its own citizenry, but also boldly and courageously with all the earth’s peoples who care to join in such a venture. It takes an incarnational view of the very nature of human being and of the body politic as itself a faithful way to render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and unto God the things that are God’s.
We live in a time when independence has seemed to mean the license to run amok unilaterally. The founding sense of the Declaration seems scandalously misunderstood and to be masquerading alone as codependency here, as sexual, ethnic, and political insularity there. These distortions recklessly affect not only individuals and families and our thoughtful and creative governing system of checks and balances, but regions and nations across this entire planet, as well. We seem to be abandoning the very corporate nature of the stewardship which this founding document affirmed and for which it called.
The answer to all this is not, I believe, some blind, unquestioning loyalty which is no loyalty at all, but an out-and-out denial of one’s citizenship. It is not the impudent display of flag lapel pins all the while blatantly ignoring the Constitutional systems which one has vowed to protect and defend and which that flag symbolizes. Rather is true patriotism to love our country enough to see that in a nuclear age it is not going to survive unless the world survives. True patriots are no longer champions of Democracy, Communism, or anything like that but champions of the Human Race. It is not the Homeland that they feel called on to defend at any cost, but the planet Earth as Home.
If in the interests of making sure that we don’t blow ourselves off the map once and for all, we end up relinquishing a measure of national sovereignty to some international body, so much the worse for national sovereignty. For there is only one Sovereignty that matters ultimately, and it is of quite another sort altogether.
Oh, and there is a tidbit which we dare not overlook after a reading of the Declaration of Independence. It is that King George III entered into his journal on that vital July 4, 1776, “Nothing of any importance or consequence took place today.”
Note: The useful reminders about ways and meanings of flag displays came my way from Pepper Marts, churchman, veteran, writer, and rattler of stained glass out in New Mexico. The splendid reflections on the meaning of patriotism belong to Frederick Buechner and appear in his “Whistling in the Dark,” Harper & Row, p 93.