The Lord be with you

Got up my courage and hobbled my way to church Sunday.  The bad leg aches a bit now, but I am so glad I went.  Was reminded that we are still in Easter season (good to know I have not missed it entirely), as we had two children baptised, two others joining the rank of full chorister (presented with their cottas -like these), the Mathias Gloria at full tilt, the sweet ache of his Agnus Dei, and a Postlude with Timothy Davis performing Mozart on the Engstrom grand piano.  And thanks to Theresa, who kindly came to get me and give me a ride at the last minute, on a weekend her mom was visiting (whom I finally got to meet).

As usual, my mind and emotions were off in a million directions at once, but one thing I noticed throughout the liturgy was that the word "Lord" was everywhere.  Made me smile (felt like I was playing the old college game of watching reruns of the Bob Newhart show and counting each time someone said "Hi Bob!").  But I was stunned at how pervasive it is, or rather how it had not occurred to me before, even after reading several days of discussion on it on the HoB list serve.  I mean, really, what would Episcopal worship be without, "The Lord be with you" (and "also with you")? 

And here's the Rite II Gloria:

Glory to God in the highest,
and peace to his people on earth.
Lord God, heavenly King,
almighty God and Father,
we worship you, we give you thanks,
we praise you for your glory.

Lord Jesus Christ, only Son of the Father,
Lord God, Lamb of God,
you take away the sin of the world:
have mercy on us;
you are seated at the right hand of the Father:
receive our prayer.

For you alone are the Holy One,
you alone are the Lord,
you alone are the Most High,
Jesus Christ,
with the Holy Spirit,
in the glory of God the Father.
Amen.

and the Nicene Creed:

We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,
the only Son of God,
eternally begotten of the Father,
God from God, Light from Light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made,
of one Being with the Father.
....
We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord,
the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son....

the Prayer of Absolution:

Almighty God have mercy on you, forgive you all your sins through our Lord Jesus Christ, strengthen you in all goodness, and by the power of the Holy Spirit keep you in eternal life.

the Great Thanksgiving:

The Lord be with you.

*People*              And also with you.

*Celebrant*          Lift up your hearts.

*People*              We lift them to the Lord.

*Celebrant*          Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.

*People*              It is right to give him thanks and praise.

the Sanctus:

Holy, Holy, Holy Lord, God of power and might,
heaven and earth are full of your glory.
Hosanna in the highest.
Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.
Hosanna in the highest.

the Eucharistic Prayers:

[A & B]

On the night he was handed over to suffering and death, our Lord Jesus Christ took bread; and when he had given thanks to you, he broke it, and gave it to his disciples, and said, "Take, eat: This is my Body, which is given for you. Do this for the remembrance of me.

[C] 

Lord God of our Fathers: God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ: Open our eyes to see your hand at work in the world about us. Deliver us from the presumption of coming to this Table for solace only, and not for strength; for pardon only, and not for renewal. Let the grace of this Holy Communion make us one body, one spirit in Christ, that we may worthily serve the world in his great High Priest, to whom, with you and the Holy Spirit, your Church gives honor, glory, and worship, from generation to generation.

[D] 

We acclaim you, holy Lord, glorious in power. Your mighty works reveal your wisdom and love. You formed us in your own image, giving the whole world into our care, so that, in obedience to you, our Creator, we might rule and serve all your creatures. When our disobedience took us far from you, you did not abandon us to the power of death. In your mercy you came to our help, so that in seeking you we might find you. Again and again you called us into covenant with you, and through the prophets you taught us to hope for salvation.

the Benediction:

Eternal God, heavenly Father,
you have graciously accepted us as living members
of your Son our Savior Jesus Christ,
and you have fed us with spiritual food
in the Sacrament of his Body and Blood.
Send us now into the world in peace,
and grant us strength and courage
to love and serve you
with gladness and singleness of heart;
through Christ our Lord.

and the Dismissal:

*Deacon...*       Let us go forth in the name of Christ.
*People*           Thanks be to God.

     or
*Deacon*          Go in peace to love and serve the Lord.
*People*           Thanks be to God.

     or
*Deacon*         Let us go forth into the world,
                         rejoicing in the power of the Spirit.
*People*          Thanks be to God.

    or
*Deacon*         Let us bless the Lord.
*People*          Thanks be to God.

And of course, these do not include the Psalms or the Kyrie eleison, which is about "kyriocentric" as one can get:

Lord, have mercy upon us.
Christ, have mercy upon us.
Lord have mercy upon us.


Kyrie eleison.
Christe eleison.
Kyrie eleison.

[Text of Episcopal BCP (1979), Rite II from http://justus.anglican.org/resources/bcp/bcp.htm].

There are, of course, many others titles or names given to Jesus, God, and the Holy Spirit, in Rite II prayers and elsewhere. But it is hard to imagine spending any time in worship that follows the Book of Common Prayer without the word "Lord" evoking the sounds, memories, and even conceptions of prayer and worship. Even those from other traditions or no tradition at all may think of Christianity when they hear "Lord" because of having heard the word in the context of "The Lord's Prayer," "The Lord's Supper," or perhaps even the beginning of the Twenty-third Psalm ("The Lord is my shepherd...").

The word, "Lord," particularly in its Greek form, kyrios (Κύριος), is not something that suddenly appeared in the King James version of the Bible in the 17th century or the 1662 Book of Common Prayer.  There is historical evidence that the term pre-dates the Gospels and was in use in the earliest Christian devotions and worship.  New Testament scholar, Larry W. Hurtado has spent his career focusing on this question, presenting his evidence and conclusions most fully in Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Christ in Earliest Christianity (2003).  See also, Davd B. Capes, April D. DeConick, Helen K. Bondis, eds., Israel's God and Rebecca's Children: Christology and Community in Early Judaism and Christianity, and Larry W. Hurtado, At the Origins of Christian Worship: The Context and Character of Earliest Christian Devotion (1999). 

The word "kyrios" and its Semitic equivalents were already in use among first-century Greek-speaking Jews as the substitutes for the Hebrew name for God, Yahweh.  See Hurtado, Lord Jesus Christ (2003 Pb. ed.), "Jesus as Lord," pp. 108 et seq.).  By then, "the Hebrew/Aramaic Old Testament had been translated into Greek, and that translation, called the Septuagint, became the near-universally used version across the Empire."  (Brad East, "Who is the Lord?")   Thus, Hurtado concludes that the use of "kyrios" in early Christian worship and texts, in connection with Jesus, indicates that he was seen as uniquely divine not long after his death, and within a particularly Jewish meaning and context rather than as a result of a later Hellenization of Christian beliefs and practices.  Hurtado stresses:

The point I want to emphasize is not only that the christological use of kyrios in early Pauline Christianity had translation equivalents in Aramaic-speaking Jewish Christian circles of earlier decades, but also that the religious meaning and functions of the application of kyrios to Jesus in Pauline circles were shaped by this earlier practice of appealing to the risen Jesus as "Lord" as a feature of the devotional life of Aramaic-speaking circles.  That is, there was a shared religiousness, and not merely an inherited vocabulary.

Lord Jesus Christ (2003 Pb. ed.) at p. 111.

Of course, what precisely the term "kyrios" or "Lord" meant to the early Christians and what its meaning and use should be today, are topics that will continue to spark debate among historians, theologians, church officials, liturgical commissions, and anyone else who may want to kibitz on the subject.  Nevertheless, it seems clear that "Lord" is at the heart of nearly two thousand years of Christian devotions and worship, and with them, understanding of what it means to be a Christian. 

By invoking Jesus as "Lord," we do not pray to Jesus as a separate divinity.  Instead, we "worship God in Jesus' name and through Jesus."  Hurtado, At the Origins of Christian Worship, p. 107.   What is expressed is our desire for and understanding of our relationship with God, through Jesus, not the creation of some kind of patriarchal or kyriarchal structure through which males or masters or overlords dominate over females, slaves, and servants.  Use of the words "Lord" and "Father" simply speak to that relationship rather than our relations with others:

In this light, Christians do not properly approach God as an expression of some ill-founded sentimentality about God's 'daddy-hood.' Christians properly call God 'Father' neither to make God 'sire' of the world or of us, nor because we want to deify fatherhood and maleness, but instead precisely because we enter into Jesus' relationship to God as Father. We are to consider ourselves as enfranchised into Jesus' relationship with God.

Ibid., 109.

To read the traditional language of Christian worship otherwise is to distort and idolize it.  From this perspective, Hurtado finds the feminist critique helpful to the extent it points to this kind of misreading and the terrible social consequences that inevitably result:

Some modern feminist criticism is both unfounded and yet also instructive for Christian worship. It is unfounded to claim that to reverence and address God as 'Father' and to reverence and refer to Jesus as 'the Son' necessarily means to privilege maleness and to give it transcendent validation while denying this to femaleness and motherhood. This sort of feminist critique presumes that all worship is the straight projection and divinisation of creaturely attributes such as maleness, and that the object of the worship is some idealised version of the attributes of the worshipper. On this assumption, the demand is logically that both maleness and femaleness should be divinised. Otherwise, women have no such idealised object with which to identify themselves. Were these assumptions totally correct, the demand would appear to be compelling.

Properly informed, however, Christian worship of the Triune God is not (or at least is not supposed to involve) the deification of creaturely characteristics. Christian worship is not supposed to be the projection of our own attributes into ideal, divine status. This would be a deification of the creature, a self-worship, which is admittedly all too accurate as characterising human 'religiousness.' But from the standpoint of Biblical tradition, any such de facto divinisation of the creature manifests a distance from the effectual revelation of the true and living God. Worship that is offered in response to the revealed, true and living God should seek to avoid any deification of the creature.

Ibid., 111.  Thus, in Hurtado's view, the fault lies not with the language used in worship but rather our understanding of it and the way we manifest it in our lives:

Perhaps one important way for Christians and others to tell if particular Christian worship really is 'in Spirit and truth' in this sense is to discern whether reference to God as 'Father' is matched in our lives by a privileging of maleness, a feudal-like hierarchy of one creaturely characteristic over others. If our lives show a preferential treatment of maleness, for example, it may well be that Christian worship has been allowed to devolve into an idolatry that is no less damnable in spite of its use of Christian terminology (indeed, Christian distortion of the revelation of God should be seen by Christians as double reprehensible). Particularly, if reference to God as "Father" is seen as justifying the privileging of the male gender, then this certainly shows a serious failure to understand the Christian theological rationale and meaning of the term 'Father' as a form of address to God. In this situation, the feminist critique of 'Father' rings true and is a judgement to be received gratefully.

The heavenly 'Father' should be worshipped, not as an extension of ourselves, as justifying patriarchy, but worshipped truly as the one God who is categorically transcendent over the creature. That is, as 'Father' only through Jesus Christ. This God transcends creation and thereby reveals and judges its inadequacy in representing God, as well as our abuse of our creaturely features such as gender. But at the same time this transcendent God, precisely by being transcendent beyond creaturely attributes, is able to affirm, validate and redeem the whole of the creation (Rom. 8:18-23), including our maleness and femaleness (Gal. 2:28-290). Given the gender-inclusive shape of God's redemption, it is important as Christians to ask ourselves whether this equal validation of male and female is evident in our lives, our families, and our wider relationships, whether the inherent value of the creation (inherent to creation as God's beloved creature) and the equal importance and worth of male and female are demonstrated in our church life? Theology can play a role in helping us to guide us to right living (though, to be sure, the right living to which Christians are summoned requires a real transformation and not merely instruction). But it is also true that the character of our particular Christian living is in turn a good indication of how we really understand and mean what we profess to be our theological beliefs. That is, our living is a very good reflection of how 'good' our theology really is!

Ibid., 111-112.

Of course this kind of analysis begs the question of whether such language is or has become easily misunderstood because of the long history of its use and abuse in support of privilege and domination.  If so, there certainly are good arguments for expanding the use of words and titles for God and the persons of the Trinity -- not to eliminate or substitute one set for another but to help teach and inform people what the words are intended to mean "in Spirit and in truth."   I also am not convinced that the Father-Son language is the only way to articulate the nature of our relationship to God through Jesus or to represent those two elements of the Trinity.  Nevertheless, there is something to be said for correcting misinterpretations of traditional language rather than simply abandoning it.

Whatever arguments can be made for substituting gender-neutral terms in some instances and adding words referring to females in others,  they do not apply very well to the use of "Lord."  First, the word "Lord" is not gender-specific as is "Father," "Son," and pronouns that are exclusively male.  "Lord" is  more like "Senator," "Governor," or "Mayor" -- titles and positions that once were held only by men but now can be claimed by women, as well.

Second, "Lord" has a special significance when used in conjunction with Jesus and Christ.  "Lord Jesus Christ" and "Jesus Christ our Lord" are different ways of translating the Greek phrase first used as a confession in Christian devotions and worship.  In other words, from the very beginning of Christianity, it has meant confessing that "Jesus Christ is Lord."  Therefore, it makes little sense to suddenly decide in the 21st century that "lord" is an obsolete feudal term that should be eliminated from Christian worship because it can invoke images of oppressive power and authority.   While that may be one particular, limited meaning of the word, the longstanding and continued use of kyrios and "Lord" in reference to Jesus has a particular meaning of its own, which predates feudalism and is clearly distinguishable from any kind of reference to earthly princes and powers.

The difficulty some may have with the word is that it can be viewed as supporting the ideology of one side in the current conflict within and about the Episcopal Church.  For those who brandish passages like John 14:6 ("I am the way and the truth and the life. None comes to the Father except through me"), as weapons in their self-styled holy wars, the word "Lord" is a torch raised triumphantly on behalf of a Christianity that proclaims it is the exclusive path to salvation (and the hell with everyone else).  While so-called High Christology is shared by others, as well, the provocateurs seem to want to claim it as their own, and use it against those who might have different views, especially if they can be baited into into invoking radical feminist theology and demands for social justice.

Personally, I find nothing edifying about discussing this issue for the sake of yet another skirmish with the defenders of the Faith Once Delivered.  I do not view the new Holy Men and Holy Women as some kind of "Trojan Horse" (a charge apparently renewed in the recent call for "Openness in the Process of Liturgical Change").  I see nothing wrong with using a variety of language, especially in incidental prayers such as the collects for lesser feast days and holy days.  Nevertheless, I sense that there may be some cause for concern, some danger that the significance of "Lord" may get lost in any dust up that might occur along the usual fault lines.

What is at stake is not simply Tradition or what might be lost were we to relegate the Kyrie to the rubbish bin, along with all the music that so hauntingly voices its lament.  It is the ritual acknowledgement of all that is most high -- whether conceived as the Lord God or Lord Jesus Christ, the Ground of All Being, or a Power Greater than Ourselves that Can Restore Us to Sanity.  It involves submission to that higher authority, a recognition of our shortcomings, an offering of our best selves, and a commitment to placing God's goals and purposes above our own. 

Instead of binding and oppressing, naming Jesus as "Lord" liberates all those who might be bound by the claims of those with earthly power, status, and wealth. Following Jesus is to choose one's own lord and master in the service of all of humanity. And while some may question the significance and efficacy of physically bowing, kneeling, or lying prostate, the reverence, devotion, and humility embodied by these acts remain essential in our approach to God and understanding ourselves in relation to God. In today's world, especially here in the U.S., where so many are suspicious of and resistant to all authority but their own, it is difficult to imagine how any word other than "Lord" can better convey a power higher than ourselves, to whom we can freely submit and strive to serve with gladness and singleness of heart.

Lords and Ladies in Church

It is strange to be spending yet another Sunday morning home in bed (not because I want to but because I am taking special care with a broken leg).  There was a time when Sunday was the high point of my week, when I entered the holy space I found in church, bowed my head in silent prayer, confessed my sins, and emptied myself so I could offer myself up to God's will and purposes for my life.  I used to hear and ponder each word of the liturgy from the Book of Common Prayer, holding one or another up to a different light each time, wondering how I could have closed my heart and mind to the traditional words and images for so long.  I fed my hunger and quenched my thirst for God in the Eucharist, beginning on my knees, imagining tears running down my cheeks and my face grazing on the hem of Christ's robes, thinking of the Prayer of Humble Access, whether spoken or not:

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 are the same Lord, whose property is to always 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.

And when it was over, the hymns ringing in my ears, the shadows of my soul giving way to light, being raised to a shaky but quiet confidence in my ability to cope, yet again, with whatever came my way, then I could relax and smile, for a change, seek out especially those I had not seen since the week before, find out what had been going on in their lives or simply chatting about whatever people chat about when they can stop and rest and not have to immediately rush off to the next appointment or task at work or home.  As I got to know people better, I would learn more of their struggles and joys, getting to know each better as individuals.  But from the beginning I had this sense of deep companionship with so many who seemed to be there for the same reasons as I, because they loved it so.

Somehow I lost that long ago.  At first I thought it was simply some diminishment in the zeal and focus I had as a newly converted Anglo-Catholic, who had only recently returned to any kind of church, after more than two decades of a conflicted devotion to the secular humanism of the halls of academia.  But I must confess, as time went on, it was as much a function of finding myself, of all people, suddenly thrust into the role as clergy spouse - one that never, in my wildest dreams, I imagined playing, which, unfortunately led me to not play it much at all.  As Jim would repeatedly and correctly point out, I had no cause for discomfort or dissatisfaction among the people of the parishes where he served.  While I'm sure there were some, perhaps many, who were and/or are critical of how I behaved or, to the extent they knew me, of my opinions and beliefs, thankfully no one told me how they felt or acted in any way that made me feel unwelcome or uncared for. 

Nevertheless, somehow I could never entirely lose my awareness of what church was like before compared to what it was like afterwards.  No matter how hard I tried, I could not forget the joy and anticipation I used to feel when it was wholly my choice to go to church, when my efforts to get there, despite fatigue or boredom or the struggle to get young children up and dressed and get on the road, despite some quarreling and fussing, were all my own, when no one would really care but me whether I got there or not, when the sense of wonder and satisfaction of making yet another week, of filling up my heart and mind with "good things" and letting go of all the grunge was something I could bask briefly in, during coffee hour and the rest of the day.  And then, of course, there was the knowledge that people used to seek my opinions on church matters, wanted me to serve on committees and councils, listened closely to what I had to say, and taught me how to do the same for them, to interact on delicate topics, to share our faith stories, all of that rich life of being fully part of a congregation -- not to mention having a pastor who just might, if I tread carefully, listen to what I had to say as well.

All that changed, seemingly overnight.  Yes, it was largely due to my own thinking, not what others on the outside demanded.  I always felt I had to be in church every Sunday at at least one service (and felt guilty when I did not do two - though rarely went to two), had to be on time (though as the years went on, I didn't always even manage that), dressed and groomed reasonably well, and be sure not to walk through the doors cursing my children or in a foul mood because they (or I or all of us) behaved so badly on the way to church. Once I got to church, there was always the dilemma of where to sit, what to say, and what to do.  Although I shied away from (shirked my responsibilities?) acting as The Rector's Wife, nevertheless, there were always little things - like if I sat anywhere in at least the front half of the church, people would stand or sit or kneel following my lead (an odd sensation for someone as self-conscious as me, which always blew my efforts to convince myself that no one was really looking at me) - a dangerous thing because with my ADD-addled brain, my mind could easily drift and I would be rudely awakened by the fact that I could not rely on others to cue me as to what to do because if I got it wrong, chances are that most would follow. Then there was the hostess thing - I could not do it, had no experience with that sort of thing, was used to years of avoiding having anyone visit my home, let alone entertaining (due, in part to my natural introversion, in part to years living with my first husband, an alcoholic who never recovered to the point of not living in squalor and filth or conforming to social niceties).  I froze in fear, let others continue with what they had done before the new rector came, and, at times, hid behind those women who had done it all as second nature when they were wives or daughters of clergy.

In both parishes, I finally retreated to the choir stalls, despite my obvious lack of vocal skills, and embraced both the company of the choir members and the music directors and our collective love of music (not to mention the incidental benefit of being able to wear just about anything or the same thing week after week under my choir robes).  While I did have to worry about hiding my voice, no longer did I feel like I was The Wife -- I was just another member of the motley crew that comprised the church choirs (thank God for them, each and every one!).  Yet it still was hard, in fact almost impossible, to recapture what I once felt in corporate worship, the time spent deeply contemplating the words and letting the music sink into my soul, being emptied and then filled with the Holy Spirit, my life and week renewed all at once, with others experiencing much the same thing.  Instead I was focused on having the next piece of music ready, not allowing my mind to drift very far, trying to recall the trouble spots in the music, thinking about my breathing (though often not getting it right), lifting my body to get as much breath as possible, and trying not to get my choir robes tangled in the kneeling rail or dropping a hymnal or prayer book to the floor.

Truth be told, Jim did not get it, not at all.  He thought I was stark raving mad.  Typically, once he discovered he could not "fix" whatever problem I was having (and yes, as a wise and experienced counselor, he often had good advice about many things -- though he also often did not have the patience or insight with me as he had with others - inevitably), he just didn't want to hear about it anymore.  Before we were married, he promised me he would stick with me (or rather I would tag along with him) on Sundays after services or at other church social occasions, knowing my fear of crowds and disease among those I don't know well.  But it soon became clear to me that after more than 25 years as a parish priest, he had it down, could "work the room" like a Chicago politician and do it well, making each person feel even his passing attention.  So I stood back and let him go, even if it meant hugging a wall somewhere or leaving sooner than I should have.  And although he told me time and time again that I could go to church or not, in our parish or elsewhere, I kept going, every Sunday I was in town, come hell or high water.  And at times I contemplated, and even made a few efforts, at finding a spiritual director who could help me get my prayer and worship life back on track, but I never followed through.  So for days, weeks, and finally years, I went through the motions and tried to make myself content with the glimmers and glimpses of the divine that came through at times, despite my inattention, and kept a running silent monologue in my head directed to God, but seldom found the time or space to stop and carefully listen to what God might be saying to me in response.

Every once in awhile, especially when we talked about Jim's upcoming retirement, I'd think about what I might do once I was "free" of my status as rector's wife. I knew that where we would live would depend in large part on whether there was the kind of Anglo-Catholic church he would like to join. I wondered whether I would really want to join him there or find my own place, maybe even in another tradition - Quaker, Unitarian, Orthodox or Roman Catholic.

Yet here I am, today, swept off my feet, as if struck by Dorothy's tornado, thinking that, after all, there really is no place like "home."  And by "home" I do not mean simply our parish, which finally has become truly home in more ways than I can describe (though I may always have some difficulty there with the ghosts of memory flooding in at unexpected times).  I mean back home in the Eucharist and the Episcopal liturgy.  The hunger and thirst are very much with me again, in palpable ways.

It remains to be seen whether it is as real as I imagine - or rather, more importantly, whether I will finally follow through as I ought and need to do.  But while I can still indulge in flights of the imagination, I recall that passage from Kathleen Norris that struck me so keenly when I first returned to church in my late 30's, after nearly twenty years of wandering in the wilderness:

“When some ten years later I began going to church again because I felt I needed to, I wasn’t prepared for the pain. The services felt like word bombardment – agony for a poet – and often exhausted me so much I’d have to sleep for three or more hours afterward. Doctrinal language slammed many a door in my face, and I became frustrated when I couldn’t glimpse the Word behind the words. Ironically, it was the language about Jesus Christ, meant to be most inviting, that made me feel most left out. Sometimes I’d give up, deciding that I just wasn’t religious. This elicited an interesting comment from a pastor friend who said, ‘I don’t know too many people who are so serious about religion that they can’t even go to church.’”

“Even as I exemplified the pain and anger of a feminist looking warily at a religion that has so often used a male savior to keep women in their place, I was drawn to the strong old women in the congregation. Their well-worn Bibles said to me, ‘there is more here than you know,’ and made me take more seriously the religion that caused by grandmother Totten’s Bible to be so well used that its spine broke. I also began, slowly, to make sense of our gathering together on Sunday morning, recognizing, however dimly, that church is to be participated in, not consumed. The point is not what one gets out of it, but the worship of God; the service takes place both because of and despite the needs, strengths, and frailties of the people present. How else could it be? Now, on the occasions when I am able to actually worship in church, I am deeply grateful.”

-- Kathleen Norris, Dakota: A Spiritual Geography (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1993) (pp. 94-95).

This brings to mind the discussion that has been going on among some of the proposed removal of the word "Lord" in our prayers, sparked, in part, by Fr. Dan Martins' recent post, An Openness in the Process of Liturgical Change.  I'm afraid the lawyer in me tries to avoid the process issues (I get weary of shop talk, at times), and it is still not entirely clear to me what is being proposed and to what extent any changes would be optional and, regardless, which would likely be widely implemented.  I am simply dumbstruck at the idea of such changes.  Yes, I know all about Prayer Book idolatry, and I listened carefully to what Jim, the once dyed in the wool Anglo-Catholic, had to say about the 1979 Prayer Book wars, how he insisted on making the changes, as required, in his parishes, and how he said he finally came to prefer the new Rite II Eucharistic prayers, both the language and, more importantly, the theology reflected in them.

But, but, but..........   First of all, I first came to the Episcopal Church in retreat from sudden and radical changes I was experiencing in my first church home, after the years in the wilderness, an ECLA Lutheran congregation.  The new pastor, who had come, in part, as a result of my vote for him and recommendation, as member of the Search Committee, had decided to change, among other things, the way the congregation took Holy Communion (standing, by intinction, after filing down the aisles "like the Roman Catholics," as the good Lutherans saw it, instead of kneeling at the extraordinarily long altar rail they had in their lovingly constructed modern Scandinavian sanctuary), decided to eliminate entirely the Prayer of Confession in the liturgy, and with it, more or less banished the use of the kneeling rails in the pews.  In private talks with the pastor, I learned that his theology was greatly influenced by Tillich, he had a negative experience with high liturgy as a child in a foreign country (his parents were missionaries) attending an Episcopal school, and that the changes he proposed were ones he could defend with great vigor and authority based on "solid research" and recommendations by the latest experts and consultants on Church Growth.

In the end, I can honestly say I did not become confirmed as an Episcopalian simply because I was annoyed with the Lutheran pastor and preferred Episcopal worship.  I spent a long time struggling with what I should do, torn between my love of and loyalty to the people of the Lutheran community, who had welcomed me and my family with open arms when I most needed them, and the way my heart and mind were flooded with the words of the Book of Common Prayer, how those words opened so many windows to the Christianity that I fought so hard against for many, many years, worried about Christian and American exceptionalism, patriarchy, intolerance, and what seemed to me the odd obsession with the violence of the Cross and the fuzzy, barely lukewarm, underwhelming story of the Empty Tomb (which only reminded me of the shivers I got from Lake Michigan winds on the Easter Sundays of my youth).  All that fell away, bit by bit, and once seemed to come tumbling down, with the sounds of the bells and the Mathias Gloria and the lights coming up during Easter Vigil.  Yet I asked myself over and over, was it all theatre, aesthetics, a love of music, and a too-easy willingness to be taken in by it all?

In the end, it was not so much the Episcopalians who drew me in but my Lutheran friends and family, who urged me to follow my own piety, who joined me many times in worship at the Episcopal church, and came to appreciate, at least in part, what I found there.  And every day, every week, it seemed I found something new, in the Psalms I used to read silently before mass, in the lectionary readings, in those many moments in prayer when my mind cleared of all that was troubling it and I either heard God speaking to me or I was enveloped by a sense of peace, warmth, and clarity, like I had never known before.

During most of this time I was scarcely conscious of the rector, who happened to be Jim, or of his excellent sermons.  Due largely to my experience with the Lutheran pastor (who, despite all, I regarded as a friend, a good teacher and theologian, liturgical matters aside, and a source of wisdom and resourcefulness in dealing with my family problems), and partly due to my natural desire not to want to follow anyone's lead (at least no one human), my focus was on the Episcopal liturgy and all I could find to read about the Anglican church and its theologies.  The Oxford Movement fascinated me, and I loved the idea of combining what struck me as a Romantic view of Catholicism, which nevertheless aimed at the best of it -- the emphasis on the senses in worship, seeing, hearing, tasting, and feeling, an unapologetic embrace of beauty and ritual -- all aimed at taking that experience of holiness, in awe and humility, out into the world to serve the poor and the needy, with grace, humility, and gladness of heart.

Whether I got any of it "right" is certainly debatable.  But what I definitely got wrong was that the Episcopal liturgy I loved was any safer from radical changes or clerical tampering just because we all professed to be joined in Common Worship as set forth in the Book of Common Prayer, rather than any singular theologies or rigid doctrines.  I had no idea what "low church" was or that it even existed.  I had no clue that there were evangelicals or charismatics, let alone Calvinists, schismatics, those still recoiling at the very idea of women clergy and bishops, not to mention, in the 1990's, the ever widening rift occurring over the issues of same-sex love and marriage.  And I had no idea that the Episcopal Church had its share of tyrants and oversized egos in the ranks of clergy and bishops, some of whom made their Lutheran patriarchal counterparts look like Ward Cleavers in comparison.

The one thing the Episcopalian Anglo-Catholics had that the Lutherans did not was an unabashed delight in and reverence for the use of things - the stuff - (what Maria calls the "Holy Hardware") in our liturgies and our worship spaces. We - or at least some of us - could unapologetically have icons, votive candles, colorful vestments, delicate lace altar linens, and complex music galore.  We could chant the Great Litany, have our crucifix on Good Friday, along with the Solemn Reproaches (yes, cleansed of anti-Semitism). We knew very well that all these things, and the sights, sounds, and smells that go with them, are not to be exalted or worshipped themselves but rather are windows that can reveal the God among and with us.  It's not that we can't let our hair down, take to the streets or the woods, the cities or fields, and follow Christ anywhere and everywhere he may lead us.  But we are not afraid of words and images, exploring the light and shadows that fall from each, placing our doubting Thomas' fingers into their wounds, and trusting our own senses, as we confront our God directly through them, without too much concern for what the clergy or anyone else says about we are supposed to think about it all.

Well, at least that's my own take on it.  And I was heartened to read what I took as similar thoughts in Cecelia's reflections on Saints and Intercessions.  Strangely enough (or maybe not), there seems to be a deep connection between Norris' Protestant women of the Great Plains with their worn Bibles and kneading bread dough and the Roman Catholic women with their rosaries and devotion to Mary.  They know, through heartache and childbirth, through brutal weather and grinding poverty, who their Godde is. And, to be quite frank, they don't give a shit what he, she, or it is called, whether their statues were created and erected by the patriarchal minions of the Vatican or their Bibles given to them by hell and brimstone preaching Calvinists. They work with what they have, and they hold their re-creations and re-imaginings dear, even at times when they may not fully recognize their own artistry and the subversion of authority that it sometimes requires.

The irony is that here in the Episcopal Church in the U.S., many of us pride ourselves with the power and influence the laity has in church affairs, notwithstanding our hierarchical structure. Progressive leaders in the House of Deputies and on Standing Committees and vestries throughout the church have had a large and important influence on how we try to steer our way through the current challenges and obstacles posed by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York and many others in positions of authority in the wider Anglican Communion.

But when it comes down to it, many of our clergy (not to mention bishops) continue to run things like little Napoleons, at least when it involves matters of liturgy and worship practices.  Yes, of course, many have considerable knowledge and expertise, gained through education and experience.  Many, however, really do not, having spent little or no time in seminary studying liturgics under the guidance of someone thoroughly informed and educated in such matters.  But that is hardly the point (or perhaps one that has been lost long ago).

What I find most disturbing, even or especially among those clergy I admire most, is their all too easy confidence in what they need to do to discomfit their parishioners, especially when it comes to moving the "furniture" and "props" around and changing the "script" from time to time.   The assumption is that people in the pews are children and/or sheep that do not know what they need and must be herded and, at times, disciplined by taking away what comforts them.  Christ, in their view, called us to leave our things behind and follow him, whether hungry or thirsty, and any one who clings to the status quo is to be mocked and vilified.  And here we are, decades away from my first encounter with the Church Growth gurus advising the Lutheran Church, full of the seeds of destruction of the so-called Church Planters, some of whom genuinely want to reach out and bring the unchurched into entirely new communities, in which they can feel at home and invested in, but others are all too quick to engage in slash-and-burn agriculture, ready and willing to exploit the natural tensions between clergy and laity, and encourage both clergy and laity to expel or shun anyone who stands in the way of change (which is always translated as necessary "transformation").

Am I crazy or paranoid, just yearning for something that never was or whose time has passed, lost in a state of spiritual immaturity, have allowed myself to get lost all these years in my husband's shadow?  Perhaps.  But I wonder if I am the only one who came back to church not because it was cleansed of all the images and symbols and words I once found so off-putting, but because I wanted to finally explore all of them, with sometimes reckless abandon, to find, if I could, how they held such power for so many for so long, or simply how I could refashion or re-envision them in my own way of relating to God.  And what about all those who have stuck with the church from childhood on, who have gone through all sorts of personal trauma and turmoil, relying on the words and rituals they know so well?  How did the faithful become the enemies of the future of the church?  The obstacles to personal and institutional growth and transformation?

Do you think I am exaggerating?  Aside from the third-hand scuttlebutt I used to hear from around the diocese, and the countless books and conference materials Jim brought home from the experts, I have been alarmed by some of what I read between the lines in these articles.  Their basic ideas are quite sound, their goals are certainly admirable and well founded in the Gospel, but if one reads and listens carefully, there are signs of increasing disrespect for laity or anyone who asks questions or in any way wants to preserve traditions and customs in the church. 

Sometimes it is quite subtle.  I think much of it comes from the new recognition that the cause is pretty much lost as far as reconstituting or revitalizing mainline churches in anything like their former forms.  The anxiety and urgency for change seems to be increasing exponentially as church membership, participation, and financial resources decline year by year, with the consequences now hitting especially hard in the wake of the financial crisis. 

I understand these feelings all too well - I lived with a clergy person who worried and despaired over it every day of our lives together and, in fact, spoke of it at some length during the two-hour drive we had together the afternoon of the day he died.  I have read and thought and fretted over it myself for some time.  I don't have the answers - or at least none that anyone wants to hear.  It may be that church as we know it will die, just as predicted by many, and maybe, just maybe, despite all these last-ditch efforts at engineering a different outcome, it will be o.k.  Maybe we cannot control the social and economic changes that have brought us to this juncture.  Maybe we should not try, at least not if it means deliberately destroying what has been so powerful and meaningful to people in the past, even if our buildings are emptying and the heads bowed in prayer are getting grayer every day.

I do not want to project my own likes, preferences, and perceived needs onto my parish, wherever it may be, or on the church at large.  I certainly am well aware of the dangers of doing that, have struggled long and hard over these issues, and will continue to do so.  But on the other hand, I feel the need to stand up and ask some tough questions of those who now say, in effect, that we need to give up the notion of church as a social institution with any kind of regularity or influence in our daily lives and communities, that we must become bands of committed true believers, like first or second century Christians, freed of all connection to structures of power and authority, ready and willing to subvert the world order and focus on Christ-directed Kingdom building, as we should have been doing all along.

I "get" what many of you are saying - in fact, that is largely why I left the church in my teens and twenties, in retreat from the smug, exclusive social clubs of the 1950's and early 1960's, with our Sunday clothes, hats, and white gloves, and WASPish manners and superficial morality.  But you know, if it had not been for those years, when I only attended church because it was expected of me, and my parents only sent me because it was expected of them, I most likely would not have been willing to try it again later, or had any notion that individual "spiritual journeys" are of little worth without the mutual support and nurture and call to action that comes from living in community.

I know we cannot turn back the clock, and it was not all that great to begin with.  But both commonsense and the more I read about the long process of secularization in the West, the more convinced I am that we must seek a truly social solution to the problem of the decline of churches.  Arguably the decline is not the result of dramatic changes in mores or beliefs but rather the fact that large segments of our society here in the U.S. (and in Europe) are no longer structured around religious institutions.  Although Americans have maintained a great deal more religiosity than Europeans, for various reasons, I think we have been hit hardest by increasing mobility and dislocation from our original homes and families.  As one sociologist has put it, we are now seeing "the effect of geographical and social mobility in breaking up dense communal relations, permeated by religion, and in breaking up the unity of the generations." (Professor David Martin, Cambridge lecture, 2005).

Perhaps the one thing from the past we do need to try to recreate are "dense communal relations, permeated by religion."  By this I do not mean going off and living in isolated, segregated communities.  But I do mean truly embracing the idea and goal of living as Christians in community the best we can in our diverse world.  We may no longer have the same kind of social, economic, geographical, and family ties to bind us as did our grandparents and great grandparents.  But we do have new ones, arguably as strong or stronger, even when "virtually" linked, than the old ones.

I am not sure how this may all play out in terms of the nuts and bolts of organization, meeting face to face, and what implications  there are regarding property ownership and maintenance.  But what I am fairly certain of is that we are shooting ourselves in the foot when we so cavalierly talk about dispensing with those who want the so-called "status quo" and when we turn our parishes over entirely to the whims and desires of clergy and bishops who back up their prejudices and frustrations with local conditions with so-called expert advice on what the church must do to survive.

Some of this cavalier attitude, or words that can be taken as supporting such an attitude, can be found in the following articles:

The Ending, Dying Church - Rev. Mark Bozzuti-Jones
Faith Matters, Where Did the Mainline Go Wrong? - Walter Russell Mead
Quit Thinking of Your Church as Family - Anthony B. Robinson
Expecting Too Much Too Soon - excerpt from this article by Dan Hotchkiss
Membership Down - Dr. John B. Chilton (with observations from Thomas Brackett)

While they speak compelling words of inspiration, what they strike me as doing is attempting to herd people off into smaller and smaller groups of "true" and zealous Christians, separating the wheat from the chaff.  While the new and improved church may welcome people of all ages, colors, sexual orientation, and socio-economic classes, it has little patience with or desire to keep anyone who does not present herself or himself as a "mature" Christian (often taken to mean those who will go along with any and all change supposedly for the good of The Other, as dictated by those in charge, whether it be an individual or group that has taken over).

Although the goals are worthy, I wonder if we will lose something important if we become so impatient and frustrated that we are not willing to work at keeping or building communities "permeated with religion" that have a mix of ages and degrees of "spiritual maturity."  And part of creating and maintaining communal relations must rest on some measure of stability in our liturgies and the theological terminology used in corporate worship. 

Aside from the "process" and the policies that may ensue from it, I would hope that many of our clergy and consultants would allow a measure of "transformation" in themselves, which would respect laity in general and so-called "popular" religious practices in particular.  If the Ladies, old or young, want to kneel before "The Lord" as they always have, mutter the rosary while the priest is speaking, well, why the heck not?

Let the Sunshine In

A fond goodbye

What Jim might have said had he had the time to say goodbye:

There is a rhyme by Clarence Day which says what I want to say: 'Farewell, my friends, farewell and hail; I'm off to seek the holy grail; I cannot tell you why; remember, please when I am gone, 'twas aspiration led me on; tiddly-widdly-toodle-oo, all I want is to stay with you, but here I go, goodbye.

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P.S. For anyone who wants ready access to albums with selected photos of Jim (same ones posted before - someday I will find better ones), they are public at Facebook here and here.

The use of religious symbols - Thoughts from a young seminarian

Webster's Dictionary defines a symbol as "something that stands for or suggests something else by reason of relationship, association, convention, or accidental resemblance; especially a visible sign of something invisible."  Etymologically the word 'symbol' can be traced to a Greek work which means to throw together or simply place together for the purpose of comparison.  A symbol then is something through which two realities are related to one another; and in attempting to understand symbols we must try to come to some understanding of this relationship.  But while this may provide an understanding of the function of symbols -- i.e., what they do -- it still does not define what they are.

Perhaps the best way to define the symbol is to contrast it with other representative forms that, like the symbol, stand for or point to something beyond themselves.

IMAGES (pictures, statues, photographs)
Images imitate what they represent; whereas symbols need not resemble the thing which they symbolize -- they need only to suggest or associate.

GESTURES (shrugging the shoulders, bowing the head)
Gestures express or embody their meaning as spontaneous, visible extensions of inner attitudes.  While many gestures are symbolic, not all symbols are gestures or involve action.

SIGNS (dinner bell, traffic sign, smoke)
Signs announce some fact or give notification.  Their role is practical or instrumental, they have an intellectual appeal and call for an immediate response.

Each of these representative forms may take on a symbolic nature and/or may point to some particular aspect of the symbol, but they do not point to the peculiar nature of the symbol nor are they definitive in every situation.  A symbol is a representation which indirectly reminds of or refers to some other reality, serves as a vehicle for the conception of that reality, and actually and effectively participates in that reality.  A symbol may be arbitrary in which case it is established by common consent as opposed to having a natural or historic relationship with that which it represents: e.g., a key represents power or possession or a cross represents the Christian faith.  A symbol may be evocative, in which case its meaning is suggested by engendering certain attitudes or feelings rather than by any direct statement: e.g., the American flag.  Since symbols need not imitate what they represent and since they usually refer to something that is in a different and higher category, they are ideally suited for expressing religious truths.

Baron Friedrich von Hugel was pointing to this in his statement, "I kiss my daughter in order to love her as well as because I love her."  He kisses her because he loves her.  Love requires an expression, a way of showing itself, of making itself felt; and a kiss is one way of doing this.  But what of the other part of the statement?  Kissing can express love, but can it create love?  Probably not.  But perhaps von Hugel is saying that his love for his daughter will grow as there are more outward expressions of it.  The kiss is a symbol of love -- it enables him to communicate this love to his daughter who can in turn respond to it, thereby enriching that love.  And at the time that he kisses her, the kiss is love.

Man lives by symbols; and it is probably true that it would not be possible to live in any real sense without them.  Suppose that two people want to exchange ideas on a subject.  Their ideas are 'spirtual' -- or at least non-material -- as is the desire to share them.  These ideas, then, can only be shared through some symbolic device.  The individuals can speak or write to each other.  The spoken word is an outward and audible symbol, the written word an outward and visible symbol of the ideas conveyed by it.  In the absence of symbolic device, the two minds will never meet.  Indeed there are those who would posit that this capacity for symbolization is what distinguishes man from the rest of creation.

Man's conquest of the world undoubtedly rests on the supreme development of his brain, which allows him to synthesize, delay, and modify his reactions by the interpolation of symbols in the gaps and confusions of direct experience, and by means of verbal signs to add the experience of other people to his own. [F.W. Dillistone, Christianity and Symbolism, p. 23].

In the sacraments the Christian community has its peculiar symbols which are both formative of the community and necessary to its life.  These symbols are the means of communicating to its people the reality and experience of the Risen Christ.  Each of these sacraments is in a special way an extension of the Incarnation into the various needs and concerns of human life.....
 
James M. Jensen, Evanston, Illinois, May, 1972, from "A Five-Week Adult Study Course on Christian Initiation," a Project Submitted to the Faculty of Seabury-Western Theological Seminary

Into that dark night

Taking of Christ, Caravaggio, 1602, National Gallery of Ireland

Denial of St. Peter, Caravaggio, 1610, Metropolitan Museum of Art

And some day I'll know that moment divine....

Sermon - Palm Sunday 2004

Palm Sunday 2004
Grace Church, Utica

For reasons that are not easy to fathom people have always been attracted to the scene of tragedy. Years ago, in the American West, when a criminal was to be executed, entire families would gather with their picnic baskets to watch the hanging. We like to think that humanity has progressed beyond that, but I’m not at all sure it’s true. Even today within hours after a tornado cuts through some town, you’ll often find traffic jams as the curious drive through to see what’s happened. But then that’s quite tame compared to more recent pass-times. We send the men and women of our armed forces off to war, while people here at home pop popcorn and watch the actual battles on television.

Evidently we’re regressing. In the Gospels we’re told that most of Jerusalem gathered on Golgotha to witness Rome’s ugliest form of punishment. Crucifixions drew huge crowds. This day there are three— three men who have been convicted and condemned, tied and nailed to rough wooden crosses. The scriptures say that the people stood by watching. Even “....[Jesus’] acquaintances [and] the women who had followed him from Galilee, stood at a distance, watching....” Jesus of Nazareth is dying. He is the one on the middle cross— he’s the preacher, the miracle worker, the prophet. Some believe that he is the Son of God, the Savior. But for now he is dying before the eyes of the crowd.

In a national poll taken several years ago people were asked what they thought would happen if Jesus came back. A majority felt that we would most likely kill him again, but that we would do it more quickly this time. Perhaps you find that surprising. People are drawn to Jesus, you say. We’re drawn to him ourselves. Yes, but there’s also something in us that is threatened by him, something in us that wants to hide from him, or maybe just get rid of him.

Early in Mark’s Gospel, when Jesus’ ministry has only just begun, we read that the Pharisees “...immediately conspired... against him, how to destroy him.” (Mk 3:6) Why? Why that kind of reaction? Jesus said it was because of their hardness of heart. You see people of that day believed that the heart was the center of thinking and feeling— not our heads but our hearts. They believed that the heart was the center of our will. Jesus said that their hearts had grown hard.

When he comes to offer us new life, Jesus also tells us that we have to be willing to change, to risk some of the earthly things to which we’ve always clung for security. That’s where our hardness of heart gets us into trouble. We tend to stiffen up at the idea of venturing out into something new. Often, we just walk away from it— and not necessarily because we place little value on our religion.

Remember that the two groups of people who were most opposed to Jesus were very religious people. The first group was the Sadducees. Their lives were centered in the religious institutions of Israel. The Sadducees had status and prestige, they were financially well-off, and they were absolutely inflexible in their interpretation of the Tradition. So when Jesus came into their midst and began talking about a relationship with God that wasn’t based upon the observance of the law but upon love and trust, the hearts of the Sadducees grew hard— they dug in their heels. They wouldn’t consider that kind of change because it would mean moving too far beyond the Tradition. It would also mean giving up a great deal of their own power and prestige.

The Pharisees were a little different. They were the legal experts— they knew Jewish law backwards and forward. They knew exactly what the law required and they would allow no less. On the other hand, neither would they offer any more— to God or to anyone else. They valued their own righteousness above everything. They expected recognition for it— from God as well as from other people. The Pharisees were also Israel’s first nationalists; if their first love was their own righteousness, then their second love was for their country. And they believed that their nation would be protected by God as long as the people would be faithful in observing what the Law required. So when Jesus came along healing a crippled man on the Sabbath day the Pharisees saw this as a threat to the security and well-being of the whole nation. Why? Because it was contrary to Jewish Law to do any such thing on the Sabbath.

There’s a story about the courtship of Moses Mendelssohn, a well-known 18th century Jewish philosopher. Mendelssohn was a small, hunchbacked man who fell in love with a beautiful woman. Several months after they met Mendelssohn visited her father and asked him how she felt about the possibility of marriage. The father said, well, the truth is that she’s very frightened of you, because you’re a hunchback. So Mendelssohn asked if he might see her just one last time.

He found her doing some sewing. She avoided looking at him during their conversation, which eventually came around to the subject of marriage. The young woman asked Mendelssohn if he believed that marriages were made in heaven. And he said, “Oh yes, in fact something very unusual happened to me. You see, when children are born, they call out in heaven, ‘This boy or this girl will get this or that one for a husband or wife.’ When I was born my future wife was announced, but then I was told that she would have a terrible hump on her back. And I shouted out, ‘O Lord, a girl who is hunchbacked will very easily become bitter and hard. A girl should be beautiful. Lord, give the hump to me, and let her be beautiful.”

The young woman was deeply moved. She saw Mendelssohn in a whole new way.

In assuming human flesh in the person of Jesus, God also embraced our human imperfections— our weaknesses, our failings, and our sin. He did it in order to destroy their power over us, and so that, by grace, we could become the people God calls us to be. Jesus experienced the depths of human suffering so that we could be assured of God’s presence with us in the midst of our own.

The Gospels tell us that the people who gathered at Calvary taunted Jesus, that they hurled insults at him: Save yourself! If you’re the Messiah, come down from the cross! The chief priests, the Scribes and the Pharisees said, `Yes, if he’s really the king of Israel, let him come down from the cross.’

Thank God he didn’t! And because he didn’t come down from that cross you and I can receive the strength to overcome our own hardness of heart. Because he didn’t come down we can see God and each other in a whole new way. And it’s that new way which is the true way, the one that will bring us to life, both in this world and in the next.

© James M. Jensen

Sermon - Epiphany VI - February 15, 2004

Epiphany VI — February 15, 2004
Grace Church, Utica

Today’s Gospel lesson is one that is comforting, but also disturbing. It is a mixture of blessings and admonitions. What is particularly bothersome is that the conditions and situations that are blessed, don’t really seem blessed at all; those that carry warnings, are very enticing. This is something Jesus frequently does in Luke's gospel. It seems as if Jesus is setting out to do what one famous preacher described as “comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable.” The word “blessed” can quite appropriately be translated as “happy.” The word “woe” is used as a warning. There is a sense of doom about it. Jesus seems to be saying, “you who are really in hard places are blessed.” And, “you who are comfortable are doomed.” And let’s face it, this isn’t particularly good news for those of us who have a tendency to seek comfort and entertainment in our lives. Is poverty a prerequisite to being happy? God forbid, is being well-fed a sign of doom?

There is a story about a person who felt each of the messages in this gospel in a very personal way. It’s about a man who belonged to a congregation in the United States that did a number of shot-term mission projects in Latin America. In this particular instance, the mission work involved the funding and building of a medical clinic in a very poor community. The people of this community had no access to medical care— not even the most basic emergency services. There wasn't even a place to buy aspirin. A few years earlier, one visitor to the community reported, “if a sick child doesn't get well because it is loved and prayed for, then that child doesn't get well.” It was this observation that motivated the leadership of the parish to build the clinic.

So, money was raised, parishioners volunteered their time and talent to make the trip, and the clinic was built. For the first time ever, this village had a basic resource for health care. Lives were saved and changed; and it was done in the name of Christ.

A family that lived in the village decided to thank the people who had come there to build the clinic. They decided to have a meal in their honor. This family was very poor. Their home consisted of three non-mortared walls of cinder blocks. The roof was corrugated metal, laying on poles, held down by rocks. The kitchen was outside and consisted of a hearth with a grate and a clay oven. There were no chairs, no table. The plates were metal.

In contrast, the food was glorious. There was chicken and rice, beans, well seasoned avocados, a fresh salsa, tropical fruits, and sugared pastries. There were fresh, hot, hand-made tortillas. And there was Coke and even a bottle of rum to celebrate.

During the meal this parishioner from the United States realized that the cost of the food was equal to more than six weeks of income for the people hosting the party. His first thought was to give the hosts the money as soon as the meal was finished; but as he thought about it, he realized that this would be very patronizing and would dishonor the hosts. The next thought was to give the money to the village priest so that later on he could slip the money to them. But again, upon reflection, he could only conclude that action would also be insulting. Finally, he decided to simply enjoy the meal with profound appreciation and gratitude.

Later, in reflecting on this experience, he said, “It was the greatest honor I have ever received. That family spent six weeks of income to thank and honor me. No one else has ever come close to that. I realized that these people were the richest family I had ever known. They are so rich that they could spend six weeks of income on a banquet to honor people that they would never see again in this world. I only spent about a month's worth of income to celebrate our daughter’s wedding— a marriage that has given me grandchildren who are the dearest things in my life. How poor and stingy I am. My hosts, on the other hand, are rich and generous.”

In Christ, God is like those poor people of that Latin American village. Jesus, Lord of all, makes himself poor, even to accepting the worst kind of death, in order to generously shower us with love and forgiveness. What do we make of this? How do we respond?

First, we must accept that God’s ways are not our ways. God’s wisdom seems foolish and contradictory to most of us. God freely and unconditionally gave us love and forgiveness in a lavish fashion— not because we did something for him. In fact God's giving of love and forgiveness coincides with a horrible offense against God, in Jesus’ death on the cross. How different from the way most of us are. We try to reward those who do us great service, often in the cheapest way possible. If we’re honest, we’ll admit that we tend to seek bargains in our expressions of gratitude.

Secondly, There is no way we can repay God for this gift of unconditional love. There is also no way that we can earn or deserve it. It defies logic. But, it seems to be God’s nature to love the worst, most notorious and evil sinner in history as much as the most sacrificial saint.

Finally, since we can't really understand it and really can't deserve God's love, we are called to sit quietly and enjoy it--- to accept it, humbly and graciously. It’s only as we accept that we are absolutely, unconditionally, loved by God and then live in that love, that we can begin to gain some understanding of Jesus’ teaching and then begin to live with some of the freedom of those rich, but poor people. Then, and only then, can the paradoxical, seemingly contradictory teachings of Jesus begin to make sense to us. Then and only then can we truly be blessed.

© James M. Jensen

Sermon - Proper 6A - June 12, 2005

Proper 6A — June 12, 2005
Grace Church, Utica

In a recent church publication one of our bishops was quoted as saying that the Church today is more divided than a cut-up birthday cake. He went on to say that the various groups of people represented by each slice are all convinced that they and their cause, whatever it is, speak for God. The result, of course, is a great deal of turmoil, with a host of opposing forces all claiming to represent the cause of righteousness. It’s the work of one of the demons that has always plagued people of faith, a demon that gives us the desire to change everybody else into our image of what being a real Christian is all about.

A few examples....

You have the so-called pro-life people, versus the pro-choice people. The “pro-lifers” carry on vehement demonstrations against those they consider to be murderers and God-less heathens. The pro-choice group opposes those they regard as religious bigots who want to make their anti-abortion stand the only choice available.

There are the advocates of gay rights, in favor of the ordination of gay and lesbian people, who also believe that the Church should bless marriages or commitments between people of the same-sex. They tend to look scornfully on those whom they would characterize as narrow-minded biblical literalists who are still stuck in their homophobia. Then you have the people who continue to embrace the traditional arguments against homosexual behavior, who look at gays and those who take up their cause as shameful and immoral people who could not possibly know anything of God or of God’s will.

There are the Charismatic folks who think that the best way to glorify God is to hold hands during the Lord’s Prayer and otherwise let them fly-around at will accompanied by spontaneous utterances of various kinds. They tend to get disgusted with the stiff and formal worship of traditionalists, particularly their stained-glass music, seeing them as people whose spiritual lives are stunted and whose minds and souls have been hopelessly warped by professional musicians. On the other side of the spectrum you have the people who are moved and inspired by classical music, who view all those “turned-on Christians” as folks who have more than a few loose screws and whose musical taste has been forever ruined by “renewal music junkies.” However, they remain confidant that when we all get to heaven there will be no more sounds of “Kumbaya,” but only the glorious strains of Bach and Buxtehude, and Solemn High Mass with plainsong that never ends. After all, if God had wanted Folk Masses or Jazz Masses or contemporary Christian music, Jesus would have had a guitar and an electronic keyboard at the Last Supper.

And then, of course, there are the feminists, who want to change all the words we’ve ever used to talk about God, and drive most of the men in the Church over a cliff— following the example of Jesus when he healed a man who was possessed and sent all the demons into a herd of pigs. The arch-nemesis of every feminist is the traditionalist who is convinced that God can only be imaged and represented in male terms, can only be worshiped with the proper Elizabethan “thees” and “thous,” and the misogynists among them who believe that Adam would have been just fine in the garden if God hadn’t blown it by creating Eve.

And so it goes. If you think I’ve exaggerated things to the point of being ridiculous then I’d have to say you’ve been insulated from a great deal that’s going on in the Church today— for which you should probably be very grateful. But there’s an underlying issue here, and it can surface almost anywhere— within a parish, a family, in the work-place, for that matter in any situation in which we must live and work with other people. I’ll put it to you in the form of a question: How do we develop our own sense of values, have a commitment to them, and yet remain open to other people who may not share them? Can we be comfortable with ourselves and our own perspective on things, without feeling compelled to declare everybody else “wrong?” And an even more basic issue, are we often so concerned about being “right” that we are forgetting how to respond to people with love and respect?

These are serious questions, and they are becoming very critical for the Church as it attempts to respond to issues in our common life. I suspect that many of them are issues that will never be resolved once and for all, because no matter what decisions are made somebody or a group of somebodies is going to be dissatisfied and convinced that there’s been a big mistake.

Given the fact that there may never be unanimous agreement on some things, how do we, with so many diverse points of view, have any real sense of community? How do we continue to believe and give witness to the fact that we are one in Christ? We might take a clue from today’s second lesson, in which St. Paul writes to the Romans:

While we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person— though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die. But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.

The point is this: the only way we’re going to have any peace with God is to recognize and accept our reliance upon God’s grace and to let go of any silly notions of becoming virtuous through our commitments to the right things or right causes. It is not correctness— not political correctness, not religious or liturgical or theological correctness— that will make us worthy to receive the blessings of life in Christ; they always come as God’s gift, given to us freely, even though we are not worthy or deserving of them.

Let’s be honest. By the standards of the Sermon on the Mount there isn’t a single saint who ever lived who was free from sin. One commentator has written that: our self-derived morality is like the silhouette of a giraffe— lofty in the front, but far lower in the rear. And it’s true for every one of us. There isn’t a single Christian, living or dead, who has any room to boast. We all have our flaws.

The Gospel truth is that at the foot of the cross we all stand on level ground, and God has acted on our behalf in spite of our ungodliness. That means we stand on the same ground as those we oppose on any issue. It’s a truth that ought to keep us humble— humble enough to accept ourselves and each other despite our deep-seated differences. It should remind us that no human virtue entitles us to Christ’s healing, sacrificial love; and no human flaw is great enough to put us beyond the Lord’s reach.

If we believe that Jesus lived and died “for us and for our salvation,” then we need to come to grips with the truth that he did it for the pro-choicer and the pro-lifer alike; he did it for those of us who are straight and those who are gay; he did it for the traditionalist and also for those who live on the edge. Jesus came to seek and save the lost. May he give us the grace to see that we are all lost, and that he is the only one who can show us the way.

© James M. Jensen