Sermons, Seminary Notes, Some Other Stuff...

New Blog!

2008-10-18T15:30:00.001-04:00

Join me on my new blog: http://fathermarkcollins.blogspot.com!

This is my final post here!

News

2008-06-06T20:33:00.008-04:00

Been a while since I posted here, but things continue apace. Of note:

I signed a letter of agreement with the Rev. L. Kathleen Liles and, in August, I will become the Assistant to the Rector at Christ & St. Stephen's Church in Manhattan. I'm very pleased to be joining Mother Liles in ministry and to be called to serve the people of this wonderful parish.

The Ordination of St. Stephen by Vittore Carpaccio

It was expected, but nonetheless, is good to hear that the Standing Committee of the Episcopal Diocese of New York has approved my ordination to the priesthood. That long-awaited event will take place on Saturday, September 20th at 10:30am in the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine here in Manhattan. There will be a reception that afternoon at Christ & St. Stephen's. And I will preside at Holy Eucharist for the first time the next day, Sunday, September 21st, also at Christ & St. Stephen's.

In the interim months before I begin at CSS, I'm working for Episcopal Charities of the Diocese of New York; which means I'm working on the Cathedral Close everyday and get to see things like my bishop waiting for the crosstown bus. Right now we're raising money for feeding programs in Episcopal parishes across the diocese.

Click here to donate to these and other EC sponsored programs.

That's all for now. Watch this space for much jubilation when we find a place to live!

The Cross of Love

2008-05-15T09:14:00.013-04:00

As winner of the Preaching Prize for 2008, I was asked to preach at the commencement Eucharist on graduation day, Wednesday, May 14, 2008 in the Chapel of the Good Shepherd at General Theological Seminary. This sermon is based on the BCP propers For the Ministry III: Exodus 19:3-8; Psalm 15; 1 Peter 4:7-11; Matthew 16:24-27

I was on retreat several years ago, very early in the discernment process that would eventually lead me here to General Seminary. Several of us had gathered at a monastic outpost for a five day silent retreat. We were not a group, just individuals who for our various reasons, had come to seek silence and prayer in the woods of northern Massachusetts.

The silence was to begin after Compline, so our first evening meal was a speaking meal. I learned that one of the retreatants at my table was heading back to seminary after a course in clinical pastoral education. She told us how, on the first day of the course at a hospital in Boston, the nun who was to be their supervisor had asked the incoming CPE class why they were there. A variety of answers were given: To be of support to the sick, to learn how best to comfort those in need of comfort, to help people -- my bishop made me do it! As they spoke, the incoming students began to notice that each reason seemed to garner a somewhat qualified acceptance from the good sister. The students begin to sense that there was a right answer as to why they were there, and that none of them had yet given it. Finally, their supervisor looked these new chaplains in the eye and told them the truth which perhaps none of them had yet come to know.

She leveled her gaze upon them and told them, “You are here, every one of you, because you are wounded. Each of you, in some way, bears a wound in your heart and soul. It may be a childhood wound, or a spiritual wound or a long healed physical wound, but you each have one. And God has called you out of that woundedness, to be with others in their woundedness, and to show forth God’s healing love.”

Some few years ago, many of us took up everything we owned, our loved ones, and the good wishes of our parishes and dioceses, to follow the call of Christ -- and to come here to General Seminary; to this Close, to this Chapel, to this altar. We came with tremendous hopes and great faith. We brought all our life experience, be it long or short. We brought all our gifts and over three years I have come to know that among us there are myriad gifts, gifts of creativity, and inspiration, gifts of music and song, gifts of leadership (like when Arianne tells me what to do) and gifts of followership (like when I do what Arianne tells me to do!), gifts of tenacity, gifts of humor, gifts of compassion and understanding.

And we took up our own woundedness as well. We brought our shadow sides with us to seminary. We came with our egos and jealousies and pettiness. We came with our narrowness of mind. We came with our past hurts and our ability to cause hurt. We are the survivors of dysfunctional families, we are the sometimes broken hearted and the oft lame of spirit. We are all of us flawed, all of us wounded, and we are all of us in great, great need of God’s grace.

All of our great gifts -- and all of wounds came with us here to General. Each of us have taken up our cross, and brought it to this place, planted it firmly in the soil of this Close, and we have done so in order to do what God has called us to do -- to follow Christ.

And now, as our epistle says, the end of all things is near. We are poised to move from this seminary into the outside world. We go out of this place with much learning, more experience, but also with the realization that we can’t and won’t cure all the world’s ills, or all the church’s ills, and knowing that the healing that we offer is bounded by the properties of God’s creation.

So, what is it we will offer the church? What can we, as gifted yet flawed followers of Christ, do for the people that we are being sent to serve?

We can love them.

Our epistle today tells us to maintain constant love for one another, that love covers a multitude of sins. To love those we are called to serve in ministry is the one thing we can do that calls upon both our giftedness and our woundedness. It is through our own pain that we can truly see and feel the pain of others. It is in recognition of our own brokenness that we can come to love the brokenness of others. In loving, we serve our God wholly, because it is in loving we deny our false selves, and we bring to bear all sides of our true selves, our full humanity, the same humanity that was sanctified by God in our creation, in the Incarnation, and by our baptism.

In loving the children of God entrusted to us in ministry, and loving them out of our own life’s pain, our wounds are redeemed, and become the means of a further Incarnation, a conduit through which more of God’s love enters the world.

Love covers a multitude of sins, and sins are something we are sure to encounter and sure to commit on our journeys. Whether as lay or ordained ministers, our vocations will bring us into contact with our own sinfulness, and with the sinfulness and brokenness that are always part of Christian community.

I have some bad news: I don’t know how to tell you this, but: The church is not a hot-bed of mental and emotional health. Parishes and church institutions are where very many people bring their giftedness, yes, but also their hurts and fears, their narcissism and passive-aggression, their grief, their loneliness, and their pride -- and then there are the parishioners themselves!

In our ministries, I know that we will meet all manner and type of God’s children: And through it all, I think there is only one thing that we must always do -- and that is to love those God has called us to serve.

The medieval mystic Julian of Norwich tells us that Love is without beginning, is and shall be without ending; that God wills that we be like God in wholeness of love to ourselves and to our even-Christians, our brothers and sisters in Christ.

We go out from this place to preach and to teach and to participate in the sacraments, we are to form children in the faith, we are to work for justice, we will celebrate baptisms, deaths, marriages, conversions. We will preside over vestry meetings, and meet with committees. We will anoint the newborn and the dying; we will weep with the sorrowful and shout in celebration with the joyous. We will do many things, and undertake many tasks, and do all manner of good to the glory of God. And we will fail in many things; we will be humbled, and on some days, I expect, be brought quite low. We will be admired, despised, beatified and vilified. And I don’t think that much of that matters, in the end.

I think that the only thing we must do, and must do in every situation is love.

We have taken up our crosses to come to this place, and take them up again we must as we leave. Our own crosses, our own woundedness, our burdens and shortcomings and our own pain will be crucial to our ministering to the woundedness and pain of others and to our witness to a broken, wounded world. Our many talents and gifts and our learning will serve us well, that is most certainly true. But it is the wounds we bear that will serve us most when we seek to comfort the wounded, when we attempt to bring healing to a broken world.

So, we take up our own crosses now to follow Christ even further and in so doing we take up the Cross of Christ as well; the cross on which Jesus was wounded, the cross by which the whole world was redeemed. For can there be, was there ever, a greater icon of unending love than the cross upon which Christ offered himself as a most loving sacrifice. The cross of Christ is the unequivocal evidence of the endless, unconditional love that God bears for all humanity.

Of God’s grace, Jesus was given for us, to be human, to share our life, to give himself for us, a holy and fragrant offering. All that was done for us: the cross, the tomb, the resurrection and ascension was done for love.

Many years after her first mystical experiences, Julian of Norwich was again visited with visions. She wrote, “From that time… I desired oftentimes to learn what was our Lord’s meaning. And fifteen years after, I was answered in ghostly understanding, saying thus: Wouldst thou learn thy Lord’s meaning in this thing? Learn it well: Love was His meaning. Who shewed it thee? Love. What shewed He thee? Love. Wherefore shewed it He? For Love. Thus was I learned that our Lord’s meaning was Love.”

We have come, bearing our crosses, to this place to be fed, to be formed, to be fortified in faith, and to be sent forth. Later today we cross that Chapel step that reads “through the gates and into the city” and today, we will take those words literally, and go out from this place to serve God’s people in God’s holy church. We won’t go out like the disciples, two by two, but single file (or we will if we were paying attention at rehearsal yesterday!) We won’t be carrying staffs, but we will be wearing some cool new academic hoods. We won’t be in sandals I don’t guess, but I know that whatever shoes Julie wears will be red!

We go from this place, having again taken up our crosses and with them the cross of Christ. And as we go, we lift high that cross, so that the love of Christ may be proclaimed wherever we go, in whatever we do for the people that God calls us to love and to serve.

Yes, the end of all things is near. And as Julian proclaimed, in the end all shall be love.

~ Amen.

Farewell to St. James, Fordham Manor, the Bronx

2008-05-11T16:09:00.007-04:00

Today, May 11th -- Mother's Day and Pentecost -- was my last Sunday as seminarian at St. James Fordham in the Bronx. St. James has been my spiritual home for two years. Fr. Tobias Haller, Br. James Teets, Ms. Monica Stewart, Mr. George Green, and so many others have been my mentors and teachers, and friends. This morning for Pentecost we sang "There's a Sweet, Sweet Spirit in this place..." I can testify to that!

The mad, bad St. James acolytes: Megan, James, Justin, Daqwan, Yadel, Jay and Brian.

The inimitable Ms. Monica Stewart

Abigail and Anita Laryea

Mr. Stephen Ajasin

Our matriarch "Mother St. James"

The cake frenzy!

Tyra LOVES to have her picture taken!

A wonderful place where I have learned so much...

The Alumni/ae Prize in Ecclesiastical History

2008-05-08T23:27:00.007-04:00

It's a bit naff to do this, but this blog is serving as an online resume for me these days, so here goes...

I'm proud to let you all know that I've been awarded the Alumni/ae Prize in Ecclesiastical History for 2008. The award was established in 1895 for the graduating student essay on "the historical interpretation of the life and thought of the Church of England with special reference to its continuity with the ancient Catholic church". In this case, 'Church of England' is broadly extended to include The Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion. We were given a choice of three quotes to base our essay on. The essay had to be written in a two-hour period, and was 'open book'. I'm not saying this essay is my best work, but as the last thing written in my senior year, at the end of exam week, and at the tail end of three tedious but thrilling years of study, it ain't so bad. My essay text is below:

“This is and has been the open profession of the Church of England: to defend and maintain no other Church, faith, and religion than that which that is truly Catholic and Apostolic and for such warranted, not only by the written word of God but by the testimony of the Ancient, Godly Fathers.”
—John Overall, Dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral, London

John Overall was born in 1559, months after Elizabeth I had come to throne and in the year that the Book of Common Prayer was reestablished as the standard of faith for the Church of England. Overall was a translator of the Authorized Version of the Bible under James I & VI. Overall’s defense of the Church of England in this short statement hinges on three assertions of the Church of England’s identity. It is Catholic and Apostolic, it is Biblical, and loyal to the interpretations of the faith of the earliest Church Fathers. This Church of England is then a catholic church in that in addition to the Bible, it follows those catholic principles of fealty to the earliest Christian church which professed a faith believed to be handed down directly from the apostles and formed by the early church fathers.
Overall’s defense is notable for what it omits. It omits the authority of the Pope. It omits the authority of church councils later than Chalecedon, notably the Council of Trent, while including those councils where the creedal statements of the faith were compiled (i.e. the testimony of the Ancient, Godly Fathers). It omits such later philosophies and theologies that may have become accepted by the church such as the work of Thomas Aquinas. Overall’s assertion is that the Church of England is catholic in that it is authentic to the earliest examples of Christianity and to Christian scripture.

The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church gives this definition of the term catholic as meaning, “In general, in present-day usage, it is employed of those Christians who claim to be in possession of a historical and continuous tradition of faith and practice, as opposed to Protestants, who tend to find their ultimate standards in the Bible as interpreted on the principles of the Reformation of the 16th century” (305-6). We see in Overall’s statement that not only is he omitting certain ideas about catholicity that would have been claimed by the Roman church, he is also including certain attributes that would have been condemned by the more radical reformers of the 16th century. Overall asserts that the apostolic faith as interpreted by the church fathers is essential to the Church of England. These church fathers and their writings were supercilious to the more radical, Protestant reformers who sought to make scripture alone the standard of Christian religion. For Overall, the Bible is indeed a standard of the faith, but in conjunction with the received apostolic tradition, and the earliest interpretations from the church fathers. It’s worth noting that in including the Bible in his statement Overall uses it in a negative locution: “not only by the written word of God” (emphasis added). Overall deemphasizes the Bible in favor of apostolic tradition, and early church interpretation; a stance somewhat surprising for one of the English Bible’s translators.

In her volume on the early church in The New Church’s Teaching Series, Rebecca Lyman describes the emphases of the English Reformation. “In their search for a catholic and reformed church independent of Rome at the Reformation, Anglicans went back not only to scripture, but to these earliest centuries of the church. Here the reformers found a model for liturgy in the language of the people, a learned and pastoral theology, and the shared authority of the councils” (3). Lyman sees in the newly independent Church of England a clear desire to emulate those earliest Christians from the era when the church was truly catholic and apostolic. Lyman describes the ‘apostolic tradition’ as “the teachings of Jesus that were preached through the earliest missionaries or apostles” (5). She goes on to describe what apostolic and catholic meant in the early church era. “Early Christians used the terms ‘apostolic’ and ‘catholic’ to refer to this core inheritance of the first communities. They defined as authentic and therefore ‘apostolic’ those inherited teachings that could be tested by universal (‘catholic’) and public testimony” (5).

Overall’s immediate ecclesiastical predecessors working in the reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI and Elizabeth I would have relied heavily on Renaissance humanist scholarship that revered the earliest manuscripts then available. “Those responsible for shaping the Reformation in England… enthusiastically built upon one of the great gifts of the Renaissance, a high regard for the past” (Thompsett 6). Humanist reinterpretation of ancient manuscripts led to new understandings of the earliest Christian communities and their practices. As John Booty writes in his introduction to An Apology of the Church of England by John Jewel, the English reformers saw “humanist studies breaking through the arid and corrupt accumulations of the recent past, providing… the opportunity and the means for probing into the period of the primitive church” (xviii). The English Reformation took advantage of new thought and new learning in order to reach beyond the accretions of medievalism to find a more authentic catholicism in the earliest apostolic church. And it was to this model that they sought to adhere.

“(T)he recovery of ancient Christianity through the work of educated men such as Archbishop Thomas Cranmer significantly affected the polity, spirituality, and worship of the English church in the 16th century. Like others of their day, these reforming scholars saw the ancient church as an authority to cleanse and correct the contemporary church, as well as to deflect Roman Catholicism’s exclusive claims to antiquity and truth” (Lyman 8). Catholicity as understood by Overall and the English reformers was a concept inextricably tied to the early church, and not to the See of Rome. Scholarship had shown a church that was more counciliar, more pure, less corrupted by centralized power, with a great regard for the scriptures. This early church was understood as catholic and it is this catholicity that the Church of England sought to emulate at the Reformation. “In essence, our illustrious Reformation ancestors backed up one thousand years to the traditions of their forebears” (Thompsett 7) in order to find a true religion with which to reform the Church of England. Simply put, the Church of England believed itself to be “offering a more authentic Catholicism than that offered by the Church of Rome” (MacCulloch 493).

The regard for the historically catholic can be found in later eras of Anglicanism. “(T)he ancient church had its most powerful effect on Anglicanism… in the Oxford Movement” (Lyman 11). In an attempt to revitalize the worship and theology of the Church of England, Newman, Pusey, Keble, J. M. Neale and others associated with the Oxford and Cambridge movements sought to revive ancient catholic ecclesiology and ritual. Initially theological, the Oxford Movement was specifically and unashamedly catholic, and sought to move the Church of England away from its more Protestant understanding of polity initially, and later toward more ancient, catholic forms of worship. Anglicanism became more and more ‘Anglo-Catholic’ as a result of the Oxford Movement and the work of the ritualists associated with the movement. These efforts gave Anglicanism back an aesthetical catholicity that once again did not require adherence to Roman authority.

Later efforts to reconcile elements in the Church of England that were struggling with modernism resulted in Anglican bishop and scholar Charles Gore’s Lux Mundi. Gore looked to the Reformation to find a model of reform that valued catholicity while allowing for change. He wrote, “It is the glory of the Anglican Church that at the Reformation she repudiated neither the ancient structure of catholicism nor the new and freer movement” (Lyman 12) toward reform. Gore saw value in maintaining catholicity as essential to Anglicanism as it reformed itself, and proposed that such a model should be followed as Anglicanism struggled to encompass modernity.

As various streams of Christianity sought to move closer together in the United States and in England, the catholic identity of the church was again affirmed in the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral. In ecumenical endeavors, Anglicanism would maintain sacramentality, creedal theology as derived from the early church councils, Biblical authority, and episcopal governance descended from the ancient church and the apostles themselves. A catholic Anglicanism would continue in the apostolic tradition, with the orders of ministry as described by the church fathers, and with the earliest church’s understanding of sacredness in the two sacraments of baptism and the Eucharist.

As Anglicanism grew and comprised more independent provinces, its essential catholicity was maintained. In describing the Anglican Communion in the 2oth century, Archbishop William Temple wrote, “(Anglicanism is) solidly catholic, as in its doctrine, so also in its affirmation of continuity in time and unity through space, expressed by outward obwervances” (Schmidt 259). Also in the 20th century, regard for early church practice is again seen in the liturgical movement's renewal of worship. “Studies of ancient liturgy also underlay the Liturgical Renewal movement of the 20th century which sought to restore many of the theological and liturgical understandings of prayer and the sacraments from the early church” (Lyman 13). Again Anglicanism seeks to reform itself along catholic lines to maintain its attachment to the practice and theology of the earliest Christian church -- when the undivided church could truly be called catholic and apostolic.

“At the end of (the 20th) century… we may be closer to the intentions of our earliest Christian ancestors than we were at the start” (Thompsett 12). Anglicanism retains its catholic identity today, in its worship, in its creedal theology, in its governance and polity. We continue to maintain the catholicism that was seen in the earliest, undivided Christian church. We continue to define a core catholicity as essential to the church’s identity. Overall’s statement could be made today as easily as it was in the immediate wake of the 16th century reformation of Anglicanism. We were then and continue to be ‘Catholic and Apostolic.’

Bibliography

Booty, J. E. An Apology for the Church of England by John Jewel. New York: Church Publishing. 2002.

Cross, F.L. and E.A. Livingston, eds. The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church. 3rd ed. New York: OUP, 1997.

Lyman, Rebecca. Early Christian Traditions. The New Church’s Teaching Ser. 6. Cambridge, MA: Cowley, 1999.

MacCulloch, Diarmaid. The Reformation: A History. New York: Viking. 2003.

Schmidt, Richard H. Glorious Companions: Five centuries of Anglican spirituality. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2002.

Thompsett, Fredrica Harris. Living With History. The New Church’s Teaching Ser. 5. Cambridge, MA: Cowley, 1999.

The Bishop of Newark Preaching Prize

2008-05-03T18:18:00.003-04:00

I'm very proud and gratified -- and deeply humbled -- to let you know that I have won the Bishop of Newark Preaching Prize here at General Seminary. The prize comes with a small cash stipend, and with the rather daunting responsibility of preaching at the commencement Eucharist on the morning of my graduation from seminary. So, pray that the Spirit enlightens my mind and heart -- and gives me the voice to proclaim God's word on May 14th.

The sermon I preached for the judges can be found here.

Update: I found out on Sunday that my field ed supervisor and mentor, the Rev. Tobias S. Haller, BSG also won the preaching prize in his senior year here at General. Good tutelage, obviously; and perhaps the heavenly intercession of St. James the Less!

Stateside!

2008-04-18T14:22:00.003-04:00

"The Major" is back home! Safely returned from a year or so in southern Afghanistan, the Major sent an email earlier today to let me know he's at Ft. Riley, KS, his point of embarkation. He should be safely home in Nashville soon.

Thanks to all of you who prayed for his safety. I hope you'll continue to join me in prayers for peace throughout our world:

Almighty God our heavenly Father, guide the nations of the world into the way of justice and truth, and establish among them that peace which is the fruit of righteousness, that they may become the kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

Sermon for Year A, Easter 4: "Holy Listening"

2008-04-15T18:55:00.011-04:00

Preached on the fourth Sunday of Easter, April 13, 2008 at St. James Episcopal Church Fordham Manor. Scripture readings this sermon is based on can be found here.

+ In the name of Christ Jesus, Amen.

My father’s farm is in the hill country of West Tennessee, where the landscape begins to hint at the existence of the Great Smokey Mountains further eastward. The gentle rolling hills are thickly wooded in most parts, so pasturelands are often separated from one another; and are usually bounded by hills and forests.

A significant part of my father’s working day is about ‘going to check on the cows’. He loads a sack of feed into the back of the pick-up truck. Dogs and people pile into the cab of the truck and we drive sometimes a mile or two over gravel roads to get to one of his pastures where his cattle are grazing.

After the gate is safely closed behind us, my father blows the horn of the pick-up three times. Now, after years of driving over rutted gravel roads, the horn on the pick-up truck is woefully out of tune. It gives off more of a bleat, than a honk. But in a few minutes of that out-of-tune bleat, over the hill or through the woods, come my father’s cows.

My father takes out his pocket knife and opens the sack of feed, something called “Ranch Cubes” which are considered quite the bovine delicacy. He tilts the sack over his shoulder and spreads the feed in a line -- about 20 feet long or so -- on the ground.

The cows all gather along this makeshift manger, and begin to feed. My dad walks through the group of heifers and calves, counting, checking ears and eyes for infection. He notes the progression of those heifers that will bear calves in a few weeks or a month. And he looks to the health of the nursing mothers, and the development of their young. As he does so, the cows will gently move aside, some will nuzzle his gloved hand, and he’ll scratch their heads were new horns may be coming in.

His cattle know him; they know his voice, and the off-pitch bleat of his truck horn. They are mistrustful of a stranger; they do not know my voice or my smell. They shy away from me, but under his hand they are calm, and are at peace.

The Gospel of John from which our reading today is taken is not a gospel of calm or of peace. It is a gospel of conflict, and of division. The term “The Jews” appears 70 times in the gospel of John compared to twice in Matthew, and not at all in Mark or Luke. And it is meant to carry the disapproval and condemnation that so grates on our post-Holocaust ears. It is in John’s gospel that Jesus is seen as one with the Father. The gospel begins with the astonishing claim that Jesus of Nazareth is the Word made flesh, a claim that seems to deny the monotheism that was a the defining element of Judaism -- a claim that would have grated on the ears of first century Jews.

And there is a new word in John that appears no where else in the New Testament, and no where else in all of the Jewish literature of the time: aposynagogos. To be cast out, or put out, from the synagogue.

Most scholars agree that the Gospel of John is the last of the gospel accounts to be written. It is a biography of Jesus like Matthew, Mark and Luke, but it is also an autobiography of the community that gathered around John, the beloved disciple --that developed along different lines from the Apostolic that grew up around James and Peter in Jerusalem and the churches Paul founded in Corinth, Ephesus, and Galatia and throughout the Roman empire. As an autobiography of a specific community of believers, the Gospel of John gives evidence of the rough and tumble period of early Christianity when there were many churches struggling to be faithful to the teaching of Jesus, in different places and in different ways.

This John community accepted the membership of Samaritans, as the account of the Woman at the Well tells us. The John community has experienced conflict with the religious establishment -- “The Jews” -- and had been cast out of their houses of worship. The Gospel of John’s very exalted view of Jesus as the Word made flesh that existed before the creation of the world, would have sounded like blasphemy to most Jews and many Jewish Christians in that time.

So this community of the Beloved Disciple is one that is no stranger to conflict. It has been cast out of the synagogues where most Christian initially worshipped. It has accepted the hated Samaritans as fellow believers. It has come to believe that Jesus is son of God, and very God himself.

Our gospel reading today from John comes just after the healing of the man born blind, an event that caused much consternation for the Pharisees and that led the man born blind’s parents to fear being forced aposynagogos, out of the synagogue.

So, when Jesus says in today’s reading that there are those who are thieves and bandits it is the Pharisees and the other religious forces in the community to which he refers, who would drive out the John community for reveling in the revelation of Jesus as God Incarnate and who have doubtlessly caused the John church so much pain.

There is no doubt that we live in times just as contentious as those we hear about in our readings today. These are times of contention in our church, in our communities, and in our nation. We are at war in Iraq and Afghanistan, and there is unrest in Nigeria, Tibet, Columbia. Some of these conflicts are as old as are our national issues around race, they seem never to come to resolution or reconciliation.

What are we to do in situations such as these? Where are we to turn in times of religious conflict like those found in John, or in our reading from Acts this morning where an argument about the different treatment afforded the Hebrew and Greek widows erupts -- and in which Stephen -- the first deacon -- is taken from the synagogue and stoned to death?

Where do we turn in times of different understandings and interpretations of the faith? Who is it that we are supposed to follow? Who do we look to for guidance when war breaks out, and when tempers flare on street corners, in political debates and in parish meeting rooms?

There are often loud and angry voices in situations such as these. Lots of people have lots of opinions. You can find all kinds of opinions on cable news channels and all over the Internet. There can be real confusion, and real difference of opinion. And hearing so many different opinions and so much criticism -- and to hear so few voices calling for understanding and reconciliation -- all this noise can make us fearful, anxious, even angry.

Noisy, confusing times such as these are times that call for a holy listening. Jesus assures us, we will know his voice when we hear it. It is he who will call us by name. It is he who will lead us through the gate to the pastures of peace, and will not cast us aside. Through him, the good shepherd, the gateway to salvation, we will find the word of truth and pastures of calm and of peace.

In times of conflict, sometimes it is not best to add our voices and opinions to the fray, perhaps we are to engage in holy listening for the sound of what our ears and our hearts will tell us is the voice of our Savior calling to us to follow.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I believe in speaking up and speaking out. I think that all too often, we are silent when the truth of our lives -- our own gospel truths -- is exactly what the world needs to hear. And after we’ve said our piece, then we should do our best to hear what our brothers and sisters are saying.

When there is conflict over how we will relate to each other as Anglicans, or how we can better relate to each other as black folks and white folks or how we here at St. James are to be one body of Christ, though we are West Indians and West Africans and African Americans with different faith traditions and customs.

We are brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus -- and we are always that, no matter what -- we are many sheep of one flock, with one shepherd whether we are Hellenists or Hebrews, as one body in Christ Jesus, one flock, we need to listen to each other with very great care.

Because when we listen with the ears of our hearts, we will hear the truth, we will hear the voice of the Savior calling to us, guiding us forward, showing us the path of righteousness and the way of peace.

We may hear our shepherd’s voice in the words of a sermon, or in the stories we share at coffee hour, in the hymns we sing, or the voices of our children reciting the psalms like they did just a few Sundays ago.

We may hear Christ’s voice in the account of the veteran returned from war, in the cries for freedom from the Buddhist monks of Tibet, in the silence of the poor and the oppressed.

We’ll know it’s our Savior’s voice when it calls us to act with mercy and forgiveness, when it calls us to work for justice and for peace, when we are urged to take on new challenges, to be reconciled with our enemies, to live in love with one another to forgive, to love and to serve.

For the one we are seeking to hear is no ordinary shepherd, the King of Love our shepherd is, and it is in love that he seeks us, and on his shoulder gently laid, home, rejoicing he leads us….

+ Amen.

The Botafumerio at Sant'iago de Compostela

2008-04-14T09:48:00.002-04:00

In the historic church of St. James in Compostela, Spain -the terminal shrine of one of the most important medieval pilgrimage routes - they like a little incense with their worship!

ETRB VI: "The Altar Steps" by Compton Mackenzie

2008-04-05T17:52:00.004-04:00

The Altar Steps by Compton Mackenzie

One of the joys of auditing a course means that you can head down ‘rabbit holes’ in the assigned reading when they attract your attention, and not have to worry about it. In doing some reading for my Modern Anglican Development class, I came across an article originally published in Victorian Studies on Anglo-Catholicism and homosexuality by David Hilliard. The article made reference to Sir Compton Mackenzie’s Anglo-Catholic trilogy of novels. Down the rabbit hole I went.

Mackenzie is most noted for his comic novels of the 1940s Monarch of the Glen and Whiskey Galore set in Scotland. However, earlier in his career, he was seen as a literary novelist and was greatly admired by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Mackenzie was admird for, among other works, his coming of age Sinister Street novel (in 2 volumes), which were compared to W. Somerset Maugham’s Of Human Bondage. Mackenzie’s Anglo-Catholic trilogy of novels -- The Altar Steps, The Parson’s Progress and Heaven’s Ladder -- are another bildungsroman flavored effort on Mackenzie’s part. The main character Mark Lidderdale is, like Mackenzie, deeply religious. And his development as a burgeoning catholic is charted by the three novels. I found a free online copy of The Altar Steps, downloaded it, printed it out and red it through.

In the opening chapters of the book, it is the late 19th century and Mark’s father James, an Anglican priest, has come to St. Simon’s Notting Hill, an outpost of the Catholic Movement in the Church of England. Fr. Lidderdale is given charge of the St. Simon’s Lima Street Mission. The Lima Street Mission typifies the outreach to working class and poor constituents that was a marked aspect of the Catholic Revival. James Lidderdale falls afoul of the bishop with a Mass of the Pre-Sanctified and a ceremony of Creeping to the Cross on Good Friday, among other Ritualist practices. His conflict with the bishop brings on a bout of rage and self-pity. He rants that his lack of fealty to his vow of celibacy as a catholic priest has caused this downfall, and he rejects Mark and his mother, and leaves for missionary work in Africa.

Young Mark and his mother return to Cornwall, and to the care of his benevolent, more protestant, priest-grandfather. Mark is sent to an uncle to be educated in his private, very evangelical boy’s school Haverton House. After a few years Mark runs afoul of his uncle and what Mackenzie calls “his desiccated religion.” On Whit-Sunday (Penetecost: day of the coming of the Holy Spirit) on a walk in the fields, Mark is drawn by church bells to an Anglo-Catholic parish nearby. Mark is swept up in the piety of his childhood by the Sanctus, the Nicene Creed, and the mystery of the mass. He becomes friendly with the vicar, Stephen Ogilvie, and his mother and sisters, and comes into the Ogilvie family’s orbit for the rest of the novel.

Mark is confirmed at Fr. Ogilvie’s church at Meade Cantorum and decides to become a priest. The vicar tutors him in classics and eventually Mark sits for scholarship exams at Oxford. However, in a fit of self-sacrifice he deliberately fails his exams in favor of a less fortunate student. Still set on the priesthood, Mark makes a vow of celibacy and seeks to occupy his time until he can enroll in theological college and qualify for ordination.

In the ensuing year’s Mark lives and works at an Anglo-Catholic mission much like the one his father ran. Here at Chatsea, Mark is tutored by Fr. Rowley, an avid Anglo-Catholic, and selfless missioner to the poor fishing and merchant marine families of the seaside village. Fr. Rowley is widely admired for his work, and by subscription and exhaustive fundraising, he builds a magnificent parish church in Chatsea. However, a new bishop is unwilling to license the church with its Altar of the Dead, where masses are to be offered for the salvation of the souls of the many dead sailors from the community. This flagrantly catholic practice cannot be sanctioned and Fr. Rowley, much like Mark’s own father, abandons his ministry rather than compromise his principles.

Mark decides to be an itinerant preacher, and eventually lands in one of the newly refounded Anglican monasteries. The Order of St. George struggles to pursue its mission when its founder and leading light must constantly travel, preach and fundraise. It is meant to be a mission to sailors, but must close its portside priories and retreat to its mother house to await brighter days. The novices and monks are by turns truly devout and foolishly distracted by the ethereal ceremonies of monastic life and profession. At the end of the novel, Mark leaves the order and rededicates himself to his priestly vocation.

The novel brings to life the conflicts that arose out of Anglo-Catholic revival in Anglicanism as they confronted the movement’s second generation. Mark’s own father and his mentor Fr. Rowley both seek to bring pastoral comfort to their poor communities through Anglo-Catholic liturgy, and catholic theology and piety. Both men are eventually countered by short-sighted, conservative bishops who tout the letter of ecclesial law, and ignore the enormous good that these priests are doing.

The Anglo-Catholic social ministry is foremost in Mackenzie’s view of the movement. The author has great approbation for the devotion these men had to the poor communities that were often the only one’s that would accept their theological and liturgical catholicism. Fr. Rowley’s devotion to his Altar for the Dead, and the deep meaning it held for his parishioners who scrimped and saved to build it, is profound and moving.

Anglo-Catholic monasticism is given less praise as the fictional Order of St. Paul is made to seem at best misguided and unsuccessful, and at worst frivolous. And our hero Mark makes mistakes along his way to spiritual maturity. In an hilarious episode, he attempts to kidnap an evangelical MP’s son and spirit him away to an Anglo-Catholic vicarage where he can be safely converted to the catholic faith and practice. His effort is discovered and thwarted, but we see the sometime overlap and interplay of ecclesial and secular politics.

As the novel concludes, in a nice turnabout, Mark has learned that he is to be ordained, and his first reflections are on what he will preach the next Sunday -- not on what vestments he’ll wear or rituals he’ll enact. Mackenzie clearly has a high regard for the seriousness of the Catholic Movement, and great sympathy for it. His novel’s chief value for me was its from-the-inside view of the Anglo-Catholic movement. One comes to feel some of the sincerity and piety of the movement’s proponents along with the indignation they feel at evangelicalism efforts to thwart their piety and devotion. The bright line that divided evangelical and Anglo-Catholic practice

The next two novels in the trilogy are not available online, and are only available from out-of-print book websites for upwards of $100. But I’ve located copies at Columbia’s library, for which I have borrowing privileges. Stay tuned for reviews of The Parson’s Progress and Heaven’s Ladder.

An Easter Celebration

2008-03-23T22:48:00.008-04:00

I was kitted out for my first ordained Easter in all the finery that St. James Fordham Manor could muster -- and they could muster quite a bit as it turned out! The cloth of gold dalmatic is a donation from a monk of vicar's order, the maniple and Byzantine stole is from the vicar's ordination set. More finery than I will likely ever have the honor to don again.

Here is Mr. George Greene, Master of Ceremonies and Sub-deacon for the day (and a great teacher to me of my liturgical duties), the Rev. Tobias S. Haller, BSG, vicar of St. James, and the new deacon.

The vicar and myself at the Easter luncheon which was also an ordination celebration.

Ms. Patience Okuwoha, longtime member of St. James and one of my ordination sponsors.

The fine ladies of St. James who prepared and served today's celebratory lunch.

The parish hall was well and truly packed.

The delicious cake!

A very big thank you to all the wonderfully supportive people of St. James Fordham Manor. They were most generous in celebrating the resurrection of our Lord and my ordination. A day I will long remember.

My brother and sisters....

2008-03-19T08:24:00.023-04:00

It's taken a few days, but here are a few shots from my ordination to the diaconate on Saturday, March 15th, 2008 in the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, in the Episcopal Diocese of New York, the Rt. Rev. Mark S. Sisk, Bishop...

This is all of us. In order from the right: me, Kathryn Reinhard, Stephanie Allen, Arianne Weeks, Lindsay Lunnum, Candace Sandfort, Yejide Peters. In the midst of us is Bishop Sisk, flanked by the cathedral deacons. And peeking around Candace's head is Canon Coles. This year's EDNY class of transitional deacons consisted of myself and six women, hence the bishop's form of address to us during our vows: "My brother and sisters..." At rehearsal on Friday, Lindsay turned to me after the first time we heard that particular locution and said, "Well, I guess that's you." Yep, I guess so.

Just before the big event, this is Patience Okwuoha from St. James Fordham Manor, Sibyl Piccone, from Ascension, myself and Tobias S. Haller, BSG, Vicar of St. James. These good folks stood as my presenters for the ordination.

My great seminary and EDNY friend Arianne Weeks and her daughter (and future deacon) Dorothea.

The man without whom none of this would be possible, the Right Reverend Mark Sean Sisk, Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of New York.

The woman without whom none of this would be possible, The Very Reverend Constance C. Coles, Canon for Ministry for the Episocopal Diocese of New York.

Actually, when it comes down to it, this is the man without whom none of this would be possible, the "bishop of my heart" Denton L. Stargel. (NB: if the camera adds 10 pounds, the while garment I'm wearing, called an alb, adds 40 pounds at least!)

My mentor and friend, the Rev. Tobias S. Haller, BSG, vicar of St. James Fordham Manor, my field ed site for these past two years. And two representatives of the many St. James parishioners that supported me at my ordination, Ms. Monica Stewart, and Ms. Pearline Bashford, in hats, of course!

Ken Luymes and Ann Marie Duross of International Rescue Committee days.

The amazing Miss Eliza Williams of International Rescue Committee (ret).

Steve Dahut and Karen Azeez. Karen plays a part in this story. When we were both working at City Harvest, and discussing graduate school as a someday kind of thing, Karen said, "You should study theology in grad school!" As you can see, that seed has taken root.

Just two of the many Ascensionites who showed up to lend their support, Jenny Landis and Fr. Mark Hummel.

It was an awesome and inspiring day all around. Thanks and praise go to very many people for helping me get to this day: Denton in particular, my many seminary classmates and friends, Subdean Titus Presler, my advisor at GTS, my mentors Fr. Haller and Fr. Andrew, all the good people of Church of the Ascension, Manhattan and St. James Fordham Manor, the Bronx, especially Patience and Sibyl, the good folks of the Episocopal Diocese of New York, especially Canon Coles, Bishop Sisk, and the unfailing Alito Orsini -- and, of course, to God from whom all blessings flow...

Glory to God whose power, working in us, can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine: Glory to God from generation to generation in the Church, and in Christ Jesus for ever and ever. Amen. (Ephesians 3:20, 21).

Sermon for Year A, Lent 4: "Seen and Sent"

2008-03-02T18:40:00.009-05:00

Preached on the fourth Sunday of Lent, March 2, 2008 at St. James Episcopal Church Fordham Manor. Scripture readings this sermon is based on can be found here.

+ May only your word be spoken, O God; only your word heard, through Christ Jesus, out Lord. Amen.

A few weeks ago in our Lenten cycle of readings, Abraham set out from Haran to the Land of Canaan. Last week was all about water; Moses brought water from the rock at Meribah and Massah, and Jesus gave the woman at the well living water that would quench her spiritual thirst for ever.

This week, in our readings, we are talking about seeing, about being chosen and sent out to do God’s work in the world. Today we hear a bit about fear, and about faith in God’s plan for our lives and our world.

As our reading today begins, Samuel is pretty downtrodden over King Saul’s failure as the first king of Israel. But God tells Samuel to get over it and to get on the road. God sends Samuel to Bethlehem where he will find Jesse, and his sons, and it is from this relatively unknown and undistinguished family that God has chosen Israel’s next king.

As theologian Rick Marshall points out, Samuel and the Bethlehemites are wary. They are fearful of retaliation by a jealous Saul. This is a kingdom in decline, a fearful people fraught with anxiety. There’s been a failure of leadership, and there is fear about the future.

Samuel takes a heifer to sacrifice at Bethlehem so that Saul won’t suspect anything, and there he asks Jesse and his sons to join in his sacrificial banquet. The first of Jesse’s sons to come before Samuel is Eliab. Samuel immediately thinks, “Oh, this must be him.” Eliab is apparently tall, dark and handsome, just as Saul was. But God tells Samuel no, it is not Eliab.

And then comes one of those scripture passages that ring down the ages, one of those verses that helps us in our own day understand ourselves and God, and what God’s values are, as opposed to our own. First Samuel, chapter 16, verse 7 says, “For the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.”

Samuel looks for the most photogenic of Jesse’s sons to be God’s obvious choice. But God is not quite so obvious as that. As all of Jesse’s sons pass before him, God tells Samuel that all of these have been rejected. Samuel has to ask Jesse, “Is this all of them?” That’s when we find out that the youngest, the runt of the litter, is out in the fields tending the sheep. He is sent for, and when this youngest son appears, Samuel notices right away, that he too is handsome, but in a ruddy, hardworking kind of way, not at all like Saul and Eliab.

God tells Samuel, “Rise and anoint him for this is the one.” Samuel does so, and it is not until just this point in the story, after 13 verses and 7 older brothers, that the scripture finally reveals the identity of this new king. “The Lord came mightily upon David from that day forward.” Ah, yes. David, the fabled king of the united nations of Israel and Judah. This unexpected, youngest son of the obscure Jesse, this shepherd boy, is the one chosen by God to lead the people; he is the one Samuel has been sent to find.

Samuel needed to look with the eyes of God on Jesse’s sons before he could really see the one God had chosen. And it is God who has seen David, has looked into his heart. In the very first verse of the reading, God says to Samuel, “I have provided for myself a king” from among the sons of Jesse. The word that we translate as ‘provided’ is actually a form of the verb “ra’ a” meaning literally ‘to see’ in Hebrew. God is telling Samuel that he has seen among Jesse’s sons the one that will become Israel’s legendary yet flawed king.

And this is a beginning of a long, complicated and beautiful love story. The love story of God for David, and of David for his God. You can hear its beginnings in the description of David’s rough beauty. God sees David’s good points and bad. God loves him totally, and God anoints David to do his work in the world. David’s failings do not prevent him from being chosen to lead, and they do not prevent God from loving David unconditionally. And this unconditional love affair will David’s own life and be translated down the generations to David’s eventual heir, Jesus -- and by our baptism into the very body of Christ, unto us.

+++++++++++++++

In our gospel reading, seeing and being sent figure prominently as well. Jesus sends the man born blind to wash in the pool of Siloam which means ‘sent’ and gives him the gift of sight. The man born blind is then able to bear witness to God’s grace in his life, though neither his neighbors, nor the religious authorities thank him for it.

Throughout our gospel story today, there is a tension. There is an air of anxiety. Just as with Samuel and the Bethlehemites, the people of Jesus’ time are anxious; they know well the strife of living under Roman occupation. The Pharisees and the blind man’s family are also anxious in part about the nature of the miracle Jesus has performed, and about what it can mean, what impact it will have on them. There are many anxieties, and they are apparent to everyone.

And then there is God’s truth that in some ways justifies all the anxiety. God has a new plan. God is doing a new thing. God is calling new leaders. God is sending his people out to do his work. David -- and then Jesus -- have been chosen, and sent by God to refocus and recreate the relationship between God and humanity. David will serve as proof of God’s unending love for us. And Jesus will prove that God’s love for us extends through the love God bears for the only begotten son. Jesus’ death and resurrection will show the world that God’s plans for us extend beyond the grave, and unto everlasting life.

+++

I think that each of us here this morning can find our own stories in the scriptures we have read this Lent. Many of us like Abraham have journeyed away from our homes -- in search of what might be God’s will for us, God’s plan for our lives. We have traveled from the West Indies and from West Africa, even from West Tennessee. We have, some of us, come like Samuel, seeking new opportunities in places of peace, free from strife and the anxiety of life in unsettled political situations. And we have all found our way to St. James where we bear our own witness to God’s grace in our lives -- and where later this morning at our Annual Meeting we will choose new leaders to guide our parish into the future.

I too was sent to St. James. I came here to learn about parish ministry from Fr. Haller, Br. James, Mr. Green, Ms. Stewart -- from all of you. And soon, I will be sent somewhere else, to shepherd God’s children in another place. Like the man born blind, I have tried to bear witness to God’s grace in preaching from this pulpit and in serving near this altar. Like David, I am the least likely to be called, and yet called I am.

Through my duties here, I have been challenged to make Christ and his redemptive love known. I have learned something about the needs, and concerns of this community and our hopes for the world. I have had the chance to assist in public worship and in the preaching of God’s word, and the ministration of the Sacraments. Each of these is the particular duty of a deacon.

Like Samuel, you have seen me in this new role: at the altar, at the communion rail, in this pulpit -- at coffee hour, in bible study and at parish meetings. And by seeing me in these various roles, you have helped me see myself as a minister to God’s people. You have been minister to me. Yyou have helped me see as God sees. You have helped me to see into my own heart.

This is an anxious time for me. My ordination as a deacon will be two weeks from yesterday, on March 15th at 10:30 in the morning in our Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine. I hope as many of you as can be there will be there. It will be a celebration of your ministry to me as much as an ordination of my ministry.

God is doing a new thing in my life. And yet I am anxious. I haven’t had a good night’s sleep in a couple of weeks now. I’m forgetful of assignments at school and appointments with friends.

Perhaps you know how I feel. You know the anxieties of raising children, working for the best life that you can provide for them. You anoint them with your love, and then let them go to make their own mistakes and triumphs. You know the anxieties of life in our time -- economic fears, fears of violence around the world and here at home. And yet, in the face of these anxieties, we can all be sure of two things. God loves us unconditionally, and God has called each of us. Perhaps it is our sensitivity to the anxieties around us that testifies to the fact that God is calling us to lives of mission, and of service to God and God’s people.

It is clear to me that God has called you to be like Samuel to me, to help me come to understand my duties as a deacon, and one day as a priest. You are called like Samuel to anoint new parish leaders at today’s election. Perhaps some of you will be called as I am to ordained ministry. Someone among you may be the next Barak Obama or Hillary Clinton, chosen like David to lead a great nation. Some of you may be sent, like the man born blind, to bear witness to -- and in fact to administer -- God’s miraculous power to heal.

There is no doubt that there is anxiety in our lives. And there is no doubt that God sees the way forward. And that if we can look into our own hearts and into the hearts of one another, we too will see what God sees. We can come to perceive God’s will for ourselves and for the world. And with God’s grace and with the support of one another, we can do what God calls us to do. We can serve God’s people in whatever ways we are called. We can do justice and love mercy. We can be prophets and priests, and faithful members of the Bishop’s Committee. We can make Christ’s redemptive love known. We can bear witness to the needs, hopes and concerns of our communities and of the world. We can give glory to God in all that we do.

During this Lent, I encourage you all to look within, to see your own role in God’s plan for the salvation of the world, and to take heed of God’s call in your own lives -- and in your own hearts.

Let us pray:

O God, you anointed your servant David to become the shepherd of your people. Prepare our hearts and minds and spirits to do the work you have given us to do. Open our eyes to see within ourselves and others the challenges you call us to, and the gifts you have given us to meet those challenges. Grant us the wisdom to discern your call to us, and the courage to heed it. Amen.

A PC Good Samaritan

2008-03-02T00:16:00.001-05:00

One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic

2008-02-24T19:06:00.003-05:00

Yes, Catholic! And One, and Holy, and Apostolic... These terms are called the 'Four Marks of the Church' and there's a pretty good explanation of their meaning and use on Wikipedia.

Almost all Christians use the Apostles Creed, and most use the Nicene Creed, and in each of these the term 'catholic' is used to describe the church. In these contexts, catholic is taken to mean 'universal', as it does in the original Greek. By universal, we mean that God's grace through Jesus Christ is available to everyone, everywhere at all times and in all places.

As Bill Cain, SJ pointed out once at a meeting at the Church of Saint Francis Xavier, there's a innate contradiction in the idea of a "Roman Catholic" church. Can you be universal and yet require obedience to the Bishop of Rome? Most Anglicans, Lutherans, Eastern Orthodox and Protestants would answer 'no'. As Ed Condry, canon treasurer of Canterbury Cathedral, pointed out during a recent session of the Canterbury Scholars, Anglicans have always considered our branch of the universal church a temporary approximation of the unity that we will find in the ultimate kingdom of God that awaits us at the end of time. We don't claim exclusive rights to the salvation of Christ Jesus. Rather, we claim that that salvation is Christ's gift to all humanity.

And in the Episcopal Church, we practice our catholicity every Sunday. In the Episcopal Church all baptized Christians are invited to partake of the Eucharist. Our baptism makes us Christians, and Christianity, as we understand it, is catholic by definition. And every Christian of every stripe is welcome at God's table.

Two Ordinations?!?!?!?!?

2008-02-24T18:20:00.002-05:00

Here's the text of a note that I included with my (few) mailed invitations that explains (somewhat) why I'll be ordained twice -- and that your prayers and presence at either are both will be a great joy to me:

Dear friends and family,

This message comes to you with what are for me some very glad tidings! I am to be ordained a deacon in the Episcopal Church on March 15th, as the enclosed invitation details. You may not be familiar with the traditions surrounding ordination in the Episcopal Church. So, here is a little summary:

The Episcopal Church follows the centuries old tradition of “successive orders,” which means that one is first ordained a deacon before being ordained a priest; and one is a deacon, and then a priest before becoming a bishop. This is done not only to continue a biblical and historical precedent, but also to remind those who are ordained and all in the church that ministry begins in service, and service has always been the primary role of a deacon.

What does this mean for you? It means that there’s going to be a great celebration in a few weeks at the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine in New York and I’d love for you to be there. But it also means that “God willing, and the people consenting,” there will be another celebration on Saturday, September 20, 2008 when I am ordained a priest. I would be thrilled to have all of you present for both ordinations. But, please know that your prayers for both -- and presence at which ever celebration is convenient for you -- will be most welcome and greatly appreciated.

Joyfully,

Some elemental Anglican fun

2008-02-14T22:40:00.011-05:00

The blog Barkings of an Old Dog has begun an Anglican Periodic Table. I'm not enough of a science geek to get all the references, but I can attest to the veracity of the table's list of attributes for Tobiasite, named for the Rev. Tobias S. Haller, BSG, Vicar of St. James Fordham Manor, a noted blogger himself -- and my field ed supervisor (and friend). Old Dog says, "Tobiasite is essential for the normal growth and maintenance of backbones and teeth... Tobiasite is a useful and essential component to a healthy Anglican diet." Here, here!

Get your dose of Tobiasite at his blog In A Godward Direction. See all of Old Dog's Anglican Periodic Table here, including such elements as Lambethium (Cc) and Akinolon (Bp).

God willing and the people consenting...

2008-02-12T23:45:00.005-05:00

Thanks for your prayers

2008-02-05T15:00:00.001-05:00

It looks like they worked! I passed my General Ordination Exams! Sincerely, thanks to all who offered kind words and wisdom. A major hurdle is behind me -- thanks in no small part to God's grace and your faithful prayers.

Roadside Ecclesiology

2008-01-20T16:51:00.000-05:00

It was an interesting road trip from Memphis, TN to New York, NY. 1058 miles give or take, and lots of roadside theology along the way.

I'm not sure how much of a Greek scholar is the pastor of the Shiloh (TN) Church of Christ -- regardless his instincts are right on. In the New Testament, the Greek word we translate as 'church' is 'ekklesia' and means literally 'assembly'. The pastor's message here is a bit more eccleisologically minded than one generally finds in Southern Protestantism. It asserts that the church is a gift from God, which is in keeping with more high church, catholic ecclesiology. The 'assemly necessary' quip is well taken. St. Paul's vision of the church was of an assembled body of believers, individual members of the body of Christ on earth coming togetheer -- the 'church militant' as it is called. It matters that each of us as members of the body of Christ do assembly. Some assembly is required. It is important to go to church on Sunday -- not perhaps for what you get out of it, but rather what you are required to give to it.

And now we turn to the Church Triumphant, or at least one vision of it. This is the back of a tombstone in a cemetery just off I-81 somewhere north of Roanoke, VA. We stopped to let the dog have a walkabout and to use the outhouse in the cemetery ourselves (yes, there was one) and saw this. It's a nice sentiment, I suppose. I like the almost Mormon idea of a union here on earth lasting into the next life. But I'm not sure I want to think of continuing the labor God calls us to here on earth in the great hereafter. I'd like to think of us praising God for eternity, not trucking forever! But hey, if you really like trucking, then I guess that's what paradise is all about!

This is what I'll be up to for the next few days...

2008-01-01T19:46:00.001-05:00

And this is what I hope the outcome will be...

If you have a moment over the next several days, say a prayer for me and my classmates as we undertake the General Ordination Exams. Thanks!

The unavoidable, and perhaps unforgivable, CHRISTMAS LETTER!

2007-12-18T20:28:00.000-05:00

We kind of hate ourselves for doing this, but we have for the past few years while we're here at seminary. So here's another Christmas Update from Mark and Denton -- oh, and er, umm, Maisie.

This is Maisie, she's a 10 week old West Highland Terrier who came to live with us the week after Thanksgiving. In case you didn't realize it, we can confirm that 'Westies' are pretty stubborn and hard to train. She's a sweetie, though. And will likely prove a worthy successor to our beloved Molly, who died unexpectedly this past summer.

Mark is getting ready to take his ordination exams beginning on January 2nd for 4 days. He'll be tested in the 7 areas required by the canons of the Episcopal Church: The Holy Scriptures,
Church History, including the Ecumenical Movement , Christian Theology, Christian Ethics and Moral Theology, Studies in Contemporary Society, including Racial and Minority Groups, Liturgics and Church Music and the Theory and Practice of Ministry. As long as he's memorized everything in these few books, he'll do fine!

Then, God willing and the people concenting, Mark will be ordained a deacon on March 15th and a priest on September 20th of next year. Stay tuned for updates on that!

Denton left his rather taxing position as the CFO of the College of Mount Saint Vincent at the end of November. How taxing was it? Well, they hired three vice-presidents to replace him -- so that's some indication!

He's a full time puppy trainer at the moment. And he's been seen wearing this button around the seminary Close while Mark is preparing for those ordination exams:

Denton will begin a job search when he returns to New York from visits to Floribama and Tennessee. If you see any of these, let him know:

Next year will be a year of change for us -- Mark will be graduating from seminary and looking for a job as a priest. If you see any of these, let him know:

That means a move to, hopefully, somewhere in the area. Watch this space for details.

Til then have a Merry Christmas, and a New Year of peace and joy.

With love, Mark and Denton

Sermon for Year A, Advent 2: "Prophets & Promises"

2007-12-09T22:19:00.000-05:00

Preached on the second Sunday of Advent, December 9, 2007 at St. James Episcopal Church Fordham Manor. Scripture readings this sermon is based on can be found here.

+ May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer.

This weekend Oprah Winfrey and Bill Clinton are out on the road, campaigning for their favorite Presidential candidates. Oprah Winfrey is heading to Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina on a campaign swing for Illinois Senator Barak Obama. Bill Clinton is in many of the same places campaigning for his wife and our Senator, Hillary Clinton. Each of these public figures will be making predictions and campaign promises on behalf of the candidates that they think should be our next president. We’re being told that change is needed, that experience is called for, that an end to the war in Iraq is on the horizon. Prophesies of justice and promises of righteousness are all over CNN this weekend. These promises like others we have heard from public figures may or may not be kept. I think most of us have come to view the promises of politicians with some skepticism. It is rare when the Utopia promised us during campaign season is indeed the land we come to live in after the votes are counted in November, and our choice of leader is anointed on inauguration day.

Advent is kind of like a campaign season. We hear from the prophet Isaiah all through Advent, with predictions of the one who is to come and descriptions of the bounty and equity of the coming kingdom. Today as well, in our gospel reading, we hear from John the Baptist who tells us that the one who is coming is bringing wrath and judgment. Oprah Winfrey and Bill Clinton, Isaiah and John the Baptist are all doing the same thing -- making promises and predictions of what is to come. I think that like good Christians and good citizens, we need to examine these predictions with care.

Isaiah tells us that a new leader is going to rise up. He will be a shoot from the tree of Jesse, the same family tree that brought Israel Kings David, Solomon, and Hezekiah. This new king will be wise and understanding. He will be a mighty judge. He will slay the wicked and protect the meek. He will be faithful and he will be righteous. The one to come, according to Isaiah, will bring peace the likes of which we can only imagine, wolves shall lie down with lambs. The ferocious man-eating lion shall become a vegetarian. There will be an era of peace and righteousness that will encompass every aspect of creation. This new royal heir will bring about a period of peace and prosperity which Israel has not seen in many, many years -- and it is not only Israel that will know his benevolence. All nations shall be drawn into peaceful concord -- and enemies of every stripe, predators and prey, will live in harmony. With a platform like that, he’s got my vote!

You’ve heard the expression, “Clothes make the man.” Well, we’re meant to know that John the Baptist is a true prophet, that he means business, by the description of his outfit in today’s gospel. The Bible doesn’t often give us an account of the latest fashion trends in the ancient Middle East, so when it does, you know it means something. In today’s gospel, Matthew tells us that John is wearing camel’s hair and a leather belt. This is the same sort of ‘prophet’s uniform’ worn by Elijah, the prophet that was most associated with the coming of the Messiah. Scripture had predicted that Elijah would return as the forerunner of the Messiah. If John the Baptist is in fact the returning Elijah, then what he says if of great importance and who he points to is even more important

John’s candidate for the coming one, the Messiah, seems altogether different from Isaiah’s candidate. This coming Messiah will be an awesome and terrible judge, come to separate the wheat from the chaff -- and the chaff he will burn in an unquenchable fire. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is bound for the same fire. According to John there is a Messiah coming who is to coming to baptize not with water as John himself does, but with the fire of the Holy Spirit.

If Isaiah’s candidate is running on the peace and prosperity platform, then I think John’s candidate is running on a law-and-order platform. Isaiah is promising that his candidate will put a chicken in every pot. John is promising that his candidate is going to run the rascals out of Albany or Washington or Jerusalem -- or all three.

Both of these prophetic visions of the reign of the hoped for Messiah are pretty incredible, in their own ways. It is inconceivable that the lions of the savannah are suddenly going to give up killing and eating other animals. One cannot imagine that such a overturning of nature can happen. And indeed it cannot happen in this world. It is a vision of the world to come, of the eschatological reality that will come to be at the end of time, when God’s plan for the salvation of all creation is fulfilled. Likewise, John promises a winnowing of the just and unjust, and a punishment of the wicked that too seems to go against what we know of the world we live in. We know that the wicked often get away with it, don’t we? The Pharisees and Sadducees of our day often repent of wrong-doing, but they don’t always appear to come to Jesus or be brought to justice.

Both of these visions presented by Isaiah and John the Baptist might seem to us to be, as yet, unfulfilled. There is a lot that’s been promised, that has been predicted, that has yet to come about.

But Paul, I think, feels a bit more optimistic about it all. Paul tells us in today’s reading from his letter to the Romans that at least some of the campaign promises that have been made on behalf of God are being kept, and have come to fruition in his own day. He quotes from the chapter of Isaiah that we read this morning, telling the community of believers at Rome that the root of the tree of Jesse has brought salvation to the nations, to the Gentiles.

Through Paul’s mission to the Gentiles, the salvation once promised to the Jews has been extended to all humanity. The Gentiles may now indeed rejoice as Deuteronomy says, because God in Jesus Christ has made all people heirs of the promises made to Abraham and his descendents. John the Baptist tells the Pharisees and Sadducees that God could raise up children to Abraham from the stones of the ground. Paul says that in Jesus, God has raised up heirs to the promises made to Abraham from every nation of the earth. In the incarnation, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, God has confirmed the promises given to the patriarchs, so that as Paul says, the Gentiles too might glorify the one God.

For Paul, the promised one of Isaiah and of John the Baptist is Jesus Christ. Jesus is the one to bring judgment and mercy, to separate the good and bad fruits, and to bring together all nations. And he tells us that these prophecies recorded in Scripture have become a source of strength for believers. “By the encouragement of the Scriptures we may have hope,” he tells the Romans. Because the God who has kept his promise in extending salvation to the Gentiles -- we can be sure -- will keep all the promises he has made to our ancestors in faith, and to us.

It is clear from many of Paul’s writings that he and his contemporaries believed the return of the Jesus would be very soon. The end was near. The fulfillment of all things was soon to occur. As far as we can tell, Paul would have been surprised to find us here nearly 2,000 years later still waiting for the second coming of the Lord, and for the full manifestation of the kingdom of God.

Paul’s generation saw the first Advent of the incarnation of Jesus. The apostles walked with and talked with Jesus while he was on earth. They met him in the upper room after he had risen again. They came to believe that truly this was the Son of God. They saw him ascend to heaven with a promise to return and, in time, to bring all things in heaven and earth to their culmination in his kingdom.

And we are waiting still. In our own generation we, like Paul, are awaiting a second Advent, the second coming of the Lord. We too expect that some day all of the prophecies will be fulfilled and that the earth will be, as Isaiah says, “full of the knowledge of the Lord.”

We can sit and wait for this to happen, I suppose. We can make predictions of our own and head to Jerusalem on New Year’s Eve and wait for something to appear in the skies as some folks have done. Or we can watch the weather report, and predict that floods here or hurricanes there are surely the signs that it’s all about to come to an end. We can do that if we like, but it seems a waste of a life. It seems an awfully flat footed response to the gospel of peace and justice that has been declared to us. The message of Scripture can often seem to be about a time yet to come, but it’s also about a time that has already come, and it’s also about the time now. There’s not much you and I can do about the future, and less we can do about the past. But there is something we can do now. We have been given a span of days on this earth, and thanks to God’s gift of free will, those days are ours to live as we choose.

I think that while we wait for Christ to come again, we can help God out a little bit. We can help make our own world, in our own day, at least a small reflection of the reign of God that we expect in the fulfillment of God’s kingdom at the end of time. We can try to make manifest some of the miraculous peace and justice that the prophecies talk about.

We are, after all, the Body of Christ in the world, we are, in a few moments, to be feed with his holy and sacred food. We are nourished by our Lord and savior with his body and blood to be his body, his agents in our own day. As the incarnation was born in Jesus, so his kingdom can become incarnate in us, when we do God’s will. There is much to do and much to hope for. We cannot do it all. But we can make a beginning; we can do homage to our incarnate Lord, by seeking to live by the values of God’s kingdom come in the here and now.

There is great enmity in our church, and in our world. There is strife among Jews and Gentile and Muslims and Christians, among Conservatives and Progressives in our Anglican Communion. Wars and rumors of war continue; there is injustice almost every where we turn. Our mission as Christians is to be Christ in this world, and to be what Isaiah calls the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and fear of the Lord, in our own day. We will not bring about the awesome visions of Isaiah or of John the Baptist, but we can do what we can do. And we can, as does Paul, abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Preachers should practice what they preach. I should follow what Mr. Brown calls ‘my rhetoric’. Mr. Longsworth, there’s a turkey in your future. It will be my contribution to the St. James Christmas eve dinner. I can’t make the wolf and the lamb to lie down together, but I can provide a little turkey for those who will sit down together on Christmas Eve in this church to celebrate the nativity of our Lord.

During this Advent season, I invite you to look for the ways, either great or small, in which you can help to bring the peace and the justice that we hope for at the end of time into the world that we live in today.

Our king is coming, and yet there is so much of his kingdom yet to come. Prepare your hearts for great joyfulness. Prepare your souls for the judgment of God. And make ready to serve your Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, by serving the needs of one another. As we prayed our in Collect this morning, make ready to greet with joy the coming of Jesus Christ our Redeemer.

Amen

God's Place in Politics

2007-12-08T08:52:00.000-05:00

The New York Times has some sensible things to say about Mitt Romney's speech on his faith and its role in his political ambitions. Here are some quotes -- the full text of the editorial is at the bottom of this post.

Mr. Romney filled his speech with the first myth — that the nation’s founders, rather than seeking to protect all faiths, sought to imbue the United States with Christian orthodoxy... Mr. Romney dragged out the old chestnuts about “In God We Trust” on the nation’s currency, and the inclusion of “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance — conveniently omitting that those weren’t the founders’ handiwork, but were adopted in the 1950s at the height of McCarthyism.

In his book, “American Gospel,” Jon Meacham quotes James Madison as saying that law was “meant to comprehend, with the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and the Mahometan, the Hindoo and infidel of every denomination.”

The founders were indeed religious men, as Mr. Romney said. But they understood the difference between celebrating religious faith as a virtue, and imposing a particular doctrine, or even religion in general, on everyone. As Mr. Meacham put it, they knew that “many if not most believed, yet none must.”

We believe democracy cannot exist without separation of church and state, not that public displays of faith are anathema. We believe, as did the founding fathers, that no specific religion should be elevated above all others by the government... That is why they wrote in Article VI that “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.”

The full text of the NY Times editorial is here.

Words of Wisdom and Faith from the Bishop of New York

2007-11-29T11:54:00.000-05:00

Every year at the Episcopal Diocese of New York's convention, our bishop, the Rt. Rev. Mark S. Sisk, gives an address. Every year, I find it to be compelling, thoughtful, provocative and important to our continued mission of Christian witness and action. Here are a few excerpts. A link to the full text of the address is below.

The witness to God’s radical love has become ever more difficult. The difficulty arises from two deeply linked sources. The first, and more superficial cause, is a shift in cultural values that has tended to muffle all but the most extreme voices…

Of late I have been meeting with other religious leaders of a like mind in hopes that together, we can find a way to raise the voice of moderation in the midst of the cacophony that surrounds us.

However, the deeper truth is that deafness to all but the most extreme voices is itself a perfectly natural development in a society, in a world, in which the forces of extremism have moved from the margins to the very center of our common life.

Who among us, in his or her wildest imagination, would ever have guessed that candidates for the Presidency of this great nation, or a nominee for its highest law enforcement officer, would find themselves seriously debating fine nuances of what is an acceptable method for torture and what is not. To what have we come? And how have we gotten here?

These are not easy times in which to serve. But by God’s grace they are the times we have been given. Let us so immerse ourselves in the life of the living Lord that we may find a new and life giving word of hope and justice, to the community of which we are a part.

Let it never be said of us, that we, in our generation cowered before the work that was ours to do. By the power of God’s Spirit who lives within us, let us find in one another the strength of the One who sustains us all. Let us have the courage to live without fear because the God who loves us and sustains us is more powerful than all the evil forces that drive us apart.

Rejoice in each other. Rejoice in the work that God has given us do, Rejoice in the Life of the Living One who loves us, now and unto the ages of ages.

The full text of the bishop's address can be found here.

A new resident on the Close...

2007-11-24T19:24:00.000-05:00

This is Maisie, a West Highland Terrier pup (and her litter mates) who is about 8 weeks old. We met her today. She finishes weening next week and will have a check-up at the vet and then she comes home with us on Thursday.

Sex in the Bible!??!? Well....

2007-11-18T18:30:00.000-05:00

My New Testament professor Deirdre Good has some astute observations on sex, sexuality and gender in the Bible. Here's a quote:

If sexuality is marginal in biblical tradition and the Bible has no vision to help integrate human sexuality, and if a Christian theology of the sacrament of marriage is patristic and medieval, what might be the consequences for our contemporary debates about sexuality in the church and elsewhere? One is that since sexuality seems to be of no great concern to either God or Jesus according to the biblical record, we need to recognize this gap before we rush to fill it.

The rest of Deirdre's scholarly good sense can be found here. Hat tip to Episcopal Cafe for the link.

Canterbury's Thomas # 2: Thomas More

2007-11-16T15:04:00.000-05:00

Thomas More was executed by Henry VIII in 1535 at the Tower of London for refusing to accept Henry's ecclesiastical supremacy. More's body -- as was the case with most executed prisoners -- was buried in St. Peter's ad Vincula within the walls of the Tower of London. His head was placed upon a spike on London Bridge as a warning to potentials traitors, as was also the custom.

Legend has it that Margaret Roper, Thomas More's daughter, bribed the keeper of London Bridge to dislodge the head and drop it to her barge in the river below. It is known, however, that Margaret Roper was called before the London Council and charged with stealing the head. However, charges were dropped and she was allowed to keep it. She is believed to have carried it to Canterbury, the longtime home of the Roper family.

The gate to the Roper family home.

Across the street from the Roper home is St. Dunstan's Church, the Roper's parish. Within it, the Roper family is buried, along with Thomas More's head.

The plaque was placed in 1932 over the site of the Roper family crypt.

The vault was excavated in 1978 when this photo was taken. The Roper family's coffins were found underneath the pile of rubble you see in the bottom of the photograph. And in the niche in the wall of the vault was found the remains of a skull believed to be that of Thomas More.

Within St. Dunstan's Church are two windows depicted Thomas More and his family.

Canterbury's Thomas # 1: Thomas Becket

2007-11-16T11:26:00.000-05:00

Here are some pics from Canterbury that relate to Thomas Beckett, and the attack on his cult and shrine by Henry VIII...

This is the site of the actual martyrdom in 1170. On this spot, just off the Cathedral Cloister and Chapter House, Thomas Becket was slain by men from the court of Henry II.

Originally, Thomas Becket was buried in a fairly simple tomb in the crypt of the cathedral. Almost immediately his cult began to develop. This is a detail from one of Canterbury's stained glass windows known as the 'Miracle Window' because it documents some of the miracles associated with Thomas Becket's tomb. What it also documents is what the original tomb in the crypt may have looked like. Notice the holes in the side of the tomb. It's believed that these openings allowed pilgrims to touch Becket's coffin, with their hands, feet, and even their heads, to seek a blessing or cure from the saint.

Eventually, a magnificent shrine to the saint was built upstairs in the Trinity Chapel at the east end of the cathedral on the spot pictured above. It might have looked something like the photo of Edward the Confessor's shrine in Westminster Abbey below. It is believed that the openings allowing access to the saint's coffin were maintained. It was believed to have been build of rose colored stone and to have become heavily jeweled as pilgrims and patrons made gifts of precious metals and stones to the shrine.

Edward the Confessor's shrine in Westminster Abbey.

The shrine stood in the Trinity Chapel from 1220 until 1538 when its destruction was ordered by Henry VIII -- just over 300 years. During those 300 years, the tomb of Thomas Becket was the focus of intense devotion and pilgrimage. It is to the tomb of Thomas Becket at Canterbury that Chaucer's pilgrims are travelling as they tell each other their Canterbury Tales. Here in the floor stones of the Trinity Chapel, you can see where the knees of 300 years of pilgrims have smoothed the rough stone, creating a dip in the stones where they knelt beside the shrine.

Another view of the floor in the Trinity Chapel where the shrine of Thomas Becket once stood. This shot is taken from the northeast corner of the spot where the shrine once stood. The dip worn by the pilgrims' knees is clearly visible.

The stone used in the shrine is believed to have been rose colored marble. As the jewels and precious metals on the tomb were harvested for the royal treasury in 1538 -- including the Regale of France, a huge ruby offered to Becket's memory by Louis VII which became a part of a thumb ring worn by Henry VIII, the stone itself was tossed aside. Pieces of rose colored stone believed to have been part of the shrine are still found from time to time at the cathedral when excavations and renovations are made. These two pieces of rose stone are in the cathedral archive.

Over the course of centuries some of the discarded rose colored stone has been refashioned and used in various structures of the cathedral. This piece of rose colored stone was used to pave the cathedral cloister.

Thomas Becket's memory is still honored today by priests and publicans in Canterbury.

Hook 'em high, Hook 'em low...

2007-11-02T15:48:00.000-04:00

Here are a few more shots from my trip to Canterbury. These are from Bishopsbourne, Kent, a village where it just so happens Richard Hooker was rector. In the rectory here, some of Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity was written.

St. Mary's Church, Bishopsbourne.

The church predates the Reformation and was, at one point, highly decorated. These images would have been whitewashed over during the 16th century's iconoclasms. The outlines of some of those earlier drawings have been uncovered. This is an illustration of 'Christ the King".

Apparently, Hooker was not satisfied with the preaching arrangements in his day, and left funds to the church in his will to purchase this pulpit.

His statue is next to the pulpit.

And a memorial plaque is on the south wall of the chancel.

The parish was apparently quite weathly during the 19th century. This is the west window by Edward Burne-Jones and likely executed by William Morris & Co. These two artists were at the forefront of the Pre-Raphaelite movement in the Victorian era.

William Morris & Co. is believed to have created the reredos mosaic as well.

How NOT to welcome the newcomer...

2007-10-26T22:09:00.000-04:00

Very funny clip from a BBC comedy show... Is this what John Drymon would be like with a mustache and a British accent???

Mirage in the desert: the myth of the 'Global South'

2007-10-26T21:22:00.001-04:00

Here's an analysis of just what the so called 'Global South' is and is not from the Rev. Frederick Quinn. Some short quotes:

"Global South" implies a monolithic body when in reality the group's membership appears to be porous, driven by a small number of special interest advocates primarily in Nigeria, Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda, and their American franchise holders."

"The vision of Christianity that Akinola and his supporters present does not represent the breadth and depth of religion in Africa. Scripturally and structurally, it mirrors the remnants of a colonial church tradition, one where African bishops rigidly follow in the footsteps of a departed generation of autocratic British mentors."

Thanks to Episcopal Life Online for the link to Dr. Quinn's piece.

Here I Stand, I Can Do No Other...

2007-10-26T20:53:00.000-04:00

Guess I'm a bit more reformed than I would have guessed. According to the theology quiz, found here, I'm a Lutheran (theologically anyway!)

Eucharistic theology
created with QuizFarm.com

You scored as Luther

You are Martin Luther. You'll stick with the words of Scripture, and defend this with earthy expressions. You believe this is a necessary consequence of an orthodox Christology. You believe that the bread and wine are the Body and Blood of Christ, but aren't too sure about where he goes after the meal, and so you don't accept reservation of the Blessed Sacrament or Eucharistic devotions. (Well, they're nice for some people, just not so much for me...)

Luther

81%

Orthodox

75%

Calvin

69%

Catholic

50%

Zwingli

50%

Unitarian

31%

The African war over homosexuality

2007-10-12T16:32:00.000-04:00

Here's an interesting perspective on the history of the conflict between Christianity and homosexuality in Africa; excerpted from The New Republic by Episcope.

Unholy Communion
by Philip Jenkins
The New Republic
10.11.07 Issue date 10.08.07

In the past few years, conservative Episcopalians from a number of U.S. congregations have voted to bolt from their church and place themselves under various African leaders, including Nigeria's Anglican primate Peter Jasper Akinola. The source of the conservatives' discontent with the U.S. Episcopal Church was its liberal position on homosexuality. It had, after all, named an openly gay man bishop of New Hampshire. That was also the reason Akinola and other African clergy appealed to these largely white congregations. Akinola's church views any gay manifestation as an "acquired aberration" and has compared the U.S. Episcopal Church to a "cancerous lump." He has also backed legislation that prescribes severe prison sentences for gay sex....

Many African societies have well-established traditions of same-sex interactions and gay subcultures. In different parts of the continent, we can find everything from warrior cultures in which mature men sexually initiate youths, to examples of gender crossing. A decade ago, the varieties of African homosexuality were documented in the book Boy-Wives and Female-Husbands, edited by Will Roscoe and Stephen O. Murray.

Why, then, did opposition to gay rights become so critical for many African Christians? The answer has a lot to do with the rapid spread of Christianity on the continent in a relatively short time. In 1900, Africa had 10 million Christians, representing around 10 percent of the population. By 2000, that figure had grown to 360 million, or 46 percent. As a result, most African Christians today are first- or second- generation members of the faith, and many are adult converts. Sociologists generally agree that newer religious groups tend to have more literal approaches to scripture. In practice, of course, literalism still leaves plenty of room for debate and interpretation; but, when the Bible specifically condemns a particular sin--and same-sex interaction is repeatedly denounced in both the Old and New Testaments--that makes it difficult for literalists to find wiggle room.

In other ways, too, the rapid expansion of Christianity has conditioned African views on homosexuality. African churches exist in a ferociously competitive environment, one where traditional groups--like Anglicans and Catholics--must fight to maintain their market share against newer Pentecostal denominations, with their enticing promises of miracles and healings. The last thing the older churches need is a suggestion that their commitment to scriptural truth is anything less than absolute or that they are any less rigorous than their rivals in condemning sin.

The other key rival--and another factor shaping moral attitudes--is Islam. Over the past century, African Christianity has grown much more rapidly than Islam, a fact that puzzles and infuriates Muslims who regard the continent as naturally theirs. In 1900, for instance, Christians accounted for just 1 percent of the people of what would become the state of Nigeria; Muslims made up 26 percent. By 1970, however, the religions had achieved parity, each having around 45 percent of the population. And some recent polls suggest that, today, the nation has a Christian plurality. Against this background of rivalry and potential violence, Christians cannot be seen to concede anything to Muslims in terms of their commitment to strict morality. Even the harsh anti-gay measures that Akinola backs in Nigeria are still milder than the provisions enforced under the sha- ria code that prevails in one-third of the country's states, which includes the death penalty for homosexuality. Moreover, by condemning sexual liberalism, African churches are making clear to their own members and their Muslim neighbors that they are not puppets of the West. Moral conservatism thus serves to assert cultural independence--a link that requires sexual immorality to be portrayed as a Euro-American import.

The Muslim context helps explain the sensitivity of gay issues in one other key respect. In the region later known as Uganda, Christianity first arrived in the 1870s, when the area was already under Muslim influence and a hunting ground for Arab slave-raiders. The king of Buganda had adopted Arab customs of pederasty, and he expected the young men of his court to submit to his demands. But a growing number of Christian courtiers and pages refused to participate, despite his threats, and an enraged king launched a persecution that resulted in hundreds of martyrdoms: On a single day, some 30 Bugandans were burned alive. Yet the area's churches flourished, and, eventually, the British expelled the Arab slavers. That foundation story remains well-known in the region, and it intertwines Christianity with resistance to tyranny and Muslim imperialism--both symbolized by sexual deviance. Reinforcing such memories are more recent experiences with Muslim tyrants, such as Idi Amin, whose victims included the head of his country's Anglican Church. For many Africans, then, sexual unorthodoxy has implications that are at once un-Christian, anti-national, and oppressive.
…
To be sure, Africa is a diverse continent, and some voices are more liberal on gay issues than others. Many of the most progressive can be found in South Africa, arguably one of the most gay-friendly countries in the world. Its constitution outlaws discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation, and, in 2006, the country legalized same-sex marriage. Many churches certainly opposed this latter measure, but the depth of feeling is nothing like what we find in a country like Nigeria. Anglican leader Desmond Tutu has spoken out for gay rights, declaring, "To penalize somebody for their sexual orientation is the same as what used to happen to black South Africans for something about which we could do nothing." Generally, bishops who do criticize homosexual behavior rank it low on their hierarchy of sins. The country's current Anglican primate, Njongonkulu Ndungane, calls homosexuality a "pastoral, secondary problem," and has rebuked Akinola for failing to address more pressing issues in his backyard.

One explanation for this phenomenon is that South Africa's unique history has given its leaders more room to promote tolerance on gay rights. After all, given the African National Congress's recent credentials in resisting white domination, the government can hardly be accused of passively succumbing to Western influence.

Songs That Say Something #4

2007-10-10T14:06:00.001-04:00

"You Get What You Give" by New Radicals

Lyrics are here.

Open letter to the LGBT Community from Bishop Gene Robinson

2007-10-09T11:24:00.000-04:00

Bishop Gene Robinson has written to gays and lesbians about the recent House of Bishops meeting in New Orleans. He gives his sense of the meeting and why he voted for the statement issued by the bishops.

October 9, 2007

"Now that the Church has had some time to absorb and consider the recent meeting of the House of Bishops in New Orleans and its response to the Anglican Communion, I’d like to share with you what I experienced at the recent House of Bishops meeting, and where I think we are as a result.

There is NO “mind of the House” nor a “mind of the Episcopal Church.” In fact, we are a House and a Church of many different minds. We are in transition from the Church we have been called to be in the past, to the Church we are called to be now and in the future. We are not there yet.

I value highly the thoughts and needs of my brother and sister conservative bishops, who have no intention of leading their flocks out of the Episcopal Church, but come out of dioceses which, for the most part, find the Episcopal Church’s actions of the last four years troublesome and alarming. I listened to them when they voiced the fears of their people that changing our views on homosexuality is a precursor to moving on to denying important tenets of our orthodox faith, from the Trinity to the Resurrection. We worked for a statement which would reflect the diversity we recognize and value as a strength of our Episcopal communion. It was our goal to describe the Church as it currently is: NOT of one mind, but struggling to be of one heart.

My own goal – and that of many bishops – was to do NOTHING at this meeting. That is, our goal, in response to the Primates, was simply to state where we are as an Episcopal Church, not to move us forward or backward. Sometimes, “progress” is to be found in holding the ground we’ve already achieved, when “moving forward” is either untimely or not politically possible. And, doing nothing substantive respects the rightful reminder to us from many in the Senior House that the House of Bishops cannot speak for the whole Church, but rather must wait until all orders of ministry are gathered for its joint deliberations at General Convention.

While many of us worked hard to block B033 and voted against it at General Convention, it IS the most recent declaration of all orders of ministry gathered as a Church. The Bishops merely restated what is, as of the last General Convention.Yes, we did identify gay and lesbian people as among the group included in those who ‘present a challenge” to the Communion. That comes as a surprise to no one. It is a statement of who we are at the moment. Sad, but true.

Many bishops spoke on behalf of their lgbt members and worked hard to prevent our movement backwards. We fought hard over certain words, certain language. We sidelined some things that truly would have represented a movement backwards.

I want to tell you what I said to the Archbishop of Canterbury. In the course of his comments, it seemed to me that the Archbishop was drawing a line between fidelity to our gay and lesbian members, and fidelity to the “process of common discernment,” which he had offered as a prime function of a bishop. I heard him saying that gay and lesbian members of our Church would simply have to wait until there was a consensus in the Communion. When we were invited to respond, I said something like, “Your Grace, I have always respected you as a person and your office, and I always will. But I want you to know and hear, that to me, a gay man and faithful member of this Church, this is one of the most dehumanizing things I’ve heard in a long time, and I will not be party to it. It reminds me of Jesus question ‘Is the Sabbath made for man, or man for the Sabbath?’ Choosing a process over the lives of human beings and faithful members of this Church is simply unacceptable and unscriptural.” The next morning, the Archbishop tried to assure us that he meant both/and rather than either/or. I tried to speak my truth to him.

On the issue of same sex unions, I argued that our statement be reflective of what is true right now in the Episcopal Church: that while same sex blessings are not officially permitted in most dioceses, they are going on and will continue to go on as an appropriate pastoral response to our gay and lesbian members and their relationships. Earlier versions of our response contained both sides of this truth. I argued to keep both sides of that truth in the final version, providing the clarity asked for by the Primates.

Others made the argument that to state that “a majority of Bishops do not sanction such blessings” implied that a minority do in fact sanction such blessings, and many more take no actions to prevent them. All this without coming right out and saying so. That argument won the day. I think it was a mistake.

Another issue to which I spoke was this notion of “public” versus “private” rites. I pointed out on the floor that our very theology of marriage is based on the communal nature of such a rite. Presumably, the couple has already made commitments to one another privately, or else they would not be seeking Holy Matrimony. What happens in a wedding is that the COMMUNITY is drawn into the relationship – the vows are taken in the presence of that community and the community pledges itself to support the couple in the keeping of their vows. It is, by its very nature, a “public” event – no matter how many or how few people are in attendance. The same goes for our solemn commitments to one another as lgbt couples.

I suspect that these efforts to keep such rites “private” is just another version of “don’t ask, don’t tell.” If avoidance of further conflict is the goal, then I can understand it. But if speaking the truth in love is the standard by which we engage in our relationships with the Communion, then no.

Let me also state strongly that I believe that the Joint Standing Committee of the ACC and Primates MISunderstood us when they stated that they understood that the HOB in fact “declared a ‘moratorium on all such public Rites.’” Neither in our discussions nor in our statement did we agree to or declare such a moratorium on permitting such rites to take place. That may be true in many or most dioceses, but that is certainly not the case in my own diocese and many others. The General Convention has stated that such rites are indeed to be considered within the bounds of the pastoral ministry of this Church to its gay and lesbian members, and that remains the policy of The Episcopal Church.

Lastly, let me respond to the very real pain in the knowledge that the change we long for takes time. This movement forward is going to take a long time. That doesn’t make it right. It certainly does not make it easy. Dr. King rightly said that “justice delayed is justice denied,” but that didn’t stop him from accepting and applauding incremental advances along the way.

We have every right to be impatient. We MUST keep pushing the Church to do the right thing. We must never let anyone believe that we will be satisfied with anything less than the full affirmation of us and our relationships as children of God.

BUT, I will continue to try to remain realistic in my approach. I work hard, and pray hard, to find the patience to stay at the table as long as it takes. And I hope we can refrain from attacking our ALLIES for not doing enough, soon enough. The bridges we are burning today may turn out to be the bridges we want to cross in the future. Let’s not destroy them.

We need to be in this for the long haul. For us to get overly discouraged when we don’t get all that we want, as fast as we want, seems counterproductive to me. We should never capitulate to less than all God wants for us, but to lose heart when we don’t move fast enough, and to attack the Church we are trying to help redeem, seems counterproductive.

The two days of listening to the Archbishop of Canterbury and some members of the ACC were the two hardest days I’ve had since my consecration. (It was a constant and holy reminder to me of the pain all of YOU continue to experience every day at the hands of a Church which is not yet what it is called to be. Ours is a difficult and transforming task: to continue serving a church that seems to love us less than we love it!) I was comforted by the support I DID receive from those straight bishops who spoke up for us, and especially by many of the Bishops of color, who implicitly “got” what I was trying to say and defied the majority with their support of me and of us. I was even encouraged by many conservative bishops’ willingness to work together to craft a statement we, liberal and conservative alike, could all live with.

I believe with my whole heart that the Spirit is alive and well and living in our Church – even in the House of Bishops. I believe Jesus when he told his disciples, on the night before he died for us, that they were not ready to hear and understand all that he had to teach them – and that he would send the Holy Spirit to lead them into all truth. I believe that now is such a moment, when the Church, in its plodding and all-too-slow a way, is being guided into truth about its gay and lesbian members. It took ME 39 years to acknowledge who I was as a gay man and to affirm that I too am considered precious by God. Of course, the very next day after telling my parents, I expected them immediately to catch up to what had taken me 39 years to come to. Mercifully, it has not taken them the same 39 years to do so. The Church family is no different. It is going to take TIME.

I voted “yes” to the HOB statement. I believe it was the best we could do at this time. I am far less committed to being ideologically and unrelentingly pure, and far more interested in the “art of the possible.” Am I totally pleased with our statement? Of course not. Do I wish we could have done more? Absolutely. Can I live with it? Yes, I can. For right now. Until General Convention, which is the appropriate time for us to take up these issues again as a Church, with all orders of ministry present. I am taking to heart the old 60’s slogan, “Don’t whine, organize!”

I am always caught between the vision I believe God has for God’s Church, and the call to stay at the table, in communion with those who disagree with me about that vision – or, as is the case for most bishops, who disagree about the appropriate “timing” for reaching that vision of full inclusion. In this painful meantime, please pray for me as I seek to serve the people of my diocese and you, the community of which I am so honored to be a part."

Your brother in Christ,

+Gene

Thanks to Episcopal Cafe for text of +Robinson's letter.

Got Covenant?

2007-10-06T23:30:00.000-04:00

The Rev. Canon Dr. Jane Shaw, dean of divinity, chaplain and fellow of New College, Oxford, chimes in in The Guardian about her favorite covenant:

Face to Faith:
The bond of baptism means we have no need for a new 'essential' Anglican covenant, says Jane Shaw

The Rev Canon Dr Jane Shaw
Saturday October 6, 2007

For Christians, the rite of baptism brings us into the body of Christ. It is about sharing a radical equality as children of God. Paul made this clear in his letter to the Galatians: "For in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith ... There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male or female." This was startling in the hierarchical Roman society into which the church was born, where you might find yourself in a small room, knee to knee, sharing a meal with a man who was your social superior, or with a slave or a Roman matron, with whom you would never, in the normal conventions of the day, have mixed. It is startling today; not in the same way, not in the formal breaking of hierarchies in our apparently democratic society, but in the linking of different peoples across villages, towns, countries and the globe, through that bond of baptism. We call this a baptismal covenant.

The gospels relate that when John the Baptist baptised Jesus, God's voice boomed from the heavens: "This is my son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased." And the heavens echo with that phrase every time a child or adult enters the waters of baptism: "This is my daughter, my son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased." Baptism is both a recognition and an acceptance on our parts that we are always and already loved by God. Baptism marks a choice to enter into a community that first of all believes that all human beings are made in the image and likeness of God and are therefore God's beloved; and, secondly, accepts the call to express that love in the world. Christians follow Jesus, who said to his disciples: love one another as I have loved you. Baptism is a call to serve based on acknowledging the worth of every single human being. We are each, lay and ordained, called to that radical service grounded in love. In the baptismal covenant, there are rightly no distinctions between persons. We are all the beloved children of God, called to share life with each other and love one another as God loves us.

There is much talk at present in the Anglican communion of a new covenant to bind us together. This is seen as a solution to our problems, to our disagreements about homosexuality. Some argue that we just need to agree to certain new "essentials". But many of us hesitate to embrace such a covenant because we already have a covenant: our baptismal covenant. That is how we are joined together and it is based on the long-established "essentials": the historic creeds. From the very earliest days of Christianity, baptism marked that moment when men and women assented to the Christian essentials - one God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit - and came into relationship with those who shared this belief in the creator God, the risen Christ and the Spirit who sustains us daily. Baptism is therefore the foundation of our identity as Christians. With Paul's words to the Galatians in our memories, we hesitate to assent to a covenant in which there will be a new distinction between lay and ordained by handing over decision-making power to the Anglican primates. Having made our assent to the historic creeds, we hesitate to create new "essentials" about an issue - homosexuality - that may be purely of this moment. (emphasis added)

Let me suggest another response to the Anglican crisis. All we really have to do in the midst of this crazy church dispute is be awake to our relationship with a loving God. And to do that, warring Anglicans simply have to recall their baptism: that moment when the waters washed over us and the heavens echoed with God's declaration about each of us - you are my beloved son, my beloved daughter, with you I am well pleased. If we remember that, really remember it, disputes might "wither like the grass and fade like the flowers" as Isaiah puts it, as we are bathed in the knowledge of God's love for each and every one of us.

Thanks to Thinking Anglicans for the link.

Songs That Say Something #3

2007-10-05T15:30:00.000-04:00

"If Everyone Cared" by Nickelback

Lyrics are here.

NB: Video contains a little bit of contemporary Irish history...

The Feast of St. Matthew

2007-10-05T00:40:00.001-04:00

In keeping with long established custom, seniors are invited by the dean to preach a sermon in the Chapel of the Good Shepherd. Mine was on Friday, 21 September 2007, the Feast of St. Matthew. Readings for this sermon can be found here.

My mom tells a story about one of her early lessons in parenting, which came from, not surprisingly, another more experienced mother. It came about in a neighbor’s back yard one summer afternoon at a pool party.

Now, when I was a kid, in my neighborhood, the above-ground, backyard pool was a new luxury. Their crimped metal sides and easy-to-puncture blue plastic linings were cumbersome to assemble. And they left a perfect yellow circle of dead Bermuda grass on the lawn when they were disassembled in the fall. But like dutiful wannabe suburbanites, my parents acquired one of these new luxuries, and so did a few other parents in our neighborhood.

Keeping up with the Joneses was impossible though, because just up the street from us was the family of Walter and Pat Jones, and their three kids: Cora, Luke and Sally, and the Joneses had an honest-to-God, concrete sided, aqua bottomed, below ground swimming pool -- with, I might add, that irresistible-to-kids feature: a real diving board which soared above the surface of the water at the dizzying height of about a foot and a half. This was an astonishing amenity in our working class neighborhood, something that could usually only be experienced in the rarified confines of a Holiday Inn.

Our above-ground pool paled in comparison. Thankfully, the Joneses were good neighbors and often invited any and all to cool off in their pool and ‘cannonball’ off their diving board on summer afternoons. One such afternoon found a bunch of neighborhood kids splashing about in the pool and a few moms gathered nearby under a shade tree in green-webbed aluminum lawn chairs with their big glasses of sweet tea and cigarettes…

As was often the case, my brother and I managed to stay in a fairly constant state of conflict throughout the afternoon over whose turn it was to be Marco and whose turn it was to be Polo, or who would go next on the diving board. My mom would call out on occasion or at times get up from her lawn chair to make peace between us. Finally, Pat Jones said to her, “Leave the kids alone. Let them fight it out on their own. You should get to enjoy the afternoon too, you know.” As my mom tells it, that’s when she learned to let my brother and I argue if we were in disagreement, and come to whatever uneasy peace we could manage to negotiate on our own.

And this contentiousness has remained a part of my relationship with my brother to this day. We joke and tease, and argue about politics. He likes to remind me that he has quite a bit more hair than I do, and I like to point out that his waist size now starts with a 4 -- as in size 40 or even 42 inches -- while mine is still in the very high 30s… It makes some people anxious, like my step-mother, who didn’t watch us grow up with our contentious form of affection. But it has become an identifying part of our relationship.

This past Christmas, my father took to calling my brother “The Major” and me “The Reverend”. My brother is in fact a Major in the reserves and is now on active duty with the US Army at a Forward Operational Base outside Gardez, Afghanistan, near the border with Pakistan -- a region long known for its lawlessness, now an area of a great deal of Taliban and Al Qaeda activity.

In terms of my new nickname, I’ve tried to explain to my father that I have not yet undergone the ontological change that will occur when, God willing and the people consenting, I am ordained by a bishop who stands squarely in the historic, Apostolic succession descended from St. Matthew and the other disciples. He is a Baptist after all, and he thinks it’s funny to have two sons with ‘ranks’ that he can tease us about. So, the Major and the Reverend we are…

After this past Christmas, I began to think about this Major and Reverend stuff. Even though The Episcopal Church and the US Army would appear to most people to be fairly distinct, divergent organizations, they have a bit in common. Both are hierarchical, with well defined ‘orders’ within them. Both my brother and I recognize a chain of command as he would say, and are bound to respect a kind of episcopal authority, as I would put it. We both serve in organizations, and ‘serve’ is how we both would characterize it, that are mission driven and that work toward what they believe to be a greater good. We aren’t so different after all. There’s not so much difference between being a Major and a Reverend on a certain level and I think my father, with his teasing, is gently pointing this out to us.

And because my brother and I have freely contended over the justice and efficacy of war, especially the War in Iraq, and over all manner of politics and the US foreign policy, always from opposite ends of the political spectrum -- I know what my brother is about; I know what he believes in his heart. I don’t often agree with him on most things -- and I expect not many of you would either -- but I know clearly what it is that he holds dear, what are his core values and beliefs. And if, God forbid, my brother should become a casualty of the war he is fighting in Afghanistan, I will be consoled by the fact that, for my brother, such a death would have great meaning. For him, it would be a ‘good death’, one in which he was serving his highest values. And I know that because contention and conflict, and the knowledge that it brings us about the other, has always been a part of our relationship.

To be a tax-collector in Jesus’s day like Matthew in today’s gospel was to be in conflict with a large part of the Jewish community. Taxes for the largely agrarian first century Palestinian were oppressive and unfair. Jewish citizens already paid religious taxes of about 20% of their income. When Palestine was made a Roman “protectorate,” the taxation system doubled, and the taxes paid by the average family rose to 35 or 40%. Many people paid additional rent for the lands they farmed but did not own outright, bringing the total of rents and taxes up to one-half to two-thirds of the family’s income.

Being a tax collector made Matthew a collaborator with Rome, the pagan oppressors and occupiers -- it made him ritually unclean as well as what many considered a traitor to his own people.

Let’s leave Matthew for a moment and concentrate on another apostle: Simon the Zealot, as he is called by Luke. Now, scholars disagree about what exactly is meant by this nickname: The Zealot. It may well have meant that Simon was a member of the political faction known as the Zealots that arose in Galilee about the year 6. These Zealots were enraged by the plan to increase taxation based upon the census of Quirinius of Syria. You’ve heard about this event in Luke’s account of the birth of Jesus… “And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed.” In response to this tax initiative, the Zealots took up arms but their short-lived rebellion was quickly put down, and they fade into the background for a bit, then appear again in Josephus’s history of the Jewish Wars as the faction responsible for the Jewish Revolt sixty years later which resulted in the destruction of the temple at Jerusalem by Rome.

So imagine for a moment if you will Matthew the tax-collector and Simon the tax resister, the tax rebel. Would you invite these two fellows to your intimate little dinner party for 12? Would you sit them next to each other at your Last Supper???

It seems as if in calling Matthew the Tax Collector and Simon the Tax Rebel to become his apostles, Jesus is ensuring conflict, inviting discord into his inner circle. This is no way to put together a management team. How is this group going to coalesce, how are they going to manage to follow Jesus without tearing each other apart? How is this ill-matched assemblage, that includes the Tax Collector and the Tax Rebel, going to get along at all? This little grouping might be the Lord’s doing, but I doubt if they all saw it as marvelous.

In his book, “Conflict and a Christian Life” Sam Portaro writes, “Conflict can actually be a force for good… Conflict is not just a problem to be resolved…”(1) Portaro points out that “the gospel of Matthew is set in the midst of controversy… and that at many points in Matthew’s gospel the teaching of Jesus is deliberately set against the prevailing practice of the time. When Jesus invites Matthew into his circle and immediately accompanies (him) to dinner with (his) tax collector friends and colleagues” (30) conflict and controversy ensues. Portaro writes, “Matthew was one of twelve very different disciples. At the very least, the call of Matthew and the other eleven reminds us that Jesus obviously tolerated, even embraced” (31) the controversy and conflict that real diversity often brings.

So, here we are, then with a collection of people from the same faith group but with some very different theologies of how best to live out that faith in their context. Each is trying to follow Jesus, to understand what Jesus is teaching, and how that teaching is meant to be applied to the world they find themselves in. There are real differences of interpretation of the scripture and traditions they have inherited; and real questions about just where Jesus and the Spirit are leading them.

Sounds like quite a contentious group, doesn’t it? Sounds like an early version of the Anglican Communion, doesn’t it? Wouldn’t it be funny if, finally, after more than 450 years of Anglicanism, now, as we are at one of our most conflicted places, we are finally getting it right, if we are now truly living out the Apostolic faith -- not by making nice, but by engaging in conflict that is very real, often heart-rending, AND illuminating???

Bishop Gene Robinson was recently among us at the Tutu Center conference on reconciliation. He recounted how at a meeting of Anglicans from around the world, someone said to him, “For us, Bishop, there is not that much difference between George Bush and Gene Robinson.” Bp. Robinson said, “That may be the worst things anyone has ever said about me.” And I’ll bet George Bush might say the same thing. But from some points of view, Bush’s foreign policy and its consequences seem just as unilateral and ill-considered as does Bp. Robinson’s consecration. I don’t like hearing that, and I don’t agree, and maybe you don’t either. But hearing that, and knowing that, I am a little closer to understanding those who so vehemently disagree with our church’s actions regarding human sexuality. Out of dispute, as the conflict has come to fruition, I have learned something about how the rest of our communion sees us. From that point of view the Episcopal Church and US foreign policy aren’t that different. They see a similarity between the president of the United States and the bishop of New Hampshire; just like my dad sees some similarities in my brother the Major and me, the someday Reverend.

Sam Portaro writes, “The trouble with Jesus was -- and is -- that he stands in the midst of conflict, (and) allows that conflict” to occur. “The trouble with Jesus was -- and is -- that he invites us to follow where he has led.” (53).

Conflict is upsetting, frightening, and illuminating. Knowledge comes from telling our truths without self-censorship -- and from listening to the sometimes contradictory truths of others. I have no doubt that it was part of the everyday life of the apostles, as the Acts of the Apostles so often recounts. But out of that conflict, there was forged a faith that has come down to us today, a faith that we pledge to continue in our baptismal covenant when we are asked, “Will you continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers?” and we reply “I will, with God’s help.”

So, continue we must, and by continuing as a Communion in conflict, we might forge a new way of being in communion that truly reflects the apostolic faith that was forged out of a similar atmosphere of conflict.

One quick caveat: I’m talking about being in communion, not covenant. In Matthew’s day there was a covenant design team that was headed up by this guy, what was his name? Oh, yeah, Jesus Christ. And it took him just one draft to establish -- in his blood, no less -- something he called the New Covenant. As far as I’m concerned, that’s just about enough covenant for me.

I want to leave you with an image. I recently visited an exhibition of the work of the sculptor Richard Serra at the Museum of Modern Art. One of the sculptures in the exhibition is entitled ‘Prop’. It consists of a lead plate of about five feet by five feet and weighing hundreds of pounds that lies flat against the wall, several feet above the floor. This lead plate is held in place by another lead plate that has been rolled into a column and propped against the piece on the wall. The only thing holding the piece of lead on the wall up is the column of lead propped against it. It’s a small wonder, really. It is beautiful and delicate even though it’s hundreds of pounds of gray lead -- the same material in different shapes, held in balance by tension.

As the Anglican Communion and as Christians, this should be our goal. To find a balance through tension and conflict, to continue in the sometimes contentious fellowship of the apostles -- not to allow our different theologies to obscure the fact that we are made of the same material -- we are one body, we are sisters and brothers, and we are called, like Matthew, into communion with those who may see things quite differently than we do. There’s no denying that this communion will encounter conflict from time to time. And there is no denying that it is the Lord’s doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes. ~~ Amen.

Canterbury Wrap-up

2007-10-04T23:23:00.000-04:00

It's now several weeks since I returned from Canterbury. Still think of it and what I experienced there almost every day. Here is a wrap-up of the rest of the time there.

This is the entire group of Canterbury Scholars in the garden of St. Andrew's House, the home of the Anglican Communion Office. We met the Rev. Ken Kearon, Secretary General of the Anglican Communion and some of his staff. We also gave presentations on aspects of the life of the communion that were important to us. We had a great lunch and then a barge ride down the Thames to Greenwich, then back on the bus to Canterbury.

It was a long day -- Gabriel and Mark enjoy a little shut-eye on the cruise down the River Thames

On one of our next to last day, we visited some of the famous religous sites in Kent. This is a baptismal font at Richborough, the site of an old Roman fort and port, and most likely the site of St. Augustine's landing in 597 A.D. There is an old chapel on the site as well. This is believed to be the site from which Christianity was (re)spread across the Britain.

This is the pulpit in St. Mary's Church, Bishopsbourne, Kent. Richard Hooker was the rector of St. Mary's and in its rectory completed Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, the 16th century masterwork of Anglican Via Media. Hooker left a provision in his will that this pulpit for the church was to be provided as his legacy.

St. Mary's must have enjoyed the favor of the late Victorians. Also in the church is this amazing Edward Burne-Jones window and an even more amazing William Morris reredos.

St. Mary's moved some of us to sing and dance. My fellow scholars from all around Africa sang the song that the Martyrs of Uganda sang as they were led to their martyrdoms in 1885-1887 & 1977. We sang the song again as the sequence hymn the next day at the 11:00 A.M. Holy Eucharist in Canterbury Cathedral.

The last Sunday was for a final Holy Eucharist in the Cathedral and a garden party in our honor... then good-byes.

Bell Harry Tower

2007-08-04T19:06:00.001-04:00

Monday afternoon we climbed to the top of Bell Harry Tower, the central and tallest of the cathedral's towers. Here are some pics from the trip up.

This is the tower from below. And yes, we made it to the roof.

And this was what the way up looked like.

There were some great views of Canterbury town from the stairway up. But nothing like the views from the top.

Halfway up is a square one can walk around that affords magnificent views up the Quire and down the Nave. Here the Varasi Singers are rehearsing for that evening's Evensong.

And this is one of the views from the top, looking west toward the front two towers of the western front of the cathedral.

The trip up the tower afforded a great view of Cathedral Lodge where we are staying.

These are Virginia Seminary folks on top of the tower -- this is as 'high church' they will ever get!

Tour of the Cathedral

2007-08-04T17:20:00.001-04:00

Here's some of the pics from our tour of the cathedral on Tuesday, August 1st.

A view down the nave.

Just inside the side entrance is the memorial chapel for soldiers and sailors from Kent who have died in war. The regimental flags are on display.

Not nearly as crowded as Westminster Abbey, the cathedral does have quite a few memorials. This is the memorial for members of the Neville family who were the Earls of Warwick and prominent players in the Wars of the Roses.

These are a couple of the roundels from 'The Miracle Window' in the cathedral. They tell the story of a miraculous cure attributed to a pilgrimage to St. Thomas Becket's tomb in the cathedral. These windows are some of the only remaining record for how the earliest tomb of St. Thomas may have looked prior to its destruction on the orders of Henry VIII. The casket-shaped tomb pictured has holes in the side so that pilgrims could reach in and touch St. Thomas's casket.

This is the view of the ceiling of the Bell Harry Tower. Beautiful fan vaulting with the shield of the Dean and Chapter in the center.

This is the current memorial to St. Thomas erected on the sight of his martyrdom. In the 1980s, John Paul II and the Archbishop of Canterbury knelt in prayer here together upon the first papal visit to England since the Reformation.

These panels are in the cathedral's great West Window. The central panel of Adam 'delving' is some of the oldest stained glass in the cathedral -- probably 13th century. It shows Adam delving, or digging with a spade to grow food. Adam was condemned to have to struggle for his food for having eaten of the Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden. In the 14th century, the Peasant's Revolt coined the slogan, "When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?"

This is the actual sight of St. Thomas Becket's shrine. A candle is kept lit always. If you look carefully, you can see ridges in the rows of tiles that form a square around the edge. These ridges were worn by the knees of knelling prilgrims who visited the shrine in the 300 years it existed before Henry VIII had it dismantled.

Canterbury Cathedral by night.

Through a glass brightly...

2007-07-30T12:13:00.000-04:00

We visited the stained glass conservation program today.

On the left is a piece of stained glass that depicts one of Christ's ancestors. The glass was probably broken out of the window during the reformation. It appeared on the doorstep of the cathedral in the 1970s with a note that said, "This is yours." One small section of glass was protected on both sides by painted decoration, and from that, the stained glass experts could determine the exact color of the original glass. For demonstration purposes, the conservation studio made a reproduction of what it might have looked like originally. Conservators still can't determine where in the cathedral the face might have gone.

Demonstration of stained glass painting.

Another Sunday in Canterbury...

2007-07-30T11:15:00.001-04:00

It was my second Sunday in Canterbury. The day included three services, a self-tour of St. Dunstan's church, singing, a BBQ, and a beautiful sunset. Here are some scenes from the day:

The Canterbury Scholars are serving as chalcifers for the Sunday 11:00 am Sung Eucharist during our term here. That's Victor from Sri Lanka, me, Gradwell from South Africa, some Welsh guy, and Ron from the USA.

Next was the discovery of the connection between Canterbury and William and Margaret Roper, daughter and son-in-law of Sir Thomas More, and More himself -- at least part of him. Margaret More Roper (famous from CH2 for being learned and lovely) and her husband lived in Canterbury on the high street leading into the city centre. This was their gate.

In this stained glass window in St. Dunstan's Church, Canterbury More is pictured in the central panel. His devoted second wife Alice kneels at his feet. Margaret is to his right, and her husband William to his left. Margaret was thought to be the most educated woman in Europe in her day. Her humanist father saw that all his children, including his daughters, were educated to the highest standards of the then burgeoning renaissance. It is More's example that likely influenced Henry VIII in his decision to make sure that his daughter Elizabeth was educated to a similar standard.

Margaret More Roper, after her father's beheading at the Tower of London on 6th July 1535, retrieved his decapitated head and had it buried in the Roper family crypt in St. Dunstan's Church, were she and her family would eventually be buried. Seems grisly, but if my understanding of the practices surrounding Tudor executions is correct, More's body would have been buried immediately after his execution in St. Peter's Ad Vincula, a small church within the gates of the Tower of London. Then his head would have been set upon a pike at the Tower or on London Bridge (or elsewhere) as a warning to others. (More was convicted of treason for refusing to sign the new oath required by parliamentary act acknowledging Henry as the head of the church in England.) Given Henry's reluctance to execute More, and his affection for his family, More's head was probably handed over to Margaret without it going on display, or shortly thereafter. Margaret saw that her father's head was duly interred in Canterbury.

Later that evening, the cathedral commemorated the feast day of William Wilburforce, a member of parliament and the evangelical wing of the Church of England. Two hundred years ago, thanks largely to the efforts of Wilburforce and his supporters, the Clapham Sect, the slave trade was outlawed in Britain and all its possessions. Wilburforce had wanted to outlaw slavery itself, and initially failed, settling for an end to the trade in slaves. Slavery itself was abolished in the British Empire in 1833-4. The Canterbury Scholars were asked to form an ad hoc choir for the service (the Cathedral Choir is on holiday). We sang, "Go Down Moses", "Steal Away", a Russian "Kyrie", and a hymn written for the anniversary called "Abolition".

Thereafter, we were treated to a BBQ on the lawn (aka 'back garden') of Canon Ed Condry's home in the cathedral precincts. Pretty nice little place, eh? Definitely worth taking a 7:30am Matins service or two.

The day ended with yet another of those beautiful English summer sunsets that seem to last and last.

Pilgrimage To Canterbury

2007-07-28T16:27:00.000-04:00

We went on pilgrimage today, walking part of one of the medieval pilgrim's routes -- this one from Winchester to Canterbury, a distance of about 120 miles. We walked the last 7 or so. The day was perfect for a walk across the north downs of Kent. Here are some of the shots:

Again there were fields of golden barley all along the route. And a blue sky with clouds.
We trouped along the rights of way between fields. Here, we're walking between a barley field and a hop field gone to seed.
Here are Clive from India, Ben from Atlanta, and Kate from VTS coming down the slope.
We've crossed the highway and we're walking alongside a pear orchard. In front of Ben is Christine from Hong Kong and Gabriel from Zambia.
Of course, not matter where you are, there you are...By the end of the day, we were back at Canterbury and the clouds were gathering and darkening. All around a great, great day.

From the bottom to the top...

2007-07-27T19:11:00.000-04:00

Some very interesting theological discussions today, on Discipline and Freedom, and on creativity in ministry -- and in life. Much to digest. We also got a first look at some of the aspects of the Cathedral that most interest me (The Archive, the Bell Harry Tower, and the Crypt.

Here are some of the shots:

This is the view from Bell Harry Tower, the tallest, central tower of the cathedral towards the West Front.

My hero, Elizabeth I, in a wood cut from a 16th century Book of Common Prayer, piously at her prayers.

A piece of pink marble thought to be from the shrine of St. Thomas Beckett which was destroyed during the Reformation on the orders of Henry VIII. It's believed that the smashed marble was just cast aside and, and in this case, later recut and used to repair the walkway in the Cloister.

The remnants of a ceiling decoration in the cathedral crypt. These decorations are believed to have been painted by the Huguenots, French Protestants many of whom fled to England in 1572 after the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre. Elizabeth gave the Huguenots the liberty of the cathedral crypt where, to this day, a French Protestant congregation still worships. I find this decaying decoration intriguing; I've never seen these two emblems used together before. It's as if the Huguenots combined the Tudor Rose as a sign of their deliverance with the crown of thorns as a sign of their suffering.

A view from within the Bell Harry Tower -- of the altar, and the Compass Rose, the symbol of the Anglican Communion.

Crab & Winkle Way

2007-07-25T17:53:00.000-04:00

Yes, Virginia. There really is a Crab & Winkle Way and I've been from one end of it to the other, and back again. And I may do it all again tomorrow.

.

It's 7 miles from Canterbury to Whitstable on the coast, so 15 or so miles round trip

This is what the pathway looks like most of the way. Soft gravel, fields of rape, trees that serve as windbreaks for the fields, but also some woods and a few stretches through Canterbury and Whitstable neighborhoods.

On the bridge over the A290 highway from Canterbury to Whitstable -- and the ubiquitous golden fields of rape.

The 'beach' at Whitstable. Whitstable is an oystering town, and they'd just celebrated the Whitstabel Oyster Festival. Cute fishing village, not overly commercialized, with lots of working class/middle class families on holiday.

The sky is so big and so beautiful in Kent. The clouds and the golden rape and the blue, blue horizon.

The view from the hill just outside of Canterbury as the clouds parted and the sun shone on the cathedral.

Anglican Insights

2007-07-25T16:48:00.000-04:00

Don't think I'll go into great detail about the course work I'm doing here. But here are a few insights that might be of interest:

I think of myself and my church as operating from a position of great privilege. I am a rich, white, well-fed American Anglican, after all. But in hearing the stories of my fellow Anglicans, I find that my story is not so different. We have all struggled with faith issues. We have all struggled with our call to the priesthood. The exterior circumstances are greatly different. We have different levels of access to resources. But our interior lives are very surprisingly similar.

In an attempt to define Anglicanism, a priest from Papua New Guinea said, "There are no locked doors in Anglicanism."

A priest from Zambia said, "An Anglican is someone who celebrates life while on the way to heaven."

A priest from Nigeria asked, "Is my faith born out of conviction or condition?" His answer went something like, "If it is conditional, changes will cause me to loose my faith. If it is born of conviction, I can leave my culture and language be swallowed up to serve others."
A priest from India noted, "Comfort is a hindrance to hearing God. Like Buddha, Moses had to leave the Pharaoh's palace to hear God calling him."
From Evelyn Underhill: "The two things the laity want from the priesthood are spiritual realism and genuine love of souls."

Canterbury and Kent share a root which means 'boundary'. Kent is on the edge of England and the sea, and Canterbury exists at the edges where the churches of the Anglican Communion meet as one.

A brief exchange in Bible Study re: Ruth, Naomi that may have really been about what's going on in the Anglican Communion now:

Me: "Ruth defied Naomi's admonition to walk apart from her and to return home. Ruth had become Naomi's family and she would not relinquish those family bonds. She stayed with Naomi though Naomi asked her not to."
A priest from Burundi: "Ruth submitted herself to Naomi, and put away her own land and language and took on Naomi's. She put aside her own self for the sake of the larger whole."

Recommendations from Barney Hawkins' course on Christian Leadership:

Find time to be idle with scripture and tradition

Remember the importance of the ordinary

Live near the edge, on the border -- not always at the center.

Some of the things that we've done these past days have been:

Excellent bibles studies each morning that never fail to open my eyes to a way of seeing scripture.

A great introduction to Anglicanism as it is lived at Canterbury by Canon Ed Condry.

Some great sessions from Prof. Barney Hawkins on Christian Leadership -- really informative and important.

Sessions from the Rt. Rev. Josiah Fearon, Archbishop of Kaduna in the Church of Nigeria on Islam -- along with some revelations from the sometimes restive borderline where Christianity and Islam meet.

A session on a "mission-shaped" church from the Rt. Rev. Graham Cray, Bishop of Maidstone of the Church of England. (I found myself in disagreement with Bp. Cray on a few points. It was nonetheless informative to see that some evangelicals really do speak with British accents.)

A Candlelight Pilgrimage through the cathedral at night that ended in a circle gathered on the spot where St. Thomas Beckett's Shrine once stood. We all offered prayers in our own languages, which was amazing. One after another prayers were repeated in all the languages of our group. Mine went something like:

Mother-Father God, we offer our thanks for our ancestors in faith, the generations upon generations of faithful hearts who have passed the story of salvation on to us. With all of us from every corner of the world gathered here, we pray for peace in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in every corner of the earth -- and in every human heart. These things we pray in the name of the One God who is our creator, our redeemer and our
sustainer. Amen.

Sunday in Canterbury

2007-07-22T15:24:00.001-04:00

It was an amazing day in Canterbury today. Sunday worship at the cathedral sort of took me by surprise. I wasn't expecting to be so moved and so inspired and so proud to be here and a part of the Anglican tradition where it all began in 597AD. The guest choir from Pusey House Oxford sang mass settings by Palestrina. Just as they launched into the final 'Hosanna in Excelsis' of the Sanctus, a flock of gulls criss-crossed the translucent windows of the nave looking like the shadows of a flock of angels circling the cathedral. As the choir finished, the noon day bells began to ring. Just then, the Archdeacon of Canterbury, the Venerable Sheila Watson, the presider for the day, continued reciting the Eucharistic Prayer, "Accept our praises, heavenly Father, through your son our saviour Jesus Christ..." (Sheila has a great voice, a resonate alto with plummy vowels and sibilant S'es -- she was born to intone the Anglican liturgy!) It was an amazing confluence of music, bells, voices and a flock of seagulls to mark the feast day of St. Mary Magdalene, for perhaps the 1,600th time in this place...

Another face of Canterbury was met at the reception for the Canterbury Scholars at 'coffee hour' which here is wine and juice hour, really. All the kids in the Sunday Club (aka Sunday School) made cards for each of the Canterbury Scholars, mine featured a lot of glitter (hmmmm, wonder why???) and was inscribed, "To Mark Collins, with love, Plum XOX." I think Plum is what you call 'cheeky' here. Also included in the card was a Dubble 'fair trade' chocolate bar which is on reserve for later this evening.

I also met a lovely woman named Kate who was telling me about her nearby neighborhood. I mentioned that I was looking to do some sightseeing by bicycle around the area if I could ever find a bike to rent. She said, "Oh, my husband has loads of bikes. He can loan you one."

I met her husband Nick and he loaned me a mountain bike (above left), helmet, gloves, pump, spare tube and tools! Unbelievably generous, especially given the cost of renting here ($24/day, $100/week). So, I have wheels!!! I'm so glad and was able to tool about the town in the afternoon in the same fashion I do in NYC. Very, very glad about that!

This is truly the place where, as Bono sang, 'the streets have no name' so I was having trouble following the cycling map of the city, when I turned a corner off a city street and found this amazing field to cycle through (above). Amazingly beautiful and just around the corner from Canterbury proper. I finally managed to make it around the city on the bike path, so I now have a good 1/2 hour ride I can do on breaks in our schedule. And you see so much of the people and places that make up this place. Haven't cycled through many Norman castles before, but it appears I'll be able to quite often here. I also hope to get out on the roads around Canterbury and cycle up to Whitstable, which is 7 miles away, and maybe even to the beach at Sandwich, which is 15 miles away. A bit ambitious perhaps, but we'll see what the schedule allows.

It's now time for 'Clapham Junction', a Channel 4 drama celebrating the 40th anniversary of the decriminalization of homosexuality in the UK. Then to bed -- the real course work here starts tomorrow.

Blue Sky Day in Kent

2007-07-21T18:05:00.000-04:00

It was a beautiful blue sky day in Kent today. Lots of sun and 'warm' weather. I say warm, but it was at most 70 degrees -- what passes for warm around here.

Day began at matins in the crypt of the cathedral. Then Bible Study in our assigned small groups. In my group are seminarians, deacons and priests from India, Zambia, Namibia, South Africa, New Zealand, Mauritius, Burundi and the US. Our Bible lesson was the Road to Emmaus from Luke. Such a great story to take on here in this place of pilgrimage. And a great story of mission, of journey to consider amongst a group of people who have traveled from so far to be here.

Lunch was followed by some time off. I wandered around the city centre for a bit and then out into Canterbury. Came across another terrific view of the River Stour. The river grass is so beautiful waving at the sun from just below the surface of the water.

Passed the inevitable Thomas Beckett pub. Also visited the site of St. Thomas's martyrdom in the cathedral proper. It was Thomas's martyrdom on this spot on 29 December 1170 that helped make Canterbury a focus of pilgrimage. Chaucer's pilgrims were on a pilgrimage to Canterbury telling stories to pass the time -- and those stories form the corpus of The Canterbury Tales. Picture of the spot will come soon when the cathedral is not quite so crowded as today.

Friday was the final day of the school term and the summer holidays are officially on here in England. The streets were thronged with people, and the line to enter the cathedral wrapped half the way around it at the peak of the afternoon.

Began our group work today, telling 'our stories' in our small groups. I went today and dropped the 'gay bomb,' making my sexual orientation a small part, and not the focus, of my spiritual journey so far. The group got a little quiet, but no one walked out. And I got a few questions later. So, not a bad reaction, I'd say.

This evening was dinner at the Deanery which, as you can imagine, is quite something. Very old and filled with a portrait of every dean since the Reformation. And, as you can see, a lovely garden. Lots of good conversations and we got to meet most of the cathedral chapter, including the three lay members.

Good food and and amazing setting...

The day ended quietly as the sun sank in the west (very late at night) and as happens in northern latitudes, the gloaming slowly, slowly darkened to nighttime. It is literally awesome to be here. The cathedral looms over me everywhere I turn, and is so strong and so old and so, so beautiful. There's lots of interpersonal work and learning to come. But the visual beauty of the place is what is most present to me now.

Canterbury at first glance

2007-07-20T15:42:00.000-04:00

I'm finally here in Canterbury after trains, planes, automobiles and 'coaches'. This is a shot of the view from my room in the Canterbury Cathedral International Study Center. I'll be here for not quite three weeks with 35 other newly ordained priests and seminarians from throughout the Anglican Communion. So far, I've met folks from the US, Namibia, South Africa, The Seychelles and Zambia -- and that's with only 2/3s of us here. Should be a great time and should be interesting and challenging.

The trip was fine, if quite long. Entered London in yet another torrential downpour -- the UK has had three of four bad rains this year, and today was another. Didn't seem to affect my travel. Got here from London well enough. Took the (much cheaper) bus and got to see all the golden fields of rape that are ubiquitous in Kent.

Am trying to stay awake til at least 10pm tonight so as to reset my jet lagged circadian rhythms. Had a spot of lunch upon arrival (actual cucumber sandwiches (no crust, of course) while seated at a garden table just off the Study Centre refectory. Can't make this stuff up.

Walked around the city centre to avoid taking a nap. Here are some scenes:

These are the heraldic shields and devices on the gate to the Cathedral Close. A few of my favorites are here: Portcullis, Tudor Rose, Royal Arms...

This is the bank of the River Stour that runs through Canterbury. Lovely, eh? I love the green river grass that lies just beneath the waters surface and makes the river bottom look like a sheet of waving emeralds.

The Crab and Winkle Way: a bike path to Whistable I hope to ride along next weekend.

Heard Evensong this evening in this magnificient, glorious space, sung by the choir of Pusey House at Oxford. It could have been 1607 instead of 2007. It was a thing of great, great beauty -- and they do it 7 days a week -- all to the glory of God.

Time to catch a little British TV and then hit the sack. Days begin with Matins and Eucharist in the mornings and attendance is required. Yikes!

War, and rumors of war...

2007-07-15T22:17:00.000-04:00

My brother (at left) leaves tomorrow morning at 0300 for an undisclosed location in Afghanistan. He'll be there for up to 18 months fighting a newly invigorated Taliban and Al Qaeda.

President Bush claims that, “The same folks that are bombing innocent people in Iraq were the ones who attacked us in America on September the 11th, and that’s why what happens in Iraq matters to the security here at home.” Many critics disagree with the president's assertion.

As many of you know, I am a survivor of the attack on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. Now my brother is being sent to try to defeat those who perpetrated that attack, nearly 6 years later.

IMHO, this war in Afghanistan should be over my now, and my brother should be home with his family -- and the war in Iraq should never have happened.

As the New York Times put it on July 13, 2007 -- three days before my brother deployed to Afghanistan --

Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia did not exist before the Sept. 11 attacks. The Sunni group thrived as a magnet for recruiting and a force for violence largely because of the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, which brought an American occupying force of more than 100,000 troops to the heart of the Middle East, and led to a Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad.

Read the Times' appraisal of Bush's assertions in an article entitled "Bush Distorts Qaeda Links, Critics Assert" here, and more about the cost of the Iraq war in terms of the focus on Afghanistan here.

ETRB V

2007-07-10T00:26:00.001-04:00

I no longer apologize for reading mysteries when given the chance. Not since I discovered some years ago that most of my Literature professors set aside Austen, Dickens and Shakespeare at term's end and spent their summers engrossed in some of the better written, literary crime fiction out there. Here are some recent mysteries well-worth a place in your beach bag:

In The Woods by Tana French

This one is a winner all around. French is a first time novelist and she deliveries a intriguing, interesting plot and characters in this first outing. The characters are so well drawn and believable. The male protagonist is one of the best written by a woman since Pat Barker's Regeneration trilogy. He must investigate a murder that is strikingly similar to a crime he survived when just a child. A crime the details of which he has suppressed. French handles this coincidental plot device deftly, and you never feel 'set -up' or that the plot is a bit too neat or cute. The psychological insight into the crime and those affected by it is spot on, without seeming preachy or Oprah-esque.

The relationship that develops between the two detectives, Ryan and Maddox, is enveloping. The novel is as much about that relationship as it is about a crime. And you find yourself as interested in their interplay as in solving the crime. Even the auxiliary characters are indelible. A few weeks after finishing the novel, I'm still moved by the character of the murder victim's dance instructor, who appeared only twice in the narrative. French's description of her reaction to the death of her student is moving without being maudlin or over-written. I hope Ryan and Maddox return in French's next book. I'll await a sequel with bated breath. My rating: E E E E

Christine Falls by Benjamin Black

John Banville (here writing as Benjamin Black) is a beautiful writer and a recent Booker Prize winner for his novel The Sea. I read his Untouchable almost a decade ago and I still recall images and descriptions from it. His prose is not showy or overt. As you read and a turn of phrase, image, or unfamiliar adjective comes along, you stop and reread a line or two, and realize just how well-crafted every sentence is.

As Banville enters the mystery genre, he brings along all his literary skills and Christine Falls is yet another beautifully written novel. That said, the novel, as a mystery novel, is surprisingly conventional. Banville/Black's tale is based upon the phenomenon of the Magdalen Laundries; which are now well known through film, a Joni Mitchell song and other sources. So the setting for the mystery seems recycled, not fresh, really. The plot takes us from Ireland to Boston, and I expected a bit of an existential riff on the connections between the two cities. Didn't get it, per se.

There are breathtaking descriptions, wry observations, and interesting, even compelling characters. Most impressive is Quirke, the main and said to be recurring character. This is a well written, literary mystery that interests and repays the reader's effort. But somewhat conventional, all told. Critics often say that the first in a series of mystery/crime novels is often a bit of a disappointment. The writer may not hit his/her stride until the characters have spent more time under the pen. Perhaps here too. I do await the next Black mystery, but not with baited breath now reserved for Tana French’s next novel. My rating: E E E

The Naming of the Dead by Ian Rankin

If you're an Ian Rankin fan, then you never miss an installment of his Detective John Rebus series. Done and done. After the other two mysteries, I found myself clipping through Naming at a pretty quick pace. I know the author and the characters, so there was less to learn as I read. Rankin in a dependable author in the best sense. He knows his Edinburgh setting well, yet is able to make it interesting each time out.

His greatest challenge here is to wrap his crime narrative around the G8 summit meeting in Scotland in 2005 which abutted the July 7th London tube and bus bombings of that year. No small challenge for a British writer whose audience is too well aware of both events. Rankin is nothing but deft in creating a crime narrative that explicates but does not interfere with the very recent history in his novel. We learn a great deal about Scottish politics, the British left and the police attitude toward public protest as the plot unfolds. Not a small feat to pull off in a familiar setting with a well-trod detective protagonist. I'll be picking up the next Ranking installment if just to see how skillfully he will manage to keep it fresh as this series continues to mature. My rating: E E E

Songs That Say Something #2

2007-07-09T12:27:00.000-04:00

"Hey You" by Madonna (Official Live Earth video)

http://www.liveearth.org/

The Road Home

2007-07-09T10:41:00.000-04:00

The gig is up at the New York Times. After months and months of measured, moderate opinion on ending the war in Iraq, Sunday's editorial page calls for a complete withdrawal. Quite an evolution for the 'newspaper of record'. Here are some excepts from the Times editorial (emphasis added):

"It is time for the United States to leave Iraq, without any more delay than the Pentagon needs to organize an orderly exit...

At first, we believed that after destroying Iraq’s government, army, police and economic structures, the United States was obliged to try to accomplish some of the goals Mr. Bush claimed to be pursuing, chiefly building a stable, unified Iraq. When it became clear that the president had neither the vision nor the means to do that, we argued against setting a withdrawal date while there was still some chance to mitigate the chaos that would most likely follow...

Continuing to sacrifice the lives and limbs of American soldiers is wrong. The war is sapping the strength of the nation’s alliances and its military forces. It is a dangerous diversion from the life-and-death struggle against terrorists. It is an increasing burden on American taxpayers, and it is a betrayal of a world that needs the wise application of American power and principles...

Despite President Bush’s repeated claims, Al Qaeda had no significant foothold in Iraq before the invasion, which gave it new base camps, new recruits and new prestige...

This war diverted Pentagon resources from Afghanistan, where the military had a real chance to hunt down Al Qaeda’s leaders. It alienated essential allies in the war against terrorism. It drained the strength and readiness of American troops. And it created a new front where the United States will have to continue to battle terrorist forces and enlist local allies who reject the idea of an Iraq hijacked by international terrorists. The military will need resources and bases to stanch this self- inflicted wound for the foreseeable future...

President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have used demagoguery and fear to quell Americans’ demands for an end to this war. They say withdrawing will create bloodshed and chaos and encourage terrorists. Actually, all of that has already happened — the result of this unnecessary invasion and the incompetent management of this war...

This country faces a choice. We can go on allowing Mr. Bush to drag out this war without end or purpose. Or we can insist that American troops are withdrawn as quickly and safely as we can manage — with as much effort as possible to stop the chaos from spreading."

My $.02: By any definition, our intervention in Iraq is now a tragedy, and one that will continue for some time. How sad, really. The war against terror was never in Iraq, until we put it there. And we've seriously delayed, if not lost altogether, the chance to defeat our real terrorist enemies, once confined largely to Afghanistan. Instead, we've created what will prove to be a nearly endless, regional conflict -- a veritible terrorist recruiting campaign -- which will foster decades of resentment towards America, making us continually vulnerable to terrorist attack.

We should have heeded former US General, WWII hero and Republican President Eisenhower's warning (see it here) that the 'military industrial complex' (his phrase) would do its best to keep us in a constant state of (for them, profitable) war if allowed to do so.

It appears that Cheney, Halliburton and the other war profiteers can justly claim "Mission Accomplished" in Iraq. And poor George Bush appears to have been a perfect patsy for them.

And the more than 2 million refugees, nearly 750,000 Iraqi civilian casualities, nearly 4,000 US and Coalition military casualties, the less than 3,000 people who died on September 11, 2001 in whose name this war was supposedly fought, and the next few generations of Americans who must now live in fear -- all of us, really -- are the losers.

For the full text of the New York Times editorial on ending the war in Iraq, click here.

Songs That Say Something #1

2007-07-05T13:42:00.000-04:00

"I Tried" by Bone Thugs N Harmony feat. Akon
Click for Lyrics

ETRB IV

2007-06-28T14:30:00.000-04:00

Portrait of an Unknown Woman by Vanora Bennett

Ok, this one suckered me in -- I admit it. But I'm ashamed of what I fell for. The cover, for one. In a book buying spree, I spotted this at Barnes & Noble and immediately twigged that the cover was taken from a Hans Holbein painting. A short perusal proved me right. It's a detail of Holbein's group portrait of the family of Sir Thomas More (at right). A few years ago I read Peter Ackroyd's excellent biography of More, so I was intrigued. Turns out that the novel is based upon the portrait in part. It seeks to tell the story of one of More's adopted daughters featured in the portrait about whom very little is known.

Ok, ok -- my interest is peaked, and I'm on a bit of a post-semester, give me something fun to read buying spree, so I picked it up. I was hoping for a sort of The Other Boleyn Girl kind of light, but reliable historical fiction set in my favorite era. Plus it involved Holbein's portraits from the Tudor period, some of which I've seen at the National Portrait Gallery in London. What could be better, eh?

Well, I wound up being pretty disappointed. Portrait is one of those historical novels that gives its characters much too much of a modern sensibility. Characters have an interior life and sociological expectations that are much more 20th century than 16th century. The More family was extraordinary, but not that extraordinary. Additionally, the writer resorts to one of my pet peeves, which seems to show up all too frequently in historical and mystery fiction. She advances her plot and storyline by having her characters "think out loud" in the text. So connections between plot points and events are given to the reader as a particular character's interior monologue. I think this is lazy writing, as if Hans Holbein or Margaret Clement would, in the 16th century, have carried on such a linear, narrative-supporting thought processes. And as if the 21st century reader can't do his own thinking while reading. So,you're reading and long and come across incredibly detailed character thought narration that contains totally non-random, carefully organized plot/character details that the author couldn't get into the narrative more artfully. I hate it when that happens!

As it turns out, the novel builds it's main story line around a bit of a crack-pot theory that some fellow by the name of Jack Leslau has articulated (see http://www.holbeinartworks.org/) about the differences between the two extant versions of Holbein's group portrait of the Mores. The theory (SPOILER ALERT) winds up involving Richard III and the Plantagenet princes supposedly murdered in the Tower of London just before the Tudor rise to power. Richardians will relish this plot line. Historians should and will hate it. The device of the unacknowledged heir to the throne belongs in the 'boy's literature' of a few centuries ago. It's beyond a cliche and altogether too Da Vinci Code-esque. And Bennett doesn't handle this most significant of her plot devices all that well, never really giving a believable account of her hidden heir's motivation for staying hidden.

Towards the end, the novel devolves into melodrama as undiscovered parentages are uncovered everywhere. The notoriously moral More family turns out to be a hotbed of illicit sex and illegitimate parentage along the lines of Footballers Wives. The combination of the hidden heir conspiracy coupled with the everybody's-getting-jiggy-and-no-one's-shooting-a-blank storylines sink the novel under their combined weight of improbability. Vanora Bennett is no Phillipa Gregory, nor is she a Dan Brown. And that makes her truly pitiable and her novel regrettable.

My rating (out of a possible four):

Sermon for Year C, Proper 22: "Mustard Seeds & Mulberry Trees"

2007-06-27T19:06:00.003-04:00

Workshopped on Thursday, June 7, 2007 as part of the Episcopal Preaching Foundation's Preaching Excellence Program -- preached on Sunday, October 7, 2007 at St. James - Fordham Manor. Lectionary readings that this sermon is based on can be found here.

Update: I preached this sermon on May 2, 2008 for the judges -- and was awarded General Theological Seminary's Bishop of Newark Preaching Prize.

In the name of Christ + Amen.

Mama Robbins was my city grandmother and Mama Collins was my country grandmother. In these two, I had the best of both worlds: I had a grandmother near by in the city where I grew up with a candy dish that never failed us: Hershey’s kisses and Bazooka bubble gum, and gumdrops at Christmas. And I had a grandmother off in the country with a barn full of hay to play in, fields of cotton and corn to chase cousins through and a grey zinc ladle - a ‘dipper’ we called it -- hanging by the sink. The clear cool well water always had a slightly sweet metallic tang when we gulped it from that dipper, gasping for breath, cheeks red from running, before we dashed out again into the green expanse of those fields.

Both women were paragons of the Christian faith -- in quite different ways. Mama Robbins was a Methodist and never missed church. There was always a copy of ‘The Upper Room,’ a sort of Methodist ‘Forward Day by Day’ in her sewing basket. Mama Robbins felt and feared all the anxieties of the city, it seemed. She would sit for hours sewing in a chair by the window. The sun would wax and wane through the Cape Cod curtains as the afternoon wore on. The ticking clock would mark the hours and periodically she would part the curtains and say to the sun drenched street, “Lord, I’m just so nervous!” or “Oh! I’ve got the swimmy head today!” and then return to her silent stitching. She seemed always to be worrying, most often about her loved ones, most of whom gave her good reason. Alcoholism was part of the family legacy and it caused my grandmother no small amount of worry. But her faith buttressed her against the strife her husband, children and grandchildren caused her. She never doubted that God would support her and would find a way to repair her oft-broken heart. Like Paul in today’s epistle, she knew the one in whom she had put her trust, and she knew that he would guard all that she had entrusted to him.

Mama Collins was a Baptist, and played the upright piano at Concord Baptist Church. Concord sat atop a red dirt hill which was hard to navigate in the pick-up truck on rainy spring days when we’d had what my grandfather called ‘a gully washer.’ The church was probably no more than 20 feet wide by 30 feet long. The piano was jammed against the wall just beyond the front pew. Mama Collins would crash out the first few bars of the hymn posted on the hymn board, and then she would turn to us over her right shoulder -- eyes wide, mouth wider -- and with a sharp, audible gasp of breath, and a nod of her head, give us our cue to begin singing. Mama Collins might miss a Sunday if there was cooking to do or the fruits of her garden to be ‘put up’ for the winter. If she wasn’t there on a particular Sunday another grandmother with a late Victorian girl’s education (which, of course, included piano lessons) would play the piano or the congregation would sing the so well known hymns a capella. Her life was tied to the seasons, and her faith was mingled with the red dirt of the earth. It had always and would always sustain her and it would always live in her, and in her children, and now lives in me.

How is it that faith comes to us? How does it grow in us? Who plants the seed? How is it nurtured and brought to fruition? For me, faith was drunk in from a zinc dipper of cool well water. It was prayed for in prayers that accompanied tens of thousands of stitches. I am so lucky, so blessed, for like Paul in our epistle, I am able “to worship God with a clear conscience,” in no small part because “my ancestors did.” And so, I think, are we all. When we gather around the pulpit to hear the Word of God proclaimed, when we come to the table that is set for us to feed of the fruits of the earth that will soon be sanctified for us, we join the throngs of believers that have gone before us.

We share the faith of millions and millions of Christians. We share the faith of martyrs and prophets and apostles. We share the faith of Peter and Paul, and of Timothy and his grandmother Lois, and his mother Eunice as we heard in today’s epistle. We share the faith of Billy Graham and Pope Benedict the 16th, of Presiding Bishop Katherine Jefferts Schori and Archbishop Peter Akinola of Nigeria. We share the faith of Mama Collins and Mama Robbins.

But we know, each of us, in different ways and in different times, what it is like to cry aloud like Habakkuk: “Why do you make me to look upon trouble and wrong-doing? O, Lord, how long shall I cry: Help -- and you will not listen? Violence -- and you will not save?”

Sometimes our faith is very much like the mustard seed. A mustard seed is the smallest of seeds, it is so tiny. I helped Mama Collins plant them in her garden and I was amazed that anything so small could survive in the mud and muck. She would warn me, “Just two or three now! They’ll come up, don’t worry!” And sure enough, they would -- yielding huge bushes of the bitter greens that she would stew for hours on the stove with a bit of pork and serve with a little hot pepper vinegar. So tiny, the mustard seed, in dim light -- or in hard times -- you might not even be able to see it at all. But small amounts of faith, even the tiniest dot of it, can, as our gospel says, “uproot the tall and mighty mulberry tree and hurl it into the sea.”

According to Jesus, the faith that can move mountains and mulberry trees comes in the smallest, tiniest grains. And that goes against the grain of our capitalistic, consumerist culture in which more is better and bigger is better and too much is not enough. It is in smallness that the miraculous is found. The smallest seed can contain a forest of faith. But it can be so difficult to know it at times. It can be so difficult to access it. For me, it can be so difficult to look into my own troubled heart and worried mind and find the mustard seed of faith amidst the fears and unfulfilled hopes, among the doubts and disappointments, alongside the hurts and the losses.

But even at such times -- maybe especially at such times -- I know that I am not alone. And neither are you. I am “surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses” -- and so are you. I am part of a long, long history of belief, contentious as it has been -- and still is. Nonetheless, it has survived in the hearts of millions of Christians-- Mama Robbins and Mama Collins to name but two.

That is why I come to church, that’s why I cling to a community of believers. Others may be able to go it alone like the desert fathers and mothers, casting themselves adrift in a sea of sand to live alone in mystic communication with the risen Christ. Not me. I need you. I need you and all your grandmothers and grandfathers. I need a communion tied together by word and sacrament and common prayer. I need every one of our ancestors in faith -- martyrs, prophets and apostles, sinners and saints alike. It is when I see you uprooting mulberry trees that I remember that there’s a mustard seed there somewhere in my heart. That is just as powerful, just as mighty as the faith of millions of Christians on earth and in heaven -- Mama Collins and Mama Robbins, to name but two.

~Amen.

Sermon on Reconciliation

2007-06-27T19:01:00.000-04:00

Preached on Tuesday, June 5, 2007 as part of the Episcopal Preaching Foundation's (http://www.tepf.net/) Preaching Excellence Program.

Reconciliation is hot these days -- very trendy, very of the moment. You can hear people speaking in favor of it in churches and schools and in politics. Reconciliation has become much more than a word. It’s now a buzz word; one of those terms that seem to come into the collective consciousness, get used and overused almost before you’re aware of it. Buzz words like ‘reconciliation’ often have their meanings morph during their periods of popularity and sometimes they come to be understood in less complex ways as they become mundane and banal through everyday overuse.

According to the Merriam-Webster College Dictionary, “reconciliation” has several meanings. Usually it means the restoration of a friendship or of harmony between two parties. A secondary meaning is to accept something, usually something that one finds unpleasant; to be reconciled with some situation that we cannot change, but must live with. Sometimes, I believe, we mistake the two meanings. Sometimes it seems that we seek the restoration of harmony where there may have never been such harmony in the first place; and we come to hope for hugs and tearful embraces, when what we really should expect is to come to a point of acceptance of that which we might not like very much.

Buzz words like reconciliation can loose their true meanings altogether, and change from being words with a set of meanings, into something like signposts that seem to point to or point out something, rather than mean what they once were thought to mean.

My favorite signpost word these days is ‘controversial’. Controversial used to mean, “Here’s something that has caused a great deal of discussion pro and con;” or “here’s something that thoughtful people are considering and thinking about and are arriving at differing opinions about.” Nowadays you’re most likely to hear “controversial” used in a teaser for this evening’s local news broadcast, and in that setting it seems to mean “It’s sweeps month and we’re going for our highest ratings of the year. Therefore, we’ve found two loudmouths, neither of which has any particular credibility, who will disagree with each other at very high decibel levels, and with a plethora of bombast. You won’t be able to look away, sort of like when you see an accident on the highway, but that’ll mean our ratings are up, and so are ad revenues; so stay tuned for the controversy!!!!!!!” Controversial has come to be a signpost that indicates a manipulated disagreement for the sake of the spectacle.

Likewise, reconciliation can mean, “I hate you and everything you stand for, but I’m so conflict-averse, I cannot stand to have you not like me. Therefore, I’m going to compromise a lot of what I believe in in order to be seen as in agreement with you.” Or it can mean, “I cannot handle too much complexity, because for me, complexity creates anxiety. Therefore, even if there are legitimate differences between two sides, I must force them into compliance with one another so that I can make them fit into an uniform intellectual box that doesn’t create anxiety for me.”

Reconciliation, the buzz word, seems to point to anxiety -- about conflict and about difference. Sometimes when we seek reconciliation, it seems what we seek is to collapse divergent forces or impulses into a kind of harmony that we believe will end our anxiety. We want a resolution, and the sooner the better. Dr. Phil and Oprah can pull it all together in about 48 minutes less the commercials, so why can’t we? We want the plot wrapped up, we want good to win and evil to lose, we want the marriage to be saved, the hyperactive kids made manageable, the miracle diet to succeed, and the warring couple, or estranged family members to hug and make-up while the credits roll over their tearstained, reconciled faces.

An end to conflict and complexity, a simple and serene harmony; they seem like desirable goals, don’t they? They seem, dare I say it, almost Christian, don’t they?

Well, perhaps. But there is more to reconciliation than an end to anxiety and divergence. Perhaps there is that second meaning that we can explore. There may be a reconciliation that exists that does not cost us our integrity. There may be a reconciliation that does not pave over our differences with a thin veneer of consistency. There may be a reconciliation that enlarges rather than collapses; that encompasses a diverse and complex reality, rather than recreates a dying past.

I’m reminded of how a friend of mine who is also a recovering alcoholic in Alcoholics Anonymous describes ‘acceptance.’ Acceptance is a pretty big topic around AA. There’s that whole “accept the things we cannot change” thing from what AA calls the Serenity Prayer -- and which we seminary educated theologians recognize as classic Niebuhrian Neo-Orthodox Realism. My friend describes acceptance this way; she says, “To accept something does not mean that I must whole heartedly embrace it and claim it to be the best thing that’s ever happened to me; not does it mean that I should only begrudgingly and bitterly admit something with as much resentment and repulsion as I can muster. Rather, acceptance means that I merely acknowledge the reality of what is before me; that I accept people and circumstances for what they are, and not try to change their reality; nor my own, in light of the new realities I am encountering.”

Here is not false harmony or unity. Here is not a bitterness or repulsion. Here is merely acceptance of a reality that is bigger than oneself, a reality that is beyond my control.

Jesus gives us an example of this kind of reconciliation in his experience in the Garden of Gethsemane on the eve of his trial and execution. The scene appears in all the synoptic gospels, and it carries a profound weight in each. It is amazing, really, when you think about it. One way to look at Jesus’ struggle to accept his fate in Gethsemane is to see it as a moment of weakness. Does this struggling, anguishing Jesus look like a King-Messiah? Is this the same Jesus that was with God in the beginning and is shortly returning to the realm of the Supreme Being? Down south we would say about this Jesus, “He tow (torn) up!” He is distressed, agitated and grieved. He throws himself on the ground, and prays fervently to God, “Father, if it is at all possible, let this cup pass from me. Yet, not what I want but what you want.” Or as the King James Version translates Luke, “Nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done.”

In the agonizing moments in Gethsemane, Jesus is clearly not reconciled to his fate. He wants to escape the trial and torture he knows awaits him. Yet, he comes to a place of acceptance, a place of reconciliation… He comes to accept what lies before him, and he comes to accept it as a reflection of God’s will. Indeed, as we look back through our theological lenses, we see that the fate Jesus momentarily sought to escape was that which was to prove to be the reconciliation of the whole world to God through Jesus. What a loss it would have been if Jesus had balked -- if he had chosen to turn his back on the horrible reality that awaited him.

If Jesus can accept death on a cross, what then can I not accept? If Jesus can become reconciled to crucifixion, what is it that I will be unwilling to endure? If Jesus can forgive those who tortured, humiliated, and executed him, who is it that I cannot forgive? Who can I not be reconciled with?

One of our bishops tells the story of meeting with some of her counterparts in the Anglican Communion from Africa. In talking about the troubles that now face our communion, the bishop confessed that she did indeed know and respect many gay and lesbian couples. She was asked, “When the men live together, just the two of them, who cooks for them?” She replied, “Well, they usually share the cooking or if one or the other particularly enjoys it, he will do most of the cooking.” Men doing the cooking! Her African colleagues were shocked! Nothing like that goes on where they are from, they said, nor should it.

This story helps me to realize that though we are all one in Christ Jesus, we are often from very different places, and even from very different times. The 21st century in North America is quite different from the 21st century in parts of sub-Saharan Africa. We live in the world in different ways, and we encounter the gospel of Christ in different ways.

It seems impossible for me to embrace a reality that would restrict women to household chores regardless of their desires or gifts. Likewise, it must seem impossible for others to be forced to acknowledge that gay and lesbian people are full and equal partners in society and in ministry when they have no direct experience of gay folks, or worse yet, have been filled with inaccurate, defamatory propaganda about gay people.

But can I be reconciled to those with more traditional views of gender roles? Yes, I can. I may not like it, and it may seem to me to contradict the essence of the Christian gospel but I can accept there are places in the world that are much like America and The Episcopal Church of just a few decades ago.

And that seems an important aspect of our current debate: where are we right now in history, and where have we been? There is something uniquely American about our forward looking, justice seeking mindset. Americans are always essentially optimistic. We seek to right wrongs and to build a better nation and society almost as a matter of course. We have never known a national reality that we were completely powerless to change. No king has ever forced his will upon us and remained in lordship over us. No cadre of oligarchs has ever established a permanent junta here. We tend to move forward convinced of our right to do so and assured of the resources we need to make progress. We tend to become enamored of our successes and forget the struggles that have been fought to bring about those successes. The fight for women’s suffrage lasted nearly 100 years in this country. Suffragists were threatened, harassed, beaten, and imprisoned. It was ugly and bloody at times, and it went on for a very long time. The fight for civil rights for African Americans was long -- and it was deadly. The modern gay and lesbian rights movement began almost 30 years ago, and still the US Army and the Cracker Barrel restaurant chain can fire you merely for being gay.

How is it that we can be so disdainful of those who are not where we are yet, when we have only very recently (and I would add ‘incompletely’) gotten here? The righteous indignation of those on one side of the current debate is misplaced. We might do well to remember that we are very recently redeemed from our own sinfulness, and should go gently when pointing out what we believe to the sinfulness of others. We need to remember our own history, and to recognize our own limitations.

And by a similar token, others involved in our current debate might need to remember their own limitations. The sexual orientation of the Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire is as relevant to the life of the church in Nigeria as the sexual orientation of the Governor of the State of New Hampshire is to government of Nigeria.

We live in a wide world, with great disparities. There are differences in education, healthcare, infrastructure, economic opportunity, not to mention social and political equality, that divide much of the world. There are differences in theologies, understandings of authority, and interpretation of Scripture that divide the church.

However, though we are many, and encompass many differences, we are one in Christ Jesus. We are reconciled to God by the birth, teaching, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. Yet we are not reconciled to one another. Perhaps because we are not seeking the right kind of reconciliation. We are not one in terms of social roles, economic wealth, access to political power, education. It is likely that we will not be uniform in very many aspects of our theologies. A survey of recent or ancient church history would show that we have never had one uniform response to the gospel of Christ. It is vanity to think that we will find such uniformity now, when we have never known it before. We are not one in and of our selves. We are one in Christ Jesus, and we can be one only in Christ Jesus.

Others may try to establish covenants that harmonize theological interpretations of scripture, or that curtail any innovations on the part of one province or another of Christ’s church. But the New Covenant established by Jesus himself is the covenant that draws us together as nothing else can. Christ died for each of us -- and more importantly rose again to reconcile each of us to God, to restore all of us to a life forever in him.

In our feeble, failing way, we seek to experience some of the glory of that reconciliation in the reconciliations we seek with each other. We want the church to be like an episode of Oprah, where we’re all hugging and crying as the credits roll.
Well, I’m not sure that that’s what we’re likely to create here on this earth. But I believe we can find a reconciliation that is more like the acceptance that my AA friend describes. We can and should accept each other’s realities, even if we believe there to be inequalities or theological errors inherent in those realities. We can accept one another; we can be reconciled to one another, because Christ has reconciled us all by his cross and resurrection. What, really, is there left for us to argue about?

Sermon for Year C, Pentecost: "Gathering The Scattered"

2007-05-27T14:58:00.001-04:00

Preached on the Feast of Pentecost, Sunday, May 27, 2007 at St. James Episcopal Church Fordham Manor: http://www.stjamesf.dioceseny.org/. Scripture readings this sermon is based on can be found at by clicking here.

My grandmother was a fairly typical farm wife. She cooked and cleaned. She planted a garden that was as much as an acre or more, and in that garden she grew all the vegetables that the family would eat through the summer, as well as enough to ‘put up’ as we say, for the winter. She kept chickens and a milk cow. The chickens provided eggs, and once in a while, a fried chicken dinner on Sunday. The milk cow provided milk, and with a little churning, butter. She kept enough chickens and the output of the cow was such that there were eggs and butter left over after the household needs were met. My grandmother ran a small retail business selling these excess eggs and butter to the folks in Bruce, MS, the town a few miles from the farm.

I was always fascinated by the chickens and how my grandmother tended to them. She would feed them each day by scattering corn on the ground from an old pail. And as she did so, the hens and the baby chicks would all crowd around her feet, forming a kind of teeming sea of birds. They would follow her everywhere, and dog her every step. I was amazed at the way they would manage to scoot out of the way of her feet just in time, to avoid getting stepped on. As my grandmother aged, I worried that she might trip over the chickens as her steps became more feeble. But such a mishap never occurred. They understood each other, my grandmother and her chickens. They knew to gather about her as she scattered corn on the ground for them to eat, and to rush from under her tread. She could move so skillfully among them, gathering the eggs they had laid for tomorrow’s breakfast, and for the egg and butter customers in town.

In our reading today from Acts, Jews from across Judea and beyond are gathered in Jerusalem. The feast of Pentecost is at hand. In Greek ‘Pentecost’ means 50th day and it is the fiftieth day after Passover. In Hebrew, the holiday is called Shavuot, which means ‘weeks’ and it is the culmination of the Feast of Weeks celebrating the harvest. It is one of the pilgrimage holidays, when Jews were required to travel to Jerusalem to make an offering at the Temple. It came at the conclusion of the barley harvest and the beginning of the wheat harvest. The first fruits of the harvest -- two loaves of breach -- were brought to the Temple in Jerusalem and offered up as a thank offering and a sacrifice to God.

This teeming crowd is drawn together at the house where the apostles are staying, by the sound of a violent wind, then to hear the disciples speaking to them in their own languages. The crowd is astonished; they know that the apostles are all from Galilee, a rural backwater some miles from Jerusalem. How could these country folk be so accomplished in languages not their own? The travelers from around the world are brought together by the sound of the wind of the Spirit, and then they are united in the Gospel of Jesus Christ, preached to them in their own tongues by a band of, of all things, Galileans.

Some have wondered if the Pentecost was a miracle of speaking or of hearing. The sound of the wind brought the crowd to the apostles door, so hearing is a big part of the story. But did the crowd, by some miracle, suddenly understand Aramaic, the common everyday language of Galilee? Or did the apostles truly speak in a dozen or more different languages? Or was this an instance of glossilalia, of “speaking in tongues”, a kind of babbling or gibberish that was miraculously understood by the crowd? Well the Greek in Acts 2:6 is “dialecto” or dialect, and that means a specific language, a particular dialect spoken in a particular place. The phenomenon being described by Luke in chapter 2 of Acts is one in which these 12 Galileans were able to speak in the many individual languages of the crowd gathered in Jerusalem for the Feast of Shavuot.

It sounds like a miracle and it was. But there were doubters from the get go. One of the crowd pipes up and says, “Maybe they’re all drunk.” Hmmm, that makes it sound more like babbling and less like an ancient equivalent of a Berlitz School of International Languages, doesn’t it? But Peter answers the heckler back, and says no, they’re not drunk, its only 9 o’clock in the morning after all! And he begins to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ, -- once dead, now risen and ascended.
In some Christian Churches today, they are reading the account of the Tower of Babel from Genesis. In that famous story, God scatters the peoples of the earth and confuses their attempts to build their vain tower up to the very heavens. God makes it so the tower-builders can no longer speak the same language so they cannot complete their task and they are scattered throughout the earth. It is many, many thousands of years later by the time we get to the account of the Pentecost in Acts. Abraham and Moses, and Deborah, David and Joshua, have all come and gone; and still Israel waits for the messiah.

In the midst of this expectation, Peter preaches a radical message in the verses that immediately follow today’s reading from Acts. This Jesus Christ who has been crucified has been raised up and exalted at the right hand of God. This Galilean has been made God’s messiah. There is only one response that can be made to such a radical, reality-altering event: “Repent and be baptized,” says Peter; “and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you, for your children, and for all who are far away, everyone whom the Lord our God calls..."
The promise is for everyone, near and far. That’s why the apostles speak in dozens of foreign languages and obscure dialects. It is evidence of exactly what Peter preaches to the crowd -- that the gift of the Spirit and the salvation of Jesus Christ is for all the world. From this point on in Acts and throughout the rest of the New Testament, that story will be told. Paul and Titus and Timothy, and Augustine of Canterbury and Patrick of Ireland, and hundreds of other believers will spread the gospel throughout the world. It will make its way to Thessalonica and to Corinth and to Rome, it will make its way to England and Ireland, it will make its way to Nigeria, Jamaica, St. Kitts and Belize. It will make its way to the farms around Bruce, Mississippi where my grandmother will testify to the same gospel that Peter preached in the hymns she sang while she churned butter and packed eggs for her customers in town.

In our reading from the Gospel of John, Jesus promises the apostles ‘another Advocate’ to come and abide with them and be in them. That word ‘advocate’ sounds a bit legal, doesn’t it? Lawyers are called ‘advocates’ in Britain and some former British colonies. The Greek word here is ‘paraclete’ and it has a legal connotation as well. In some ancient court systems, the paraclete was not a lawyer, but was a trusted friend who would accompany you to court and speak on your behalf. You would make your case before the court, and then the paraclete was testify to the strength of your moral character and would thereby strengthen your case before the court. Jesus promises the disciples a trusted friend who will abide with and in them and will help strengthen them for the work he has given them to do. This advocate will provide them with the power to heal, the power to preach, and the authority to forgive sins.

And as we see in our reading from Corinthians, this advocate, this Spirit of truth has a unifying effect. It has been passed to the apostles and then, as Peter says, to each of us in Baptism. It brings us together as one, even while providing us with different strengths, different gifts with which to proclaim the gospel. It doesn’t matter who we are, where we come from, or how it is we serve God -- whether as parents or priests, whether we are healers of the sick or teachers of English as a second language; we serve God in our work and in our lives, and we are one in the Spirit. The story of the Tower of Babel has been reversed. Those who for their vanity have been scattered to the corners of the earth, are now gathered by the Spirit and made one by the salvation of Jesus Christ.

Acts chapter 2 says that 3,000 believers were added to that small circle of Galileans on Pentecost, and for that reason we account this feast day as the birthday of the Church. As Jesus had promised, 10 days after his ascension the expected Advocate has come. The Spirit has descended on the apostles, and enabled this small band of rural Galileans, fishermen and carpenters many of them, to preach Christ crucified and risen again with such power and conviction that the gospel has never died -- it is the same gospel that has come down to us here today. We are gathered together in this church this morning just like the apostles in that upper room on Pentecost. In a few moments we will call upon God’s Spirit to bless and sanctify the bread and wine that we will offer, and our very selves. We will eat of the body of Christ and we will drink of the one Spirit, like generations of Christians before us. Though we are many people from many places with many different gifts, we are one in the one Spirit.

In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus says, “I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings.” And so it has come to be. Like my grandmother’s chickens, we gather together to be fed with the food of eternal life. We trust in our savior to feed us and sustain us. We remain forever in God’s Holy Spirit come down to us and the Spirit remains in us, abiding with us, constantly at our side, brooding over the earth like a mother over her children. ~~ AMEN.

Sermon for Year C, Easter 2: "Nature or Nurture"

2007-04-19T09:27:00.000-04:00

Preached on Sunday, April 15th, 2007 at St. James Fordham Manor, The Bronx, NY:
http://stjamesf.dioceseny.org/

Lectionary readings this sermon is based on can be found at: http://www.io.com/~kellywp/YearC/Easter/CEaster2.html

I’m not really sure if I believe in nature or nurture. Are we born the way we are? Or are we who we are based on how we were brought up, who raised us and what has happened to us in our lives? If you were to see me at Thanksgiving, you’d have no trouble knowing who my people were around the table. I could be nobody else but my father’s son, and I might easily pass for my brother. I came home for Thanksgiving one year and when my grandmother saw me, the first thing she said was, “Well, now. You sure look like your brother now that you’ve fatted up some!” My father and brother and me, and in fact all my uncles and cousins really ‘favor’ each other, as we say down South.

Yes, my brother and I are unmistakably brothers. We look alike and talk alike to a degree. We have similar senses of humor and love to tease each other. But in many respects we are almost exactly opposite. He’s a rock-ribbed Republican and I’m a yellow-dog Democrat. My brother is a major in the National Guard and an accountant. I majored in English in college, and am now pursuing a career in the church. He’s way, way country and I am, of course, a sophisticated New Yorker! We had the same parents and grew up in the same home and yet we’re pretty different in some respects while we’re very similar in others.

Thomas in our reading today is an interesting fellow. He’s barely mentioned in the other gospels, but in John he has a bit more of a ‘speaking part.’ In chapter 11, Jesus is set upon traveling back to Judea to comfort the family of his dead friend Lazarus. The disciples warn him against going. Jesus has stirred up the ire of the religious authorities in Judea and there will undoubtedly be trouble if he returns. But go he will, and it is Thomas who says to the other disciples: “Let us also go, that we may die with him.” I’m sure that Thomas was just as afraid of trouble as the rest of them, but he was nonetheless willing to go with Jesus wherever Jesus might go, and he was willing to accept the consequences of following Jesus, whatever they might be.

These particular words of Thomas’s are set in stone in the floor of the narthex of St. Thomas’s Church on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. The narthex at St. Thomas’s was redone as a thank offering for peace at the end of World War II. You’ll also find there the words from Luke’s Gospel: Peace on Earth, Good Will towards Men, and these are surrounded by the symbols of all the countries that were part of the Allied Forces in World War II. Nearby is an altar that lists the names of all the parishioners from St. Thomas who served and died in World War II and, my friends, let me tell you, there are very many names there. It seems the parishioners at St. Thomas heeded the words of their patron and went forth to die with each other and their brothers and sisters in arms in the worldwide battle against fascism. Like the apostles in our reading from Acts, they were steadfast and fearless in the pursuit of their duty.

Thomas has another ‘speaking part’ in John’s account of the Last Supper. Jesus is speaking rather cryptically about going ahead of the disciples where they cannot follow him, to prepare a place for them, and that they will know the way to that place when the time comes… Pretty confusing stuff, so Thomas asks Jesus, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” It is in reply to this question that Jesus makes one of his more famous statements when he tells Thomas and the other disciples, “I am the way, and the truth, and the light.”

As we can see, Thomas is a follower of Jesus in the truest sense. He wants to know where Jesus is going, and he is willing to follow him even unto death. How shocked and saddened Thomas must have been by the events of Good Friday. Willing to follow Jesus into any confrontation and to fight any battle, he finds that he has lost Jesus, not to a heroic death on the ramparts of Jerusalem fighting against the pagan Roman occupiers, or in an act of violent cleansing of the Temple of all its impure practices and hypocritical priests… but rather he has lost Jesus to the most ignominious of deaths, a death on a cross, stripped naked and exposed to die by the roadside into town, crucified along with two thieves, two common criminals, put to death like a common criminal himself. Not a glorious hero’s death, nor a brave rebel’s death, but a pitiful, shameful, criminal’s execution.

So, when we finally meet Thomas in today’s Gospel, he has lost both his hero, and his dream. He seems quite a bitter man. He hasn’t experienced Easter yet at all, he is mired in the darkness of Good Friday. He wasn’t with Mary, Peter, and John, and hasn’t seen and heard all that they did at the tomb on Easter morning. He wasn’t there on Easter evening when Jesus appeared to the disciples, miraculously entering a locked room and baring his wounds and breathing upon them, bathing them in a new form of God: the breath that is the Holy Spirit. No, when we finally find Thomas in today’s gospel, it’s a week or more after Easter and Thomas is still deep in mourning and bitter, and full of doubt about all that the disciples are telling him. Thomas is a man whose dream is dead, and he can’t believe, he won’t believe, that that dream can and will be reborn.

It is on the first Sunday after Easter, like this first Sunday after Easter, when Thomas joins the disciples in that locked room, and Christ appears to them again. When they are gathered together, just like we are here, Christ comes among them. And he offers his peace to them, and to Thomas he offers the very thing that Thomas has said he needs. He offers his wounds to probe, to serve as proof positive that he has indeed risen from the dead.

Thomas’s doubts fall away, along with all the bitter disappointment of the past week, and he worships the risen Jesus, proclaiming, “My Lord and My God.”

Paul Nancarrow, the canon theologian for the Diocese of Minneapolis has this to say about this incredible moment:

“Now that Thomas can experience the Risen One for himself, he becomes the first of the disciples to worship Jesus as his God. Thus the story of Resurrection, begun when the stone is removed from the tomb, is not complete until it is echoed and reechoed in the lives of believers. What the Thomas episode makes clear is that “belief,” in the particular sense John uses it in this gospel, is not simple credulity, nor is it accepting something as true, against all appearances, just because some authority declares it to be true. “Belief” in John’s sense always includes some element of experience, some direct encounter with the One in whom the believer believes. For post-Thomas Christians, our encounter with the Risen One comes in and through the community of disciples who carry on Jesus’ ministry in Jesus’ name and by Jesus’ Spirit, rather than by the sight of the eyes and the touch of the hand. Yet our encounter with the Risen One is no less genuine for having been mediated through the believing community—as indeed Thomas’s encounter was mediated—and the blessing we receive in believing is no less than the Peace conferred upon the disciples by Jesus on Easter evening.”

So, here we are, a week after Easter, just like Thomas. And we are drawn together in a community of believers, just like Thomas. And in a few moments, we will share in a meal that was first shared with Thomas and the other disciples at the Last Supper. And in that meal, the risen Christ himself will come to us, in bread and wine, in body and in blood. And by partaking of this mysterious, magical, momentous meal together we will become the body of Christ. As we partake of the body of Christ, we will become the resurrected body of Christ in this world. We are the community of disciples who carry on Jesus’ ministry in Jesus’ name and by Jesus’ Spirit. The Easter story is made real in us.

We are the risen Christ in the world now, and let me assure you, there are many Thomases in the world, now as then. There are those who are bitter, and those whose dreams have died, those who lives are filled with skepticism and disbelief. We see them all the time, don’t we? The sort of crazed looking fellows who seem to derive a small sense of power by walking into traffic and yelling back at the cars that honk at them. Those friends of ours at work who scoff at us when the subject of religion comes up. Those kids on the street who seem so young and yet are so determined to be as tough, and bitter, and menacing as they can. It’s uncomfortable to be around these folks or to meet them face to face. It’s easier to ignore them and hope they’ll go away, without causing us any trouble. It’s easy to turn our backs on those who have lost their way in the world, who seem to have turned their backs on us, those who are filled with disappointment and disillusionment and seem so committed to darkness and violence… Those who don’t want to believe as we believe, and think we’re fools to believe as we do.

But we have to remember that Christ didn’t turn his back on Thomas, or condemn him. Christ came to Thomas and offered him a reason to believe. Do we do that, I wonder? Can we do that in this day and age? Can we, like Christ, offer the Thomases of our world the experience of a risen Christ? Can we show the world both our woundedness and our healing? Can we bear witness to the little deaths that we have experienced, and the resurrections we have been blessed with? As today’s collect puts it, can we who have been reborn into the fellowship of Christ’s Body show forth in our lives what we profess by our faith? Do we have any hope to offer the disappointed? Any sweet consolation for those who have drunk of nothing but bitter gall?

The answer is yes. We can be agents of the risen Christ in the world by not turning our backs on those who most need us: the doubtful and the bitter and the disappointed. Perhaps a word of forgiveness instead of recrimination when we are wronged. A welcome to the stranger. Acceptance instead of condemnation. A word of concern and guidance to the youth who seems so troubled. Or maybe just a wide enough berth for those who walk the streets of our city filled with rage. But most of all, because we have come to believe like Thomas did, we can continue to believe in the Thomases in our world who feel as if they have nothing left to believe in. Christ did not stop believing in Thomas, neither should we. Christ offered Thomas the experience of the resurrection that he had missed. We can do the same. Our experience of resurrection, as professed every day in our lives and practiced each Sunday on this altar has an effect; it has an impact on the world, on those we love, and on us. Its Easter Day every day for us, because like Thomas we have had and continue to have a lived experience of Jesus Christ, once dead, now risen to new life in each of our lives; a fact we will soon reenact and reiterate in the breaking of bread and the blessing of wine.

There’s a tradition in the Church that Thomas became the apostle to India, and helped found the very ancient Christian Church there. Thomas proved to be a loyal and constant follower of Jesus after all. And after his experience of the resurrection, if legend is true, he became a leader that others then followed. Maybe he was born that way, maybe it was the experience of the risen Lord that made him that way, maybe both. Nature or nurture -- I don’t think there’s really much difference. We were made by God to love, and we love God in return. We were born and then reborn in the waters of baptism. We all will die, but will rise again on the last day, in the resurrection of the world. We are Easter people. It is both what we have become, and what we were born to be. It is what we have to offer to the world.

Why I am an Episcopalian...

2007-03-21T17:54:00.000-04:00

There is no shortage of comment in the blogosphere about recent actions and reactions in the Anglican Communion. I don't often seek to add to it. But today, there was a statement issued from the House of Bishops of The Episcopal Church that I felt compelled to 'lift up'. Here's a quote from -- and a link to the full text of -- the resolutions and communications adopted by the bishops of the branch of Anglicanism that I am proud to call my spiritual home:

"We proclaim the Gospel of what God has done and is doing in Christ, of the dignity of every human being, and of justice, compassion, and peace. We proclaim the Gospel that in Christ there is no Jew or Greek, no male or female, no slave or free. We proclaim the Gospel that in Christ all God's children, including women, are full and equal participants in the life of Christ's Church. We proclaim the Gospel that in Christ all God's children, including gay and lesbian persons, are full and equal participants in the life of Christ's Church. We proclaim the Gospel that stands against any violence, including violence done to women and children as well as those who are persecuted because of their differences, often in the name of God."

Adopted March 20, 2007
The House of Bishops
The Episcopal Church
Spring Meeting 2007
Camp Allen Conference Center
Navasota, Texas

Full text here:
http://www.episcopalchurch.org/3577_84148_ENG_HTM.htm

Glory to God whose power, working in us, can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine: Glory to God from generation to generation in the Church, and in Christ Jesus for ever and ever. Amen.
Ephesians 3:20-21, Book of Common Prayer, p. 102.

Sermon for Epiphany 4, Year C: "Speaking Up and Speaking Out"

2007-01-28T17:27:00.000-05:00

Preached on Sunday, January 28th, 2006 at the 'family service' in the Chapel of the Good Shepherd at General Seminary: http://gts.edu/worship.asp

Lectionary readings that this sermon is based on can be found at: http://www.io.com/~kellywp/YearC_RCL/Epiphany/CEpi4_RCL.html

Today we hear in our readings the importance of speaking up and speaking out in the service of God. Jeremiah is afraid that, though God has called him to be a prophet, he is too young and inexperienced to be able to proclaim God’s message.

Jesus reads from the scroll of Isaiah in the synagogue in his hometown, and the people are astounded at his erudition and his ‘gracious words’. And they’re kind of intimidated by Jesus and feel he’s “putting on airs”. But Jesus knows that he has been called to a special ministry by God. He reminds the people in the synagogue that in Elijah’s day and in Elisha’s day, miracles were performed by the prophets for the glory of God. And the beneficiaries of those miracles were just two of many people who were chosen by God as were the prophets themselves.

In John’s gospel, chapter 15, Jesus is quite clear: “You did not choose me, I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit.”

So even if, like Jeremiah, we are frightened and feel unprepared, we must still speak. And even if, like Jesus, those closest to us find us a bit unbelievable in the role of God’s ‘mouthpiece’, we must still speak God’s truth to the world.

Words are very important in our tradition. Again in John’s gospel we learn that ‘In the beginning was The Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”

And in Genesis we read that God creates the heavens and the earth primarily through the power of speech. God said, “Let there be light” and “Let the earth put forth vegetation” and it came to pass.

So, words are powerful, and speaking up and speaking out is a powerful way we can serve God in the world.

But what is it we should say? When should we speak up? How can we speak God’s message to the world? What words should we use, who should we speak to on God’s behalf?

Well, Jesus always welcomed everyone, whether an old friend or a stranger. So, when we see the new kids at school and they seem shy or haven’t made any friends yet, we can say “Welcome” and be friends with them.

When we see injustice in the world, it’s really important to speak up. Whether it’s the war in Iraq, or the inequities of the curriculum, we need to speak the truth on God’s behalf and remind our government that war is wrong, and remind our professors that women have played an important part in the salvation history and continue to do so.

We need to speak the truth when it makes us vulnerable. And we need to speak the truth in love and with kindness when others are vulnerable.

We must always speak up when something seems not right, or makes us uncomfortable, or makes us sad. Sometimes people try to stop us from speaking up, or try to scare us into not telling the truth. Older kids and even grown-ups sometimes, can bully us, or ask us to do things or touch us in ways that make us feel uncomfortable.

That’s when we have to say, ‘No!’ and ‘Stop it!’ And then tell a teacher or our parents what happened. Sometimes older kids or a grown up might try to scare us, might tell us that we’ll get in trouble or our parents will get mad if we tell the truth. That’s when we really should find an adult that we know and trust and tell them what happened right away.

Following Jesus means speaking up, it means telling the truth. And God will provide us with the words we need and the confidence to speak our truth, and God’s truth.

Now, before I leave a loophole here that will ruin family dinners and embarrass too many parents, let’s have a few criteria for speaking up and speaking out. Ask yourself three questions:
Does it need to be said?
Does it need to be said now?
Does it need to be said by me?
Chances are that, if everyone is seated at the table for Thanksgiving dinner and you’ve just realized that Grandma has a mustache, this particular truth might not pass the three question test I’ve just spelled out.

Like Jeremiah, we may be young and intimidated and maybe even afraid. But God is stronger than we are, and God will always help us to speak up and to speak out on behalf of others who are in trouble and on our own behalf when we are in trouble or hurt or feeling vulnerable.

Let us pray: Mother Father God, help us to speak up and to speak out on behalf of your children and your gospel truth. Plant your truth in our hearts, and give us the words to speak the truth of your caring love to all the world. Amen.

Sermon for Epiphany 3, Year C: "We Are One"

2007-01-21T16:53:00.000-05:00

Preached on Sunday, January 21, 2007 at St. James Episcopal Church, Fordham Manor,The Bronx, NY: http://stjamesf.dioceseny.org.
Lectionary readings this sermon is based on can be found at: http://www.io.com/~kellywp/YearC/Epiphany/CEpi3.html

People have certain skill sets that seem somehow innate. Most of us are good at some things, and not others. Those of us who are musical seem to be born with the ability to carry a tune and sing on key. Some of us are mathematical and can divide up a check in a restaurant in seconds. Others of us are athletic and can sink a basketball or send a soccer ball into the net with amazing accuracy. Others of us are emotionally intuitive, and can sense the feelings of others and can always find the right words to say. Others of us are literarily minded, and are drawn to books and written material for their primary source of information and enlightenment. I’m one of those. I take a book with me everywhere and if there’s something I’m interested in or have heard about but don’t understand, I’ll look for a book, or a magazine or Internet article to explain it all to me. Give me a book about something and I’ll begin to teach myself what it is I want to know.

Much as I would have liked to, I wasn’t allowed to take just English classes in high school and college. I had to take math and science and gym like all everyone does. And that’s a good thing. It’s good to know what you’re good at, and it’s good to get better at what you’re good at, but it’s also good to gain knowledge and expertise in areas that you’re not as good in. It’s good to expand your skill set and to work outside your ‘comfort zone’ a bit. If you’re a bookworm like me, one semester of accounting will make you appreciate the bookkeepers and accountants of the world all the more! So, even though we all have our specialties, stretching ourselves is a good thing, I think.

I understood why I was required to take sciences at City College of New York, my alma mater, but I didn’t look forward to it. And I was constantly on the look out for ways to avoid cutting up frogs in biology lab. City College realized that, for some of us, grisly lab experiments where useless, so an alternative was created. A two-semester course that became known as “Science for Poets” was offered. Instead of lab, those enrolled in “Science for Poets” were asked to write several long papers, but the dissection of amphibians was not required. Now, you mention more papers to most scientifically or mathematically inclined students and they groan, wail and gnash their teeth. But to a born English major like me, it was God-send! I thanked the Almighty for delivering me, and enrolled right away to fulfill my science course requirements. Between “Science for Poets” and Geology (rocks don’t gross me out the way frogs do!), I was able to graduate from the City College of New York without throwing up in a biology lab!

The “Science for Poets” professors where good guys, actually. There were two of them, and they understood their constituency. They wanted to give us the big picture, to impart an understanding of the basis of science and to do it in a way that didn’t scare us or put us to sleep. They did a good job, and used books and television shows and newspaper articles to help us see the necessity of having an understanding of the sciences. But as professors sometimes do, both instructors had to be away at a conference and a substitute took over the class for a day. The lecture topic for the day was chemical biology. The substitute did not have such a great feel for this class made up of English majors and writers. He kept getting way too technical as he was trying to explain the molecular level at which our bodies digest food. As the class became more confused and frustrated, so did our substitute professor. At one point, peppered with raised hands and questioning faces, he exclaimed (in kind of a loud voice), “Look! You’re just a tube! You’re a tube that surrounds a chemical process that breaks the chemical bonds in food to produce energy. That’s how you live! And it’s been like that since you were first humans. Everybody everywhere is just a tube designed to eat, digest and to produce energy from eating and digesting!” The class sort of sat there in stunned silence, contemplating the somewhat graphic, but sort of poetic point the professor had made. The big picture made sense to us much more so than the molecular level process. We are tubes. We eat; we digest in order to live. We are all the same and have always been so. We are one in the same in this respect. Even an English major can understand that!

Paul is, I think, making a very similar point in today’s reading from the First Epistle to the Corinthians. The Corinthians were a diverse group of people. The Romans had destroyed Corinth in the year 146bc. They then rebuilt and repopulated it, and filled it with what they considered to be the dregs of Roman society, displaced peasants, refugess, and other overflow population from Rome. Sort of like the English colonization of Australia with convicts. Ideally situated to be major center of trade, the city was one of differing, diverse and sometimes divisive populations. Corinth was the second city that Paul sought to evangelize, and he spent 18 months there working to establish a church among the city’s Jewish and Gentile populations. He’d put a lot of work into Corinth, so it’s not surprising that when word reaches him that squabbles have broken out in the church, he writes to help reconcile the warring parties.

And the Corinthians found plenty to disagree about. They were fighting over who was truly wise and mature in the faith, and who was still a “spiritual infant.” They were threatening to sue each other in the courts, they were fighting over whether to eat food sacrificed to idols, how to wear your hair when prophesying, all sorts of issues related to marriage, and sexual ethics and the role of women in the church. Sound familiar???? There was division in their ranks, and the community had begun to pull apart. People were aligning themselves with Paul or Cephas or Apollos, they were fighting over whether to follow Bishop Katherine or Archbishop Rowan or Peter. Wait, sorry, I’m getting the Corinthians mixed up with the Episcopalians. But it does sound awfully familiar doesn’t it? All the Christians letting all these issues, some trivial, some pretty serious, pull them in different directions and away from the central truth of the faith.

The Vicar in his sermon last week reminded us that even the simplest acclamation of faith can only come from God. No one can proclaim the Almighty without God providing the faith that powers the proclamation. So all of those who proclaim Jesus as Lord are united in a faith that only the true Spirit of God can give rise to. Mother Theodora Brooks, rector of St. Margaret’s in the South Bronx, used a proverb from her native Liberia at the recent celebration of Martin Luther King Day. “A mango tree,” she said, “does not give life to a banana.” The declaration of Jesus as Lord is the fruit of the Spirit of God at work in the hearts and minds of the believer. That Spirit is what unites us to God through Jesus, and it is in that Spirit that we – all together throughout the world and for eternity, past and present - comprise the one Body of Christ in the world. Paul tells the Corinthians that though they may be different, in fact they may seem to differ is substantive ways from one another, they are in fact one. They are all baptized in the one Spirit and are therefore members of the one Body of Christ, the eternal, universal, catholic church.

But it sure doesn’t sound like it then or now, does it? Our own church seems ready to split in two over issues of sexuality and gender. The churches of the Global South seem just about fed up with the rest of us in the North with our unshared wealth, our domineering ways, and our progressive ideas. WE even find this same kind of tension in the gospel reading for today. Jesus declares himself Lord and the fulfillment of the Scripture while teaching in the synagogue in Nazareth, and a few passages later, he is run out of the synagogue and out of town.

This is the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. Running from January 18th, the Feast of the Confession of St. Peter to the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul on the 25th, this week is one set aside when Christians are asked to pray for the unity of the church. From the sound of Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, from what we’ve discussed in our Bible Study groups about the Philippians, and the news we hear coming from the Diocese of Virginia, not to mention Tanzania and elsewhere in Africa, unity among Christians has been a rare flower, blooming briefly in certain times and in a few places, but withering quickly away amid the divisions and denouncements.

Well, maybe. But maybe not. As Paul points out, our baptism makes us part of the indivisible, indissoluble Body of Christ. We are one, whether we like it or not, and we are one whether we care to acknowledge it or not. I will regret it deeply if the diocese of San Joaquin, California or the diocese of Fort Worth, Texas decide to separate themselves from The Episcopal Church. And I will regret it deeply if the Church of Nigeria decides to leave the Anglican Communion – or worse still, tries to kick us out of it. Divisions are sobering and saddening to many of us. Especially those of us who work in the church and worship faithfully in the church and wish and pray for the church to be united in our mission to, as our hymn says, tell all the world that God is light.

But I believe that if the eye cannot say to the hand, “I have not need of you,” neither can Christians say to one another, “I am not a part of you.” We are one in Christ Jesus. We always were and we always will be. We are one with those who may have serious disagreements with us. We are one even with those who do not believe themselves to be one with us. We are one body because we all share the one bread. And in this sense, we are what we eat.

It’s like my substitute science professor said. We’re all the same when you get to the bottom of it. We all eat and digest our food in order to live. Or as Paul puts it in today’s epistle, “We were all made to drink of one Spirit.” We may be jocks or musicians; we may be math-letes or bookworms. We may be soft hearted or strong willed. We maybe Anglican or Roman, Jamaican or Crucian, Yoruba or Igbo… But we are all the same in one regard: We are all children of God, washed in the blood of the lamb who died for our sins. There is one Lord and one faith because there is one baptism into the Holy Spirit of God.

So, what do we do in a church that is one, but still fractured, still squabbling over issues large and small? Avery Dulles, a Roman Catholic cardinal who teaches down the road here at Fordham has said that, “There is a contradiction between the essential unity of the church and its empirical disunity.” Cardinal Dulles is right when he calls our unity essential. It is essential that we are one, we cannot be Christ’s church in pieces. But it seems as if we are pulling apart into more pieces rather than coming together as one. And I’ll bet it seemed like that to Paul as he was writing to the Corinthians.

There are a very few things that I’m willing to say unequivocally about what God wants of us or plans for us or what the future holds. But I do believe that there is a future yet to be revealed to us. I’m not sure if it will be Jesus returning on a cloud or fire and brimstone or both. But I know that God’s work in the world is not yet completed, not yet fulfilled. When it is done, I firmly believe that we will all be one in the glory of God, in the kingdom to come. That we are and will be one holy catholic and apostolic church. Faith in that future reality is to me, part of what the Christian faith is all about. We believe in the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come, don’t we? We believe in things yet unseen. We believe that the story didn’t end on the cross, and that it won’t end in a church ridden with strife, but in a church and a world reconciled to the God that created us all. We shall be one in the kingdom to come, and we bring ourselves closer to that kingdom when we work and pray for unity; and when we seek to understand, accept and be reconciled with all our sisters and brothers who proclaim Jesus as Lord.

Let us pray: Holy God, you are the One God who has created, redeemed and sanctified all the world. Guide your pilgrim church on this earth to live more fully into the unity that we share as your creation. Make manifest in us our common bond in the blood that was shed by your son on the cross. Make us humble, and in humility, make us loath to ever declare ourselves separate from one another, or to blasphemously claim that any one of is separate from the love of Christ. Make your Church, dear Savior, a lamp of purest gold to bear before the nations the true light of the gospel. Gracious God, you are one, and we are one in you, make us one people of faith now and in the world to come. Amen.

ETRB III

2007-01-19T14:38:00.000-05:00

Damascus Gate by Robert Stone

It's hard to know quite what to make of Robert Stone's novel about millenary crazies in Jersusalem. It's an excellent novel, well written, well plotted and complex. It is at times overly complex, but not so as to be impenetrable. It's frequently allusive, and those allusions are spelled out at times, and not at others. You can feel as if you're dissecting a T. S. Eliot poem rather than a contemporary novel with thriller aspirations. Stone comes off as a brilliant, perhaps too brilliant, writer with more to say than necessarily needs to be said.

That said, however, the novel never seems bloated or overwritten. In fact, it is sleek and well edited, even at nearly 500 pages. It's taken me almost a week to read it, and that's unusual, especially given my commuting time these days.

The novel weaves the stories of Christopher Lucas, a somewhat dissassociated freelance journalist, and Sonia Barnes, a red diaper baby cum jazz singer cum Sufi accolyte, with the tales of several drug addicts, psychotics, NGO activists, American right wing evangelicals, and Zionist guerillas. This cast of characters then seeks to bring about their own spiritual renewal, the spiritual salvation of the world, the coming (and/or coming again) of the Messiah, and the rebuilding of the Temple at Jerusalem. Plots are hatched by crazies and political extremists -- which then begin to overlap in both sensational and banal syncronistic ways . Lucas and Sonia fall in love -- or maybe they've just fallen under the sway of an American department store heir and self-proclaimed prophet who has come to believe himself to be the Messiah now that he's off his medication. When the characters and plots begin to intersect, you are surprised at first, but then see that it couldn't have been any other way. Stone may be a highly acclaimed and award winning literary author, but he's no slouch when it comes to crafting a complex thriller of religious and political intrigue.

The novel is best when describing the comings and goings, customs and quotidien ways of everyday Jewish, Muslim, Christian, Armenian and Russian Jerusalimites. You get a real since of how this city at the center of so many worlds has evolved (or devolved) into the near chaos one so often hears about. Critics have called Damascus Gate one of the best novels written about contemporary Jerusalem. That may be true, but in the end, I hope not. The Jerusalem depicted here is one overrun by nutcases, zealots, cynics, manipulators and anti-Semites of every stripe. The overall tone of the novel is deeply cynical, and there is no single sincerely religious character. Everyone is Damascus Gate is either deluded or busy manipulating the deluded to their advantage.

Stone's most recent book has just come out. It's called Prime Green and it is a non-fiction account of his days on acid and on the bus with Timothy Leary and other Sixties figures. The man has lived many lives, it seems. I'm not sure how his deep knowledge of the Middle East was gained, but the disallusioned hippie stance is evident throughout Damascus Gate.

All in all, I liked Damascus Gate. I don't think I'll be quick to pick up more of Stone's work, if only because it can be work to get through. But it's a well written and entertaining work, if not, for me a particularly beloved one.

My rating:

another issue of the ETRB

2007-01-11T16:38:00.000-05:00

The Cutting Room by Louise Welsh

Welsh hopes to invest the crime novel with literary pretensions and she does so in the excellent first novel. The book was a NY Times Notable Book of the Year and received lots of accolades. It can also be classified as one of the new(ish) Scottish Noir novels that give us a Caledonia of crime, grime and drunks. Cutting Room is quite good - a quick read if you care to, but go too fast and you'll miss some of the well-crafted sentences and beautiful and darkly drawn imagery. Rilke, a somewhat shady autioneer, discovers some unseemly material in the attic of an estate his auction house has been asked to liquidate in a hurry. He seeks to get to the bottom of the graphic images he's discovered and in so doing drags us through the Glasgow antiques world via some rough figures and the still seedy side of Scottish gay life. All in all, a good read with some quite memorable characters. Nice to have a gay lead character that's not a paragon of oppressed virtue or political correctness. Welsh's second novel presumably deals with crime as well -- it's an account of Elizabethan Playwright Christopher Marlowe's last three days before his untimely death in a pub in Deptford (see also Anthony Burgess's A Dead Man In Deptford.)

My rating for The Cutting Room: