proper 11a: ladders in the weeds

we may say in the creed about jesus that "he shall come again, with glory, to judge both the quick and the dead," but it seems that few of us live as if that were an important part of our expectations. indeed liberal theologians often speak of how mistaken the "early church" was in expecting the immanent return of christ. i sometimes wonder whether the phrase "early church" implies that we are the "late church," and that therefore we might be surprised by a trump at any moment.

of course there are those who are making big bucks off "the second coming." if, however, the gospel for this sunday is correct, the left behind folks have it just about backwards: it will be the tares, the weeds, who leave their clothes behind on airplanes, with the good wheat left behind (on an earth that will be recreated, according to the revelation to john).

meanwhile, we have to live amongst the weeds. I once worshiped with a parish that was jokingly called "bede's-in-the-weeds," as if somehow her mother parish downtown were in a perfect wheat field. i confess i find this persistence of weeds less enjoyable when i think of the parable in jungian terms, and realize that the weeds are often within my own heart. if the weeds were only those persons with whom i share the field who were less perfect than i, i could probably forgive them. but the truth is that there are many things growing in my heart for which i pray clearance, and that sometimes i pray with my fingers crossed behind my back.

it is in the context of my own heart that i find the story from genesis hopeful. ". . . the holy one is in this place, and i never knew it." again and again the holy one comes into the stony desert where jacob was fleeing from his brother, no stonier than my weed-filled heart can be, not just a "second coming," but comings "seventy times seven." for as john wesley wrote in his notes on the new testament, "the mediation of christ: he is this ladder: the foot on earth in his human nature, the top in heaven in his divine nature; or the former is his humiliation, the latter is his exaltation."

strange nest fellows

i have been reading two quite encouraging and somewhat unusual books this past week. encouraging because i find myself in such agreement with them, which itself these days makes them unusual.

the first is bede griffiths" return to the center; the second stanley hauerwas's a better hope. it may seem strange that i find two such apparently differing authors so similar to myself in our approach to the modern/postmodern world in which we find ourselves.

griffiths: ". . . men of genius who lack 'wisdom', like luther and calvin, voltaire and rousseau, marx and freud, release such incalculable forces of evil."

hauerwas: "postmodernism . . . is the outworking of mistakes in christian theology correlative to the attempt to make christianity 'true' apart from faithful witness."

having graduated from a seminary downstream from the mistakes of calvin, i am particularly aware of how embedded in the religion of capitalism modern european christianity has become, and as i usually point out in a slightly different context, america is just what europeans do when they have no restraints.

what is needed in these absurd times brother louis called "the modern psychosis" is of course what is always needed: true repentance and amendment of life. what i find hopeful in the writings of griffiths and hauerwas is their recognition that it is our religion itself from which we must repent. once again, those of us who have ears should hear: "the time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of god is at hand: repent ye, and believe in the gospel."

the end of midsummer: the feasts of sts. peter and paul

there are many wonderful ways the church--the kirk, if ye be a bit scots--embodies the gospel.

in celtic lands, especially, the feast of sts peter and paul marks the end of midsummer and the beginning of a time of fast leading up to the transfiguration.

in cornwall, there are bonfires. (the best i could do was to go to cornwall beach and put candles in the sand.)

at st. paul's, bellingham, today we are kirkin the tartans. this event is not tied to any particular time of year, but i am particularly happy that it is happening today at st. paul's, especially when the new calendar makes this not just the feast of st. peter but also of peter and paul, the holy apostles.

the collect for the day in the 1979 book fo common prayer is

"almighty god, whose blessed apostles peter and paul glorified
you by their martyrdom: grant that your church, instructed by
their teaching and example, and knit together in unity by your
spirit, may ever stand firm upon the one foundation, which
is jesus christ our lord; who lives and reigns with you, in the
unity of the holy spirit, one god, now and for ever. amen."

i especially like the "knitting" image, echoing the collect for all saints day. the tartans of the scots were very much the work of human hands, died with the plants from local gardens. this event is a wonderful expression of the incarnation that makes salvation possible.

the kirkin o' the tartans is also a reminder that the church is more than just us now. it is "the blessed company of all faithful people." we join therefore not only with those of us who will gather in elizabeth park, but with those who have walked before us and those yet to be born.

i hope we sing st. patrick's breastplate.

the forerunner: least in the kingdom

although the japanese manufacturing giant toyo kogyo chose the name of the ancient persian god of light, "mazda," so far as i know john is the only christian saint honored by sharing a name with a car, although i have no idea whether when toyota named their suv "forerunner" they were aware that the name was already taken by one of the most important of saints of the church.

john the forerunner is so important that the church commemorates not only his death, by beheading, on the 29th of august, but his nativity, today, the 24th of june. only our lord and his mother the theotokos are similarly remembered.

his nativity occurs at the height of summer, when the days are the longest, when earthly splendour is at its greatest. this can be a trap for us. we easily forget the profound importance of jesus words, "among them that are born of women there hath not risen a greater than john the baptist: notwithstanding he that is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he." (matthew 11:11) so we seek, not the kingdom of god, but the lesser good, and it is a good, of this world. we seek happiness in sunny days and toyotas.

even the book of common prayer's collect for the day lists the goods of this world, of the time of the law and the prophets (matthew 11:13, if you will, without speaking of the kingdom and the king to which john was pointing:

"make us so to follow his doctrine and holy life, that we may truly repent according to his preaching; and after his example constantly speak the truth, boldly rebuke vice, and patiently suffer for the truth's sake." these are good goals, but not the best goal. we are satisfied to settle for what the book of acts calls "only the baptism of john." (acts 18:25) we repent, looking for forgiveness of our sins, often (and in much of pop christianity only) because we want to escape the consequences of our mistakes--we want a get out of hell free card. but we never begin to truly live in the kingdom of god.

as great and faithful as john the forerunner is, and as excellent an example as he was, we are offered yet a better way. let us not be blinded by the brilliance of the sun at midsummer, but give thanks for john's witness and look forward to the even greater brilliance of the uncreated light which we see in christ jesus and which is available to enlighten "all men." (john 1:9) let us anticipate the next great feast of the year, the transfiguration, casting off the works of darkness that we might be true images of the light of christ.

bernard mizeki and proper seven

one of the great advantages of the liturgy is that it is not dependant on great sermons to be great worship. the hymns, the readings from holy scripture, the psalmody, the intercessions, and especially the prayer of great thanksgiving are so powerful that one can sit through a so-so sermon not so much in boredom as in anticipation of what comes next. i have, i admit, sat through many of those so-so sermons, and if i am truthful, i must confess i have preached some of them.

lately, however, i have been hearing very good sermons, sermons which take the role of proclaiming the word of the holy one today as a serious part of the work of the people called to be holy.

yesterday was no exception. chuck used as an example of the life to which jesus calls us in the gospel the story of bernard mizeki, who was killed for loving christ jesus and his followers more than the local religion. and even as chuck challenged us to take seriously jesus' call, he reminded us how easy it is to deny jesus, not in the dramatic ways which we might fantisize--"would i be faithful if faced with likely martyrdom?"--but in the little times, illustrated by an instance within his own life when he realized he had denied jesus without even noticing it.

chuck's confession of faltering faith made me wonder if we don't often deny jesus in a big way, also without noticing it. in the life (and martyrdom) of mizeki, it is easy for us to see his having abandoned what david l. veal calls in saints galore "that superstition and ignorace" of the local religions.

but we do not even recognize the the consumerism in which we so often worship for the religion which it is, a religion in the true sense of tying our world together, with which me have easily made peace, and from which we are very reticent to cut loose with the sword which jesus brings. our witness has been so easily neutralized that it would be silly to consider ourselves potential martyrs. again and again we have chosen "greed, which is idolatry," over the self-denial to which we are called. as often as not the cross we take up is a piece of jewelry. and we never notice that what we give up is the way that leads to true joy.

"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."

re-entry chattiness

after being away from bellingham for a year and two weeks, i am finding re-entry somewhat difficult. when living as a semi-hermit in the gentle hills of the ozarks, amidst slabs of ancient limestone, my life fell easily into a rhythm that i found deeply satisfying.

now i am back to the city, where at any given moment it seems there are more cars whizzing down squalicum parkway, the quiet street beyond my deck, than there are in the whole of eureka springs on a busy weekend.

i am trying to find another rhythm, one that keeps me centred on the holy one in our midst but which makes me available in "the conversation that leads us to new acts as todays apostles" in real time and not just on this blog.

so, i am adding two other sets of links, one commotions under the big steeple, the other groans of emmergence, and will try to engage some of the questions and issues that confront us in the noisy city. the blog about the mouse in the living room is part of that effort.

the mouse in the living room

jesus, so far as we know, said nothing about homosexuality. it is said that he loved two men (the rich young ruler and john--i know, agape not eros, a distinction to which i will return). but he did say a lot about economic injustice (and when he needed a coin for the empire, he never seemed to have one).

if i may paraphrase g.k. chesterton, it would be possible to develop a huge cloud of blog tags about whether jesus thought homosexuality is a sin (chesterton said whether he believed in fairies) but about whether jesus said that the rich are in deep shit (i don't remember what more polite victorian/edwardian phrase g.k.c. used) there is no room for debate.

earlier this week, i sat in on what the local congregation with which i most often worship in bellingham calls its "alms ministry." for one hour a week, people are allowed to come into the church building and beg. the beggars are treated well, and the people who distribute the alms are much like peter and john in the temple in that they offer the beggars jesus christ. but they are not like peter and john when they tell the beggars that there is only $150 a week to give out.

this is a lie. the church has much more money than this. the lease payments on some of the mercedes i see in the parking lot on sunday mornings are more than $600 a month. the truth is that we as the church--and not just in this congregation--love our toys more than we love our brothers and sisters in need. we choose to give only $150 a week in "alms." i understand the lure of toys: i have been tempted the past few weeks by a new bicycle. the ones i've been looking at cost between $600 and $1000. fortunately i personally have about $3.50, and no credit card, so i can't go out and indulge my temptation.

that one hour tuesday morning has been almost the only time since returning to bellingham that i have been engaged in any discussion or activity about an issue jesus seemed to think is important. (i mean, in the daily office last night we read again about his feeding of the multitudes, but we don't discuss this "in church".) instead, i hear about "the question:" homosexuality.

last week i went to a movie night at some friends' house, and the movie was "inlaws and outlaws." last night i went to a birthday party, and one of the other men there was a pastor of a local congregation of the church of god of andersonville, indiana, and he asked me, "what's the deal with homosexuals in the episcopal church?" (his was not a coy question. his own take is that there is sin in our lives, some of it heterosexual, some of it homosexual, but just as paul writes to the roman, we all are sinful, and so have no room to condemn each other.)

with tens of thousands of children starving to death each day, largely the result of the actions of the empire as much as the death of the holy innocents of bethleham was an impirial action, with the world's "only superpower" using its powers to destroy governments and people throughout the world, with corn prices so high that the poor of south american are doing without tortillas as the rich of north america are burning the corn in their chevrolet denalis, the upcoming lambeth conference will be reported throughout the world as a debate about how sinful it is for the american episcopal church to have selected and consecrated gene robinson as a bishop.

one of the more insightful essays about the wider implications of the debate expected at lambeth was in the july 2008 harpers, which puts it within the context of imperialism and its aftermath. it is of course much easier for us to say "tush, tush" about good old gene robinson, "isn't it a shame he started packing fudge?" than it is to look at our own responsibilities for the greed and suffering in our world.

it is much easier to talk about the mouse in the living room, to shriek and look for a better mouse trap or say how harmless the mouse really is, than to deal with the same issues jesus found important enough to talk about so forcefully that the empire found it necessary to try to silence him.

so, back to jesus and his love for at least two men. i confess i find the term "homosexuality" an oxymoron. sexuality is about reproduction; it is one of the ways diversity is kept within a species. but in our modern culture informed more by the scandalous magazines at the check-out stands of the grocery stores than by careful formation by the church in the real implications of the scandal of the cross, there is not much room for love, only for sex, and sex is no longer about reproduction but about lust and appetite-fulfillment.

as my friend from the church of god and i talked last night, i tried to encourage him to look at what happens between two men, between gene robinson and mark, for instance, as not about sex but about love. why do we define people by something that my friend said "takes about three minutes every two weeks?" is this the only time he loves his wife? is this all that there is between any two people who love each other? and if it is, should we split the church yet again over this small act while ignoring the huge acts of sins we ourselves commit? (i seem to remember jesus saying something about splinters and logs.)

it is fascinating that although all of the evangelists speak of the bridegroom, it is only john, in both his gospel and in his revelation, who speaks of the bride. (and paul speaks of neither.) i suspect such imagery, although very important in the mystical tradition of the church, east and west, and celebrated in the popularity of the song of songs and explored in carmelite spirituality particularly, makes many of us good old boys, whether mega-church pastors in colorado or cardinals in rome, uncomfortable. if we follow the imagery even paul does use about the submission of the bride to the husband, which he says is a mystery and is about the church, it means that we must die daily to our own will, to seek not power but knowledge, and not knowledge we can express on wikipedia but knowledge of the most intimate and personal sort.

knowing the holy one, the father who is revealed in the son, is eternal life. and it is also the way we come to love god, whom if we do not know we cannot love. and loving god prepares us to love our neighbor as ourself. and when we truly do that, fulfilling the first and great commandment, then our living rooms will be freed of pesty intruders small and great.

a good day for singing

today is the feast of st. ephrem of edessa, sometimes known as ephrem of syria, a fourth century deacon who is responsible in large part for the beginnings of hymnody in the church. he is also patron of spiritual directors.

as i have been adjusting to life in bellingham again, i have realized that the most consistant part of my practice lately has been drinking coffee. therefore i find this prayer of blessed ephrem, used especially during lent in the eastern church, to be particularly helpful to me:

(making a prostration)

"o lord, master of my life, grant that i may not be infected with the spirit of slothfulness and inquisitiveness, with the spirit of ambition and vain talking.

(making a prostration)

"grant instead to me, your servant, the spirit of purity and of humility, the spirit of patience and neighborly love.

(making a prostration)

"o lord and king, grant me the grace of being aware of my sins and of not thinking evil of those of my brethren.

"for you are blessed, now and ever, and forever. amen.

"lord jesus christ, king of kings, you have power over life and death. you know what is secret and hidden, and neither our thoughts nor our feelings are concealed from you. cure me of duplicity; i have done evil before you.

"now my life declines from day to day and my sins increase. o lord, god of souls and bodies, you know the extreme frailty of my soul and my flesh. grant me strength in my weakness, o lord, and sustain me in my misery.

"give me a grateful soul that I may never cease to recall your benefits, o lord most bountiful. be not mindful of my many sins, but forgive me all my misdeeds.

"o lord, disdain not my prayer - the prayer of a wretched sinner; sustain me with your grace until the end, that it may protect me as it is your grace which has taught me wisdom; blessed are they who follow her ways, for they shall receive the crown of glory.

"in spite of my unworthiness, i praise you and i glorify you, o lord, for your mercy to me is without limit. you have been my help and my protection. may the name of your majesty be praised forever. to you, our god, be glory. amen."

the visitation: women and children first

the story of the visitation reads like an opera. all the spoken lines are poetry, but beyond the sheer beauty of the language, a lot of rather surprising things are going on.

would it have been unusual "n those days" for "mary" to "set out and [go] "with haste to a judean town in the hill country, where she entered the house of zechariah and greeted elizabeth"?

"when elizabeth heard mary’s greeting," not only did "the child [leap] in her womb," but "elizabeth was filled with the holy spirit and exclaimed with a loud cry." in other words, elizabeth is described as a prophet. her words became the beginning of the marian praise song we call the hail mary:

"blessed are you among women,
and blessed is the fruit of your womb."

mary responds in song as well, with the magnificat, often set to wonderful music:

“my soul magnifies the lord,
and my spirit rejoices in god my savior,
for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant.
surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed;
for the mighty one has done great things for me, and holy is his name.
his mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation.
he has shown strength with his arm;
he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
he has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly;
he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.
he has helped his servant israel, in remembrance of his mercy,
according to the promise he made to our ancestors,
to abraham and to his descendants forever.”

how often outside of musicals and the gospel according to luke do women speak in such song? but of course they are speaking of a very great event indeed. the newly-conceived messiah, jesus, is making the first of many fateful trips to jerusalem if indeed that is where elizabeth and zecheriah reside, and he whom the universe cannot contain is contained in the womb of a young women about whom elizabeth says, "blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the lord.”

but it is not only the women who know and are beginning to understand the profound significance of this visit between cousins. elizabeth says, "as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leaped for joy."

this first visit of jesus to jerusalem is a very different event from his last, when the children will still greet him as the king (see the gospel for palm sunday), but the king and priests and roman government will not greet him with joy. is it any surprise that the first one to meet the risen lord will be another woman, mary magdalene?

women and children seem better to understand the nature of real power than do those who consider themselves the powerful.

the second sunday after pentecost: musings

it's a little later in the week than usual for this post: i have been settling into my new town and digs and surroundings. being back in bellingham has been quite wonderful, with long coffee sippings with friends i hadn't seen for a year, and with the mysts of mystery every morning draping the bay and mountains.

it has also been a time of experiencing in a very wonderful way the gospel for the sunday. when i arrived i had no idea where i would live or how i would pay for my food or any of the things that make life easy. but i was not worried. i knew that our father knew what i needed, and would provide. and he did. i walked into the living room of a friend who works with recovering addicts who would otherwise be homeless people, providing lodging and food while they get back on their feet. "would i go to work?" yes. and she had a tiny loft apartment over the garage, with a little deck hanging over squalicum creek. sunday morning my shoes fell apart. in the corner, a little spider-webby, was a pair my size, abandoned. thanks be to god.

whitsunday: the alan parsons project - la sagrada familia

what can one say about pentecost? perhaps the most important is that "they were all gathered in one place with one accord."

Peter Gabriel - Here Comes The Flood

whitsunday is the english name for pentecost: the day when the rivers were warm enough for baptism. baptism, our death and burial.

4 may: the sixth sunday of easter: the koan returns

i can scarcely do better than to quote the whole gospel:

"these words spake jesus, and lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, father, the hour is come; glorify thy son, that thy son also may glorify thee: as thou hast given him power over all flesh, that he should give eternal life to as many as thou hast given him. and this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true god, and jesus christ, whom thou hast sent. i have glorified thee on the earth: i have finished the work which thou gavest me to do. and now, o father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which i had with thee before the world was. i have manifested thy name unto the men which thou gavest me out of the world: thine they were, and thou gavest them me; and they have kept thy word. now they have known that all things whatsoever thou hast given me are of thee. for i have given unto them the words which thou gavest me; and they have received them, and have known surely that i came out from thee, and they have believed that thou didst send me. i pray for them: i pray not for the world, but for them which thou hast given me; for they are thine. and all mine are thine, and thine are mine; and i am glorified in them. and now i am no more in the world, but these are in the world, and i come to thee. holy father, keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given me, that they may be one, as we are."

"and this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true god, and jesus christ, whom thou hast sent." (17:3) in the great arch-form of john's gospel, we are nearing the climax. here he concludes the theme begun at chapter 3, verse 16: eternal life. jesus' answer to philip from the fourth sunday is repeated within this great prayer, the eucharistic prayer of the last supper, as it were. and then the intent of the prayer: "holy father, keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given me, that they may be one, as we are."

as i look at the claims of the church to be divided, the attempts we make to excommunicate one another, i cannot help but think we might do well to recover the use, throughout the church, of the book of common prayer's "prayer of humble access:

"we do not presume to come to this thy table, o merciful
lord, trusting in our own righteousness, but in thy manifold
and great mercies. we are not worthy so much as to gather
up the crumbs under thy table. but thou art the same lord
whose property is always to have mercy. grant us therefore,
gracious lord, so to eat the flesh of thy dear son jesus christ,
and to drink his blood, that we may evermore dwell in him,
and he in us. amen."

if we truly dwell in him, the dear son, we cannot help but to dwell in the father also.

ascension: theology vs. incarnation 1.

yesterday, the feast of the ascension of our lord jesus christ, i helped a friend clean out a house he had rented for six and a half years to someone who seems to me to epitomize a miserable sinner.

how can i say that? you might ask. am i not being judgmental? no. merely observant.

sin is what makes us miserable. for six and a half years through i have no idea how many different boy friends and different drugs the occupant of that house had been surrounding herself with the detritus of a life lived ugly. the furniture, a collection whose unifying style was filthiness and odour, we put on the curb to be picked up as garbage, along with boxes of beer cartons and candles stubs and forks, remnants of some kind of business and broken pieces of once-useful objects.

like most cities in the united states, eureka springs is a collection of cultures, different outlooks, with little mutual recognition or understanding. tourists driving by the little yellow victorian cottage we were emptying would have no idea that the inhabitants were not living happy, fulfilling lives in this tourist haven. nor would the inhabitant of the little yellow house have any obvious reason to doubt the lives of the tourists passing in their new suv's were less than the joyful events vacations advertise.

the joyless artifacts i carried to the curb, as i found myself being covered with the dust and filth of the misery which passes unobserved and approved by modern life, made me especially aware of what we pray on ascension day:

"grant, we pray, almighty god, that as we believe your
only-begotten son our lord jesus christ to have ascended
into heaven, so we may also in heart and mind there ascend,
and with him continually dwell; who lives and reigns with
you and the holy spirit, one god, for ever and ever. amen."

and they made me wonder why we so easily settle for lives of quiet, filthy desperation when the kingdom is at hand.

ascension day

this ascension day is the 22nd anniversary of "my first celebration of the eucharist," an event the synchronicity of which has gained significance for me over the years as my understanding of the place of the ascension in the liturgy has grown. celtic daily prayer from the northumbrian community has added another glimpse of understanding: the ascension as a marriage. of course! and of course this is part of the implicit orthodox understanding of the liturgy, but which i seldom remember explicitly.

the northumbrian "liturgy combines material from a variety of sources: . . . traditional scottish prayer . . ., the imagery of jewish betrothal custom and catherine de hoeck doherty's vision of the bride as a 'servant of the poor.' the scriptures used are from the song of solomon and st john's gospel.

"jesus betrothed his followers to himself. he offered his love. his own body and all his kingdom. he looked for our love, our willingness to follow him, our promise to be his alone, to wait for him.

"you have not chosen me', he said, 'but i have chosen you. receive my love. do not be afraid. drink from my cup as the sign of your betrothal to me. trust in my love and believe in me. if only you could see me for who i am!'

"'my father is rich in houses and land. i am going to prepare such a wonderful place for you, so where i am you can be with me. when all is ready, i will return and take you to myself.'

"'walk as my own in the world, and remember how i have loved you. it is better that i leave you now--for time is short, and you have much to do as you prepare for my returning.'

"clouds of heaven covered him as he was taken up out of their sight.

"when the people of heaven welcomed their heart-love, mary's beautiful son broke into tears before them.

"'i am my beloved's,' he said, 'and she will be mine. my desire is towards her, and she will not fail me. soon she will shine as brightly as the sun, reaching out for me, urgently as a mighty army, radiant and terrifying. my sister, my bride, she is mine!'

"the spirit of promise gave this vision, the spirit he said would lead us deeper into truth. it is a vision of what we, as his own, can become.

"there she stands, above the treeline, shining in the rays of the noonday sun.

"she is beautiful and simple, with her doors wide open: and into her stream the rich and poor alike.

"she is the bride of christ. she is his beloved and he is all tenderness, all love, towards her.

"not only is she his beloved, but she serves the people whom he loved, the poor. the people whom he fed with loaves and fishes, she now feeds with bread and wine.

"from her heart rises an immense cry of adoration:

"'my lord has died,
jesus, my lord is risen.
jesus our lord will come again to take us to himself--that where he is we may be also.'
. . .
"lord, hasten the day when those who seek you in every nation will come from the east and west, from north and south, and sit at table in your kingdom."

--from celtic daily prayer (harpersanfrancisco, 2002), pp.281-283.

36 and counting: the sixth sunday of easter

the gospel for this sunday is john 14:15-21. the church knows that forty days after the resurrection jesus ascended to the father, a fact that is celebrated thursday of this week. but she remembers that jesus promised he would not leave us orphans, that he would send, "another comforter, that he may abide with you forever."

for a number of years my favourite read for pentecost (after of course the daily office readings for this season) has been annie dillard's holy the firm. this year i have a new favourite: cormac mcarthy's the road. it profoundly recognizes that we are living in the last days, but it is also a profoundly hopeful book, a pentecostal book in all meanings of that word. in it a loving father takes his son through the wilderness, telling him all along the terror-filled way that they are "some of the good guys," that they "carry the fire," even though the existence of other "good guys" is an act of faith, and the fire is constantly challenged. at last the father dies just as the son meets some of the other good guys: one man, one woman, two children, one boy, one girl.

"the woman when she saw him put her arms around him and held him. oh, she said, i am so glad to see you. she would talk to him sometimes about god. he tried to talk to god but the best thing was to talk to his father and he did talk to him and he didnt forget. the woman said that was all right. she said that the breath of god was his breath yet though it pass from man to man through all time.

"once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains. you could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. they smelled of moss in your hand. polished and muscular and torsional. on their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. maps and mazes. of a thing which could not be put back. not be made right again. in the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery." (p. 241)

koan on the creekside

i sat on the banks of a creek wednesday as it flowed into the impounded waters of the white river, it's enlarged surface reflecting early springs green leaves and the still-white trunks of the sycamores.

i was reading nikolai gogol's the divine liturgy of the russian orthodox church, and i interspersed bits and pieces of psalms which occur in the liturgy as i read, especially psalm 103. i found myself humming them to melodies from the orthodox liturgy, and i was saddened that there is no community here to sing with.

and i understood perhaps some of how brother andre of taize felt. he stopped celebrating eucharist because the whole church would not celebrate together.

today i am reading s. l. greenslade's schism in the early church (london: scm,1964), which includes these words:

"[the early church] was not undivided, but it was much less divided than we are to-day, and it hated division and worked hard, if sometimes by unhappy means, to heal it. it did so, not because it was uneconomical in manpower or money to have a novatianist chapel and a catholic church on opposite street corners, nor even because disunion was mocked at by the pagan. it was because disunion is in itself sin, and therefore to be fought against." (p. 33)

lord have mercy upon us, and incline our hearts to keep thy law.

fifth sunday of easter: way, truth, life

this post is another one of those times i feel like i have a good answer to an excellent question quite a while after the question has been asked. knightr4 said in response to the previous post, "folks still want revealed truth but are not sure where to find it because they are not finding it in the books that they used to." i rose to the bait of books and said, " i have noticed that many of the books "'they are used to' use orthodoxy as the big-bad-word." but it's not about books, but about our search for, amongst modern-thinking folk, infallibility, and among post-modern-thinking folk, what ryan calls "revealed truth." neither are really found in books, except, i would suggest, in the very specific way which the bible reveals the word of god.

yesterday's gospel, john 14:1-14, takes place in the room where jesus and the disciples met on the thursday before the crucifixion. philip, who a bit before had been asked by some greeks to show them jesus, now asks, “lord, show us the father, and we will be satisfied.” jesus responds, "whoever has seen me has seen the father."

this is leading up to one of the conclusions as it were of john's gospel. we so often read the gospels in little bits and bobs, which we sometimes fancy up with the term "pericopes," that it is easy to lose sight of the fact that they are excellent works of writing. everyone knows john 3:16, more or less. i was confronted saturday with a flock of youngsters in red t-shirts that said in big black letters "3:16" only saturday. but seldom do i find t-shirts that say "17:3": "and this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true god, and jesus christ whom you have sent."

in a rather famous interview, theresa of calcultta was asked what she and her sisters did that was so successful, since people were flocking to them, and not only the dying to whom they particularly ministered. she replied, "we give them jesus." the interviewer thought she was being coy, so insisted, "but you must do something special." theresa replied, "we give them jesus."

it is the person of jesus who reveals the way, the truth, the life, indeed the very nature of god. anything else, books or sermons or even this blog, can only point to him or away from him.

jody's question: orthodoxy?

i am leading a reflection on the old testament readings of the easter vigil at the local united methodist church on wednesdays during the great 50 days. usually it is only on thursday that i am able to think of good answers to the very good questions people have asked.

jody asked last wednesday, "what do you mean by orthodoxy?" i had said rather off-handedly that if one has not experienced orthodox worship, one has no idea of what real worship is like. by that i mean, at the least, that orthodox worship happens in heaven. we ascend with christ as christ's body to the heavenly realm. most western worship, especially in the reformed tradition, is definitely worship here on earth.

but there is the bigger meaning of "orthodox," and as i thought about that, i came to the conclusion that i mean the church as described in the second chapter of acts: "and they continued stedfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in prayers." (v. 42) certainly many folks who consider themselves christians have consciously departed from the apostles' doctrine. indeed another person in the group was rejoicing that modern united methodists have a wide variety of teachings and practices from which to choose.

that this is a source of rejoicing rather than repentance comes, i think, from our adoption of the a modern (in the sctrict hobbesian/lockian sense)worldview, in which god perhaps cannot but certain does not actually reveal his self to us. the scriptures, the liturgy, the church, are all human inventions, not gracious gifts from the holy one. the thanks that we give in the liturgy of sts. addai and mari, which i have received in my apostolic tradition, for the "form of worship which we have received from you [the father] does not make sense to many modern christians.

therefore for many modern christians it does not seem possible that what orthodox christians consider stedfast continuity is even possible. yet it also seems that many modern christians have accepted some sort of infallibility that comes not from god but from our own imaginations.

we reject the possibility of there being real access to truth in the orthodox traditions of the holy catholic church, but we put our faith in the "institutes" of calvin or luther's single-minded rejection of a millenium and a half of tradition, even accepting his shortened canon of scripture. or we consider the bible infallible, confusing a book about the word of god for the incarnate, eternal word of god himself. how odd that some who hold that position find the infallibility of the pope incomprehensible.

so i find myself often seeming to be the fogey, the silly old man who thinks god loves us enough to self-reveal to us. i find not only great comfort but great truth in the oft-repeated address in the orthodox liturgy, "thou art a man-befriending god." i find continuity between the holy one's desire to be friends with moses and his desire to be friends with us. this i think is a completely orthodox understanding of the beloved one. thanks be to god for his unspeakable gift!

the fourth sunday of easter: all we like sheep

it is not popular to be sheep these days. we seldom use the old confession,

"almight and most merciful father; we have erred, and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep. we have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts. we have offended against thy holy laws. we have left undone those things which we ought to have done; and we have done those things which we ought not to have done; and there is no health in us. . . ."

the in the gospel for this week (john 10:1-10) jesus suggests we are indeed his sheep, because he is our shepherd. when we so proudly think of ourselves otherwise, we are listening to the voices of those who are thieves and robbers. i was reminded of a hymn from my childhood:

"savior, like a shepherd lead us, much we need thy tender care;
in thy pleasant pastures feed us, for our use thy folds prepare.
. . .
early let us seek thy favor, early let us do thy will;
blessèd lord and only savior, with thy love our bosoms fill." (dorothy a. thrupp)

but there are times when we, too, are called to act as shepherds. that is when the other image of jesus in this gospel becomes important. he is the door. whenever we would bring anyone into the fold any other way, we fail.

as usual, william temple sums it all up quite well, saying,

"the pastoral office, like all other offices in the church, is a localisation, so to speak, of a function of the whole church and its members. . . . we are called to be christ's witnesses. but by what right do we date to attempt the direction of a neighbour's life, or even of a child's? and . . . the answer is that we approach him through the door.
"i have no right to call men to adopt my traditions or to follow my manner of life. but i may call them to accept the truth and to follow the way which is life." (readings in st. john's gospel (new york: st. martin's press, 1968), p. 159)

tribute to a friend

i received a letter yesterday from one of my several friends who are exploring ordination--not any of the ones who have commented on this blog, and this post is in tribute to him.

it has been an odd week, in that a greater than usual number of my friends who are in the business, as it were, ordained ministers in various brands of the church, have talked to me about their discomfort with the church, questioning whether they can continue to work within it as they have been. none of them is questioning his or her own calling to priesthood, merely whether the church allows them to exercise it.

my immediately, if not spoken, reaction, is that the calling and imposition of episcopal hands is itself the empowerment and indeed necessitating--is that a word--to exercise it. but that's easy for me to say. i'm ordained in a branch of the church that follows without ever noticing it roland allen's idea of priesthood without remuneration. i can be as prophetic as i wish, and there is no loss of what we call "livelihood" to me or my family.

so, into this week comes my friend's letter, saying "that i do genuinely feel called to out of the idea of the joy of service. . . . but is the job ready for me?" the problem, you see, is that my friend is "a queer."

hence my post. i wrote to him of my experience when i resigned my charge in the united methodist church, which had decided not to ordained "practicing self-professing homosexuals." i knew i should be truthful, so although i had had no practice, i self-professed. the response was one of those bureaucratic horrors that eviscerates the power of the gospel to save this horrible broken world in which we live. i don't remember whether it was the district superintendent or the elder who was in charge of keeping everyone on the next page in the notebook with the checkmarks to fill out for full membership in the conference who answered, but the answer was, "gosh, dale, we don't care what you do, so long as no one knows."

i assumed that my ordained life was over. it was therefore an amazing surprise when i discovered a weird branch of the church whose discernment process was not based on either fear or current politics, but on what the spirit is speaking to the church (and what he had spoke to the church in the earliest days, before it got all entangled with the empire). as i began to go through enquiring about possible ordination, i was delighted and surprised that my phone would ring and it would be a bishop from somewhere or another who did not have a notebook with check mark blanks but with questions about my spiritual experiences and practices and understanding of the holy.

so, i told my friend, "the bigger question is not if the church is ready for you, but how it necessarily requires you. think of how the big shots in the temple thought they weren't ready for jesus. and of course they weren't."

and i am delighted to find someone who recognizes that the call to ordination is the call to the joy of service, and delighted that he has found that in a parish which serves.

and i want to make sure that i am not dishonest online. as i wrote to my friend, i am celebate, but it is to simplify my life, not because i think there is something worse about what i prefer to call homophilia than homosexuality. anyone who goes through the checkout lane of any grocery store in this country can see on the covers of the weeklies that heterosexuality is not necessarily a good thing, either. despite what television and people magazine say, there is more to life than sex.

third sunday of easter: heartburn

usually on monday mornings i try to post something about the previous sunday's gospel. this post is no exception, but it is a little more personal than some.

the gospel is the story of the first supper: unrecognized jesus and two disciples meet on the road. they hear him tell of all the scriptures that testify of him, and then recognize him in the breaking of the bread. "did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us along the way, while he opened the scriptures to us?"

i was delighted that an old friend was in town, a priest with whom i had worked twenty-five years ago. bob was at the parish breakfast. then at the bible study after breakfast, another friend said, "i like this guy," in reference to something bob had said. "i like him, too," i said, "but when i was a substitute teacher, i found that anyone can be brilliant for three days." in my mind was, "but i worked with bob for years, and his brilliance lasts." but those words were not said.

afterwards, after i had probably been too anxious to agree with bob--not that i disagreed with him--i had a bit of heartburn. i realized that i was jealous. bob has had a very easily-defined career: rector, canon-to-the-ordinary, rector, head of a dioscesan taskforce. at breakfast i had been called once again a prophet. what has my career been? semi-pelagian semi-prophetic semi-ornamental semi-hermit. how does that look on a resume? indeed i had started to call this post "the loneliness of the long-distance prophet." in my better moments i am happy to recognize my calling; blessed even (macarius has both meanings, after all.) i know that

"the measuring line marks out delightful places for me,
for me the heritage is superb, indeed." (psalm 16:6)

before the day was over, it had become one of my better times. edie reminded us in her sermon that "every good and every perfect gift comes down from the father of lights" (james 1:17), and as we broke the bread, we sang:

"one bread, one body, one lord of all,
one cup of blessing which we bless.
and we, though many throughout the world,
we are one body in this one lord." (john b. foley, after paul of tarsus)

of course! bob's gifts are mine, and my gifts are his; or rather, bob's gifts are ours and mine are ours. apart from the vine, the one lord, whose branches and members we are, we are nothing.

"so my heart exults, my very soul rejoices,
my body, too, will rest securely,
for you will not abandon my son to sheol,
nor allow the one you love to see the pit;
you will reveal the path of life to me,
give me unbounded joy in your presence,
and at your right hand everlasting pleasures." (psalm 16:9-11)

the koan: a (perhaps) last remark

i have discovered in my old age roland allen, whose insistant idea of what constituted "church" was based on pauls' missionary methods, not ours. when a local group of believers have received the bible, the creeds, the sacraments, and the ministry, they are as much church as rome or canterbury or constantinople or antioch, or even jerusalem. of course his continuing problem with "the church" as it already existed was that there was no willingness for bishops to share "their" ministry--or at least the ministry which is often seen seen as "theirs" rather than the church's.

there are two things that strike me full-in-the-middle-of-the-forehead about his writings.

the first is that what he sees as constituant of the church is exactly the contents of the chicago-lambeth quadrilateral.

the second is his insistance, in which i find he is painfully correct, that we fail to trust the holy spirit.

in defense of thomas, no doubt

eight days after easter sunday has come, since at least as early as the sixth century, comes “thomas sunday.” then is read the gospel which says, “thomas, called the twin, one of the twelve, was not with them when jesus came. when the disciples said, ‘we have seen the lord,’ he answered, ‘unless i see the holes that the nails made in his hands, and can put my fingers in the holes they have made, and unless i can put my hand into his side, i refuse to believe.’ eight days later the disciples were in the house again. . . . jesus came in . . . . then he said to thomas, ‘put your finger here; look, here are my hands. give me your hand; put it into my side. soubt no longer, but believe.’ thomas replied, ‘my lord and my god.’” (john 20:24-2, jerusalem bible): “doubting thomas.”



although matthew’s gospel records that even forty days after the resurrection, at jesus’ ascension, “some doubted” (28:17), this sunday thomas’ doubt will be spotlighted. In many hundreds of pulpits, we will be reminded, “happy are they who have not seen yet believe.” (john 20:29)



in what do we who “have not seen” believe? it is the witness of thomas’ insistence on actually touching the physical body of our risen lord (along with luke’s homely inclusion of jesus' question, “have you anything to eat?”—a ghost perceivably could have been lying [24:41]) that establishes the certainty that the resurrection was indeed physical.



there are always those who want to reduce the resurrection to “a spiritual event,” or to suggest that the disciples were having some sort of mass hallucination. this idea is very much alive today among those who talk about “christ consciousness,” or who say “we are not religious, we are spiritual.” biblical christianity is always more than spiritual. the creed merely expresses the teaching of the psalms, the gospels, the letter to the hebrews and the first letter of peter: “we believe in the resurrection of the body.”



death is the separation of the soul from the body. the life in the world to come is the reunion of souls and bodies. the souls of the faithful underneath the heavenly altar in the revelation to john (6:9-10) cry out “how long?” waiting for their bodies!



this allows for true religion. religion literally means to rebind together things that are or have become separated. the reconciliation of god and mankind; the union of hebrew and greek, of male and female, of slave and free, are not merely spiritual events. nor is what we usually call morality merely a spiritual matter. james wrote of this when he said, “pure, unspoiled religion, in the eyes of god our father is this: coming to the help of orphans and widows when they need it, and keeping oneself uncontaminated by the world” (1:27).



it is his insistence on touching the lord’s wounds that allows dear thomas to recognize jesus as both lord, and god, and that founds our religion, in which we can offer ourselves, our souls and bodies, as a living sacrifice.

resurrection and forgiveness

before the resurrection, jesus sent out the twelve (luke 9:1-2)and the seventy-two luke 10:1) to heal and to proclaim the good news of the kingdom. but he did not send them to forgive sins. this he did, and was condemned for it. (mark 2:1-12)

but after the resurrection, all is changed. consider this passage from john's gospel:

"in the evening of that same day, the first day of the week, the doors were closed in the room where the disciples were, for fear of the jews. jesus came and stood among them. he said to them, 'peace be with you,' and showed them his hands and his side. the disciples were filled with joy when they saw the lord, and he said to them again, 'peace be with you.
'as the father sent me,
so i am sending you.'

"after saying this he breathed on them and said:
'receive the holy spirit.
for those whose sins you forgive,
they are forgiven;
for those whose sins you retain,
they are retained.'" (20:19-23)

(there are those who find only two sacraments ordained by our lord, and who reject the church's ministry to forgive sins. i don't understand how they read this passage.)

it is remarkable and amazing that the first thing jesus does when he rejoins the disciples is to send them to forgive sins. this is of course quite in keeping with john's understanding of the mission of christ jesus, as it was with paul's understanding: "this is a true saying, and worthy of all men to be received,
that christ jesus came into the world to save sinners." ( 1 timothy 1:15).

it is amazing because we are so often concerned with everything else: hospitals and potluck suppers and new and bigger organs. we are often just plain embarassed that there are sins and that we are called to forgive them.

it is remarkable because it is the first thing jesus does after the resurrection. before the crucifixion it was not possible. but now it is. this is what jesus underwent the agony of the scourging and crucifixion and descent into hell for: to save sinners. and just as the father sent him, so he sends those who follow him. to forget this only is to ignore the heart of the gospel.

Holy Thursday

the last time i was in los angeles, i spent a week off the expressways, enjoying the wonderful neighborhoods. unfortunately i was not there for maundy thursday.

alleluia! the lord is risen!

my absolute favourite paschal hymn is "the strive is over". and those of you who were with me in seattle to hear (bask in the glow of)desmond tutu will enjoy that at trinity cathedral in kansas city they have those fancy liturgical fly rods, too. alleluia!

is easter early this year? no, and it's only starting.

easter is the only holy day we have that is outside of regular, calendar, time. sometimes well-intended folk want to "set" the date of easter (usually as march 25, which is the traditional date of the crucifixion of our lord). but easter actually is dated within a cosmic understanding of time: it is the first sunday after the full moon after the spring equinox; it is within the time of the sun and of the moon, and of creation. it is the eighth day, the day as st. matthew says, "when all things are made new." (matthew 18:28, jerusalem bible) if you saw mel gibson's the passion of the christ, remember the scene in which jesus meets his mother as he carries his cross. "look, mother," he says, "i am making all things new.

all things. "from the beginning until now . . . all creation has been groaning in one great act of giving birth . . . ." (romans 8:22) the recreation has begun--the word matthew uses is palingenesis--literally a re-genesis. the new creation is not finished. as the writer to the hebrews said, "at present, it is true, we are not able to see that everything has been put under [jesus'] command, but we do see in jesus one who was for a short while made lower than the angels and is now crowned with glory and splendor because he submitted to death." (2:8-9) jesus has led us into the new creation, the promised land of the kingdom of god, the sabbath rest, but we are still like the children of israel who were led out of egypt into the promised land, through the jordan, by joshua. (jesus is of course the greek spelling of joshua.) we are still weak compared to what seem to be giants in the land. but, "the spirit, too, comes to help us in our weakness." (romans 8:26)

and so our easter celebration continues, not just the one sunday but through the great fifty days of the pentecost ("pentecost" means counting to fifty), until we are all filled with the holy spirit. (acts 2) the early church celebrated this fifty days as one continuous feast, singing alleluias each day, standing at prayer, reading the book of acts to remind them of their role in the birth of the new world. our fore-fathers and -mothers in the faith recognized that their salvation--our salvation--was accomplished by the entire work of christ: incarnation, death, burial, descent into hell, resurrection, ascension into heaven to sit at the right hand of the father, and sending his holy spirit.

"with so many witnesses in a great cloud on every side of us, we too, then, should throw off everything that hinders us, especially the sin that clings so easily, and keep running steadily in the race we have started. let us not lose sight of jesus, who leads us in our faith and brings it to perfection; for the sake of the joy which is still in the future, he endured the cross, disregarding the shamefulness of it, and from now on has taken his place at the right of god's throne." (hebrews 12:1-2)

the last of the first sabbaths: great and holy saturday

although many of you reading this blog almost certainly will have observed maundy thursday and good friday, and are looking forward to the great paschal celebration of the resurrection of our lord, i suspect fewer will note holy saturday. yet this day is as important in our salvation as any other of the triduum.

the eastern church has maintained it's observance of this day, and the western church is beginning to recover it, but i have heard little made of it in the west.

this is the day our lord, after his crucifixion took captivity captive, rested in the earth. as gregory of nazianzus (one of the paleo cappadocians) said, "what is not assumed is not redeemed." the struggle to understand the fullness of our great redemption came to be expressed as the fight against arianism. the orthodox church recognized the holy nature of this great sabbath, in which our incarnate lord rested from finishing the new creation even as his father rested from finishing the first creation.

we imply this in the apostles' creed when we say "he descended to the dead" in the newer translations which avoid what to us modern folks an incomprehensability in the older translaton: "he descended into hell."

i cannot recommend too highly that we, too, take this as a day of profound rest, and use the holy saturday office to rejoice in the magnificence of our salvation.

good friday

i was hoping to find a good rendition of psalm 22* to post. failing that, i found a wonderful (i.m.h.o.) meditation on good friday from parsifal.




*(My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? *
and are so far from my cry
and from the words of my distress?

2 O my God, I cry in the daytime, but you do not answer; *
by night as well, but I find no rest.

3 Yet you are the Holy One, *
enthroned upon the praises of Israel.

4 Our forefathers put their trust in you; *
they trusted, and you delivered them.

5 They cried out to you and were delivered; *
they trusted in you and were not put to shame.

6 But as for me, I am a worm and no man, *
scorned by all and despised by the people.

7 All who see me laugh me to scorn; *
they curl their lips and wag their heads, saying,

8 "He trusted in the LORD; let him deliver him; *
let him rescue him, if he delights in him."

9 Yet you are he who took me out of the womb, *
and kept me safe upon my mother's breast.

10 I have been entrusted to you ever since I was born; *
you were my God when I was still in my
mother's womb.

11 Be not far from me, for trouble is near, *
and there is none to help.

12 Many young bulls encircle me; *
strong bulls of Bashan surround me.

13 They open wide their jaws at me, *
like a ravening and a roaring lion.

14 I am poured out like water;
all my bones are out of joint; *
my heart within my breast is melting wax.

15 My mouth is dried out like a pot-sherd;
my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth; *
and you have laid me in the dust of the grave.

16 Packs of dogs close me in,
and gangs of evildoers circle around me; *
they pierce my hands and my feet;
I can count all my bones.

17 They stare and gloat over me; *
they divide my garments among them;
they cast lots for my clothing.

18 Be not far away, O LORD; *
you are my strength; hasten to help me.

19 Save me from the sword, *
my life from the power of the dog.

20 Save me from the lion's mouth, *
my wretched body from the horns of wild bulls.

21 I will declare your Name to my brethren; *
in the midst of the congregation I will praise you.


22 Praise the LORD, you that fear him; *
stand in awe of him, O offspring of Israel;
all you of Jacob's line, give glory.

23 For he does not despise nor abhor the poor in their poverty;
neither does he hide his face from them; *
but when they cry to him he hears them.

24 My praise is of him in the great assembly; *
I will perform my vows in the presence of those who
worship him.

25 The poor shall eat and be satisfied,
and those who seek the LORD shall praise him: *
"May your heart live for ever!"

26 All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to
the LORD, *
and all the families of the nations bow before him.

27 For kingship belongs to the LORD; *
he rules over the nations.

28 To him alone all who sleep in the earth bow down
in worship; *
all who go down to the dust fall before him.

29 My soul shall live for him;
my descendants shall serve him; *
they shall be known as the LORD'S for ever.

30 They shall come and make known to a people yet unborn *
the saving deeds that he has done.)

the psalms in holy week

in 1549 thomas cramner, archbishop of canterbury, published "A Table for the Ordre of the Psalmes, To Be Sayed at Matins and Evensong." since then most churches have used the psalms more selectively, with psalms specifically appointed for holy week and easter. i am rather old-fashioned, so i thought that this year i would see how cramner's table of psalms fell out for these days. looking at the psalms with the understanding that they are the prayers of the messiah, prayed by the church, his body on earth, i find the ones that come this week quite wonderful and amazing.

these are the psalms for each day, maundy thursday through easter sunday:

maundy thursday morning, 102, 103; evening 104;
good friday morning, 105; evening, 106;
holy saturday morning, 107; evening, 108, 109;
easter sunday morning, 110, 111, 112, 113; evening 114, 115.

on maundy thursday morning we pray:

"rise, take pity on zion!--
the hour has come to have mercy on her,
the hour has come . . . "(102:13)

"bless the lord, my soul,
bless his holy name, all that is in me! . . .
no less than the height of heaven over earth
is the greatness of his love for those who fear him;
he takes our sins farther away
than the east is from the west." (103:1, 11-12)

and in the evening, as we prepare to commemorate the beginning of the new creation, we sing that great hymn of all creation in psalm 104, praying these words on the night jesus gave us the eucharist:

"all creation depends on you
to feed them throughout the year:
you provide the food they eat,
with generous hand you satisfy their hunger." (vv.27-28)

good friday gives us psalm 105 in the morning and 106 in the evening, great hymns that recount the holy one's acts in delivering israel from egypt and leading them, despite their continuing sins, through the desert into the promised land. their sins continue and they were led again into captivity.

"time and again he rescued them,
but they went on defying him deliberately
and plunged deeper into wickedness;
even so, he took pity on their distress,
each time he heard them calling." (106:47-48)

holy saturday morning continues "salvation history," ending with these wonderful words on the day we remember that our lord "was buried and descended into hell:"

"but now, he lifts the needy out of their misery,
and gives them a flock of new families;
at the sight of which, upright hearts rejoice
and wickedness must hold its tongue.

"if you are wise, study these things
and realize how the holy one shows his love." (107:41-43)

holy saturday evening gives us two songs, with great contrast. psalm 108 is all hopefulness and trust as we look to easter morning:
"my heart is ready, god!
--i mean to sing and play.
awake, my muse,
awake lyre and harp,
i mean to wake the dawn." (vv.1-2)

but psalm 109 reminds us of the price of our hope, telling the curses taken on by christ as he "became sin" for us:

"may no one be left to show him kindness." (v. 12)

then come the joyous psalms for easter morning, as we sing to the lord,

"royal dignity was yours from the day you were born." (110:3)
"alleluia . . . alleluia . . . alleluia." (111:1, 112:1, 113:1)

and our alleluia continues in the evening with psalms 114 and 115. all of creation, sea and mountain, earth and river, praising the holy one (psalm 114) as do we when with christ we are raised to new life:

"the dead cannot praise the holy one,
they have gone down to silence;
but we, the living, bless the beloved
henceforth and ever more." (115:17-18)

alleluia indeed!

koan time is running short

it is tempting to say something about the foursquare nature of the inner court of the vision of the temple in ezekiel (ch.40:47) and compare that to the quadralateral as somehow being mystically related to each other. (well, i guess i did say it, didn't it?) they do seem related to me, in that i find the "sides" of the chicago-lambeth quadrilateral to be authentic parts of the new temple which we are called to be, a temple of living stones, even if i do recognize that it is difficult for us to agree on their meaning or implementation.

but i do trust the promise in ezekiel 36:26: "i shall give you a new heart, and put a new spirit in you; i shall remove the heart of stone from your bodies and give you a heart of flesh instead." and i trust the prophecy of the dry bones in the thirty-seventh chapter. both of these reassuring passages occur after the wide-spread condemnation of both israel and the other nations, and before the description of the rebuilt temple.

another way of understanding the unity of the church is found in the 1916 discipline of the methodist episcopal church:

"the methodist episcopal church has always believed that the only infallible proof of the legitimacy of any branch of the christian church is its ability to seek and to save the lost, and to disseminate the pentecostal spirit and life." (new york: methodist book concern, 1916, p. 20)

and as roland allen so forcefully reminds us, the measure of the authenticity of the church in the book of acts was that "the holy spirit came down on all . . . ." (acts 10:44)

one of the many scary things that happens to ezekiel is that "the spirit lifted . . . up and took" him (2:14). almost certainly the main hindrance to our recognizing the oneness of the body of christ, his church, is the fear that if we are open to the wonder of the thing the holy spirit will lift us up and take us. we are comfortable where we are. why should we want to live in the kingdom of god?

palm sunday: the entry into jerusalem

anna was with us yesterday evening for the eucharist. not just the prophetess anna of luke's gospel, who stayed in the temple to recognize the child messiah. she of course is always there, with angels and archangels and all the company of heaven, whenever the eucharist is celebrated. but last night also we had anna a two-year old, who was about as two-years-old as it gets, making demands of us adults because she has just begun to be able to make demands, the way we who are old enough to know better sometimes make demands of god; making joyful noises because they are joyful; and sometimes singing the hymns and texts of the liturgy.

the reading was the entrance into jerusalem from the gospel according to st. matthew:

"when they were near jerusalem and had come to bethphage on the mount of olives, then jesus sent two disciples, saying to them, 'go to the village facing you, and you will at once find a tethered donkey and a colt with her. untie them and bring them to me. if anyone says anything to you, you are to say, "the master needs them and will send them back at once."' this was to fulfil what was spoken by the prophet: say to the daughter of zion: look, your king is approaching, humble and riding on a donkey and on a colt, the foal of a beast of burden. so the disciples went and did as jesus had told them. they brought the donkey and the colt, then they laid their cloaks on their backs and he took his seat on them. great crowds of people spread their cloaks on the road, while others were cutting branches from the trees and spreading them in his path. the crowds who went in front of him and those who followed were all shouting:

"hosanna to the son of david! blessed is he who is coming in the name of the lord!"

and when he entered jerusalem, the whole city was in turmoil as people asked, 'who is this?' and the crowds answered, 'this is the prophet jesus from nazareth in galilee.'

jesus then went into the temple and drove out all those who were selling and buying there; he upset the tables of the money-changers and the seats of the dove-sellers.
he said to them, 'according to scripture, my house will be called a house of prayer; but you are turning it into a bandits' there were also blind and lame people who came to him in the temple, and he cured them. at the sight of the wonderful things he did and of the children shouting, 'hosanna to the son of david' in the temple, the chief priests and the scribes were indignant and said to him, 'Do you hear what they are saying?' jesus answered, 'yes. Have you never read this: By the mouths of children, babes in arms, you have made sure of praise?'" (njb)

this passage recalls another story from matthew, which we were reading less than three months ago: the story of the earlier herod's attempt to eliminate the new-born king by killing all the male children less than two years old (matthew 2:16), a story remembered in the beautiful coventry carol.

but herod had failed, and the children are here to remind us of his failure, a reminder also of matthew's literary prowess. it is the children who once again are annoying those in power, the children are central to they hymn we sing each year on palm sunday: "all glory, laud and honor, to thee redeemer king, to whom the lips of children make sweet hosannas ring." no one's hossana's were sweeter than anna's.

palm sunday and holy week: tourist or pilgrim?

tomorrow is palm sunday, the beginning of "holy week," and for many christians a time of great business. there are more readings that i can begin to comment on, but i will direct you to the excellent site textweek for a guide.

what i would like to comment on is some of the origins of this busy time, and to suggest how we might use it. there seem to be two main sources of the crammed-packed "holy week"--well, three, if we consider the original celebration of the pascha (in english, easter). the earliest church celebrated the passover of our lord, the three days from "maundy thursday" to "the first day of the week, the day of the resurrection," as one great feast, recognizing that we cannot sort out any one part of the work of the christ as more important or independent of the others. death, burial, descent into hell, resurrection, they're all together one great event.

then especially after the ending of the persecution of the church, the week before the vigil became a sort of cram week for catechumens. so in addition to the events of the three days (the triduum), there were added special readings for each of the other days from "palm sunday" on.

then jerusalem was rebuilt splendidly under the auspices of the emperors, and "holy week" became the time for pilgrimages to the holy sites. what we know of the early events today comes mostly from the writings of egeria, a fourth century spanish abbess who described the events. there were four churches, with services spread between them, in addition to the processions of palm sunday and good friday through the streets of the city. the martyrium marked golgotha, where our lord as crucified. the eleona as at the mount of olives where he had taught. the imbomon was at the place of his ascension, and the anastasis marked the tomb, the site of his resurrection. it was not long before churches, first in spain, then throughout the empire, began to try to reproduce as much of the jerusalem events as they could.

we still try to reproduce those events, with results ranging from magnificent (i would recommend, for instance, holy week at st. mark's cathedral in seattle, to pitiful, at places i won't mention.) but i will suggest that to try to pack all of the activities possible into a week when most of us are already too busy for our souls tends to make holy week a tourist trap rather than a pilgrimage.

so, i recommend taking the week slowly, choosing some particular part for meditation and exploration. if the time is new to you, you might start with the palm sunday procession, and pay particular attention to its texts and hymnody. (the hymn "all glory laud and honor" is, according to eric werner in the sacred bridge, perhaps the oldest melody used by the christian church, originating in the jewish temple liturgy for the feast of tabernacles.)

each year, one can add to one's understanding, if the lord delay his return. if not, we will be singing "all glory laud and honor" in a different setting.

difficulties with a modest proposal, 4: the historic episcopate

both the american episcopal church and the lambeth conference agreed on the fourth "lateral":
"the historic episcopate, locally adapted in the methods of its administration to the varying needs of the nations and peoples called of god into the unity of his church."

as bernhard w. anderson said of this part of the quadralateral it is the "one side more lateral than the others." (in j. robert wright, ed. quadralateral at one hundred [cincinnatti, ohio: forward movement publications, 1988], pp. 55-60). part of what makes this statement so difficult is "the historic episcopate." if the american and world-wide bishops had appealed to the "biblical episcopate," their position would probably have strengthened over the past century as the discoveries of the dead sea scrolls, for instance, have made clear that the idea of episcopate which the church in the second and third century had for the word episcopos was current in the century or so before christ.

but the "historical episcopate" tends to call up ideas of lines of men in strange hats processing into marble halls. of course one could as well suggest the men who came to the council of nicea with their scars and ragged clothes from the persecutions which they did not know were over, mostly.

the "historic episcopate" also tends to call up the idea of large dioceses, as much political organizations as ecclesiastical.

into my lent, as i struggle with the koan of ezekiel and his vision of the rebuilding of the temple for "nations and peoples called of god into the unity of his church," comes the little bombshell of roland allen, with his ideas for a restoration of the methods of the early church when the presbyterate were literally the elders of the local church, and the episcopos was the overseer of a local church as well. of course. so simple. so free from the trappings of "taking care for what you wear." allen found it very unlike that his bishops (the anglican bishops of the 20's and 30's of the twentieth century) would ever ordain such bishops, but he did hope they might at least ordain local presbyters.

but now, nearly a century since allen was a missionary in china, perhaps the time has come to encourage such a confidence in the holy spirit to do what jesus has promised:

"in all truth i tell you, whoever believes in me will perform the same works as i do myself, and will perform even greater works, because i am going to the father. whatever you ask in my name i will do, so that the father may be glorified in the son. if you ask me anything in my name, i will do it. if you love me you will keep my commandments. i shall ask the father, and he will give you another paraclete to be with you for ever, the spirit of truth whom the world can never accept since it neither sees nor knows him; but you know him, because he is with you, he is in you. i shall not leave you orphans; I shall come to you. in a short time the world will no longer see me; but you will see that i live and you also will live. on that day you will know that i am in my father and you in me and i in you." (john 14:12-20 njb)

who are "we"? (wilco answers)

a week or so ago i tried to suggest to a friend that "we"--the "good people" who say we are opposed to the war in iraq but who accept the benefits of it, such as its support of the bubble of the u.s. economy--are in fact supporting the war with our silence. he loudly said not to include him in that "we."

perhaps wilco says it more eloquently than i.

the fifth sunday in lent: lazarus

the calling of lazarus from the tomb, the unbinding of the dead man, is absolutely central to the gospel according to john, and to much of how followers of christ understood his accomplishment as the messiah.

the lectionary reading, john 11:1-44 or 45, tells the story, and it is a wonderful story. but to see how important this story is we must look also at all of chapter 11 and at least the first eight verses of chapter 12.

so, first, the story: jesus, on "the far side of the jordan [from jerusalem] . . . in the district where john had been baptizing" (john 10:40) receives a message that his friend, "the man he loves," is sick. at this point i can do no better than to quote john, the language of this passage is so packed:

"on receiving the message, jesus said, 'this sickness will not end in death, but it is for god's glory so that through it the son of god may be glorified.'

jesus loved martha and her sister and lazarus, yet when he heard that he was ill he stayed where he was for two more days
before saying to the disciples, 'let us go back to judaea.'
The disciples said, 'rabbi, it is not long since the jews were trying to stone you; are you going back there again?'

jesus replied:
'are there not twelve hours in the day?
no one who walks in the daytime stumbles,
having the light of this world to see by;
anyone who walks around at night stumbles,
having no light as a guide.'

he said that and then added, 'our friend lazarus is at rest; I am going to wake him.' the disciples said to him, 'lord, if he is at rest he will be saved.' jesus was speaking of the death of lazarus, but they thought that by 'rest' he meant 'sleep'; so jesus put it plainly, 'lazarus is dead; and for your sake I am glad I was not there because now you will believe. but let us go to him.' then thomas-known as the twin-said to the other disciples, 'let us also go to die with him.'" (njb)

jesus, although he clearly loves this little bethanite family, does not act primarily from his own emotions, but for god's glory. nor it is an abstract glorification of god or the son of god that is his motive. jesus acts as he does "because now you will believe." (v.15) even as the father gives his son to death for the salvation of the world, so the son gives his friend to death for his followers' belief in that salvation. eternal life does not come from the avoidance of death, but by passing through death. so thomas corrctly says, "let us also go to die with him."

"i am the resurrection.
if anyone believes in me, even though he dies he will live,
and whoever lives and believes in me
will never die." (vv.25-26)

jesus asks martha, "do you believe this?" "yes, lord, she said, "i believe that you are the christ, the son of god, the one who was to come into the world."(vv.26-27) when he asks that the stone be rolled away, martha says, "by now he will smell; this is the fourth day."(vv.39-40) jesus replies, "have i not told you that if you believe you will see the glory of god?"(v.40) then the act itself: to lazarus jesus cries, "in a loud voice, 'lazarus, here! come!"(v.43) the dead man comes out, his feet and hands bound with bands of stuff and a cloth around his face. jesus said to them, 'unbind him, let him go free.'"(vv.43-44)

reading these words i cannot help but think of the binding of isaac. (genesis 22:1-18) we often read that story, with "a ram caught by its horns in a bush" (v.13) and leap the 2000 years from abraham in the twenty-second chapter of genesis to the nineteenth chapter of john's gospel, with the ultimate provision by the holy one of a sacrifice, doing so by belittling the 2000 years of history of abraham's children, who are sacrificed in the literal sense of the word: they are chosen to be a holy people, bound by torah to a way of life which often seems hardly to bless them at all, but which ultimately will bring salvation "for the nation [of israel]--and not for the nation only, but to gather together into unity the scattered people of god." (john 11:52)

the unbinding of lazarus, more dead even than abraham and sarah who were "as good as dead" (hebrews 11:12) both fulfilled the confidence abraham had "that god had the power even to raise the dead (hebrews 11:19) and transferred the role of blessing all nations (genesis 22:18)from the "descendants as many as the stars of heaven and the grains of sand on the seashore" (genesis 21:17)to the one of abraham's sons who is "of the same order as melchizedek" (hebrews 7:11) and as the author of the letter to the hebrews so clearly understands, ". . . any change in the priesthood must mean a change in the law as well." (hebrews 11:12)

the unbinding of lazarus sets more than one dead man free.

it also sets in motion the sentence jesus had alluded to in the third chapter of john ("no one who believes in him will be condemned; but whoever refuses to believe in him is condemned already"[v. 18]) and which he announces as a present event in the twelth chapter ("now is sentence being passed on this world; now the prince of this world is to be overthrown."[v.31])

following the unbinding of lazarus the jews who see the event are clearly divided: "many . . . believed in him, but some went to tell the pharisees what jesus had done." (john 11:45-46) the chief priests and the pharisees decide jesus must be put to death.

but six days before the passover, mary of bethany, having seen the glory of god in jesus' unbinding of her brother, will anoint jesus, marking him finally, just before his death, as the literal messiah, the christ, the anointed one of israel. (john 12:1-4)

difficulties with a modest proposal, 3: the two sacraments

remember--it's been a while since i've posted about this--the third side of the chicago quadralateral:

"the two sacraments--baptism and the supper of the lord--ministered with
unfailing use of christ's words of institution and of the elements ordained by him."

the anglican bishops meeting at lambeth palace in 1888 made no change in this wording in their resolution, as they had done with the first two statements.

laying aside the recognition of more sacraments by many parts of the church--seven by the romans, for instance, twelve in the church of the east--there remains problems even with these simple words. my own malabar rite, using the anaphora of sts. addai and mari, does not contain the "words of institution," and it has been accepted as "valid" by at least the roman church, and i should add that i have often celebrated that rite in episcopal churches in at least three dioceses.

and, even more potentially heretical, i have "received" communion--i use that word not because it really reflects my own eucharistic theology but because it does point to the part of the eucharist i am talking about now--in churches whose pastors were not ordained in apostolic succession as recognized by my own lineage, nor who seemed to use any eucharistic prayer. there was bread. there was wine. we commumed as the body of christ.

oh. i forgot to mention something. there was grape juice.

and in the case of baptism, there are of course many instances of "weird" baptisms in the book of the acts of the apostles. (see, for example, acts 18:25; 19:3)

and there are of course wide disagreements about what constitutes the "element" instituted by jesus for baptism. although most churches consider the desired "element" to be running water sufficient for immersion, we often come short of what might be desired.

so, i am wondering, where am i going with this? but, remember, this is part of my lenten koan. i still have a two and a half weeks to solve it.

the fourth sunday in lent: the cure of the man born blind

the gospel for this sunday is a long one, the ninth chapter of the gospel according to john, and much happens in it. the actual "cure" part of the story is short, and almost incidental to jesus' answer to a question of his disciples about the man, "'rabbit, who sinned, this man or his parents for him to have been born blind?' 'neither he nor his parents sinned,' jesus answered, 'he was born blind so that the works of god might be displayed in him.'" (vv.2-3)

jesus then does something simple but powerful, both in action and in symbol. after saying "i am the light of the world," he makes a bit of mud with his spittle and the dust, rubs it on the man's eyes, and tells him to wash at the pool of siloam (where the water was drawn for the feast of tabernacles, itself a great light festival).

the man obeys jesus, and he can see. what follows is a sort of turning point in the gospels of lent, for once again the work of the messiah is surprising, but to this surprise, which the pharisees--for which read the religious leaders of the first church of what every brand you like best--do not even admit. instead, after initial and not surprising incredulity, they become comdemnatory. whatever this whoever is doing, it is wrong. he must be corrected. next sunday we will hear the story of an even greater miracle, the raising of lazarus, and the religious leaders will be determined to kill jesus.

however, i want to take a little time to reflect on the man born blind, the disciples' question about sin, and how i find myself in his story. in the midst of the doubts and questions about the rumoured miracle, when people were doubting the identity of the former beggar with his sight restored. "the man himself said, 'i am the man.'" (v. 9

and i am the man, not born blind so much as born in blindness.

the situation is much as it is described in psalm 51, verse five of which is translated by miles coverdale as,
"behold, i was shapen in wickedness,
and in sin hath my mother conceived me."

this does not mean that i was a pre-natal transgressor, nor that my mother committed a sinful act in my conception. rather it recognizes that the environment in which my life started was sinful. indeed how could it be otherwise? i was conceived in san diego at the end of a war waged by the civilized nations of the world against all that might be called civilization, ended by the use of the most devastating weapon yet devised by civilized man, the product of an endeavor blasphemously called the trinity project. this is the character of the world in which i blindly beg.

yet, by the grace of god, i do manage, sometimes, to see. sometimes i recognize that the "word is a lamp unto my feet" (psalm 119:105), that "the word was the true light that enlightens all men." (john 1:9) my problem, my frustration, is that i recognize the light best only when it "shines in the dark." (john 1:5) that is, when i am in my little cell, with the darkness of night all around me, or with the morning stars singing together, calling me to awake then dawn, then i think i see. but when i go into the big world, even the little big world of basin park in eureka springs, my sight becomes fuzzy. i am like mark's blind man of bethsaida: "i see men as trees, walking." (mark 8:22)

pray for me, my brothers and sisters, that i may see those men and those women in basin park as our lord, hungry or thirsty, a stranger or naked, sick or inprisoned, and not fail to come to their help. (matthew 25:44) pray that i need not fear jesus' final words in this sunday's gospel:

"blind? if you were,
you would not be guilty,
but since you say, 'we see,'
your guilt remains." (john 9:41)

28 february: wednesday in the third week of lent

it happened behind the clouds, within the clouds, which the ancient greeks thought to be living creatures, who veil and reveal. the holy one was at work changing the sunset. after a week of evening clouds, the winter sunset had been put away, in storage perhaps in the depths unfathomable to us mortals. the winter sunset that edged obliquely under the horizon, circling the world with the bright darkness of christmas, was only a memory. the new sunset came to the horizon much more sharply, a bright arrow that left a simple brightness all around. the waves of the sunset bathed the bare but budding branches bronze, and those trees in its shadows had outlives fuzzy with coming flowers and foliage.

wednesday in the third week of lent

not everything is frozen this morning, and the sunrise blankets all with at least a promise of heat. but my fingers are among the frozen things. my tongue may be the pen of a ready writer, but my fingers say, "not yet. let us embrace a warm cup of coffee, hold it. don't waste it on the ever-warm tongue."

still, lent means spring. the days are lengthening, and although it is brother crow, one of the black-robed monks, who awakes the dawn, and not myself, there is this morning enough light at 6:30 to read the morning psalms without a candle. This morning's psalms are numbers 120-125, songs of ascent, songs pilgrims sang as they went up to jerusalem, and I wonder what tune carried these words as jesus and his followers made the trip to mount zion for that last passover, the feast at which he himself would be the pascal lamb, sacrificed for his followers who would accompany him in the upper room, and for many, indeed for the sin of the world. at best i suspect a bitter-sweet melody, as they all at least silently agreed with thomas that they were going to jerusalem to die with their good master.

did they, could they, rejoice when he said to them, "let us go to the house of the lord?" perhaps the chill my fingers hold this cold lenten morning filled their whole beings, bowels and knees and tongues. still, they went, went to "jerusalem restored! the city/one united whole!/here the tribes go up,/the tribes of the holy one." they followed this son of david who would like his ancestor dance naked through the streets, not carrying the ark that held arron's blossoming rod into the city, but carrying the tree of life out. his followers then would not seem to be good candidates for living stones, "unshakeable, standing for ever."

yet when the cold darkness of today's lentnen night comes, i will pray the next psalm in this series, one that must have had joyous melodies for jesus' followers as they would begin to understand what he was doing as he recaptured jerusalem:



"when the holy one brought zion's captives home,
at first it seemed like a dream
then our mouths filled with laughter,
and our lips with song.
. . .
those who went sowing in tears,
now sing as they reap.
they went away, went away weeping,
carrying the seed;
they come back, come back singing,
carrying their sheaves."