Out of Nowhere

An exhibition of New Yorker cartoons at the Morgan Library & Museum pokes fun at the power and precariousness of money. One cartoon shows a scene in a restaurant. A man comments to his companion about a group of grim-looking diners nearby: “They control 96 percent of the market in something nobody wants anymore” (Stan Hunt, 1975).

We don’t need to know what the “something” is, how much each person is losing, or what it feels like to descend from triumph into bitterness. The wonder is at immense power suddenly turning worthless. I once asked a twenty-something new millionaire how he got all that money. Just find out what people want, he said, and offer it to them.

I suppose once I did, but I don’t now need to be told that value and fortune are functions of fashion. Not just of the way things look, but also of what people fashion that they need. The current demise of the automobile industry should be evidence enough of this. That’s one “need” that has been manipulated as the plethora of SUVs reveals, but only up to a point. Perhaps the recent presidential election and the current economic “meltdown” show where that “point” is and how shameful we’ve been in reaching it. Our lack of stewardship with the environment is but another sign of this selfish carelessness.

Whether we’ll ever overcome the massive debt into which this has led us or the irony of how we need more indebtedness even to make a play for it, remains in doubt. One saving grace is through humor. We can be grateful for The New Yorker’s collection of some six-decades of drawings which reveal all this more clearly even than should China one day foreclose on us.

Epiphany 4B Mk 1.21-28 2009

“And the people were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as one who had authority, and not as the scribes. And immediately there was… (in his audience) a man with an unclean spirit; and he cried out… ‘I know who you are…’”

“He taught them as one who had authority.”

There is a confounding ubiquity about spirit, a simultaneous and inclusive presence one simply cannot avoid, no matter where one turns or where one attempts to run. Furthermore, one can never quite be sure whether that presence is good or bad, for spirit is inherently neutral, that is, until one engages it, embraces it, incarnates it. It is then that the rubber meets the road.

One who has authority knows that reality intimately. For it is the very nature of authority to embrace and engage and elicit spirit, indeed, thus to inspire, and furthermore, to order, shape, and in the classic sense and meaning of the word, inform. The daemons in Jesus’s world do us a great service, for they are often the first to know this authority about him. They already know it about us and how vulnerable we are. In our blindness, they frequently have their way with us. But they’ve met their match in Jesus — and ultimately in all those who truly serve God.

This marvelous little story in the early verses of Mark’s gospel illustrates his urgency in telling the Jesus saga by starting right off with the truly critical effect of Jesus’s presence. There’s no beating about the bush here, and the rest is downhill in the rush to climax.

The people in the synagogue are almost instantly “astonished at his teaching… (with) authority,” but they are only “amazed” and driven to murmuring among themselves. Whereas the “man with the unclean spirit” who was also there at worship knew instantly in abject fear of who confronted him and, I should hope, to his relief at the demise of his possessors. This scene recalls for me C S Lewis’s Wormwood in The Screwtape Letters and his out-of-balance churchiness.

It, too, is about the confrontation of power with authority. See how authority meets and elicits, draws forth the spirits of those it would lead and incorporates them in accomplishing their goals? Whereas power commands and overrides the other’s spirit with its own. One need but recall the World War II leadership of a Churchill or a Roosevelt to discover a brilliant illustration of authority. And then to lay it over and against the dictators of the Axis to find the momentary clash and destructive results of authority when construed as power.

Authority reaches out of its own spirit into our spirits and enjoins us to its cause. Power manipulates our spirits and cripples them. One remembers the story of the lame man, lying by a pool at the Sheep Gate for decades waiting for someone to take him to the waters to be healed. When Jesus saw him there, he simply asked the man the obvious question, “Do you want to be healed?” (If so, then) “Rise, take up your pallet and walk” (Jn 5.1-9). Jesus met the man’s will with authority, not power at the weakened implement of his lagging spirit. The man stood and walked.

Some confuse authority with power and, as well, construe teaching with manipulation. This confusion muddles the church in our time. Authority, we often hear — and rightly so — is truly the critical turning point in the church’s current demise within itself. And strangely, the critics of the Episcopal Church’s use of its own ordered political authority, turn inevitably to the use of power and chastisement in frustrated confusion over their own. It is no easy task to incorporate or rather perhaps incarnate grace and justice into law, if, indeed, it can be done effectively at all. And yet that’s what any creative legal system must attempt. It is true of our American Constitution and its call for the balancing of powers to achieve authority. It is true of the way the church strives to be faithful to its commandment to do justice and to love and to its commission to baptize and enlist disciples. It is true of any attempt to order holiness.

We are inherently like this. For we are spiritual beings by virtue of God’s having created us. How we enlist and incarnate that spirit determines the ultimate effect and maturity of our humanity. The church is the place where we can undertake this process. The daemons know who we are, and they know that, for they are pure spirit, lurking to become incarnate in us, to elbow Jesus’s presence off center with their own. On the other hand, Jesus simply asks us if we want to be healed, if we want to walk,. And to walk is to cast out the daemons.

Jesus says simply, “Get a life — and walk.”

John Grisham was on Morning Joe this morning plugging his new book, The Associate. He was asked how he gets his plots. He said he reads five newspapers every day, that there are plenty of ideas there if you just pay attention.

The Swiss theologian Karl Barth didn’t write mystery novels, even if a lot of what he wrote was a mystery, anyway. He did say, however, that every Christian should have a Bible in one hand and a newspaper in the other. If the gospel was relevant in its own time, it should be relevant in ours. Bible scholars say that one can’t get any thorough sense of that relevance without a knowledge of the newspapers Jesus read. Neither can we, Barth suggested, without a knowledge of our own.

One important facet of Christian ministry is that we be stewards of a Mystery, that our churches be proving grounds for what it means to be human, that we know not only the source of that commission, but the challenges it faces every day. Reading the dailies along with the Bible reveals to us what God and our neighbors are up to and how we might direct our love for them. There’s surely a plot there that might catch our attention.

According to hitherto unknown Vatican sources, whoever may currently be considered patron of the economy must be replaced. Patronal archeologists have unearthed an obscure worthy of previous financial eras. It is not altogether clear what is his name, but the best estimate is that he thought to be from the Isle of Imulus.

As a suprising aside, it was discovered that Imulusians were also skilled in seamanship, so that one or more of them were made a part of every sailing vessel’s crew to be in charge of bailing should the need ever arise from nautical repressions. One of the best patronal scholars even held to the theory that an Imulus patron was not only one person, but rather an association of persons. This led to the canonizing of the entire population of the island. Eventually, each residen bore the passport designation — St Imulus.

Wall Street and Detroit, among an entire international plethora of financial institutions, were especially excited about this news, as were thousands of unemployed clergy being hired to broker 24/7 vigils to St Imulus. This, of course, was simultaneous with their supervision of the construction of the necessary chapels. This need led to many architects being called back into service, frequently confessing their relief to set aside their fast food service jobs.

Vatican archeologists were also given extended contracts in appreciation for the rediscovery of the Order of St Imulus and the numerous monasteries devoted to its redemptive causes.

According to hitherto unknown Vatican sources, whoever may currently be considered patron of the economy must be replaced. Patronal archeologists have unearthed an obscure worthy of previous financial eras. It is not altogether clear what is his name, but the best estimate is that he thought to be from the Isle of Imulus.

As a suprising aside, it was discovered that Imulusians were also skilled in seamanship, so that one or more of them were made a part of every sailing vessel’s crew to be in charge of bailing should the need ever arise from nautical repressions. One of the best patronal scholars even held to the theory that an Imulus patron was not only one person, but rather an association of persons. This led to the canonizing of the entire population of the island. Eventually, each residen bore the passport designation — St Imulus.

Wall Street and Detroit, among an entire international plethora of financial institutions, were especially excited about this news, as were thousands of unemployed clergy being hired to broker 24/7 vigils to St Imulus. This, of course, was simultaneous with their supervision of the construction of the necessary chapels. This need led to many architects being called back into service, frequently confessing their relief to set aside their fast food service jobs.

Vatican archeologists were also given extended contracts in appreciation for the rediscovery of the Order of St Imulus and the numerous monasteries devoted to its redemptive causes.

According to hitherto unknown Vatican sources, whoever may currently be considered patron of the economy must be replaced. Patronal archeologists have unearthed an obscure worthy of previous financial eras. It is not altogether clear what is his name, but the best estimate is that he thought to be from the Isle of Imulus.

As a suprising aside, it was discovered that Imulusians were also skilled in seamanship, so that one or more of them were made a part of every sailing vessel’s crew to be in charge of bailing should the need ever arise from nautical repressions. One of the best patronal scholars even held to the theory that an Imulus patron was not only one person, but rather an association of persons. This led to the canonizing of the entire population of the island. Eventually, each residen bore the passport designation — St Imulus.

Wall Street and Detroit, among an entire international plethora of financial institutions, were especially excited about this news, as were thousands of unemployed clergy being hired to broker 24/7 vigils to St Imulus. This, of course, was simultaneous with their supervision of the construction of the necessary chapels. This need led to many architects being called back into service, frequently confessing their relief to set aside their fast food service jobs.

Vatican archeologists were also given extended contracts in appreciation for the rediscovery of the Order of St Imulus and the numerous monasteries devoted to its redemptive causes.

Depending on who you hang with, our town is either Music City USA or the Athens of the South. The one because of the Grand Ol’ Opry, the recording industry, and the numerous tourists carrying guitar gig bags. The other because of the myriad of college- and university-level schools. These populations draw on numerous ethnic sources who speak all kinds of languages, usually including English or a reasonable facsimile that more often than not works a lot better than our facsimile of theirs.

Nevertheless, one of our council members got it into his head for some reason that in spite of this cross section of humanity and its rich cultural (and economic/tourist) resource, English ought to be our “official language,” and we ought to make that into a law just so nobody misunderstands no matter what else they don’t understand because of it. So the whole Council joined forces and shelled out megathousand bucks to pay for a special election and we went to the polls last week to test the waters. Rumors were that we were sunk, that the ordinance would pass. Fact is, and as a surprise to many, it failed. Only seventy thousand or so voted at all, even so, some thirty thousand of them still thought it was a good idea.

I wrote a Brit friend of mine to tell him about it. He thought that the idea of English as the official language was an altogether fine one. He apparently couldn’t resist adding that it was about time that somebody in the colonies got the memo. But, he went on, Who on earth would we get to teach it?

Epiphany 3B (Mk 1.14-20) 2009God and the devil are walking along the road together. God sees something lying there and picks it up. The devil says, “What’s that?” God says, “It’s the truth.” The devil says, “Give it to me, and I’ll organize it.”Today’s gospel tells the story of Jesus selecting his disciples. It’s a story of both good news and bad news. The good news is to witness the apparently willing surrender of all that these men held dear — work, family, perhaps even their lives — for the uncertainty of whatever it might mean to follow Jesus. This kind of an act is one that might embrace us all.The bad news is to witness what are probably the first steps, albeit it nascent ones, in the organization of truth, an act that does for sure embrace us all.A colleague of mine once introduced himself. He said, “I am a member of no organized religion. I am an Episcopalian.”I wish this were true, but of course, it is not. Nevertheless, there is a strange and uniquely Anglican spin on the Gospel that we might just remind ourselves of from time to time. It would go something like this: Perhaps our most important and distinguishing mark is corporate prayer, with thanksgiving (we also call it Eucharist) at the center of our worship.All that we do and the way we attempt to understand what we do grows out of this, our corporate worship, powered by grace in gratitude.We discover God’s will for us in Scripture. But also in tradition, as says one of our prayers, “joining with the heavenly chorus, with prophets, apostles, and martyrs, and with all those in every generation who have looked to (God) in hope.”We take this Scripture and this tradition and through our rational capacities we strive to understand these things. They are brought together for us in the shape of the liturgy, that is, the work of the people, so that we can share mutual trust with our inheritance.We distrust judgmentalism, biblical literalism, election, predestination. These ideas lead to division, then hatred, alienation, and even killing. We embrace inclusiveness, moderation, and toleration. To follow these leads to collegial and spiritual enrichment.We live comfortably with ambiguity in our tradition, and we do not require certainty in all things. We argue. We fight. But then, we come together once more for Common Prayer and Eucharist. This is our way. We seem actually and rather quaintly to prefer vagueness and imprecision. We practice a generous and forgiving orthodoxy, an ordered freedom. We are the oxymoron of the Christian view of things.Don’t we wish. But there is hope.There’s an Episcopal parish that, so I’ve heard, includes among its actively pledging, attending, and serving people, a group whose members have one other thing in common — they do not believe in God. That’s a pretty good step in the direction of inclusivity, might we say? For whether or not it is, what better place for atheists to be? It is good not only for them, but also for the rest of us in all our many stages of belief and disbelief.A congregation at its best is a place where atheists may not only freely challenge theology by their mere presence, but where, as well, they may learn enough about theology to provide real substance for their disbelief and fend off a few challenges, themselves. Then, there’s always the outside chance that they may be loved so much they’ll have to wonder why on earth why.Our sciences show us over and over with convincing and commanding evidence the great biblical truth that we human beings and all of creation for that matter are members one of another, whether we choose to be or not. What we believe, that is, what religion we may or may not practice has very little to do with it. That we cannot know absolute truth and certainty and, as the devil would have it, cannot organize it, is an idea that’s next to impossible for some folk to accept.Nevertheless, it’s a model of community to which we all might well aspire.It’s part of this Anglican Communion’s “ordered freedom.” It is a delightfully redundant diversity with a graced pragmatism about it all. We proceed, do we not, by the way of “probable persuasions.”Frank Griswold, the former presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, claims as his rule of life these words once spoken by a Roman Catholic archbishop from South America:“The bishop belongs to all. Let no one be scandalized if I frequent those who are considered unworthy or sinful. Who is not a sinner? Let no one be alarmed if I am seen with compromised and dangerous people, on the left or the right. Let no one bind me to a group. My door, my heart, must be open to everyone, absolutely everyone.”This, of course, must not only be true for our bishops, but it must also be true for ourselves and thus for the church. For it is our fear that prevents us from being such a community, not our welcome and affirmation of diversity. If I must choose, and I hope never to have to, I would choose without question an uncertain church that is loving over a loveless church that is orthodox.

Among the events I did not attend and wish I had was the one in Washington when Martin Luther King, Jr, spoke there some forty-six years ago and gave his “I Have a Dream” speech. I was in Manhattan at Columbia University at an annual church conference. It would have been easy enough, for there were conference buses commuting for the day.This day and tomorrow especially recall these memories and how the speech so clearly led to its possibilities. Someone in the cyber world just now wrote that Rosa sat so Martin could walk so Obama could run and we could fly.The polls show an overwhelming number of us who are excited about this turn in our history and confident about what it portends. Of course, there is also an underwhelming number of those who feel just the opposite, some of them noticeably even hatefully enough to succumb to racist jokes and remarks in spite of the obvious joy that is sweeping the country. That is the way and the possibility of freedom even if one of its darker sides.There is no denying, however, that all this reminds us how indeed connected we are, connected across all kinds of boundaries, many, I am sure of which we may never even be aware. We live in a big tent, remembering that nobody had a bigger tent than Jesus. Christians are remarkably commissioned in our baptism to proclaim this in every way we can, even, if it comes to that, with words.

Barbara Crafton’s Almost Daily eMo for Sunday tomorrow:

Can anything good come out of Nazareth?
John 1:46

Of course it can. Something good can come out of anywhere. Whatever else national origin or race or sexual orientation or religion or gender may confer on us, they seem not to carry automatic goodness or automatic evil. Those permate whole human family, and every segment has its share of both. I can’t tell whether you are a good person or not just by looking at your passport. I will need to know more.

I wonder if bigotry is not the greatest of human evils, and the one at the root of all the others. The world would be such a different place if we didn’t have it — imagine what America would be like without racism, what marriage and families would be like if women had always been accorded equality with men, if the world had no memory of anything else. What if religion had never made exclusive claims on its believers, had never insisted that everyone outside the organization was doomed to an eternity in hell? Certainly, we would have had fewer wars.

Bigotry is the devil’s perversion of love. He takes the natural love we feel for our own kind and refracts it into hatred and fear of the other. He makes us think we are being loyal to our own when we reject everyone else. Ugly and sad, this business, and it permeates everything we do.

But it can be cut off at the knees simply by a decision not to act in accordance with its dictates, and that decision can be made at any time by anybody. We do it ourselves, each of us. And sometimes we do it together, a wonder to behold. For, whatever has happened in the past, it is never too late to do a good thing.
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1 Samuel 3:1-10(11-20)
Psalm 139:1-5, 12-17
1 Corinthians 6:12-20
John 1:43-51