Coffee Break - Saturday a.m.

So much to read and digest, so little time. Life will be crazier than usual for me in the next couple weeks, between the onset of high school track season and club outdoor soccer (aka football) and the special tasks for the day job, including preparing for an upcoming conference and presentation (which will allow me to get away from my desk, travel to a great city, and sit in hotel conference rooms all day for days on end). But for now, let me just note the following:

Andrian Worsfield (Pluralist Speaks) has a brilliant essay up on Rowan Williams' second Lent lecture on Faith and Politics. Someday I would really like to weigh in on it myself, but Adrian has not only hit the important points but has some tremendous insights of his own that are well worth reading.

Mimi (and her ghost runner Doug!) has alerted everyone to a terrific opinion piece, "Who is the Real Patriot" by Lawrence Korb and Ian Moss featured at the Chicago Tribune.

Clumber, besides having his usual fun with the high and mighty, has this bit on what I would call Blind Ambition. Although I would quibble about the source of the information (Jerry Zeifman - a Vince Foster conspiracy theorist, and someone who circulated this story years ago in a book now out of print) and some of its spin, I think it does point to the source of some of Hillary's problems with ethics. I'd love to riff about John Dean, Hillary, and Watergate, what it is like to be a young lawyer, especially among politicians, and maybe even the judge I clerked for, who was with the Justice Department during part of the Nixon administration, but... well, another time maybe.

Finally, I'm sorry no one at Jake's really wanted to engage on PB Katharine's video but I do recognize the difficulty of talking about that kind of poetic, inspirational sermon. I, do, however, also think there are some important ideas in there as well about thought, action, belief, and, above all, hubris in relationship to what religion should really be about. And then... well, the poetry. The dead fish, of course, but also... I dunno.... something about the physics near the beginning made me think of the bit in the musical Camelot (thinking Richard Harris movie version) about Merlin teaching Arthur to fly high as a hawk so he could see land without boundaries, etc.

(Someday I'll learn not to say "Finally" in hopes I'll cut things short!]

There is the business about the Va. court ruling. As an Episcopalian and a lawyer I feel I should say something. Blogging is self-indulgent enough -- seems to me one should pay back the free forum, in a sense, by occasionally writing about something one really knows something about (or could without much effort). But... I'm afraid that much that I might have to say would be pessimistic and, at least for that reason, unhelpful. OCICBW, and in this case, I hope that will prove true. Maybe when the dust has settled, I might find something helpful to say after all, but... for now it's off to the high school track in the cold and mist and rain. Should be good to clear the head, at least.

Self-justified Truth

"The self-justified truth claim, whether religious or otherwise, is the source of all violence" -- Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori.

This is extraordinary, this sermon. Real, important stuff (my highest rating, FWIW).

If you haven't seen it already, please take a few minutes and go to Against Faith Sanctioned Violence at the Episcopal Cafe and watch/listen to the video of the sermon, which was given during the opening services for this year's Trinity Institute Theological Conference, "An Interfaith Dialogue on Religion and Violence."

Notes from this side of the Pond

Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori:

Incarnation begins here at the well, in a wise and willing maid. Yes, Wisdom’s child is brought forth from watery chaos and the terror of Mary’s “yes.” Wisdom’s child, present from the beginning of creation. Wisdom’s child, born that we might all have life abundant. That connection with wisdom is there in the gospels; Jesus is called Wisdom’s prophet and Wisdom’s child, but it’s not a strand much emphasized in Western theology.

Yet you and I, and followers of Jesus throughout the ages have found life abundant in another fountain of wisdom – the one that flows from the side of the crucified one – which becomes birth fluid for the late-born children of wisdom’s prophet. In baptism, we too become children of wisdom. Mary’s “yes” at the fountain begins a new building of Wisdom’s earthly human house, and when he’s grown, Wisdom in Jesus bids us turn in and feast, “come eat of my bread and drink of the wine I have mixed.” Will you turn in here and join Wisdom’s feast?

The Orthodox have remembered the ancient understanding of Jesus as wisdom incarnate, conceived by a fountain of wisdom – and you can play with whether that means physical proximity or divine source. That ancient understanding is echoed in John’s prologue, the word present in the beginning, through whom all things came into being – wisdom, God’s master builder, present from before creation and working to bring creation into being – the dabar, the logos, the effective word which God speaks, the word that goes forth from God’s mouth, and does not return empty, but accomplishes the purpose for which God sent it.

The sign that God gives, the word that God offers, is a child, God with us, and as Proverbs puts it, “the words of his mouth are deep waters, the fountain of wisdom is a gushing stream” (Proverbs 18:4).

When we draw water from that fountain, when we drink deep and eat our fill of wisdom’s feast, we share in Mary’s “yes,” we begin to participate in that word of God, accomplishing what God intends. “Let it be with us according to your will.” Let us become your willing servants, vessels ready to be filled with God incarnate, that we may do your will. Let your word be spoken in us, that it may go forth and do your will. May your kingdom come, O lord, and may it begin again here.

The angel turns up right here, today, too, to lure us into pregnancy of God. It’s equal opportunity, my brothers and sisters – God’s fountain bathes us equally, without regard for gender. The word of God is waiting to be born of each one of us – that effective word, that wisdom of God that will create a new heaven and a new earth. Will you say yes? Will you nurture that word, and bring it to light?.

Excerpt from Sermon for the Feast of the Annunciation at St. Mary of the Virgin, NYC.

Not everyone's cup of tea, I imagine, but thank God for ++Katharine who is not afraid to speak in her own, unique voice, drawing from diverse strands of (yes, really!) - orthodox Christianity to use words and images that incorporate both female and male images, physical creation, including birth, water, and all of its glorious messiness, not just to speak to the wimmin but to all God's children. At times it sounds odd, but it is challenging and, as far as I am concerned, a welcome change of pace. The Presiding Bishop has assumed an office in which she has faithfully sought to represent and care for all, the insiders and the outsiders and everyone else, but it is refreshing that she has not taken the office to mean that she must assume the Piskie equivalent of Eastern Newsbroadcaster-speak (i.e. some kind of safe, generic, innocuous-sounding speech to insiders). She speaks with a new voice, of a gender and a background that is fresh and alive, coming from a real person who is in a remarkable third career in life -- first as marine biologist, second as priest, and third as bishop -- speaking of faith as if she and we have discovered it anew.









(photo courtesy of Mad Priest)

Then there's this on the clergy vote in Wales against women bishops. Doug Blanchard ("Counterlight") nailed it when he addressed it in the larger context of secularization in the West when he said :

This is why secularism is the fastest growing denomination in the once famously religious USA, and why Europe remains predominantly secular.

The whole public discussion of religion, especially Christianity, has been dominated by right-wingers for a quarter century. Because of this, Christianity is made to appear backwards, a bastion of superstition and bigotry.

People find it ugly and repulsive, not because it refuses to gratify their selfishness, but on the contrary, because it offends their moral sense.

The long domination of Conservative Evangelicalism in this country (which appears, mercifully, to be coming to an end), has achieved the exact opposite of what it set out to do. It has only accelerated the long term trend of secularization.

I think Wales will eventually have women bishops, sooner rather than later.

As Christianity shrinks in Europe (and sadly, here), it becomes more and more the domain of the shrill fanatics left after reasonable people of good will are chased out.

What will bring back Christianity in the West is uncoupling it from right wing politics, and from long discredited segregation that the rest of the general public left behind a generation ago. Christianity will come back when churches stop trying to defend the indefensible.

Counterlight, commenting at Fr. Jake Stops the World (emphasis added).

And finally this, which I could not resist, from an essay on Episcopal polity and John Jewell’s Apology for the Church of England :

I remember sitting in a pub in Canterbury with several of the Cathedral Canons, and after the second pint, one said “You Americans need to get with the program and use the same polity as the rest of the Communion.” My response was something like, “Perhaps you forget, that there was a revolution in the colonies and I believe your side lost. And, as you tried to strangle the Episcopal Church baby in the cradle by withholding episcopal support, our friends, and your adversaries the Scots came to our aid." I added, rather snidely I fear, "The Church of England and the whole Communion, will, with in our children’s lifetime, adopt the Episcopal Church’s polity. My friends, if you think lay and ordained Episcopalians will give up their rights to vote on matters of import like electing their rectors and bishops, voting in General Convention and give them over to a bunch of bishops let alone primates, you are simply deluding yourselves!” Slurp, wipe the Guinness foam off my upper lip, “so there!”

from Howard Anderson's A New Step in the Reformation of Anglicanism at the Daily Episcopalian (yes, i picked out the apologetically snarky bit -- which, of course, I liked immensely -- but there was much more to this essay, so please read it all).

Two Visions of Christianity

In reading about church and politics, I came across the following views of Christianity formulated by Mark Lilla in his recent book, The Stillborn God: Religion, Politics, and the Modern West. He finds that the early theological disputes in Christianity produced "two tendencies of Christian and moral thought that remain vital to this day." These consist of the following:

One tendency takes the basic goodness of the world as axiomatic, despite the presence of sin. It assumes that man, as a natural creature, is capable of good and therefor of improving himself and his social surroundings. . . . Whatever language or images they used, these Christian thinkers considered the natural world to be continuously blessed by God; they did not think of it as an alien, hostile, or abandoned place. Although man can do nothing without divine grace, it is not grace alone that operates through him, but also his own nature, which he is responsible for cultivating. . . . He is called through his free will to imitate Christ, who is moral exemplar. If he becomes evil, it is his own choice, though he can always be turned around. . . . Many things may contribute to man's moral improvement besides grace and revelation, including pagan philosophy. And that improvement does not happen suddenly, through conversion alone or a sudden infilling with the divine. It takes place gradually through effort in the world. That is why man should embrace worldly activity -- in work, study, politics, family, church -- and help to infuse all of them with the Holy Spirit. The willingness of God to condescend and become flesh, sharing our sufferings and our joys, should assure us that he still considers his creation to be good.

There is a second, and diametrically opposed, tendency in Christian moral and political thought, and it takes a much more skeptical attitude toward nature and man. It also expresses a worry having to do with human psychology. The worry is that if human beings become convinced that creation is basically good, they will conclude that they do not need grace. They will become, to use the Christian label for this heresy, Pelagians. The charge has to be taken seriously, for if man could indeed overcome the effects of the fall without divine help, if human life could be made self-sufficient in a good world, why would man need God? To cope with this possibility, many Christian thinkers over the centuries have emphasized the significance of Christ's departure and the persistent corruption of the world he left behind. To the extent that man is a natural creature, they argue, he is still governed by sin; that human stain can never be blotted out. He may have been made in the image of God, but he repeatedly defaces himself through his innate willfulness. Whatever man now shares with the divine has been given him only through God's merciful grace, he has not earned it by virtue of his place in a divinely ordered cosmological scheme. In fact, he has not earned it all.

This conviction can have a profound effect on the Christian's relation to the world. To take it seriously is to be reminded that, since Christ's arrival, there is only one door issuing from man to God, and it exists in the heart: It is an interior passage; it does not give out into the world. It is vanity to think we can somehow approach God by learning more about the world or by reforming ourselves or our political institutions to bring them into line with what we take to be biblical authority. We are justified not by our works in the world, but by our faith in Christ Jesus. We are reconciled with God by his grace, through his Holy Spirit, not by our own labors or even by our own initiative. . . . We will be redeemed when he wills it, when he raises us out of this fallen cosmos and destroys it, welcoming us back into his bosom. In the meantime, if we are active in the world, it is at his command and to serve his ends alone.

Mark Lilla, The Stillborn God: Religion, Politics, and the Modern West (Alfred A. Knopf: New York 2007), p. 37-38 (emphasis added).

There have been others, of late, who have identified two strains in Christianity, one emphasizing the goodness of creation, the other original sin. These include Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, who spoke about divisions based on different views of Creation in her talk with clergy in the Diocese of New Jersey. Also is the more radical vision of Matthew Fox, in his A New Reformation: Creation Spirituality and the Transformation of Christianity, in which he "proclaims that we are in fact confronted with two churches: one expressed by the image of the Punitive Father, personified by a rigidly hierarchical church structure, repression of the feminine, spreading of homophobia and the elimination of internal dissent; and the other expressed by the feminine figure of Wisdom, personified by a Mother/Father God of justice and compassion. It is time for Christians to choose whom it will follow: an angry exclusionary god or the loving open path of wisdom." (at www.matthewfox.org).

Lilla's account, however, is more complex in that it focuses on how these two tendencies play out through the course of Western intellectual history in terms of their relationship to political thinking. It is an admittedly selective view (see, for example, comments on The Stillborn God by Mark Lilla, Charles Taylor, and others here at The Immanent Frame) , focusing as it does on what he calls "political theology" in light of the writings of Locke, Hume, Hobbes, Rousseau, Kant and others (not to mention first touching base with St. Augustine and Thomas Acquinas). Lilla's book, based on a series of lectures given at Oxford, is quite a different enterprise than Charles Taylor's A Secular Age, which discusses the history of secularization in the West, but Lilla's intellectual history, however rareified, is marvelously suggestive of both current divisions within Christianity and how they play out in relationship to politics and the modern state.

The line bolded above leaped out at me as capturing what seems to drive some advocates of conservative views of Christianity and, perhaps, much of the Current Unpleasantedness in the Episcopal Church. I will never fully understand how calls to do good in the world and practical proposals to help alleviate poverty and hunger, such as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), can be considered anti-Christian by some, but Lilla's perspective sheds some light on what may be at work. What remains to be seen is whether these two views, both part and parcel of the history of Christianity, are indeed contradictory and ultimately irreconcilable, thus requiring a split in those churches that profess or seek to accomodate both views.

Intelligent talk for a change

In honor of my Obama-supporter friends, excerpts from a speech by Senator Barack Obama at Cooper Union, March 27, 2008:

In the more than two centuries since then, we have struggled to balance the same forces that confronted Hamilton and Jefferson - self-interest and community; markets and democracy; the concentration of wealth and power, and the necessity of transparency and opportunity for each and every citizen. Throughout this saga, Americans have pursued their dreams within a free market that has been the engine of America's progress. It's a market that has created a prosperity that is the envy of the world, and opportunity for generations of Americans. A market that has provided great rewards to the innovators and risk-takers who have made America a beacon for science, and technology, and discovery.

But the American experiment has worked in large part because we have guided the market's invisible hand with a higher principle. Our free market was never meant to be a free license to take whatever you can get, however you can get it. That is why we have put in place rules of the road to make competition fair, and open, and honest. We have done this not to stifle - but rather to advance prosperity and liberty. As I said at NASDAQ last September: the core of our economic success is the fundamental truth that each American does better when all Americans do better; that the well being of American business, its capital markets, and the American people are aligned.

I think all of us here today would acknowledge that we’ve lost that sense of shared prosperity.

This loss has not happened by accident. It’s because of decisions made in boardrooms, on trading floors and in Washington. Under Republican and Democratic Administrations, we failed to guard against practices that all too often rewarded financial manipulation instead of productivity and sound business practices. We let the special interests put their thumbs on the economic scales. The result has been a distorted market that creates bubbles instead of steady, sustainable growth; a market that favors Wall Street over Main Street, but ends up hurting both.
. . . .

[I]n our 21st century economy, there is no dividing line between Main Street and Wall Street. The decisions made in New York’s high-rises have consequences for Americans across the country. And whether those Americans can make their house payments; whether they keep their jobs; or spend confidently without falling into debt – that has consequences for the entire market. The future cannot be shaped by the best-connected lobbyists with the best record of raising money for campaigns. This thinking is wrong for the financial sector and it’s wrong for our country.

Please read the ENTIRE speech for detailed analysis, guiding principles, and proposals.

I do not know if this is enough, whether it is, in fact, doable at all, because it requires an end to the old Democratic as well as Republican ways of doing things. This is also a somewhat romanticized view of our past, the intent and efficacy of our regulations in more enlightened times, but for goodness sake, let's at least get started back in the right direction, seeking not only to reverse course for our own sake, but to do far better for the rest of the world, as well.

Hat tip to aseekingspirit.

Rumours of Spring

have been grossly exaggerated.

The ubiquitous weather. Yesterday there was no snow, blue skies, warmth glinting through the sunshine. This morning we woke up to this.






UPDATE, MARCH 30, 2008. It's sunny but fracking 11 Fahrenheit this morning!

Special Prayer Request

A wonderful young woman, Naomi, and her family very much need prayers from everyone. If I can in any small way help build up the posse, here is what Caminante, Naomi's pastor in Vermont, asks:

26 March 2008

Get your prayers going

As Kris Carr author of Crazy, Sexy, Cancer would say, Get your posse going.

So, you all, you are Naomi's prayer posse. She needs your prayers. Spread them far and wide. Put her on whatever prayer list you know. Just pray. Pray for her, her mother, father, four sisters and brother.

She wrote tonight on her website:

So, not so great news. I’m going to finish radiation and try a chemo for two weeks. The chemo wont cure it but we’re hoping that it’ll slow or shrink it a little. It is Ewings and it is growing and being very aggressive. After radiation and chemo they will do an assessment but after that they said that there is nothing else they can do. After the assessment they will be labeling my case as terminal. My parents and I have talked about it and decided to try everything out there to fight this beast. We’re going to research alternatives and holistic approaches. If anyone has suggestions or knows anything please let me know. I’m hoping things work out but now I really begin my fight.

I can't believe they told her that they would be calling her case 'terminal.' It's so harsh.

If you all know of anything that might help, write me [Caminante] in the comments and I will pass it along.

Our prayers can make a difference. I don't know for what to pray but God knows. Thanks.

The story goes back awhile, but Caminante first wrote about it here:

12 September 2007

I lift up my eyes to the hills

From where is my help to come? (Psalm 122.1)

I reach out to the blogging world asking your prayers for a 24 year-old in our congregation, Naomi.

Three weeks ago, she went to the doctor's, thinking she had a stress fracture in her foot. The radiologist saw a spot on her foot and called the orthopedic surgeon. They thought it was an infection, so they cleaned it out and sent off a specimen. It came back as Ewing's sarcoma, a cancer that is caused by part of the 11th chromosome moving to the 22nd. It mostly afflicts 10-20 year olds, 85% Caucasians.

She went to the doctor’s yesterday and found out the following:

-- the Ewing’s cancer has spread to her lungs, shoulder and spine but so far they don’t think it is in the bone marrow;

-- she will start next week a ten-week course of chemo that is rigourous (six hours, one day on, one day off, or two days a week);

-- at the end of that treatment, she will have her third toe and metatarsal removed and the rest of her foot will be joined together (they are trying to avoid amputating the whole thing; the next course of action would be to remove the top of her foot but keep her heel);

-- after that, she will undergo another ten-week treatment of chemo;

-- that will finally be followed by radiation.

The whole treatment is expected to last two years but the doctors say there is a 78% chance of her being cured and that is their goal.

This is an awful lot for a 24 year-old to absorb as well as her family. Her next-in-line sister (17), is having a really hard time with it. So do keep them in your prayers long-haul.

For updates or further information, please go to http://caminantesi.blogspot.com.

Love them now

... get used to loving and valuing things and persons irrespective of the fact that they won't be there for ever. Love them now, and what you would want to do for them, do now. 'Night is coming when no-one can work', says Jesus. (John 9.4)

This passage from Rowan William's Easter Sermon (see below) jumped out at me when I read it. It is straightforward, simple, and heart-felt -- and raises the question of why this did not apply to his friend Jeffrey John and to all the other GLBTs and their families struggling with fear and prejudice against those with less "common" sexual orientations and all the social and legal barriers to living out a loving relationship with a same-gender partner.

To raise the question, especially from this context, may seem a cheap and easy shot -- but is it? Not if you are Lawrence King or one of the many youth or adults around the world for whom, according to Williams, the time is not yet ripe to recognize their full worth and dignity.

Elizabeth Kaeton, in a marvellous essay, The Radical Orthodox Rabbi, recently recalled with tears these words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Cowardice asks the question: Is it safe?
Expediency asks the question: Is it politic?
Vanity asks the question: Is it popular?
But conscience asks the question: Is it right?
And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because it is right.

There are times, I believe, when one must dare to "love them now" regardless of the consequences. I admit that personally this is very difficult for me, in my own life and in my own relationships, as well as with the world at large. But it seems to me that this has always been the challenge of the Good News, the question we must ask ourselves.

It is extremely difficult at times, not just because of our own limitations, but from not knowing what kind of radical action is called for. It does not usually or necessarily mean radical and violent overthrow of governments, as those early disciples of Jesus learned. And while I fear he is wrong, I do not doubt that Rowan Williams honestly and fervently believes his go-slow approach is what he is called to do, that it will achieve the most in the long run, that allowing persons to have only a fraction of their humanity recognized for now will somehow bring peace and reconciliation in the distant future.

I read this morning a blistering review of a new biography of the current Dalai Lama at Salon, a review entitled Seduced by the Dalai Lama by Louis Bayard. Bayard views the Dalai Lama as embracing appeasement with China rather than non-violent resistance. I suspect it is much more complex than that but, for all I know, maybe there is some truth of the criticism of the Dalai Lama, who like Rowan Williams, is a reluctant leader of his faith and, sometimes by default, his country. Nevertheless, I was startled at the vehemence of remarks such as this:

Hell, the Dalai Lama has forgiven China, so why shouldn't we? To hear him tell it:

"Our real enemies are our own habitual tendencies toward thinking in terms of enemies ... Our terrors are of our own creation. The world itself is not so frightening, if only we can see it correctly."

With all due respect to His Holiness -- and with all due apologies for my Western bias -- this is horseshit. And something very close to an insult to those who have lived and died in terror, the Dalai Lama's compatriots in particular. Would he have dared offer this counsel to the 1 million Tibetans who were directly or indirectly killed by invading Chinese? To the countless others who were raped, sterilized, electroshocked? What about those Tibetan parents who were forced to applaud while their children were executed? Would they be expected to believe their sufferings were merely illusory and passing?

If what the Dalai Lama professes is truly Buddhism, then it raises the question, finally, of whether a monk can be an agent for political change in such a complex and dangerous world.

Indeed, these are important questions -- which kinds of danger must we or can we respond to and how? When should we to resort to political organization and action to fight violence with violence? But I wonder if the author has totally missed the point of what the Dalai Lama was saying, due to Bayard's own understandable frustration and anger with the lack of an effective response to or restraint upon the violence of the Chinese authorities.

For me, the Dalai Lama's words struck a chord with much I have read in recent months about global terrorism and the response of many in the West -- how Western governments and political leaders have manipulated fear of terrorism to use it in an Ahabian quest to vanquish what has been most recently named as supreme Evil -- or, as described in our Sunday Easter anthem, "crushing the serpent's head." Maybe the Dalai Lama is right, not just taking the long view for the sake of easy appeasement but confronting the real terrors within us as the only means that any of us can begin to overcome evil. It is not that the outside dangers are not real -- they are, quite real, as the death Rowan Williams spoke about so eloquently in his sermon. But the danger of physical death is not, in and of itself, the sum total of evil, but rather its awful instrument. Fr. Jenco knew this all too well.

I don't begin to have the answers to the age-old question of when and if violence is justified to avert destruction and mitigate suffering. But I do know that other kinds of fears -- deep internal ones, not fear of outside threats - sometimes impedes radical action to love one another. To suggest, as Williams does, that he cannot take such action but rather must wait until someday -- when we all may come to better understand each other, by a "listening process" which has long ceased to listen, when bishops and archbishops will cease their scribblings of covenants and treaties and plots, public and hidden, and finally agree that their peers are worthy of sharing Communion with them -- to wait until someday, in the long distant future, seems to doubt the power of what it means to "love them now," to do "what you would want to do for them" because the "Night is coming when no-one can work." So why cannot our leader stand up and say, quietly perhaps, but firmly, the time is now, we shall do it, and I will gather all I can at the table who will come, no one unworthy or too troublesome to be with me?

I do not know. All I can hope is that we all learn to better find and embrace that radical power of love in our own lives, and hope and pray that our leaders may as well.

Update: Since I wrote this I read the awful news of the violent attack during the funeral ceremony being held for the sister of Davis Mac-Iyalla in Nigeria. Jonathan, as usual, has expressed his sentiments about the role Rowan Williams should be playing with... well, bog-standard pith. Read it here: "An Evil Orthodoxy."

Also, this quote from +Gene Robinson:

"It's almost laughable - the premise seems to be that I could undo in an hour an entire lifetime of orthodox teaching," he said. "If I am so off-base in my thinking and in my theological reasoning, wouldn't that be apparent to people? So I think the fear must be that I will make too much sense, that I will actually describe the God that people know in their lives, and then that will demand change."

From interview in The Boston Globe, hat tip to the Admiral of Morality.

And finally, this: Giles Fraser and "Putting an End to Scapegoating."

March, 25 Update:

Father Jake now has this on More Violence in Nigeria.

The first day of Creation all over again

Easter -- that is, Easter Sunday morning church celebrations with the brass and the timpani, the belt-it-out hymns and anthems, their martial words and proclamations of Victory -- is something I actually dread each year and sigh a big sigh of relief when it is over. For me Easter comes in the middle of the night, the Resurrection that occurred when no one was looking, light out of darkness in quiet and a searing glory that is beyond sounds or words. Easter Sunday at times seems a profanation of that great mystery and the way it should get under our skins and into what life and breath we have left in this world.

I thought about writing about it further, but I suspect it all has to do with my personal idiosyncrasies, and I'd just as soon get back to the regularly scheduled programming of everyday life.

Yet, I woke up this morning, to find this marvelous sermon, by none other than the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams. It takes me to the kind of Easter I seek -- the one that happens on Monday after and every day after that. So I share the part I liked most here (and recommend the whole linked below):

Easter may tell us that death is conquered, but it doesn't tell us that there was never any contest.

Perhaps that's the clue. Easter is not about denying death, and the resurrection doesn't make the nightmare death on the cross unreal. Death is exactly what the artists and scientists and psychoanalysts say: it is a full stop to human growth and response, it is night falling on everything we value or understand or hope for. Fear is natural, and so is grief at the death of another (Jesus, remember, shed tears for the death of a friend). Don't attempt to avoid it or deny its seriousness. On the contrary, keep it in view; remind yourself of it. When the tradition of the Church proposes that you think daily about death and prepare for it, it isn't being morbid but realistic: get used to it and learn to live with the fear. And meanwhile - Shakespeare was being entirely Christian in this respect - get used to loving and valuing things and persons irrespective of the fact that they won't be there for ever. Love them now, and what you would want to do for them, do now. 'Night is coming when no-one can work', says Jesus. (John 9.4)

So what does it mean to say that, despite all this, death is 'defeated'? When death happens and growing stops, there are no more plans, no more hope of control: for the believer, there is only God left. Just as at the very beginning of creation, there is God, and there is the possibility that God has brought into being by his loving will. When death has done all it can do, God remains untouched and his will is the loving and generating will that it eternally is. When we look at death, we look at something that can destroy anything in our universe - but not God, its maker and redeemer. And if we accept that we shall die and all our hopes and schemes fall into the dark, we do so knowing that God is unchanged. So to die is to fall into the hands of the living God.

That is why the effort to keep death daily before us is a source of life and hope. It is to commend ourselves every day into God's hands, trusting that he is eternally a loving creator, in whom there is no darkness at all, as the New Testament says. (I John 1.5) And when we let ourselves go into God's hands, we do so confident that he is free to do what he wills with us - and that what he wills for us is life. The Easter story is not about how Jesus survived death or how the spirit of Jesus outlasted his mortal frame or whatever; it is about a person going down into darkness and the dissolving of all things and being called again out of that nothingness. Easter Day, as so many have said, is the first day of creation all over again - or, as some have put it, the eighth day of the week, the unimaginable extra that is assured by the fact that God's creative word is never stifled or silenced.

Celebrating Easter is celebrating the creator - celebrating the God whose self-giving purpose is never cancelled and who is always free to go on giving himself to those he has called. And resurrection for us is that renewed call: when we have fallen silent, when we no longer have any freedom to respond or develop, God's word comes to us again and we live. (II Cor 5.17) We can't really imagine it; it isn't just a continuation of our present life in slightly different circumstances but a new world. Yet all that God has seen and worked with in this life is brought into his presence once more and he renews his relationship with it all, spirit and body.

From the Archbishop's Easter Day Sermon
Sunday 23 March 2008, Given at Canterbury Cathedral
© Rowan Williams

The Great Vigil and First Mass of Easter

The Lighting of the Paschal Candle

The Procession

The Exsultet

Rejoice now, heavenly hosts and choirs of angels, and let your trumpets shout Salvation for the victory of our mighty King.

Rejoice and be glad now, Mother Church, and let your holy courts, in radiant light, resound with the praises of your people.

All you who stand near this marvelous and holy flame, pray with me to God the Almighty for the grace to sing the worthy praise of this great light; through Jesus Christ his Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with him, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever. Amen.

The Lord be with you. And also with you.
Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.
It is right to give him thanks and praise.

It is truly right and good, always and everywhere, with our whole heart and mind and voice, to praise you, the invisible, the almighty, and eternal God, and your only-begotten Son, Jesus Christ our Lord; for he is the true Paschal Lamb, who at the feast of the Passover paid for us the debt of Adam's sin, and by his blood delivered your faithful people.

This is the night, when you brought our fathers, the children of Israel, out of bondage in Egypt, and led them through the Red Sea on dry land.

This is the night, when all who believe in Christ are delivered from the doom of sin, and are restored to grace and holiness of life.

This is the night, when Christ broke the bonds of death and hell, and rose victorious from the grave.

How wonderful and beyond our knowing, O God, is your mercy and loving-kindness to us, that to redeem a slave, you gave a Son.

How holy is this night, when wickedness is put to flight, and sin is washed away. It restores innocence to the fallen, and joy to those who mourn. It casts out pride and hatred, and brings peace and concord.

Holy blessed is this night, when earth and heaven are joined and man is reconciled to God. Holy Father, accept our evening sacrifice, the offering of this candle in your honor. May it shine continually to drive away all darkness. May Christ, the Morning Star who knows no setting, find it ever burning -- he who gives his light to all creation, and who lives and reigns, forever and ever. Amen.

The Liturgy of the Word

The story of Creation. Genesis 1: 1-2: 2
A Song to the Lamb - Dignus es

The Flood Genesis 7: 1-5, 11-18; 8: 6-18; 9: 8-13
Psalm 46 Plainsong

Israel's Deliverance at the Red Sea. Exodus 14: 10-15; 15: 1
Hymn "Let my people go" Go Down Moses

Salvation Offered Freely to All. Isaiah 55:1-11
Hymn "Surely it is God" Thomas Merton

The Valley of the Dry Bones. Ezekiel 37: 1-14
Psalm 30:16, 12-13 C. Daw & K. Hackett based on Adoro devote

Procession to the Font

Thanksgiving over the Water

The Baptismal Covenant

Hymn "All who believe and are baptized" Mitt Frueden zart

The Litany of the Saints

Mass of the Resurrection

Gloria in excelsis - Mathias
The Epistle. Romans 6:3-11
The Great Alleluia
The Holy Gospel
The Sermon
The Prayers of the People
The Peace

The Celebration of the Holy Communion

Offertory Anthem. "Ye Choirs of New Jerusalem" C.V. Stanford
Offertory Hymn "The Day of Resurrection" Ellacombe
Prayers over the Gifts

The Great Thanksgiving (Eucharistic Prayer A)
Sursum Corda
Sanctus and Benedictus
Canon of the Mass
Memorial Acclamation
Great Amen
The Lord's Prayer

The Breaking of the Bread
Christ our Passover

+ The Communion of the Faithful+
Communion Anthem "Easter Carol" R. Proulx
Communion Hymn "Come, ye faithful, raise the strain" St. Kevin
Post Communion Collect

The Blessing and Dismissal

Hymn "The strife is o'er" Victory , arr. W.H.Monk