on the current meltdown of the american greedonomy: 'nuff said

". . . as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that noe entered into the ark, and knew not until the flood came, and took them all away." (matthew 24:38-39)

26 september: lancelot andrewes

lancelot andrewes is much more influential than most of us know: as the chairman of the old testament group for the translation of the bible authorized by king james i of england, it is he who almost certainly is responsible for the creation stories in genesis with which we are all so familiar.

i am celebrating his day by reading a wonderful book about genesis as i
struggle with the story of cain and abel for my slow work on my blog the ring of the lord. there is a lot to chew on in the first brother story. it encourages me that leon r. cass work on the beginning of wisdom: reading genesis for 25 years. perhaps i can be excused a little slowness in my work.

it all makes the mere seven years that it took the translators of the authorized version the more impressive.

feasts, suppers & banquets

reading the book of judith in the daily office this past week has made me think of the importance of feasts, banquets and suppers in scripture. the judith story brings up images of other meals which figure into the story of the holy one's saving us from our own rebellious and gluttonous ways: esther, of course; but also in a rather inverse way, john the baptist and salome; belshazzar's feast and the last supper; the feeding stories in the gospels and the fish grill on the lake shore that ends john's gospel.

one of the most insightful books about sacramental theology i have ever read is alexander schmemann's for the life of the world, which begins with the phrase, "we are what we eat." "what we eat." not "what i eat." for christians eating, like all of our lives, is a communal activity. even if we seem to be alone, we are eating with all the people and plants and animals and rain and wind and sun along the food chain leading all the way back to creation.

i haven't begun to puzzle out all i hope to learn from this circle of thought, but i found it interesting enough to point it out. maybe you can help me understand it better.

the fall ember days: cleansing lepers

my experiences with "the church" the past few days has made me think about john's disciples' question to jesus: "'are you the one who is to come, or have we got to wait for somebody else?' jesus answered, 'go back and tell john what you hear and see; the blind see again, and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised to life, and the good news is proclaimed to the poor, and happy is the man who does ot lose faith in me.'" (matthew 11:2-5)

but of course these days when we as the church are asked this question, our answers tends to be about pedigree and propriety. i am as guilty as anyone. when asked about this malabar rite, thing, my first answer is usually a little lecture in church history, the point of which is to prove that my "apostolic succession" is as old and as "valid" as anyone's. only if pressed do i say that my archbishop, who ordained me, is almost entirely unconcerned with theological orthodoxy. yet when a few years ago when i considered "transferring my credentials" to a part of the church with which i am in closer "theological agreement," i quickly thought better of it. you see, my archbishop radiates the principal that "they will know that we are christians by our love."

the fall ember days are the wednesday, friday and saturday after holy cross day. this is one of the four times of the year when those of us who are ordained are encouraged to take stock of how we are doing, and to report in to our bishops. i find that i have a long way to go. but i think i'm asking at least some of the right questions. "what do we see and hear? do the blind see again? do the lame walk? are lepers cleansed? do the deaf hear? are the dead raised to life? is the good news proclaimed to the poor?"

17 september: hildegard von bingen

i "met" hildegard in the form of a copy of some of her music in a library at memphis state university. i remember looking at it and thinking, how beautiful, but how unsingable. shortly after that "a feather on the breath of god came out, and hildegard began another career.

it seems best to let her speak for herself.

simple disobedience

the words are those of "the apostles and elders", and they came up in the daily office a few days ago:

". . . it has seemed good to the holy spirit and to us to impose on you no further burden than these essentials: that you abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols and from blood and from what is strangled and from fornication. if you keep yourselves from these, you will do well." (acts 15:28-29)

many times we have read this passage, the conclusion of what we sometimes call the council of jerusalem, the first synod of the emerging church of the first century, and we have described them as freeing us gentiles from the requirements of the laws of moses.

we do a good job, for the most part, of not following the mosaic law from which we have been released. seldom, however, do we notice that the council of jerusalem did leave us with some restrictions: "to abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols and from blood and from what is strangled and from fornication."

it strikes me that we do very poorly these days in observing these restrictions.

most of the food we eat has been sacrificed to the idol of cheapest-for-me-damn-the-results-for-anyone-else.

every day the weapons bought and operated by our taxes shed the blood of the (mostly) innocent throughout the world (not that jesus has suggested it is our job to decide who are the guilty and to shed their blood).

the commandment against food that is strangled is certainly violated in spirit if not in the letter itself in almost everything we eat from the chicken and cattle and pork food factories that provide us with our cheap-to-us food.

and it is hardly possible to go through the check-out lines at the stores selling the strangled food without noticing the popularity of fornication. if we do not commit it ourselves in fact, it constitutes some of our most popular "amusements."

should it surprise us if we do not "do well?"

who am i? the 16th sunday after pentecost a.d.2008

yesterday's propers were an embarassment of riches: moses and the burning bush, wonderful exhortation to a loving life from paul, and jesus' rebuke of peter, whom he had just called a rock on which the church would be built, but whom he now reminds, as he reminds us, that disciples of christ must deny themsselves and take their our cross and follow him. the temptation to the preacher, and also to the blogger, is to try to exhaust these readings in one year. at least one reading a blog can stop to argue or consider.

lately i have heard a lot of sermons talking about moses as a murderer, a wanted man, who has fled egypt to escape prosecution. but i suspect it was not a crisis for moses because he has killed a man that led him to flea to midian. if indeed he had been raised as the pharoah's grandson, such a crime could probably be overlooked. if he were found out to be a hebrew, however, the situation would be very different.

it is in the context of self-identity that i find these readings so challenging, especially coming as they do after jesus' question last week of "who do people say that the son of man is?" we are only able to know who we are if we first recognize who jesus is. moses had been able to identify with the empire, with the people in power. now he recognizes that his true identity lies with those who are enslaved, with those whose labor had provided the wealth he enjoyed.

often when we speak of "our cross," we think of abusive husbands or sick relatives. these are, i find,very different situations from what jesus must mean when he says "if any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me." jesus, by taking up the cross, took on the suffering of the world. and it seems we are called to do no less. we must deny ourselves. we are not called to send a check to the suffering from time to time, but to join them. our identity as followers of christ jesus does not derive from those who claim power and glory, whether they call themselves pharoah or king or president. rather our identity is given us in baptism by the true king of glory, about whom we many of us each friday pray this collect:

"almighty god, whose most dear son went not up to joy but
first he suffered pain, and entered not into glory before he
was crucified: mercifully grant that we, walking in the way
of the cross, may find it none other than the way of life and
peace; through jesus christ our lord. amen."

let us not forget who, and whose, we truly are.