The Thin Tradition

The Food Stamp President?

2012-01-22T13:30:00.000-05:00

A lot has already been written about the reasons for the increase in the number of people receiving Food Stamps during the past three years and I see no reason to repeat the litany of one factors. What has emerged during the GOP campaigns is some clarity about the economic assumptions of a possible Republican administration. One assumption is that the most imrportant contributor to job creation - maybe even the only contributor - is lower taxes for the job creators, that is, rich Americans. Seemingly missing from the GOP job creation equation is the financial health of middle class Americans, the people who would be buying the goods produced by the new employees of the job creators. The availability of capital is important, but less important than the availability of a healthy market for new products. As someone observed recently Amazon would never have succeeded in Africa because there would have been no customers to buy what Amazon was selling.

Transitive Relationships

2011-12-27T09:17:00.000-05:00

My Disciples of Christ neighbor and I were talking about ecumenical relationships. I asked him if being in full communion Lutherans meant that Episcopalians were in communion with all those with whom the Lutherans were in communion. The answer, as I already knew, is No.

What has been true about ecumenical relationships has now become true about relationships within the Anglican Communion. All the churches of the Communion are in communion with the Church of England, but not necessarily with one another. This is not something for which I give thanks, but it is a situation which I hope will not get worse. I have no illusions about the prospects for the restoration the Episcopal Church's relationship of full communion with some of the churches in Africa. The best that I can hope for in the short term is that the Church of England will be able to remain in communion with all the Churches of the Communion. Even that seems doubtful at times, but I can still hope.

Just Plain Silly

2011-12-22T09:37:00.000-05:00

Sarah Palin must have time on her hands, because I can find no other explanation for her criticism of this year's White House Christmas card, which showed a sleeping Bo by the fire in a beautifully decorated room. Mrs. Palin's objection to it was that it had no images of "family, faith, and freedom." I guess she wanted something more like President Bush's card in 2005 which showed the family's two dogs enjoying the freedom of the snow covered White House lawn.

I grew up with very staunch Republican grandparents who would be embarassed by just how silly some Republicans have become. But as a member of the Democratic Party I hope Mrs. Palin and her ilk will keep on the road to silly.

The Anglican Covenant

2011-12-21T14:56:00.000-05:00

I have long thought that the proposed Anglican Covenant would not provide a healthy way forward for the member churches of the Anglican Communion. What I thought it would do was encourage a culture of compliant within the Communion and could result in less honest communication between those who disagree with one another and more triangulation as member churches chose to lodge complaints with the Communion's Standing Committee.

I had not, however, taken the time to think about an alternative to the proposed Covenant, something which the Archbishop of Canterbury seems to think is required if the Covenant is rejected. I felt, with some justification, that one need not propose an alternative to an innovation, but could simply reject it. A logical alternative to any proposal of this sort is the status quo. Jonathan Clatworthy has done what I could not do, tackling the question of an alternative admirably in Instead of the Anglican Covenant at the Modern Church website.

Hierarchical?

2011-12-21T12:36:00.002-05:00

There continue to be arguments that the Episcopal Church is not hierarchical. We have the traditional hierarchy of Holy Orders, but the way the Episcopal Church governs itself isn't much like the most obvious hierarchical church, the Roman Catholic is governed. But there isn't only one way to be hierarchical. While Episcopal parishes and dioceses have a great deal more autonomy than Roman Catholic parishes and dioceses, their autonomy is clearly limited.

Here are a few examples of limitations:

The election of Rectors in parishes requires the consent of the Bishop.

The election of a Bishop requires the consent of a majority of diocesan Bishops and Standing Committees.

Ordinations of clergy must be approved in accordance with the Canons of The Episcopal Church.

The sale of real property by a parish must be approved by the Bishop and Standing Committee of the Diocese.

The establishment of new Dioceses requires the approval of the General Convention.

The hierarchy of the Episcopal Church is not so much a hierarchy of clergy as a hierarchy of parish Vestries, Diocesan Conventions, and the General Convention. As in other hierarchical organizations, there are decisions that can be made at every level, but the determination of which decisions can be made at each level is made at the highest level, in this case, the General Convention.

Playing to the Baser

2011-12-16T10:46:00.000-05:00

A generation or so ago some American evangelical Christians - but clearly not all - demonized three groups of their fellow Americans: Jews, Roman Catholics, and African Americans. In the past few decades that has changed. Many evangelicals, for reasons that have little to do with respect of Judaism, have made common cause with Jewish Americans in support of Israel. They have also joined Roman Catholics in opposition to abortion, and have found themselves in agreement with many African-American evangelicals on social issues.

But political campaigns often requirs enemies and in the past two decades some Republican candidates have courted evangelicals by demonizing gay and lesbian Americans. Among the latest of these appeals to the baser instincts in voters is the recent Rick Perry ad. The ad appears to have backfired, as Joshua Green pointed out in a recent column in the Boston Globe. In the wake of the negative reaction to Perry's ad I would have thought that Newt Gingrich would have avoided demonizing another group of people by claiming that Palestinians are an "invented people." As smart as he appears to be, Gingrich went ahead with that blatant lie and has not backed down when challenged about it. I hope that another column in the Globe, this one by New Hampshire's former Republican Senator John Sununu, will convince Gingrich to stop appealing the the baser instincts of voters, but I doubt it will.

I had heard the "invented" comment more than twenty years ago, that time from a rabbi who thought that it was actions of the Israeli government, actions which he did not support, that had helped to create a sense of national identity among Palestinians. I think that was a reasonable observation. A similar observation could have been made about how the actions of the English government helped create a national identity among the people of the American colonies. In a sense we are all "invented people," with national identities that have been created by the events of history.

Gingrich's observation, however, was not intended to highlight the role of the Israeli government in creating a Palestinian national identity. His comment was intended to dismiss the aspirations of Palestinians, perhaps to garner support among Jewish voters, but more likely to appeal to voters who see all Arabs and Muslims as the enemy. I hope Gingrich's appeal doesn't work, not because I don't want him to be President, which I don't, but because I want to see an end to the use of bigotry and demonizing in American politics.

Ashamed To Be a Christian?

2011-12-13T12:11:00.000-05:00

When I was newly ordained the Rector of the parish where I was serving reminded me that if I wanted to claim Mother Teresa as a sister in Christ I had to be prepared to claim Pat Robertson as a brother in Christ. Today the challenge is to see that Rick Perry is my brother in Christ, even though his attack on gays serving in the military is repugnant to me. Perry is an embarrassment, but he is still a member of the Body of Christ and I pray that the comments of many others in the Body will help him come to repentance. God, after all, rejoices when a sinner repents.

Elizabeth Warren and TARP

2011-12-12T19:08:00.001-05:00

It is interesting that Karl Rove's political machine is attacking Elizabeth Warren for having had oversight of the Troubled Asset Relief Program which was signed into law by Rove's former boss, President George W. Bush. Rove must be counting on voters in Masschusetts having poor memories. The financial meltdown that TARP was created to address was not Warren's fault, unless Harvard professors have more power than I think they do.

Privilege?

2011-12-02T15:28:00.055-05:00

For a long time I have struggled with the issue of privilege. As a fairly well educated white heterosexual man I have had privileges that many people in this country don't have, and most of those privilges are unearned. I have been hoping that there would be more honest discussion of privilege in our country, but recent comments about privilege made by Gov. Rick Perry are not what I would call honest. In attacks on the President, Gov. Perry has made the claim that Pres. Obama has had a privileged life, one that makes it impossible for him to understand hard-working Americans (like Gov. Perry?). I would never deny that the President enjoyed some privileges as he grew up - the privileges of a mother committed to seeing to it that he had a good education and of scholarships that allowed him to get that education. He also appears to have intellectual gifts that Gov. Perry doesn't have.

What makes Gov. Perry's comments less than an honest contribution to a discussion of unearned privilege is his total lack of any acknowledgement of his own privileges as a white male heterosexual evangelical Christian in Texas, nor any acknowledgement of the less than privileged aspects of the President's early life. I know what it is like to be raised by a single mother, but I have no idea, nor does Gov. Perry, of what is like to be a biracial child growing up in America.

Perhaps there are Americans who will buy Gov. Perry's assertions about the President's privileged childhood, but I hope that most Americans will scratch their heads and wonder, as I did, about whether Gov. Perry has finally lost touch with reality.

On My Watch

2011-11-30T11:33:00.001-05:00

At first I felt sorry last night as I watched Syracuse University's basketball coach Jim Boeheim asserting that it was not yet clear what had happened on his watch. But after he repeated the phrase "on my watch" for the umpteenth time I began to wonder why he wasn't watching on his watch. If the allegations of sexual abuse by his assistant coach are found to be true, then I expect Boeheim's words may come back to haunt him and he may find himself unemployed.

Transgender Rights

2011-11-17T09:51:00.003-05:00

Yesterday the General Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts (the legislature) passed the Transgender Equal Rights Bill and Governor Patrick has said that he will sign it. It is a good beginning, but there are still areas, e.g. public accommodation, where discrimination is still permitted. The opponents of the bill should be ashamed of some of the arguments that were used in opposing it, especially the references to it as "bathroom bill."

At 65 I am too old to put up with much more of the nonsense of those who want to preserve white male heterosexual privilege. As a friend and an ally I will keep working to get an even better bill passed.

The Proper Matter

2011-09-25T12:50:00.000-04:00

I got myself involved in a very unproductive exchange of comments over at Mark Harris's blog Preludium. The exchange prompted me to think - once again - about the very different reactions that there have been to the ordination of women and to the blessing of same-sex unions. I suggested that both controversies involved disagreements about the proper matter for a sacrament. Traditionally the proper matter for the sacrament of holy orders was an adult male and there were those among the faithful who believed - and still do - that ordaining a woman was not only wrong but simply impossible. Traditionally the proper matter for the sacrament of holy matrimony has been an adult male and female couple and there are some among the faithful who believe that the uniting of two men or two women in holy matrimony is simply impossible.

I am still puzzled by the way in which Anglicans have found themselves unable to maintain relationships with those who disagree about the proper matter of holy matrimony when they had been able to live with diversity of convictions about the proper matter of holy orders. Is there a logic to this that is beyond my capacity to understand? Or is this simply heterosexism, a clinging to heterosexual privilege? If it is heterosexism, perhaps the way forward is a path quite like that which many opponents of the ordination of women followed a generation. My bishop at the time said that his mind was changed when he met women who exhibited the same kind of gifts and sense of calling that he saw in men preparing for ordination. I know that the witness of the lives of the same-sex couples that I have been blessed to know have helped to change my mind - along with some serious reading of Scripture.

The traditionalists are right in asserting that this way of understanding marriage is a departure from the past, a new thing. Changing our thinking about matters, especially matters of importance like holy matrimony and holy orders, is clearly a big deal, and not, to paraphrase the marriage rite itself, to be done hastily, but soberly and deliberately. We know that we may get it all wrong, that decades later we may come to realize that we made a mistake. But for me the greater mistake, the one that does incalculable damage to God's beloved children, is to cling to the old understandings.

Taxes, Anyone?

2011-09-01T09:26:00.000-04:00

There has been some talk about continuing the payroll tax cuts that have put a bit more money in the pockets of working people. Some members of the GOP, who seem to like every tax cut, are not so happy about this one, or the tax credits that have help working people get out of poverty. Their argument is that everyone should pay taxes as a way to have a stake in the game. But nearly everyone, even those who don't pay income tax, pays federal taxes. For every tank of gas that I buy, the federal government gets $2.76 in fuel tax. That's not much, but it is a stake in the game. And if I didn't own a car, I would still be contributing to some trucking company's tax payments every time I bought anything. Put simply, we all have a stake in the game.

When I was a teenager my politics began to shift to the left. This got me in some trouble with my unwavering Republican grandmother. I wasn't allowed to wear Democrat's campaign pins in her house and I quickly learned to keep my politic convictions to myself. For a long time the memory of being told to take off a campaign bothered me. Years after her death, I found a way to make a kind of peace with my grandmother. I put a bumper sticker on my car: FRIENDS DON'T LET FRIENDS VOTE REPUBLICAN!

Over the years that I drove that car and even after I passed it on to our son, I got a few negative responses to the bumper sticker, to which I always responded by saying that the bumper sticker was only a joke, and a very mild one at that. But this year I'm not so sure. With many Republicans in Congress unwilling to see that spending cuts alone won't eliminate the federal budget deficit or that spending increases for infrastructure would help the economy, I'm beginning to think that friends should not let friends vote for some of these Republicans.

Eradicating the Poor

2011-07-26T10:10:00.002-04:00

Our daughter, Meghan MacLean Weir, MD - yes we are very proud of her - has a post on her blog about the controversy surrounding the proposal that birth control counselling and presciptions be provided to women at no cost. I won't enter the fray on this controversy, but something Meghan wrote about eradicating the poor got me thinking about something that has been on my mind since the week my wife and I spent at Chautauqua. One of the speakers was Harvard professor Michael Sandel. His course on justice, which was recorded and broadcast by PBS, and his book Justice devote considerable attention to the question of the common good. One of the controversial issues that Sandel considers, one which is the subject of a debate among his students on the PBS program, is whether it is right for the government to use the taxes it collects from the rich to help the poor.

I will not attempt to lay out Sandel's answer to that question, but in the book he considered the claim that those who are rich deserve their wealth. I have long known that their is not a level playing field in this matter in America. Some of us are born with a whole lot more money than others. Some are born with college-educated parents. Some get to grow up in safe communities with good schools. All of that has been part of my understanding for years, but Sandel pointed out other factors that I had rarely considered. Some are born with considerably more talent than others. I knew this because it had bothered me for a while as a teen-ager that some of my friends were smarter, more athletic, better looking and more popular than I was. I had not, however, considered how this factor played out in the question of deserving success and wealth. Tiger Woods did nothing to earn or deserve his athletic ability. it was a gift. Tiger Woods has, of course, put a lot of effort into developing that ability, but even that is not entirely of his own doing. He was encouraged - some might say pushed - to develop that ability by his father. Woods was privileged to have that kind of encouragement and support, to have that particular father. He did nothing to deserve that, any more than any of us get parents that we deserve.

So the question of moral deserving is not as clear-cut as some, like libertarians, claim it is. Very successful people owe their successes not solely to their own hard work, but also to all those other factors which they did not control or deserve. The very successful do not have an absolute moral right to the fruits of their success. In the various lotteries of life they were already winners while still in diapers. It is morally right to tax those who have succeeded and who have more than enough money to meet their needs in order to assist those who weren't as privileged. Given the current political climate in this country, I don't hold out much hope for the kind of tax policy that I consider morally right. After all many of those who are in Congress exhibit a kind of "I've got mine and I deserve it" attitude, as do many of those who contribute to their campaign funds. But I continue to hope that some of the privileged will have the moral insight to understand the nature of privilege and support tax policy that will require them to pay more taxes. That may seem like wishful thinking, but I believe, as Dr. King said, that the moral arc of the universe bends towards justice.

America the Beautiful?

2011-07-06T13:25:00.004-04:00

From time to time I get into conversation with friends about our National Anthem. I suggest that a text written in the midst of war, particularly a war with one of our closest allies, might not be the best choice, even if the tune were not so difficult. As a descendant of the brother of Katherine Lee Bates, I also am bold enough to suggest that "America the Beautiful" would be a good replacement. One of my friends - and he remains a friend in spite of this - tends to dismiss Aunt Katherine's poem as Victorian sentimentality. I concede that Aunt Katherine's sensibilities are dated, but every time I read or sing her words I see in them the kind of challenge that this country needs if it is not to slip into the role of an imperial power exploiting those who are weaker than we are.

Consider these words from the second stanza:

America! America!
God mend thine ev'ry flaw,
Confirm thy soul in self-control,
Thy liberty in law.

Or these from the next stanza:

America! America!
May God thy gold refine
Till all success be nobleness,
And ev'ry gain divine

What Aunt Katherine was expressing, in the language of her time, was an awareness that we are not a perfect people, a perfect nation, and that we need mending. As a child growing up in Falmouth, Massachusetts, she had a concern for the welfare of Native American children and an awareness that the way her - and my - ancestors had treated those who were here before us was the reason that those children were not as privileged as she was. She was, actually, not nearly as privileged as I have been. After her father's death soon after her birth, her family struggled for years, but it was in those years of struggle that Katherine became aware of the needs of others, including native American children.

I would be surprised if Aunt Katherine's words ever became our National Anthem, but I hope that they will always be part of our national memory, challenging us with their appeal to our "better angels."

Family

2011-06-29T08:54:00.001-04:00

I have been pretty good at honoring my decision not to get bothered by all the high drama within the Anglican Communion, but I do still read some of the blogs that deal with such matters. Recent comments about the ongoing discussion of the proposed Anglican Covenant brought to mind a discussion that I had several years ago with a friend and colleague. He had suggested an analogy for the crisis in the Communion that had been precipitated by the Episcopal Church's decision to ordain Gene Robinson to the episcopate. It was, he said, like one member of a family deciding to paint the family home without consulting others about the color. My response was that the analogy was a bit off, that we had only chosen to paint our own room.

Analogies aside, the idea of the Communion as a family does provide some insight into the crisis and into the attempts to resolve it. Whether in softer or harder ways the attempts have been aimed at making the Episcopal Church get in line with other members of the Communion on the matter of same-sexuality. Not all the other members, to be sure, but with what appears to be a majority of the members churches. The attempts, to use my friend's analogy, are aimed at limiting the choices of color for one's room.

All this insistence upon family conformity brought to mind how mistaken I was about my mother's political convictions when I was 13. That was the year of the Kennedy-Nixon race and I was convinced that my mother was voting for Nixon. After all her parents were staunch Republicans and I never heard her say anything in support of Kennedy during the campaign. It was decades later that she told me that she had, of course, voted for Kennedy, but that she had said nothing about it so as not to upset her parents.

For years Episcopalians had been moving towards "voting for" sacramental equality in the Episcopal Church. Much of that movement was not noticed by many others within the Communion, but after Bishop Robinson's consecration it was hard to ignore it. Like members of some families, some in the Communion think that it is impossible to remain a family with such differences of conviction. I disagree. After all, my mother and I still loved her parents, even though they had voted, we assume, for Richard Nixon.

How Long?

2011-06-28T14:28:00.000-04:00

In preparing for this past Sunday's sermon at Saint Michael's Church in Marblehead, I found the opening verse of the psalm claiming my attention: How long, O LORD? will you forget me for ever? how long will you hide your face from me? How rare is it for us to get that honest about our suffering. We live is a culture which is suffering-averse, a society in which the expected answer to "How are you?" is "Fine."

In God and Human Suffering the Canadian theologian Douglas John Hall points out that in the Genesis accounts of Creation there is suffering, even before the Fall. Humans suffer from loneliness, limitations, temptations, and anxiety. In fact, without these sources of suffering, we would not be able to recognize the blessings of friendship, the joy of personal growth within the inherent limits of our humanity, the maturity that comes from resisting temptation, or the peace that comes from entrusting our anxious minds to God. Such suffering is unavoidable, but far from being the ultimate reality for us. Neither is the suffering that comes after the Fall - the fratricide of Cain and all the injustices and atrocities that have followed.

To find our way to experiencing the ultimate reality of the One who chooses to be God only in relationship with us, to be Immanuel, God with us, we need to be honest about our own suffering. We need to learn again the value of lament, the value of beating down the doors of heaven with our cries of "How long...?" We can never be in solidarity with those who suffer more conspicuously in our world until we are honest - at least with God, if not with those closest to us - about our own sufferings. We cannot be the wounded healers that the world needs if we keep denying our own wounds.

Later on Sunday I discussed the sermon with a close friend who is a psychiatrist. He asked if I thought many of my colleagues would have preached such a sermon. Perhaps there would not be many, just as in our wider society it seems that psychiatrists are among the few who are willing to face the reality of our suffering. Perhaps aversion to suffering still has the upper-hand and that we continue to be in denial about the impossibility - and undesirability -of a suffering-free world. But maybe, just maybe, the myth of endless progress has lost its allure and we can dare to be honest about the suffering that is inherent in human life and have the courage to relieve the unjust suffering that so many have to endure.

The Good News of Immanuel was lived out by one who was acquainted with suffering, who embraced our humanity, suffering and all. And we who are called to bear witness to that Good News are also called to embrace our own humanity, suffering and all.

Vocations

2011-06-21T10:18:00.001-04:00

Our daughter Meghan has a recent post at her blog Advanced Maneuvers, Practice Medicine, Not Martyrdom. Her post is a response to an op-ed piece by another physician who criticized physicians who don't work full-time. One of that doctor's arguments was that medical education is to a large degree subsidized and that places an obligation on doctors that isn't there for people in other professions.

I trust that I am not the only person who sees the large hole in that argument. It would be hard to find an educational institution in this country that covered all its expenses with money collected from its students. The average college budget shows income from a variety of sources, often including government and foundation grants, endowment income, and gifts from alumni/ae and friends. Higher education in this country is heavily subsidized for everyone, and so it isn't physicians alone that could be said to have an obligation to pay back what has been given them by using their gifts to serve others.

Musing about this question for the last week or so, I recalled one of the most disappointing sermons I have ever heard. It was at the baccalaureate mass for the Roman Catholic high school where I was teaching. All of the graduates have been my students in the required ethics class and I knew a bit about some of their career plans. One was planning to be a pharmacist. Another planned to serve in the military. Not at all to my surprise the only student who was mentioned in the sermon was the one who was considering the priesthood. That vocation alone was considered worthy of mention. The irony is that the young man did not become a priest, while others in his class have successfully pursued the goals they had at graduation.

The priesthood is an honorable vocation, even though a somewhat difficult one in the Roman Catholic Church now. But so are the vocations of those others. The physician to whose op-ed piece our daughter responded and the priest who preached that terrible sermon both have a narrow, perhaps even a distorted view of vocation. To them there are certain jobs that merit the title vocation and there are others that are simply jobs. Priesthood and medicine are vocations, but delivering the mail is only a job. What utter nonsense. We are in grave danger if we forget that "our common life depends upon each other's toil," the toil of the garbage collector as well as that of the physician.

Marriage Equality

2011-06-17T13:28:00.000-04:00

For a long time this blog has announced that it - that is, I - support marriage equality. Actions, they say, speak louder than words, and today I have the opportunity to act on my commitment. Two people who married a decade ago will celebrate their anniversary by renewing their vows in church. The ceremony will be simpler than their wedding, but we will together be able to do something which was not possible ten years ago - to have their marriage recognized by at least some of these United States. In the state where they live, New York, marriage equality is not yet fully realized. Marriages occurring in places like Massachusetts, where marriage equality is a reality, are recognized in New York, but same-sex couples are still not able to get married there. That may change in the next few weeks, but only if New Yorkers who support marriage equality advocate for change with their State Senators. There are still many people in high places who are heterosexists and are trying to block in the Senate the bill that has been passed in the Assembly. The voices of New Yorkers who support marriage equality need to heard now.

A Focus and Means of Unity?

2011-05-28T11:55:00.001-04:00

I had completely overlooked the reference in the Anglican Covenant to the Archbishop of Canterbury as "a focus and means of unity," (3.1.4.I) until Tobias Haller pointed it out in a comment on his blog, In a Godward Direction. I agree with Fr. Haller that such a description of the Archbishop is blasphemous.

The focus and means of our unity is God and God alone. It is the Triune God who has created and redeemed us and holds us together in unity. Creatures like the Archbishop may help us to see our unity in Christ, but that unity is a gift, a work of the Spirit.

Here is yet another reason to say, even if the Episcopal Church were to adopt the Covenant, that it is a deeply flawed, at time blasphemous, and at time idolatrous document. It may be the better course to adopt it - with reservations - and to work towards a better articulation of what it means to be part of the Anglican Communion. Or it may be better, as some have suggested, for the Episcopal to say we cannot accept the Covenant as it is but are committed to continuing conversation with others in the Communion about what it means be Anglican in our various multi-cultural and multi-faith contexts.

Love Wins and Friendship

2011-05-26T13:11:00.000-04:00

Last night at Trinity Church in Boston Rob Bell responded to a question about how an Episcopal parish could become a mega-church. Rob's first point was that size isn't the issue and that small churches are not less important than big ones. His second point was that what draws people to a church is often friendship with one of its members. He told us that he had once asked another pastor who wanted his church to grow if he had friends who weren't members of the church. The pastor didn't. Bell said that he - and others at Mars Hill Bible Church - try to make lots of friends in the community and that those friendships are often what draw people to Mars Hill. In the Happening and Cursillo movements this idea is often expressed as "Make a friend. Be a friend. Bring a friend to Christ."

I think friendship is important, although I sometimes worry that we might see our friendships with those outside the church as purely instrumental, as only for the purpose of increasing church membership. Friends are important, simply as friends, and not as prospects for membership.

Love Wins

2011-05-25T22:46:00.001-04:00

A few months ago my friend Elizabeth Kaeton recommended Rob Bell's new book Love Wins. I had used some of Bell's Nooma videos a few years back at Saint Matthias Church and liked his way of sharing and thinking about the Good News. Given Elizabeth's recommendation I bought and read the book and I recommend it highly. This evening I got the chance to hear Rob speak at Trinity Church in Boston and to speak with him briefly as he signed a copy of the book that I had bought for a friend. Earlier today as I was thinking about hearing Rob, I gave some thought to the books title. I trust that Rob is right - and that I and others have been right - and that love does win. I agree with Rob that we can refuse to let love win in our lives, we can turn away from the offer of love and live in hells of our own making. I also believe that we can make it very hard for love to win in other people's lives. When we abuse someone, particularly when parents and teachers and clergy abuse children, we make it harder for love to win. But I continue to believe that love finds a way even into the most bruised lives and can win. What seems clear to me, both from the stories that Rob told tonight and my own experience, is that our congregations can make a difference, can be communities where love can be experienced and where lives can be transformed. What it takes, in Rob's words, is for congregations to be Eucharist for their communities.

Haunted by Relationality

2011-04-21T17:58:00.000-04:00

Carter Heyward recently gave a lecture at Episcopal Divinity School. I was glad to meet her, having been away from our school during her tenure there, and I was very impressed with the lecture. I am glad that it is now posted on the 99 Brattle blog and I recommend it.

The idea that some of us are haunted by relationality originated with Jewish theologian Marc Ellis. Carter's lecture got me me thinking - again - about the strange and perhaps rather empty victory of the high Christology John's Gospel during the first centuries of the Church's life. When I read Jesus saying, "The Father and I are one" I hear it relationally. But in the world in which the philosophy of Plato was so dominant, theologians tended to hear it as a statement about substance. Thus we get in the Creed "one in being with Father," or, as the new English translation of the Eucharist for the Roman Catholic Church phrases it, "consubstantial with the Father." I suspect that quite a few worshippers will find that hard to say, and even more difficult to understand.

We don't talk or think about the world and our place in it in with the philosophical language of Plato. Not many of us - outside the chem lab - think about the nature of things in terms of substances. We are more likely to be interested in relationships, in how things and people interact with one another. And that, I think, is how the very first followers of Jesus thought about things. What was so apparent about Jesus was his relationship with God, a relationship which he wanted to share with others, with everyone. While in the pictures of Jesus we get from the other Gospel accounts we can see this relationship, in John's account we see it in bold face. For the Johannine community the relationship of Jesus and the Father, of their being one, was of central importance. Explaining that in terms of substance, speaking of Jesus as being consubstantial with the Father, may have been appropriate in those early centuries, but clinging to that language now makes little sense. What does make sense is a relational Christology, the kind of Christology that we find in the writings of theologians like Carter Heyward.

Making the Far Near

2011-04-05T22:18:00.001-04:00

One of the joys of retiring on Massachusett's North Shore is that I'm close enough to audit a course each term at Episcopal Divinity School. Last term's course was on the Gospel of John; this term's is Globalization: Mission , Ethicsand Theology. One of the readings for this week is an essay by Thomas W. Walker in Global Neighbors: Christian Faith and Moral Obligation in Today's Economy. In the essay Walker examines the ideas of far and near in the Parable of the Good Samaritan in Luke's Gospel. In that parable, robbers come near to the man travelling on the road between Jericho and Jerusalem, they become for a time his physical neighbors, but their actions are not at all what the Torah demands of neighbors. Having robbed and beaten him, they leave him for dead by the side of the road. Two passers-by, a Priest and a Levite, keep themselves far from the man, each passing by on the other side of the road. Finally, a Samaritan, one whom the Jewish community would have seen as someone culturally and religously far from them, draws near, showing compassion in binding his wounds, paying for his continued careat an inn, and promising to return to pay whatever more needs to be paid.

The parable, so typical of Jesus' teaching, confronts its hearers, including us, with the challenge of seeing the world in a new way. How might we begin to see that those whom we see as far from us - geographically, culturally, ethnically, ideologically - are those whom God wants us to make near ones, our neighbors? How might the needs of these neighbors, as well as their gifts and great beauty, be considered as we make decisions about our lives? Not in the same way or to the same degree that the needs of our families and communities have a claim on us, but in some measure.

A central challenge of globalization for Christians, and perhaps for others as well, is making the far near, seeing ourselves as inextricably connected to everyone in this global village. We share, as Rabbi Jonathan Sacks has said, in a covenant of fate with the whole of creation, partners one with another in the work of healing a fractured world. The stakes are simply too great for us to retreat from the challenge into ethnic or religious or ideological or geographic isolation.

The End of Silence

2011-04-04T17:12:00.000-04:00

I'd like to claim that the nearly two months since my last post was intentional, perhaps the result of a decision to refrain from posting in order to spend more time in prayer. Not even close. It was simply a matter of getting distracted and not being sure that I had anything at all worth writing. And that hasn't changed much, but I am writing.

Yesterday my friend and colleague Paul preached about the healing of the man born blind in John 9. Part of what Paul said was that we don't get to see what lies ahead when we begin something new. Neither of us cold have known when we graduated from Episcopal Divinity School in 1972 where our work as priests would lead us. We couldn't see the creation of food pantries and soup kitchens and homeless shelters that would be part of each of our lives in very different communities. And, as he was preaching, I thought that it was probably a very good thing that we couldn't. Some of the things that we come to see we would not have been unable to handle earlier in our lives, especially things about ourselves. Some of the challenges that we took on would have been impossible tasks for us in our early years and it may be providential that we didn't those challenges when we were fresh out of EDS.

Something that Paul didn't talk about - or, at least, I didn't hear him - was something I find interesting about the story. After making a paste of dirt and saliva and spreading it on the man's eyes, Jesus sent him to wash in the pool of Siloam and the man "went and washed and came back able to see." There is so much that we don't see because we are unwilling or unable to look at things from a new perspective. When we are willing to move, to find a new vantage point, our blindness can be healed.

So much of Jesus' teaching involves challenges to our ways of seeing the world, challenges that are invitations to see the world and our place in it in new ways. We are far too often isolationist in our approach to the world, unwilling to see that our connections to people everywhere, and not only to people, but to all of creation. For those of us privileged to live comfortable North American lives, I think Jesus challenges us to see that our comfort has been purchased in some measure through the sufferings of underpaid workers in the two-thirds world, that our homes are heated and lighted at the expense of the earth itself.

Jesus does not lay on us a guilt trip, but challenges us to see the world in new ways and let that seeing be part of our transformation. And to let our transformation become part of the world's transformation.

Are You the One?

2011-02-08T19:55:00.000-05:00

I was privileged to share in the Eucharist yesterday in the Episcopal Divinity School Chapel. We were commemorating Absalom Jones, the first African-American ordained in the Episcopal Church, and the preacher was the Rev. Viola Morris Buchanan, pastor of Bethel AME Church in Lynn, Massachusetts. At the heart of her message was the challenge to take our place in the work of advancing God's mission in the world. Each Christian needs to be able to say, "Yes!" to the question, "Are you the one?" It is not a matter of sinful pride to "claim the high calling angels cannot share." It is our baptismal calling, both a privilege and a responsibility.

I can imagine that God could have chosen to advance the missio Dei without our participation. But the witness of the Scriptures is that God has chosen to want - perhaps even need - our sharing in the mission. My reading of the Bible has led me to the conviction that God desires to be God in relationship with us, and even, only in relationship with us.

So, when we sense that we are being called to some new participation in God's mission, when the question is, "Are you the one or should we look for another?" I pray that our answer will be, "Yes! Send me!"

All!

2011-02-01T12:34:00.002-05:00

My friend and colleague Fr. Paul Bresnahan preached a challenging sermon this past Sunday. To paraphrase Fr. Paul, "I won't go to heaven unless all of you are there as well." This is challenging to me because, to be as honest as I can, there are some folks with whom I would rather not spend eternity. But that's not my call, is it? Perhaps, as my spiritual director once told me, I can only enter heaven arm in arm with my enemies.

Fr. Paul's sermon got me thinking once again about C. S. Lewis's The Great Divorce, a book that every serious Christian would do well to read. In it Lewis describes the arrival of a bus from hell at the outskirts of heaven. The bus's passengers are met by some of the citizens of heaven and given the opportunity to enter. Some, however, are unwilling to enter, unwilling to give that which keeps them from accepting God's grace.

I believe that God's intention is that all shall be saved, all renewed, all transformed. I am also very much aware of how we resist God's love and seek to thwart God's purposes in our lives. Because the Church has so often proclaimed a very different message, i.e., that God only wants to save some of us, I have often turned to Robert Buchanan's "The Ballad of Judas Iscariot" to remind me that I can't put a limit on God's mercy. Here are the final stanzas:

'Twas the Bridegroom stood at the open door,
And beckon'd, smiling sweet;
'Twas the soul of Judas Iscariot
Stole in, and fell at his feet.

'The Holy Supper is spread within,
And the many candles shine,
And I have waited long for thee
Before I poured the wine!'

The supper wine is poured at last,
The lights burn bright and fair,
Iscariot washes the Bridegroom's feet,
And dries them with his hair.

Internet Courtesy

2011-01-29T13:00:00.000-05:00

I commented in a recent post about the name-calling that I sometimes see in the blogosphere. One of the problems with blogs is that so many of the comments are posted anonymously and that means that people can avoid accountability. One of my friends said that she prefers comments on Facebook where anonymity is harder to pull off. But there are still rude and condescending comments on Facebook and I have decided to confront those who post such comments.

Yesterday there was a batch of comments about a link I had posted on my Facebook page. The link was about Chick-fil-A's links to anti-gay organizations. When one person defended Chick-fil-A, several people weighed in. The person's response to one of them began, "I'm assuming either a limited experience with, or an influencing involvement in, homosexuality." Later I confronted the person on what I saw as a very condescending comment, one that might have been interpreted as an assertion that the person he was addressing was either too inexperienced to be able to have a rational opinion about homosexuality or had been brainwashed. The response I got was that no offense was intended. I will assume that that was true, but unintentional rudeness is still rudeness.

Blogs and Facebook and other media have provided ways for us to communicate with wider circles of people. I tend to post on Facebook links to blogs that I find valuable and have been thanked by friends for introducing them to blogs they might never have discovered. But new media present us with some of the same old challenges of maintaining a level of civility in discussing serious - or not-so-serious - matters. I remember navigating some difficult conversations with family members about the Viet Nam war a generation ago. Just as we learned then that we could endanger relationships by poorly thought out comments, so we need to learn to more thoughtful in using these new media. In the same way that SPAM makes e-mail less valuable and at times seem destined to make it useless, so rudeness in comments on blogs or Facebook makes these tools less valuable. I think we need to take the time to hold one another accountable for lack of civility and be willing to be held accountable ourselves. Higher standards of behavior are unlikely to be effectively imposed from above, but we can make a difference.

Duty Calls?

2011-01-27T21:32:00.000-05:00

Thanks to Grandmère Mimi and her friend Ann!

The Book

2011-01-25T20:38:00.000-05:00

A Dead Hand

2011-01-25T08:36:00.001-05:00

In one of his most recent books, Paul Theroux refers to writer's block as having a dead hand. Although I am not a writer, I understand. For the past week or so I have had a dead hand. I started writing a post for another blog and got as far as the first sentence. The only writing of any length that I have managed have been a couple of responses to post on other blogs, one of which was something of a rant.

There are reasons why I have had trouble getting started writing. One is that I have a habit of thinking about too many things at the same time: the GOP attempt to turn back the progress on health care reform; the continuing battles in the Anglican Communion; whether the snow will make it harder for me to get to a class today at Episcopal Divinity School. Not all of them very important, but they rattle around in my brain and I have very little ability to do what doctors call triage. (BTW, there is a wonderful blog post, Triage, at our daughter's blog, Advanced Maneuvers.)

One of the things that I have been thinking about lately is how unbelievably rude people can be in their comments on blogs. It seems that whatever manners they may have had are completely forgotten as they call people they have never met the most crude and hateful names. I recall someone mentioning a couple of simple questions that we should ask before doing something. "Would I want my mother to see me doing this?" and "Would I want this reported on the front page of my local newspaper?" Not bad questions, and ones that some posters of comments might seriously consider.

Advanced Maneuvers

2011-01-14T16:36:00.001-05:00

Our daughter, Meghan Weir, M. D., has a book, Between Expectations, coming out in March. She also has a new blog, Advanced Maneuvers. I recommend both the book and the blog without reservations.

The Word Became Flesh and Blood and Moved Into the Neighborhood

2010-12-25T12:19:00.000-05:00

A Christmas Poem: Prudentius

Though you came from the mouth of God,
Born as his Word on earth below,
Yet as his Wisdom you lived
Forever in the Father’s heart.

This Wisdom uttered made the sky,
The sky and light and all besides;
All by the Word’s almighty power
Were fashioned, for the Word was God.

But when the universe was formed
And ordered by unchanging laws,
The Cause and architect divine
In the Father’s bosom still remained,

Until the slow revolving years

In centuries at length had passed,
And he himself condescended to come
Down to the world grown old in sin…

But such destruction of humankind
The heart of Christ could not endure;
And lest his Father’s handiwork,
Unvindicated, should be lost,

He clothed himself in mortal flesh,
That by arising from the tomb
He might unlock the chains of death
And bring man to his Father’s house.

This is your natal day, on which
The high Creator sent you forth,
And gave to you a form of clay,
Uniting flesh with his own Word.

A Walk in the Woods

2010-12-15T20:06:00.001-05:00

My friend Michael Povey has some thoughts about grumpiness at his blog Povey Prattle. I know I was grumpy this past week. Grumpy when a bureaucrat at Social Security demanded another document before I could start collecting benefits. Grumpy when I received the second call about how satisfied I was with the service department at the local Toyota dealership - I was very satisfied - and the caller couldn't accept that I didn't want to talk with her. I get grumpy and I am very thankful for Michael's gentle prodding that got me to think about something that happened today that got me very tired and cold, but not at all grumpy.

This morning I took our family's eight-month old black lab Scout for a walk in Ravenswood Park in Gloucester. The 600 acre park is one of those owned and maintained by The Trustees of Reservations. According to someone I met on a previous visit, the donor of the land stipulated that it be maintained as a place where dogs could run free. An eight-month old black lab needs a place to run free and that she did this morning.

When we arrived, I saw a man with two dogs a short way up the road in the woods. Scout, after the obligatory sniffing around the area, bounded up the road to meet the dogs and the man. He patted her, made a comment about what a nice dog she was, assured me that his two were very good with other dogs, and then we were off walking. I lagged a bit behind, not quite up to his pace, but also quite sure that he hadn't come to the woods to chat with me, just as I hadn't come for a long talk, but for a long quiet walk. For the next half-hour or so we walked, the dogs racing ahead and then coming back and then wandering off the road for a bit to sniff out something interesting. I lagged even farther back as we walked, but Scout kept stopping and looking back to be sure that I was still with her. As we reached the end of the circuit we had taken and approached the parking lot and the road beyond, the man stopped and petted Scout again and held her collar until I could put her back on the leash. He told me that there had been some dogs hurt as they raced out of the park and into the road and that he always stopped with his dogs a few feet short of the parking lot. I thanked him and we parted.

I never got his name, but I am thankful for his part in this very ungrumpy adventure. I probably would not have taken as long a walk if I hadn't sensed that there was no chance of getting Scout to go anywhere but where the other dogs were going. I am also very thankful for The Trustees and for the donor of Ravenswood Park, Samuel E. Sawyer, for providing just the place for me to get over being grumpy.

I Don't Get It - Again

2010-12-10T10:51:00.001-05:00

Even though my grandparents were ardent Republicans and I have many friends in that party, I don't understand how all the Republican Senators, except Susan Collins, could vote against repealing Don't Ask Don't Tell. Maybe my Republican friends are as confused as I am by the refusal of members of the party of Lincoln and the party that prides itself as being pro-military to end DADT. The law weakens our national security by preventing committed and talented women and men from serving in the military.

The President has taken the position that he is bound to enforce DADT and has waited for Congress to repeal it. I think that it is well past time for the President to decide that he cannot enforce a law which is a threat to our national security.

I Don't Get It

2010-12-02T09:44:00.000-05:00

I am not an economist, so I probably shouldn't get it, but I find the Republicans' argument for continuing the Bush era tax rates unconvincing. Tax rates were much higher in the 1950s, a period of, at least from my perspective, prosperity. They were higher during the Clinton era and we got a balanced federal budget. And during the Bush era, tax rates were lowered, the national debt grew, and the economy crashed.

So, the Republicans want us to go back there?

A New Year's Resolution

2010-11-27T15:44:00.003-05:00

The Church Year begins this Sunday, the First Sunday of Advent, and it's as good a time as any to make resolutions. Although there are more that I could - and even should - make, I am making at least this one: I am not going to worry about the future of the Anglican Communion and simply tend to being a member of the Episcopal Church, the Associate Priest at Saint Peter's Church in Salem, Massachusetts, a Trustee of Episcopal Divinity School, and a member of my wonderful family.

What brought this on were two events that happened on the same day and the flurry of responses to them on various blogs.

The General Synod of the Church of England voted to send the final draft of the Anglican Covenant to the dioceses for consideration. If a majority of dioceses recommend its adoption, the General Synod can then decide whether or not to adopt. This process will take two years and is aimed at insuring that the Covenant is given serious consideration.
A group of Primates (senior Bishops of member churches of the Communion) from the Global South released a statement that the Covenant was unacceptable to them and that they would not be attending the next meeting of the Communion's Primates early next year.

It does not seem to be a coincidence that these two events happened on the same day, especially as the statement from the Primates was from a meeting in October. There are some of us who saw the Covenant as a very imperfect attempt to keep the Communion together in the wake of strong objections by leaders from the Global South to the attempts at full inclusion of lesbian and gay people in the Communion's member churches in North America. The Primates' statement makes it clear, to me at least, that nothing that do, short of accepting their convictions about same-sexuality, will keep the Communion together. These men have decided to walk apart, not only from the member churches in North America, but from all the other member churches.

The Anglican Communion is broken and I'm not going to waste any more time or energy worrying about it.

Christ the King

2010-11-18T13:51:00.000-05:00

Our friend Cathy is recovering from surgery and I offered to preach in her parish church this coming Sunday. As I read the lessons for Sunday and some commentaries, I learned something I had not known before. In three different stories in Luke's account of the Good News, we find Jesus speaking about today.

Near the beginning of Luke, Jesus is teaching in the synagogue and, after reading a passage from Isaiah,

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
   because he has anointed me
     to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
   and recovery of sight to the blind,
     to let the oppressed go free,
¹⁹ to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.

he says, "Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing."

Near the end of Luke, we find the story of Jesus' encounter with the tax collector Zacchaeus. Jesus is passing through Jericho on his way to Jerusalem and, in order to get a better view of him, Zacchaeus climbs a sycamore tree. Jesus sees him and says, “Zacchaeus, hurry and come down; for I must stay at your house today.” After dinner, Jesus says, “Today salvation has come to this house, because he too is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost.”

In Sunday's lesson, we find the third of these stories. Jesus is on the cross and one of the two men being crucified with him says, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” Jesus replies, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”

Jesus came to "proclaim the year of the Lord's favor," to bring us and all creation the Good News of God's unconditional love. Throughout his ministry, that love was made real today, not off in the future, in the sweet bye and bye, but in the present moment. The response of the religious people in the synagogue in Nazareth was to attempt to throw Jesus off a cliff. They could not fathom how Jesus, whom they had watched growing up, could make such an offer. I know that in my own life, and in the lives of people with whom I have been privileged to work and worship, there are times when Jesus' offer is rejected, often because we can't fathom how we could even begin to deserve God's love. But Zacchaeus and the man crucified with Jesus grasped what we so often fail to grasp. It isn't at all about deserving or having played by the rules; it's simply about God's grace, about God's deciding to love us even though we don't deserve that and far too often reject it.

Today this offer is made anew and God yearns for us to accept it.

Hope Abundant

2010-11-06T13:03:00.000-04:00

My friend Kwok Pui-Lan has edited a collection of essays by women theologians from the Global South and the United States. For far too long the theologians we heard were white men from Europe or North America. We now have new opportunities - including Hope Abundant - to hear other voices.

Strong Turnout?

2010-11-06T11:54:00.003-04:00

The local paper reported that there was strong turnout here for Tuesday's election - just under 60%. Strong? If I had accomplished that percentage in school, I would have received an F, but we seem pleased when more than 40% of our fellow citizens decide not to perform one of the simplest and least burdensome of their responsibilities.

Benjamin Franklin told a questioner during the Constitutional Convention that the Convention had created "a Republic, Madam, if you can keep it." We seem to be doing a very poor job of keeping it if more than a third of us don't even bother to vote.

Although I don't agree with their agenda, Tea Party activists understand that keeping a Republic is hard work. Even though much of the success of the candidates that movement endorses was due to well-funded media campaigns and the influence of Fox News, activists did put in many hours as campaign volunteers. The leaders of that movement are also committed to work in 2012 to defeat candidates they supported this year if they don't live up to the movement's expectations. Whether this threat will work in enforcing absolute adherence to the Tea Party agenda remains to be seen. Some of these newly-elected members of Congress may discover that the perfect is often the enemy of the good and that compromise is not always a bad thing.

Whatever our politics, engaging with those elected to represent us is our responsibility. They cannot do the job well without our help. That conversation between citizen and representative ought to be one of mutual respect. Demonizing those who represent us does us no good. It may feel good to characterize a represent with whom we disagree as "not a real American," but it effectively puts an end to any chances of productive conversation with the representative. Respectful disagreement and attempts to find common ground are often difficult in a political environment in which civility is all too rare, but I see little hope for keeping the Republic unless we are willing to do this difficult work.

Taking Back Our Country?

2010-11-01T16:40:00.002-04:00

On my way to the doctor's I passed a couple of people holding signs for a candidate in tomorrow's election. Pasted to the back of one of the signs was another that said ,"We want our country back." It is probably a good thing that I was on my way to an appointment and wasn't free to engage them in discussion, good because I might have crossed the line into rude and that would not be good for a newcomer to town. But if I could have talked with them calmly, I would have asked them, "Back from whom? Do you think it was stolen?" I'm not sure that I can even guess what their answers might have been. If they had identified big business as the thief, I might have agreed with them. If they had told me that Democrats had stolen the country, I would have pointed out that Democrats are also Americans and all that they did was win some important elections. I might even have pointed out that many of us who voted for the President think that not enough has changed and that there is still a great deal that we can do to realize the promise of America.

I understand that people are angry and want someone to blame for whatever they think is wrong. But one's political opponents are not the enemy and no one has stolen our country. What may be the case is that we haven't taken our share of responsibility for our political life. Many of us don't even vote. Even those who vote may not even remember the names of those who represent them in Washington or Boston. Few of us take the time to communicate with our representatives about issues that concern us. And yet we feel free to complain that our representatives haven't done their jobs when we have failed to do ours. It's time we got it right and began practicing the advance citizenship of being Americans.

Career Politicians

2010-10-31T15:18:00.001-04:00

I am a career politician.

I have only run for government office twice and only been elected once. The first-time I lost to my mother in a crowded field of candidates for a small number of seats on a representative Town Meeting. The second time I ran unopposed. Although I served for less than five years as a public housing commissioner, I still think of myself as a career politician. I am, as one of my professors used to say, the holder of the highest political office in the United States. I am a citizen. As a citizen I try to become engaged in the politics of the nation and in the more local politics of state and town. I vote; I write to elected officials; I served once as an honorary co-chair of a friend's campaign; and this year I'm doing a very small of volunteer work for a political party.

I see politics as the way we make decisions for our communities. We elect people to represent us and we engage those representatives in a continuing conversation about public policy, especially the issues that matter the most to us. If we aren't pleased with the decisions that our representatives do, we remember that they work for us, and not the other way around, and we fire them, voting them out of office.

Yes, I am a career politician.

I didn't begin the thought process that led to this post with any thoughts about my own political life, but with some thoughts about the term career politician. Why is it, I wondered, that career politician has become a slur, while career physician or teacher or banker haven't? Why don't we see elected office as a calling that might be a person's life work? Clearly there have been corrupt politicians, but corruption can be found in the ranks of every profession. Why is it that a calling that is so important to our common life is not thought of highly? Many of those who held elected office could be much better paid doing something else, and yet they choose public service. And for that choice they are frequently treated as little better than common criminals, and because of that kind of treatment there are many, I would guess, who choose to avoid public service, even though they have much to offer.

Career politician should be an honorable title and, because so many of us don't see it that way, our common life is much the poorer.

The Nicene Creed

2010-10-29T13:53:00.000-04:00

Every Sunday I pray the Nicene Creed, pray it because I see it as an act of praise and adoration But praying it each Sunday doesn't mean that I find the philosophical language in the Creed particularly helpful in my journey of faith seeking understanding. I don't doubt that the language of substances, of "one in being with the Father," was helpful in the 4th century, but it's not so helpful to me - and others - in the 21st century.

The choice of that particular philosophical language can be seen as the triumph of the tradition of Athens over the tradition of Jerusalem. The biblical witness is less focused on questions of being than of being with. The Bible is a book - or, rather, a series of books - about relationships: the relationship of God with Israel, the relationships of Israel with the nations, relationships within the community of Israel. It is about how God walks with God's people and about how they are to talk with one another and with the people of the nations.

Using the philosophical language of Athens was not the only way, and maybe even the best way, that the Church could have come to a common mind about how to explain its faith in the One who had claimed them. There were, it is true, heresies to be opposed, and perhaps there was no better language to use in defining orthodoxy. But the Christian faith need not be understood primarily in opposition to heresy. Here in the 21st century we need not be tied to the language of substance in our thinking about God, in our theology. Here in the 21st century the focus of our theology can be on Jesus' being with the Father and being with us, and what that tells us about how we are to live.

What If?

2010-10-23T08:32:00.000-04:00

I have to admit that I have cynical moments. One of those moments came as I was listening to the news about Juan Williams’s firing at National Public Radio. The cynical moment came as I heard about the new contract that Williams had signed with Fox News after NPR fired him. A scenario began to form in my mind. What if Williams wanted to leave NPR for a higher-paying job at Fox? What if he thought that it would be fun to leave behind the reasoned tone of NPR for the more bombastic style of Fox? What if he thought that the best way to accomplish that was to say something on Fox that was guaranteed to get him fired and to make that firing a major news item on NPR and other media?

This scenario is, of course, a product of my imagination, but I have heard Williams’ name on NPR more in the past two days than in the past two years. Maybe it's not just my imagination.

Real Americans

2010-10-05T11:14:00.001-04:00

There has been a disturbing trend during the past several years to refer to only those with whom we agree on political issues as "real Americans." I first noticed this in statements by conservatives, but I have heard liberals saying it as well.

I don't like it at all. There are no phony Americans or unreal Americans or bogus Americans or counterfeit Americans. One American isn't less American than another. We're all real Americans whether we voted for John McCain or Barack Obama or didn't vote at all. I may think that voting for Sen. McCain was a bad choice, but those who did it are as real as I am. Those who don't vote may be accused of being lazy or irresponsible, but they are still real Americans. And those who joined me in voting for our President can't afford to think that those who didn't aren't real Americans.

Using labels like "real American" doesn't help us to solve the problems that this country faces. In fact, it makes the work of solving them a bit harder because, if those with whom we disagree aren't "real Americans," they have nothing of value to contribute to the political process and we can simply stop listening. Stop listening and miss out on the possibility that there are good ideas on the other side.

Thank You, Ellen DeGeneres!

2010-10-01T12:35:00.001-04:00

NIMBY - NOTE - BANANA

2010-10-01T12:03:00.002-04:00

During the years that I was Director of the Erie County Commission on Homelessness, I often ran into opposition to the siting of services. The cry of "Not in my backyard" was heard so often that some of us coined two additional acronyms: NOTE - not over there either; and BANANA - build absolutely nothing at or near anything.

NIMBY arguments have been heard here in Massachusetts recently in the debates over wind power. An opponent of a plan to build turbines near the Cape Cod Canal said that they shouldn't be built in anyone's backyard. Of course, no one was proposing to build them in her backyard at all, but only on some land nearby. I don't whether or not there are the health risks that she and other opponents cite as the reason for their opposition. What I do know is that there are health risks for all of us if we continue to use fossil fuels as much as we do. And I know that there are very serious health problems for people, especially children, who live close to coal-fired power plants and other polluters. These are facilities that should never have been built at or near anything.

The NIMBY arguments, whether about wind turbines or social service agencies, are entirely myopic. If wind turbines or social service agencies serve the common good, why shouldn't they be located near where I live, not in my backyard, which isn't big enough, but in my neighborhood? One of the costs of living in community is being willing to set aside personal interests for the good of the community.

Rivalry

2010-09-01T16:17:00.001-04:00

It seems to me that the temptation to define ourselves in opposition to or rivalry with others is a dead end. While I am sure that there are revisionists like me who define themselves as not-the-Anglican-Church-in-North-America, I see this oppositional definition frequently among those who have adopted the labels traditionalist and orthodox. In blog post after blog post there are attacks on the Episcopal Church, attacks which seem to me to part of a self-definition of not-the-Episcopal-Church.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, I have been told, declined to make any judgment about whether or not the Nazi-controlled church was a true church. He simply stated that he believed that in the Confessing Church one could see the three marks of the true church; the Gospel faithfully preached, the Sacraments faithfully administered, and the church's life faithfully ordered. It is these marks that I see in the Episcopal Church and I will make no judgment about the Anglican Church in North America.

In all the continuing debates within the Anglican world, we would do well to follow Bonhoeffer's example.

Being With

2010-08-30T09:48:00.008-04:00

For the past few years I have been reading quite of lot of the writings of two theologians, Douglas John Hall and James Alison. Hall is a Canadian and his theology could be described as Lutheran, although he is a member of the United Church of Canada. Alison is English and a Roman Catholic and his theology is deeply influenced by the work of French philosopher René Girard. As I have read these two I have looked for areas of agreement or convergence. Although there are probably many points about which these two would disagree, I have long sensed that there was much about which they do agree.

Reading Alison's latest book, Broken Hearts and New Creations: Intimations of a Great Reversal, I found this:

...it is inaccurate to talk about humans as if we have a 'self' within us which is just born that way,...and which then independently, and from out of its own resources, chooses to get in touch with rest of humanity. What we have is an intrinsically relational self.... (Page 162)

A relational self? That was something about which Hall was also very clear:

In the tradition of Jerusalem, however, the primary interest is not with various distinctive beings and the qualities that constitute them but rather their interrelatedness....To put it in a formulary way, being itself for this tradition is relational-is "with-being" (Mitsein). (Professing the Faith: Christian Theology in a North American Context, page 147)

I have become who I am because of the relationships in which I have shared, from the earliest relationships with my family to the wide variety of relationships that I now share. My being is, as both Alison and Hall assert, relational, with-being. And that is also, in the tradition of Jerusalem, true about God's being - God is Emmanuel, God-with-us. I have said many times, at the risk of being branded a heretic, that my reading of Scripture has led me to believe that God wants to be God only in relationship with us.

Being with presents us with some challenges, both in our more intimate relationships and in other less intimate but important relationships. Marriage, as I have pointed to couples, is not an extreme makeover operation. We are changed in marriage, but not because our spouses demand it, but because God works in that relationship, as God does in other relationships , to mature us. A problem arises in any relationship when one party insists on a specific change in the other in order for the relationship to continue. The problem isn't that such demands are always unreasonable, but is whether the specific demand can be met without damaging other important relationships.

It seems to me that Episcopalians face this kind of challenge. We have been blessed to be in relationships with Anglicans in many countries, but now many of those Anglicans are demanding that we change in order to continue those relationships. The specific change that is demanded of us is to reverse the course we have taken towards full inclusion of lesbian and gay members of the church, or what has been called sacramental equality for all members. Reversing course on this would damage what I count as very important relationships within the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion, as well as relationships with a wide variety of people outside the church.

I believe that many of us in the Episcopal Church have, to use a term from the Lutherans, bound consciences. We have, after careful study of Scripture, come to the conclusion that committed same-sex relationships can be holy and appropriate for the church to bless, and that persons in such relationships may be ordained. We believe that God has led us to this conclusion, although we recognize that we could be wrong, and that we are bound to this conviction unless and until we are convinced that we were wrong. I have listened to the arguments against this conviction and remain unconvinced. I would be very pleased if I could remain in communion with Anglicans who disagree with me about this, just as I was pleased to be in communion with Anglicans who did not share my pacifist convictions. Sadly this now seems impossible.

The Place of Shame

2010-08-24T20:32:00.001-04:00

I have been struggling for some time with the issue of sameness and difference, In an e-mail about a year ago, I suggested that trying to ignore cultural differences might be one stage in a process of assimilation and, perhaps, the assertion of hegemony. If we are all the same, the sameness must be the sameness of the dominant culture. But on the other hand, we are the same, we are all human, molded by cultures that, in spite of many important differences, are alike in defining themselves in rivalry with other cultures, in seeing reality as “us against them.”

It is that rivalry which, at its worst, leads to scapegoating and genocide, Ignoring our common humanity, the Other becomes the target of our hatred, the one on whom we project all the nasty bits of ourselves that we are unwilling to acknowledge. We begin to suspect that the presence of the Other is the reason why life isn’t perfect. If only we could get rid of the Other, life would return to the way it used to be, the way it was always meant to me.

We see signs of this in the growing xenophobia in this country, as well as in the still dominant heterosexism. The chief cause of all our problems is the presence of immigrants, not only undocumented ones, but also those who have permission to be here and those who have become citizens. Of course, the evil Other is not every immigrant, but only those who are not like us,. The chief threat to marriage and the family is not the infidelity of married heterosexuals, but the lesbian and gay persons who have been or want to be married.

In the death and resurrection of Jesus the Christ we are offered the possibility of living without rivalry. “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross.” (Philippians 2:5-8) We see Jesus occupying the place of shame on the cross, freeing us forever from the power of death, freeing us to seek peace, not by driving out the Other, not by killing the Other, but by being forgiven and becoming forgiving.

The President's Faith

2010-08-20T12:03:00.001-04:00

The other day, in a blog discussion about the President's decision not to join a church in Washington, someone commented, "That is because he's more comfortable in a mosque." I hope the President would be comfortable in a mosque, in a synagogue, in a Christian church. But the comment was not about the President's ability to be present in a wide variety of places. It was about the weird notion that this President, an adult convert to the Christan faith, isn't a Christian, and the frightening subtext of the comment appears to be that it is alright to be prejudiced against Muslims, in the same way that it once was, in many places, alright to be prejudiced against Roman Catholics or Jews. I lived as a very young child in a suburban community where it was impossible for a Jew to buy a home. I didn't know that until a half-century later when a Jewish friend told me that the reason she had grown up in a neighboring town was because her family couldn't buy a home in the town where I had lived.

Standing up to prejudice against Muslims, as New York's mayor did in his remarks about the Islamic center controversy, doesn't mean being uncritical about actions of some Muslims. In fact, we need to be honest about our assessments of the actions of all our neighbors, not scapegoating any of them, but holding them to same standard to which we are held. It is, I think, appropriate for New Yorkers to say that they would rather the Islamic center be built somewhere else, but is entirely inappropriate to insist that that point of view trump the desire and the rights of those building the center. There are many things in life that I would rather not have to endure, but it would be childish of me to insist that those things be banned.

The question of the President's faith raises another question: is having a religious faith essential to success in politics? The Constitution, in Article VI, section 3, is clear that "no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States." That's the Constitution, but it seems that having no religious faith would be an almost insurmountable obstacle to political success.

The First Amendment

2010-08-18T15:18:00.003-04:00

I sometimes wonder how some people can miss the point entirely. The current controversy over the building on an Islamic center a few blocks from the World Trade Center is one of those times.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

While the first section of this First Amendment to the Constitution originally only applied to the federal government, by the middle of the 20th century the Supreme Court had ruled that both the anti-establishment and free exercise guarantees applied to the states as well. Given the free exercise guarantee, why are people trying to block the Islamic center? Because they think that the guarantee only applies to them? Because they don't see that restricting other people's freedom means that their freedom is at risk? Because they think that their being offended by the proximity of the center to the WTC should be reason enough for the center's organizers to scrap their plans?

Near the end of the movie The American President, President Shepherd makes a telling comment about Senator Rumson's attacks on him for belonging to the American Civil Liberties Union. Shepherd said that he realized that he had been wrong to think that Rumson didn't get it. The reality was that Rumson couldn't sell it. I think that maybe that's true about those who oppose the Islamic center. Yes, they understand the First Amendment guarantees, but opposition is so much easier to sell. As President Shepherd said earlier in that scene, America is advanced citizenship. It's hard work, the hard work of defending the rights of people who are very different from us, people who hold opinions that offend us, even people who do terrible things. It's the hard work of my realizing that those who are speaking out against the plans for the Islamic center have a right to do that and my defending that right. President Shepherd was right that it's advanced citizenship and I worry that we might not pass the course.

The Numbers

2010-08-15T12:20:00.000-04:00

In my occasional visits to conservative blogs in the Anglican world, I have found comments about the drops in the average Sunday attendance in the Episcopal Church, comments that assert that these are evidence that the "revisionist" position of the Episcopal Church is wrong. popularity become evidence that one was following Christ?

I think the focus on - perhaps obsession with - numbers is an indicate that we are embracing, not the theology of the Cross, but the theology of glory. Success as the world measures it - in market share, in growth in budgets - is not what Jesus was about. Paul put it succinctly in his letter to Christians in the most powerful city in the world:

Don't let the world around you squeeze you into its own mould, but let God re-mould your minds from within, so that you may prove in practice that the plan of God for you is good, meets all his demands and moves towards the goal of true maturity. (Romans 12:2, Phillips translation)

While it was comments by conservatives that set me to thinking about the numbers game, I am well aware that revisionists like me are as prone to play the game as anyone. We are being called, I believe, to be communities in the diaspora, communities that are no longer the dominant cultural and religious ones in the United States. We are being called to live faithfully, discerning as best we can God's will for us, and not worrying about whether we are winning any popularity contests.

Incardination

2010-08-13T16:03:00.000-04:00

Although the term is from the canon law of the Roman Catholic Church, incardination is a good word to use when any Christian moves from one place to another. In my case, it was moving from East Aurora, a village in Western New York, to Danvers, a town in Massachusetts. In East Aurora I had some sense of what it meant to be a Christian, an Episcopalian, and, as the English would say, a Clerk in Holy Orders. Here in Danvers I will have to work that out or, more accurately, discover it, have it shown to me. I will, if I want to preside and preach regularly, have to be licensed by the Bishop of Massachusetts. But preaching and presiding is not all that there is to being a presbyter, and being a Christian, one who is "sealed by the Holy Spirit in Baptism and marked as Christ's own for ever," is a vocation all by itself. So the work of discerning how to be in this new place, how to be incarnate here may take some time. There will be others involved in the discerning - my wife, our daughter and son-in-law and their eleven-month-old daughter, old and new colleagues and friends, and some perfect strangers. I can trust that God will use all of these people to teach me how to be me in this new place.

Boundaries

2010-08-01T10:02:00.000-04:00

There have been on some conservative blogs in Anglican cyberspace assertions that the Episcopal Church's Presiding Bishop has denied the divinity of Christ and the resurrection. I responded to the challenge to read a very lengthy analysis of some of the Presiding Bishop's statements. The writer of that analysis concluded that while Bishop Jefferts Schori had not actually denied that Jesus is divine or rose from the dead, her statements could lead - by what I saw as a convoluted path - to an implicit denial of the two doctrines.

The assertions raise the question of how much theological diversity is possible within the Episcopal Church. It seems obvious that there are boundaries, that there are theological positions that are out-of-bounds. However the discerning of exactly where the boundaries are is not simple. Thoughtful and faithful Episcopalians will disagree about whether a way of understanding the atonement or the person of the Christ is beyond the boundaries. I have, for example, been told that my rejection of Anselm's theory of the atonement puts my understanding of the atonement out-of-bounds.

I recognize that others have in their minds placed the boundary for theological diversity where I wouldn't and that there will always be arguments about boundaries. My hope is that we can recognize these differences, not as matters of bad faith, but as honest disagreements among sisters and brothers in Christ, disagreements that need no lead to separation, but to continued discussion and, perhaps, deeper respect for one another,

Free Speech - Again

2010-07-28T13:51:00.001-04:00

Our very smart son-in-law pointed out that the idea of a corporation as a person is enshrined in federal law, but he also provided a quote from Thomas Jefferson that indicated his concerns about the role of corporations in this nation:

I hope we shall... crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations which dare already to challenge our government in a trial of strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.

Even though I am wrong in my inclination to refuse to give corporations the rights of persons, I think I'm right that the speech which is protected under the Constitution is primarily public speech and that the protection is not absolute. Private speech generally needs no protection and it is the right to speak in the public square that needs protection. But protected speech doesn't mean speech without consequences. Just as the private speech of a child who swears at his parents will certainly have consequences, so the public speech of persons or corporations should not be without consequences. Target, in its support of a pro-business candidate who opposes gay marriage, has learned that its protected speech may have serious consequences. Will I be willing to continue shopping at Target? I haven't decided yet, but losing customers is a possible consequence of that protected speech.

The framers of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights were not, I believe, concerned to protect anonymous speech. Corporations, given the recent Supreme Court decision, are free to speak by supporting political candidates, but I believe that that speech should not be anonymous.

Campaign Finance and Free Speech

2010-07-27T20:41:00.001-04:00

I don't know enough about the campaign finance bill that was blocked by a filibuster today to know whether it was good legislation or not. However the comments of some of the opponents of the bill were, in my opinion, pure hogwash. How, I would ask some of these men who work for us, is requiring corporations and unions to disclose their political contributions a violation of free speech? (And I won't even ask the question of how the constitutional protection of a person's right to freedom of speech got extended to corporations.) I value my freedom of speech, but inherent in that valuing is my willingness to be open and honest about my convictions and opinions. I do not post anonymous comments on other blogs and I have no problem with those who read this blog knowing who and what I am. If corporations are so ashamed of the political speech they support with their money, what does that say about the integrity of those corporations and those who run them?

The Divinity of Jesus Revisited

2010-07-26T13:20:00.001-04:00

There have been a few responses – here and on Facebook – to my previous post. MadPriest – one of my favorite bloggers – commented on the problem of dualism, “the splitting of the spiritual and the bodily” which leads to seeing matter as inferior to spirit. Dualism is not part of the tradition of Jerusalem, but of Athens, and the witness of the Scriptures is that matter is good. The Christian's hope for eternal life is not for a disembodied life, but for the resurrection of the body."

Another comment focused my thinking on the question of the two natures of Jesus the Christ. Again I see the underlying problem with much of our Christology as a dependence on substantialistic philosophical language. Again its the tradition of Athens that has led us to think in terms of being, rather than of being-with, which is the tradition of Jerusalem. “Does Jesus have two natures?” is wrong question, or, at least, a question that we can't answer. The questions that we can answer are, “Is Jesus one with us in our humanity?” and “Is Jesus Emmanuel God-with-us?” The apostolic witness, with no mention at all of two natures, was that in this human person they met God. In some way, which they could not explain, Jesus was the revelation of the God of Israel, the one true God. We try to explain that at our peril and always get it more or less wrong. We shouldn't stop thinking about God, stop reading and writing theology, but we need to be willing to see where some theology might lead us astray.

What seems to me to be lost in much of the talk about the divinity of Jesus, is that Jesus was – and is – theocentric. The man we meet in the Gospels was centered upon God, upon Abba. He pointed not to himself but to Abba, and unless our Christology is theocentric, rather than christocentric, we are missing the point. Seeing Jesus as the one who perfectly represents God to us and us to God is, I think, much more helpful – and faithful to Scripture – than the two natures Christology. Representation is relational, and not substantialistic, and the Good News is about God's desire to be in relationship with us. While it may border on heresy, my reading of Scripture has led me to believe that God wants to be God only in relationship with us and with all creation. Or, as my friend Fr. Aaron Usher used to say, Jesus invites us to get intimate with the ultimate.

The Divinity of Jesus

2010-07-25T13:42:00.001-04:00

I read conservative blogs from time to time, especially ones that address issues in the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion. On some of those blogs there have been assertions that the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church doesn't believe in the divinity of Jesus. Although I have to yet see anything close to clear proof of those assertions, they does raise an important concern for me: the implicit denial by many Christians in North America of the humanity of Jesus.

Biblical scholar Walter Brueggemann has suggested a very challenging way of understanding Micah 6:8:

He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?

According to Brueggemann, we must walk humbly with God because that is the way that God walks with us, not only in the person of Jesus, but throughout the story of God's relationship with the Hebrew people.

In North America, we have so frequently focused on the omnipotence of God that we have nearly lost sight of the Good News of God's power being manifested most perfectly in the humiliation of Jesus on the Cross. We like an all-powerful God, largely because we like to think of ourselves as powerful, as masters of our own lives. We defend the divinity of Jesus, as if anything about Jesus needed defending, because we want an all-powerful Savior on our side. And having formed in our minds an image of this all-powerful Savior, we run the risk of seeing Jesus as not really human, not really one of us, not really one with us.

Christian faith, if is true to the witness of Scripture, is faith in a human person, Jesus of Nazareth. This is the person whom I trust, the one in whom I believe God has been revealed fully. This is the one who, far from being experienced by his disciples as all-powerful, was content to be weak and humiliated out of love for us. This is the one whose humanity we deny at our peril.

Tea Party?

2010-07-20T11:15:00.001-04:00

I have made it a habit to refer to people and groups by the name which they prefer. However, I do reserve the right to comment on the appropriateness of the name that groups choose.

Growing up in Massachusetts, I heard the story of the Boston Tea Party when I was in school. How much of what I heard was entirely accurate, I can't say. What does seem to be true about that Tea Party is that it was a somewhat risky venture. The participants could have ended up in prison. It was also a protest against the levying of taxes on colonists who had no representatives in the Parliament.

Today's Tea Party movement shares neither of these characteristics with the Boston Tea Party. Participating in this movement carries no risk of imprisonment and the taxes which these Americans don't like were levied by their representatives. There can be no cry of "Taxation without representation is tyranny" from these tea partiers. There problem is not tyranny, but their own failure to elect to Congress enough people who agree with their agenda.

And what is that agenda? From where I sit, it appears to be simply anti-federalist. What this movement seems to want is a radical diminishing of the role of the federal government. To achieve the tax cuts that this movement appears to want, without cutting the defense budget, there would have to be major cuts in expenditures for such programs as Head Start, Medicaid, WIC, and Section 8 housing assistance. To follow the agenda that the tea patiers seem to me to advocate, might well lead to the abolition of the Departments of Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, and Education.

Of course, I am an alarmist, but there are times to sound an alarm, and this may be one of them. When I worked as the Director of the Erie County Commission on Homelessness, I often heard and used the phrase, "balancing the budget on the backs of the poor." I understand that the members of the Tea Party movement are, like most of us, experiencing some difficulties during the recession. I understand how common it is for people to look for someone to blame when things aren't going well. This nation is facing some serious problems, but laying the blame on the federal government and diminishing its role in our common life isn't the solution.

Race Still Matters

2010-07-18T19:07:00.005-04:00

Recently there has been a ripple or two of comments on the blogosphere about the NAACP's resolution asking the leaders of the Tea Party movement to condemn the racist signs and actions of some people in the movement. Movements are, of course, not always tightly organized and the leaders of the Tea Party movement can't control the actions of those who show up at rallies. But they can be clear in their condemnation of racist signs or actions.

As far as I know, there have been no such condemnations from the movement's leaders. In fact there have been assertions that the NAACP has made more money out of race that the slave traders ever did. There was also what its author, Mark Williams, described as a parody, a letter from the leader of the NAACP telling President Lincoln not to grant freedom to slaves because “Freedom means having to work for real, think for ourselves, and take consequences along with the rewards. This is just far too much to ask of us Colored People and we demand that it stop.” Williams, whom I believe to be one of the leaders of the Tea Party movement, removed the parody from his website after tea partiers were invited to meet with leaders of the NAACP. He removed it but, in explaining its removal, he did not apologize for writing and posting the letter, actions that I consider to be racist.

The white, middle-class members of this movement don't seem to get it. As they experience some pain during this recession, they seem to forget just how privileged they are. Unlike people of color, they will not be stopped by the police because of their skin color. They or their parents and grandparents haven't had the experience of being unable to buy a home or rent an apartment in some towns or neighborhoods because of the color of their skin.

Certainly people of color have not been the only targets of discrimination. “Irish need not apply” signs and other forms of discrimination were far too common at the end of the 19^th century. Fifty years ago I lived in a town where Jews couldn't buy homes. Racial and ethnic prejudice are still part of our common life and denying it, as the Tea Party leaders seemed to have done, doesn't help at all.

I hope that when the leaders of the Tea Party movement and the NAACP meet it will be an opportunity for the leaders of the Tea Party to get it, to understand the nature of their privileged status in this country and to see that race still matters.

Bishops Are Bishops

2010-07-14T12:44:00.001-04:00

The General Synod of the Church of England has decided to move ahead - slowly, to be sure - towards the ordination of women to the episcopate. During the Synod meeting a proposal from the two Archbishops was narrowly defeated. I don't fully understand the proposal, but I think that it would have provided that if a woman became your Bishop and you didn't believe that women could be Bishops, you would have the right to a male Bishop whose authority was not granted by the woman Bishop but by the Church of England. I think that's right, but it was a bit confusing. Without that provision, under those circumstances, the male Bishop would have the authority delegated to him by the female bishop.

The objections to this from Anglo-Catholic and Evangelical groups came quickly and there are predictions that many in the former group will head for Rome. While I have some sympathy for those who hold in conscience minority positions - after all my pacifist position has been a minority one - I find the logic of the objections a bit weak. If I held that it was impossible for a woman to be a Bishop, or in Holy Orders at all, why would I want to remain in a church which purported to have women Bishops? Wouldn't every action of such a church be suspect because women were exercising authority which they cannot have? Wouldn't the conscientious choice be to leave?

I don't want folks with whom I disagree to leave. It saddened me when parishioners left Saint Matthias Church after the General Convention consented to the ordination of Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire. It saddened me, but I realized that conscience made it impossible for these folks to belong to a church that had a partnered gay Bishop.

When I was struggling as a teen-ager with my pacifist convictions, I was very thankful for the support of one of my high school teachers who was a member of the National Guard. He accompanied me to a draft board hearing and assured them that, although he didn't agree with me, he recognized that my convictions were genuine. I hope that I can have the same attitude towards those who disagree with about the ordination of women, I will continue to pray for those sisters and brothers in the Church of England who struggle with this uncomfortable situation, as leaving or staying would both be difficult.

The Liturgy of Democracy

2010-07-10T13:08:00.003-04:00

It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried. (Winston Churchill)

I had the opportunity yesterday to speak to some young political campaign workers. I ended talking about the hard work of citizenship, work that far too many in this country don't even recognize as work that belongs to them, let alone work that they are willing to do. Liturgy, a word that now is used only in ecclesiastical circles, originally meant the public work of the people in sustaining the life of the city - the polis - and that meant politics.

Politics is the way in which we make decisions about our common life, and thus politics is far too important to leave to our elected officials. Voting is not the beginning and the end of our work as citizens, even though many of us don't even show up for that work. Engaging with elected officials between elections is one of the responsibilities of citizenship that is neglected by most of us. We can't be bothered or we think that our opinions don't matter and so, while we grouse to our friends about the decisions that are made in Congress or the state legislature, we never write or e-mail or call the people whom we elected to represent us. When we are silent, the voices that are heard are those of lobbyists and others who understand how to influence political decisions.

It doesn't take many calls or letters or even e-mails to get an official's attention. One Roman Catholic nun with whom I once worked said that twenty letters from constituents about an issue was a deluge. A legislator's staff member said that the phones had been ringing all day with calls about an issue - there were seventeen calls. We are mistaken if we think that legislators don't pay attention to the opinions of constituents. And we are dead wrong if we think that it isn't our responsibility to help shape the decisions that are made about our common life.

I heard someone said that serving others is the rent we pay for living on this earth. I agree and would add that active involvement with politics is the rent we pay for living in the United States.

Communities of the Diaspora

2010-07-09T15:06:00.001-04:00

In the final volume of his trilogy on Christian theology in a North American contest, Douglas John Hall quotes comments of Rabbi Dow Mamur of Holy Blossom Temple in Toronto about Christians and Jews meeting one another:

They often come from the same realization that our society is, alas, no longer dominated by Christianity but by the neo-paganism that goes under the name of secularity. Both Christians and Jews find themselves in the Diaspora; because of their history, Jews are better equipped to live in it.

Not long ago I spent an afternoon with a group of Bishops talking about want it is like to live in the Diaspora. It brought home to me the truth of how much we need each other - not for conversion but for comfort; not for politics but for testimony. This is, indeed, a time for all women and men of good faith to stick together.

While I am not at all sure that our North American societies were dominated by Christian faith, but rather by the ideology of Christendom, I think Rabbi Marmur is right that Christians have a great deal to learn from Jews about living in the Diaspora. In fact, I think that embracing our vocation as communities of the Diaspora is necessary if we are to be faithful. Nostalgia for the time when belonging to a church was normative in American society will do us no good. Even though there are mega-churches with thousands of worshippers each Sunday, if we are at all honest we know that churches and other religious institutions are no longer as important to society as thy were fifty years ago.

Living in the Diaspora involves hard work, the hard work of thinking about the Christian faith, about ethical decisions, about how our faith shapes our life in society. This is the kind of work that Jews have done for centuries, the work that was necessary if they were to avoid being crushed by Christendom. This is the kind of work that Christians need to do if we are to withstand the temptation of conformity to the world's standards. The Christian faith, like the Jewish faith, is counter-cultural. We are called to stand against the world for the sake of the world, to bear witness in the world to the Good News of God's love for the world. That has been, I believe, the witness of Jewish people for centuries. That is to be our witness now as marginalized communities of the Diaspora.

Companions on the Way of the Cross

2010-06-24T10:35:00.005-04:00

"Jesus set his face to go to Jerusalem." (Luke 9:51)

While we may not like it - do not like it - we Christians are called to follow Jesus on the Way of the Cross. Luther was right in rejecting the dominant theology of glory (theologia gloriae) and embracing the theology of the Cross (theologia crucis), but we are more likely to agree with Luther in theory than in practice. We may sing, "In the Cross of Christ I glory," but we are slow to embrace the demands of the Cross. We are reluctant to join Jesus in the place of humiliation. We are reluctant to accept the humiliation of the Church.

This is particularly true of Christians in the United States where we very much wish that the label that Jesus applied to the disciple community, little flock, wasn't true of our congregations. We want to be seen by the world as big and successful. We have ignored the admonition of Paul in his letter to the Church in what was then the world's super-power:

Don't let the world around you squeeze you into its own mould, but let God re-mould your minds from within, so that you may prove in practice that the plan of God for you is good, meets all his demands and moves towards the goal of true maturity. (Roman 12:2, Phillips translation)

We have let the world's ideas of success seduce us into believing that bigger is better, that a mega-Church is more pleasing to God than a faithful congregation of twenty-five. Margaret Mead was right when she said, "Never doubt that a small group of committed people can change the world. It’s the only thing that has."

And so these little flocks of faithful Christians are companions on the Way of the Cross. Companions, those who share bread, the Living Bread of the Eucharist and the Bread which is the Holy Scriptures. (In the tradition of Lectio Divina the meditative reading of Scripture is described as Feasting on the Word.) There is no room here for a privatized Christianity, we are fellow travelers, pilgrims together.

This is true not only for those little flocks who gather Sunday by Sunday for the Eucharist. It is also true for the whole Church - we are companions with people we will never meet this side of the Last Day. We are companions with people we like and with people we don't like, with people who share our convictions about important matters and those who don't, with people who embrace theologia Crucis and with those who cling to theologia gloriae. Following the Christ is, after all, a messy business!

When Jan and I lived in England, I was often struck by the realization that the Scriptures that I read and prayed in the Daily Office were the ones that friends back home were reading and praying. We were companions in spite of the thousands of miles between us. One Sunday, after we had returned to Massachusetts and I had been ordained as a presbyter, I was driving to preside and preach at one of the congregations in our area ministry. As I drove, I found myself praying for the other congregations in the area ministry, and then for other congregations - Baptist, Roman Catholic, Lutheran, Assembly of God, United Church of Christ, Methodist - as they gathered for worship. Found myself praying because what was happening to me was a gift and not some good work that I was doing.

This coming Sunday, June 27, will be the last Sunday that I spend as Rector of Saint Matthias Church. I have been blessed in more ways than I know by this congregation's sharing of its journey with me. The journey has not always been an easy one. Some of our sisters and brothers left the parish because of serious and important disagreements - and maybe some trivial ones as well. Others have joined us during these years and have enriched our life together. We are a smaller congregation than we were ten years ago, more of a little flock, and our dreams of becoming bigger have not been realized. But we have been what matters most, companions on the Way of the Cross, and we will continue to be that forever. Deo gratias!

Education, Health Care, and National Security

2010-06-24T09:24:00.001-04:00

Recently I heard a retiree say that she was moving from New York to escape the high taxes. I am sympathetic to that, but it raises again for me a question about tax policy in the United States. I have long believed that services that were of vital interest to the nation ought to be completely or chiefly paid for with federal tax dollars. I would put health care and education in this category because I think both are matters of national security. When most people lived their lives in or near the community where they were born, it might have made sense to pay for education and health care locally. With such a highly mobile population, it makes no sense to leave these vital matters to localities. When someone is raised in a community or a state where public education is inadequate and moves to another state, it is the other state that will continue to bear the burden of that inadequate education in ways to numerous to mention. Or when a child grows up with inadequate health care and then as an adult moves, it will be the new community and state that bears the cost of dealing with the poor health of that person. Until we decide to fund the lion's share of these vital services at the national level, we will continue to have regional health care and educational inequality. And that is a matter of national security.

Failure to Communicate?

2010-06-22T11:29:00.003-04:00

In February 2008 the Archbishop of Canterbury gave a lecture at the Royal Courts of Justice, "Civil and Religious Law in England: a Religious Perspective." Much of the lecture dealt with the question of a possible recognition of some elements of Islamic law in England. Prior to the lecture, Dr. Williams said in an interview on BBC that the adoption of certain elements of Islamic law "seems unavoidable." That comment, perhaps more than the lecture itself, was labelled by Nigeria's Archbishop Peter Akinola as “most disturbing and most unfortunate."

Reflecting on that now almost forgotten controversy and on recent comments about the "American exceptionalism" of the Episcopal Church, I was reminded of a line from the movie Cool Hand Luke: "What we've got here is failure to communicate." I think that one of the central problems within the Anglican Communion is our seeming lack of awareness of the contexts in which others in the Communion are living. Was Dr. Williams not aware that any positive comments about Islamic law would not be well received by Anglicans who experience that law as oppressive in their own countries? And if he was aware, how did he communicate with Archbishop Akinola and others that his positive remarks should be understood as contextual, as appropriate in the English context, and not as in any way applicable in the context of, for example, Nigeria? And how aware was Archbishop Akinola of the English context and of the nature of the relationships between Christians and Muslims there?

Actions taken by the Episcopal Church during the past ten years have not been well-received in many churches of the Communion. In some places they have been seen as creating serious problems for relationships between Anglicans and other religious communities. To some extent, I see the problem as a lack of awareness - what one might call a lively awareness - among leaders in the Episcopal Church of the contexts of others in the Communion and how this church's actions might have an effect on them. I see also an apparent lack of awareness in other churches of the Communion of the North American context, the context in which the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada seek to live faithfully.

The challenge to the member churches of the Communion is not only to cultivate a lively awareness of the contexts in which other churches seek to live faithfully, but also to communicate with other churches in ways that honor that faithfulness. What might have been the response from other churches if the Episcopal Church, before it took controversial actions, had assured other churches that we understood that our actions might have a negative effect for many of them, but that the actions seemed right to us in our context, and that we were committed to supporting them as they dealt with those negative effects? I am not so naive to believe that any statements of that sort would have been universally received as enough to maintain unity in the Communion, but I do believe that such statements, far better than statements after the fact, would have been an indication of the Episcopal Church's deep desire to remain in relationship with all the churches of the Communion.

Too Many Voices

2010-06-19T13:32:00.001-04:00

In the Gospel reading for Sunday, June 20 we hear Jesus ask a man who had demons for his name. The man replied, "Legion." There were as many as 5,000 soldiers in a Roman legion, and the man's response suggests that there was a cacophony of voices in his head. Too many voices - like too many cooks - san lead to confusion, even disaster.

We live in a time of many competing voices - in politics, in ads, in the Episcopal Church. It seems that everyone has the Truth about something that is very important. Like the man with the Legion of voices competing for his attention, we may want to turn off all the voices, to find, as Elijah did in the reading from the Hebrew Scriptures for June 20, the place where we can hear the still small voice, the sound of sheer silence, the place where God can speak to us.

That desire is real and important. We need to find places and times of silence, but we also need to listen to at least some of the voices all around us. God has a funny way of speaking to us through others, even through - or perhaps especially through - those with whom we disagree, those whose voices we would like to silence, or at least ignore. Listening to those voices may well lead to revelation. Rowan Williams, before he became Archbishop of Canterbury, said that revelation for God's people is not simply about new information, but about new information that transforms us. Revelation is Good News.

A few years ago I was talking with two friends about how we listen for God's voice in our congregations. As we talked I shared a story about a discussion of human sexuality that had taken place in our congregation soon after the confirmation of the election of Bishop Gene Robinson. I described how angry one of the older conservation members had appeared as other members disagreed with him. One of my friends then said something that was a revelation, something that changed me. She suggested that this man - and perhaps others - was grieving for the loss of a church in which his opinions would be greeted not only with respect but with agreement. I began to see that sympathy for this man's loss did not require agreeing with him about human sexuality. I hoped that, recognizing his loss, I might be able to have a better relationship with him. Sadly, through my fault as much if not more than his, that didn't happen. But my friend's insight changed me a little and has made me a bit more sensitive to the grief of others as the Episcopal Church changes. I can support those changes without dismissing those who disagree, those who mourn for the loss of the way things were in the Episcopal Church.

That conversation with my friends was a time and a place where for a moment I could hear the sound of sheer silence, the still small voice of God.

An End to Debate?

2010-06-17T11:29:00.002-04:00

On another blog I posted a comment about my hope for the Anglican Communion:

I understand that there are many in the Communion who are upset that TEC acted on its discernment about the election of two bishops and has made some allowance for dioceses to act on their discernment about same-sex relationships. I don’t expect - nor do I think most Episcopalians who share my convictions on this matter do either - that other Anglicans will accept TEC’s actions as consistent with Anglican teaching. I continue to accept that TEC may be removed from the Communion because of actions which I fully support. What I had hoped for - perhaps naively - was that we could continue to be in communion with one another in spite of this serious disagreement. We have managed that with disagreements about other unresolved issues - including the ordination of women - and I hoped that we could live with this disagreement as well. In that hope there was no insisting that others accept TEC’s actions as good, no demand that any member church recognize Gene Robinson or Mary Glasspool - or Katharine Jefferts Schori - as bishops. There was only the hope that we could continue to work together as Anglicans, sharing our common commitments in mission, and engaging in a continuing conversation about human sexuality.

This brought the following comment from a conservative cleric:

TEC has ceased the discussion and ended the debate by its actions.

The fact that the debate goes on on that blog and elsewhere calls this cleric's assertion into question, but the cleric is right that for some Anglicans the discussion is over. In fact, for some Anglicans any serious discussion of human sexuality never began. The Episcopal Church did not end the debate. Some Anglicans decided to respond to our actions by withdrawing from the discussion, but that was their decision and not ours. Our actions did not create the reactions of others, and adults don't blame others for their own decisions. In the words of President Andrew Shepherd, "We have serious problems to solve and we need serious people to solve them."

What Is One To Do?

2010-06-15T10:18:00.003-04:00

Over at the Covenant blog I posted some comments in a thread, "You Can Be Right or You Can Be in Relationship" The thread was started by a priest for whom I have great respect, Fr. Nathan Humphrey, and his post is well worth reading. Here is part of one of my posts:

I disagree that those of us in TEC who want to remain in relationship with siblings with whom we disagree are demanding that our “vision of biblical interpretation and discernment is considered right and good” by others. No one has to agree with me to remain in relationship with me.

A few hours later someone responded to my post and began with these words:

You are insisting that the rest of the communion change its teaching such the status of homosexual sex is not part of the adiaphora of the Church.

Aside for the fact that the sentence is badly written, something which is true about many of the sentences in my posts, this brother in Christ has misunderstood or - could it be? - willfully mischaracterized my position. Reading such comments I wonder if it is possible for Anglicans to have reasoned conversations about sexuality or any other controversial issue.

A Picture Is Worth....

2010-06-09T11:38:00.001-04:00

Thanks to Jim Simons at Three Rivers Episcopal for what Jon Stewart might call a moment of Zen.

Special?

2010-06-08T11:08:00.001-04:00

Over at Preludium Mark Harris has posted a thought-provoking piece, What Makes the Episcopal Church so "Special" in the Archbishop's Eyes? I think Mark is right and that there is something very odd about the decision of the Secretary General of the Anglican Communion to dismiss only representatives of the Episcopal Church from the various committees that the Archbishop mentioned in his Pentecost letter. That decision raises a question about whether the problem is violating the moratoria recommended in the Windsor Report or something else. Perhaps, as Mark suggests, the real problem is that the Episcopal Church broke an unwritten moratorium by electing as its Presiding Bishop and Primate a woman. Misogyny is not a stranger in the Anglican Communion - nor in the Episcopal Church - and it seems to me that there are some fairly clear links between sexism and heterosexism. Patriarchy dies hard and at least some Patriarchs (Primates?) may want to keep women and LGBT sisters and brothers in the kitchen and in the closet.

It's All Grace

2010-06-08T10:38:00.001-04:00

From time to time I have serious problems with the shorthand that people use for Paul's central theological point. Justification by faith can be misunderstood and people can fool themselves into thinking that it is their faith that justifies them, thus turning faith into another work. While Paul did himself use that shorthand ("justified by faith in Christ" in Galatians 2:16), we need to guard against pulling the phrase out of the larger context of Paul's theology. In Romans 3:22-24, we can read a fuller exposition of Paul's understanding of Paul's understanding of justification: "For there is no distinction, since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus."

All have sinned. It's all Grace.

In the Lord of the Rings there is an interesting reflection of the theology of Grace. During the long and difficult journey to Mordor and Mount Doom, Frodo Baggins comes to see that his unwelcome travelling companion, Gollum, is more like him and other hobbits than he had originally thought. Although Smeagol's humanity had been corrupted by his love for his Precious - and by the evil of the Dark Lord who forged that ring - Frodo could see in Gollum the vestiges of the humanity of Smeagol. Having sought to be more by stealing the ring from his cousin, Smeagol had become less than fully human.

The same thing happens to us when we sin and fall short of the glory of God. Perhaps, like Adam and Eve, we want to become like God, or, again like Adam and Eve, we let someone else do our thinking for us, but whether our sin is pride or sloth, it corrupts our humanity and alienates us from God and one another and the creation. And there is nothing that we can do about it.

Grace happens.

Although we can never justifiy ourselves, never reconcile ourselves to God or one another or God's creation, God can, has, will. It's pure gift with no strings attached. All we have to do is accept the gift, surrender to God's love, trust Jesus. That sounds simple, even easy, but surrender is difficult for us. We want to earn our way, to be deserving of the gift, perhaps even to yield to the temptation to thnk of ourselves as better than others because we've been saved. But if have been saved, one of the things that we've saved from is the arrogance of thinking that we are better than other sinners. And one of the things that we have been saved for is community with other sinners, not only those who are receiving the gift of Grace, but also all those who have yet to surrender to Love Incarnate.

The Germans have a word for it - as usual. It's mitsein, being with. The glory of God, as Irenaeus asserted, is humankind fully alive. We see that glory in Jesus, but it isn't about talents or gifts or abilities but about relationships, about being with, about mitsein. Jesus reveals to the world that God is an accompanying God, One who desires to be in relationship with us, One who, I believe, wants to be God only in relationship with us. Created in the image of God, reconciled by the Cross, we are given the Grace to live in right relationship with all creation. It is the gift that we need to accept and unwrap and enjoy. It is the gift that Paul was pointing to when he wrote to the community in Rome: "For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God...." (8:19) In the words of the African-American poet June Jordan, "we are the ones we have been waiting for."

The Final Four

2010-06-08T09:36:00.003-04:00

I decided last week to use my final four Sunday sermons at Saint Matthias Church to lay out what I think are four essential characteristics of the Church. I think that the four are clearly discernible in the texts for the Sundays in the Revised Common Lectionary, although one could draw other characteristics from the texts. On this past Sunday, reflecting on the story of Elijah and the widow of Zarephath, the sermon was about the Church as a Community of Welcome. God willing and the creek don't rise, the three remaining sermons will be about the Church as a Graced Community, the Church as a Listening Community, and the Church as a Community of Companions on the Way.

The Presiding Bishop Responds to the Archbishop of Canterbury

2010-06-03T11:43:00.001-04:00

In a Pastoral Letter to the members of The Episcopal Church, Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori has commented on the Archbishop of Canterbury's Pentecost Letter to the Anglican Communion.

I think Bishop Katharine's letter expresses very clearly two characteristics that I have always believed to be written into the DNA of Anglicanism: the ability to hold in communion members with profound disagreements on important matters; and an awareness that we may be wrong in our reading of Scripture and our discernment of the Spirit. This latter characteristic is, perhaps surpisingly, affirmed, at least by implication in the Articles of Religion. Article XIX states, "As the Church of Jerusalem, Alexandria, and Antioch have erred: so also the Church of Rome hath erred, not only in their living and manner of ceremonies, but also in matters of faith." Anglican humility would suggest that this assertion can be made about all Churches, including our own and the other member Churches of the Anglican Communion.

The Bishop of California Responds to the Archbishop of Canterbury

2010-06-02T09:35:00.002-04:00

Bishop Marc Andrus of the Diocese of California has posted on his blog, Bishop Marc: on contemplation and living for justice, a response to Archbishop Rowan's Pentecost letter. There have been comments from many people about the Archbishop's letter, but I find the brevity and clarity of Bishop Marc's response refreshing.

Why Not Leave?

2010-06-01T10:14:00.000-04:00

A question was posed recently at Mark Harris's blog Preludium to those who support the blessing of committed same-sex unions and want the Episcopal Church to remain a member church of the Anglican Communion:

Why not following the leading of the Holy Spirit you are hearing and sever ties with those who do not hear the Holy Spirit saying this but indeed its opposite?

While I have stopped arguing with people about same-sexuality (see The Discipline of Silence), this is a question that deserves an answer. I can see two reasons to stay in communion with those with whom we disagree about this issue.

They are sisters and brothers in Christ with whom we share a common tradition within the Church. While we disagree about what it means to be Anglicans, we all are. But beyond this admittedly absract connection, many Episcopalians have friendships of long-standing with Anglicans who disagree with them about same-sex relationships. Those friendships are of great value and we are unwilling to abandon them.
I am aware that I might well be wrong about same-sex unions. I have come to my convictions about them through study, prayer, and conversation with other Christians. I don't think that I'm wrong, but I am honest enough to admit that possibility. Remaining in communion with sisters and brothers with very different convictions about the issue holds out the possibility that I will discern the Spirit's leading more faithfully and see where I am wrong. Having remained in communion with Episcopalians who aren't pacifists, as I am, has been a very good thing, good in ways that I don't even see. I trust that reamining in communion with Anglicans who are convinced that I am wrong will also be a very good thing.

I continue to pray that the Anglican Communion will find a way to live with diversity of convictions on this issue as we have on other ethical issues. I am not naive enough to think that this is likely, but I live in hope.

The Dance

2010-05-29T13:12:00.001-04:00

I am the first to admit that I am a hopeless romantic. I like books with happy endings, books like Pride and Prejudice, and am much less favorably disposed to books, like Tess of the D'Ubervilles, where the possibility of a happy ending is always just out of reach. In reading Pride and Prejudice for the first time earlier this year and in watching the 2005 movie adaptation of the novel, I was struck by how important balls were to the characters. These people loved to dance and, if the movie was at all a reflection of reality, they all knew how to dance very well.

I don't dance well. I once knew how to waltz, thanks to an eccentric junior high music teacher and a recording of Strauss waltzes, but I haven't waltzed in decades. I used to go square dancing with friends when I was in high school and I even learned to call a few dances, but I haven't done that in more than forty years. Even though I don't dance well, dancing still fascinates me. The ball scene in Pride and Prejudice and Gene Kelly's dancing in puddles in Singin' in the Rain are among my favorites.

Dancing is about relationships. Even Kelly's solo performance in Singin' in the Rain is an expression of the joy that Don Lockwood is experiencing in his relationship with Kathy Selden. It is no wonder then that the metaphor of dancing has been used by theologians to describe the Trinity. Beginning with Gregory of Nazianzus in the 4th century, perichoresis has been a word used to describe the relationships within the Trinity. The word can be translated as a round dance suggesting that the relationships of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are not static but dynamic, fluid like the movements in a dance.

In the Incarnation, the Triune God has invited us to join in the dance, to "participate in the divine nature," (2 Peter 1:4) and "to be filled with all the fullness of God." (Ephesians 3:19) This dance is not a solo performance, nor even a dance that is just God and me. It is a dance in which my partners are the members of the Body of Christ, first in its most local expression, but ultimately in its widest expression, drawing me into relationship with people I don't particularly like, with people whom I have hurt and who have hurt me, with saints in heaven and on earth. But is also a dance in which my partners are those of other faiths or no faith at all, as well as all creatures great and small, all creation. We are all part of the world which is beloved of God, of the creation which God calls good, the creation that is redeemed in Christ.

In this dance I am perhaps a bit less clumsy, but I still step on the feet of my partners. I still hurt people, by sins of commission and omission, and I still do harm to this wonderful creation, acting too often as if I am its owner and not simply a steward. The dance, to our joy, is not dependent upon us, upon our always getting the steps right. It is dependent upon God, it is a dance of Grace alone, and God invites us again and again to join the dance in faith.

Unity in Diversity, Not in Uniformity

2010-05-26T11:35:00.002-04:00

I often use the homily at the Wednesday Eucharist to think out loud about something that I think may be important. Today, as we commemorated Augustine of Canterbury, I tried to make some sense of unity in diversity, and especially of the limits on diversity within the Church. This is not only an issue for churches within the Anglican Communion, although that is the context in which it engages me.

I was asked recently if I would, were I to be serving on a diocesan Standing Committee, approve the ordination of someone in committed same-sex relationship when the majority of churches in the Communion would not approve. I didn't answer, chiefly because I find it hard to answer hypothetical questions which usually lack sufficient information for an intelligent answer. The question did get me thinking, once again, about how large a circle of approval a church needs. If we were to draw the circle to include the Roman Catholic Church, we wouldn't have women in holy orders or be able to allow divorced persons to marry without going through an annulment process which many Episcopalians find objectionable. Drawing the circle, as some have proposed, to include the churches of the Anglican Communion is certainly an option. That would mean that the Episcopal Church would refrain from any action which was not acceptable to the other churches in the Communion. That might not mean acceptable in the sense that all or a majority of the churches would act in the same way, but that the churches are willing to let the Episcopal Church act in that way.

That seems to me be the proposal which the churches of Communion must consider. Although I see the logic of this proposal, I am not willing to accept it. In reading today's lesson from the Gospel according to Luke (5:1-11), I had a thought about the "fishing for people" metaphor, a metaphor which I don't like much. I thought about the differences of equipment and technique between bass fishing and trout fishing. Different contexts require different approaches to fishing.

How we think about, profess, and confess the faith (to borrow from John Douglas Hall) has to be contextual or it will be as unfaithful and unfruitful as using the wrong equipment and techniques when fishing. There are, of course, limits to diversity, just as there are in fishing - dynamite is not acceptable fishing equipment - but uniformity is not the right goal. Unity that is rooted in love - and not in absolute agreement - is what God intends for the Church, unity that allows for the diversity that our diverse contexts require.

The Discipline of Silence

2010-05-25T11:54:00.005-04:00

Albert Einstein has had the following quote attributed to him:

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

I have been engaged, when I have had the time, in an on-line discussion of same-sexuality with some Episcopalians/Anglicans who do not share my convictions on the issue. We have found ourselves repeating arguments that had been unpersuasive in the past and, perhaps, expecting different results. The other day I said in a post that I was no longer going to contribute to the discussion and then posted another comment. One person, referring to the topic as the Hotel California topic, told me, "Sorry, Daniel. You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave."

Leaving a discussion, even a fruitless one, takes discipline, at least for me it does. I reconnected recently with someone I had know when I was an undergraduate. He had an office on campus and remembers me standing in the office door after meetings carrying on a coversation with him for ten or fifteen minutes. It was hard then, and it's hard now to leave a discussion. I think that there must be something more, something very wise that I still have to say. I want to have the last word. But my wisdom is not worth much and I never really have the last word. The only true wisdom is God's and God has the last word. My prolonging fruitless conversations strikes me as one more attempt to play God, to make myself the center of my own universe.

Several years ago I was singing the hymn "I want to walk as a child of the light" and I was brought up short by the words "the star of my life is Jesus." I suspect Kathleen Thomerson intended a celestial reference, but in that moment I saw it as a cinematic one. I want so much to be the star of the movie that is my life, but I believe that the only way for it to have a happy ending, a joyful one, will be if Jesus is the star.

I'll try to maintain the discipline of silence and let Jesus speak.

Pentecost

2010-05-22T20:27:00.003-04:00

The lessons appointed for Pentecost (Genesis 11:1-9; Acts 2:1-21; John 14:8-17, 25-27) led me to focus on two points in my sermon on Pentecost. The first, suggested by my reading of The Dignity of Difference by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, was that Pentecost doesn't undo the diversity of languages and cultures that are one focus of the Genesis passage. Rather, at Pentecost, that diveristy was embraced by the Spirit as each person heard the proclamation of the Good News in his or her native tongue. The second, suggested by my reading of Douglas John Hall's Professing the Faith, was that Pentecost comes in the wake of our defeats and failures and disappointments. The gathered disciples had experienced the apparent failure of Jesus' ministry, followed by the confusing experience of Resurrection, and waited for a promise which they could only trust would be fulfilled.

I was baptized on Pentecost/Whitsunday in 1950. My baptism, and that of my two older brothers, came in the wake of the failure of our parents' marriage. The promise of Baptism, that we are Christ's own forever, was one that our mother and our Godparents could only trust would be fulfilled. It is only by faith that we receive the gift of new life in Christ. It's all Grace. I cannot judge how well I have received that gift, but then I am still on the journey and God isn't finished with me. The best is yet to come.

My Manner of Life: Communion Instructions

2010-05-13T09:06:00.002-04:00

Lisa Fox at her blog has posted a wonderful piece:

My Manner of Life: Communion Instructions

The Danger of Universal Theology

2010-05-12T11:21:00.005-04:00

When I was a young priest I was reminded by my rector and mentor that the Catholic faith is that which has been believed everywhere, always and by all. I still think that this is a good definition, but I see a danger is an uncritical appropriation of this definition.

The danger is that we will mistake some theological formulation of the faith for the faith itself. In our attempt to avoid being "blown about by every wind of doctrine," we may find ourselves tied to theology of past generations, even past centuries, theology that fails in some measure to speak to our present contexts.

I believe that theology is always contextual, that it is the theologian's vocation to describe the faith as it is to lived in the theologian's time and place. To pretend, as some have appeared to, that any theology can be non-contextual, a pure theology for every time and place, is arrogant. To recognize that one's theological thinking is influenced by one's context, both personal and communal, leads, I think inevitably, to a modest presentation of one's theology and to a greater openness to new insights from theologians from different contexts.

Internet Hospitality

2010-05-11T10:16:00.007-04:00

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks relates a story from Stephen Carter’s book Civility in his book To Heal a Fractured World. Carter’s family moved into a previously all-white neighborhood in Washington, DC in 1966. As the 11 year-old Carter and his brothers were sitting on front step of their new home, none of their neighbors greeted them. As Carter was thinking that they shouldn't have moved into a neighborhood where they weren't welcome and would never have friends, a white woman walking on the other side of the street said “Welcome!” with a broad smile. A few minutes later she brought the boys a tray laden with drinks and sandwiches. That women, who was Jewish, knew the importance of hospitality.

I remembered that story recently during a conversation about the virtual world of the web. In an environment when many of the usual ways that we show hospitality to others are impossible, we are challenged to find new ways to make people welcome, to discover the virtual equivalents of a broad smile and Welcome! and drinks and sandwiches. It is not enough, I believe, to avoid being rude. After all, none of the passersby called the Carter brothers names. If this virtual world is to be a place of hospitality, we need to be imaginative.

This is especially true in forums where we discuss matters of some importance. If we want to have honest responses to what we write, we need to find ways to welcome others - those with whom we agree and, more importantly, those with whom we disagree. Among the unwelcoming behaviors that I have encountered are generalizations, e.g., all progressive Episcopalians deny the Resurrection, the imputing of motives, e.g., the Episcopal Church refuses to negotiate with departing congregations out of spite, and the attaching of labels to people that they did not choose for themselves. After months of being called a revisionist, I decided to embrace the label, but I would have rather not have had any label applied by those whom I continue to refer to as traditionalists. Finally, one of the behaviors that I find most troubling because of its frequency is the cryptic one-liner response to something I have written. These may have made the persons making them feel good, but they rarely contribute much to the conversation.

While this may not be the best or the only forum for a continuing discussion of internet hospitality, I invite comments and links to other places where this is being discussed.

A Reminder

2010-05-03T07:42:00.003-04:00

At Morning Prayer one day last week I was struck by the significance of the words of Jesus in the Gospel according to Matthew:

You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, ‘You shall not murder’; and ‘whoever murders shall be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment; and if you insult a brother or sister, you will be liable to the council; and if you say, ‘You fool,’ you will be liable to the hell of fire. So when you are offering your gift at the altar, if you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift. Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you are on the way to court with him, or your accuser may hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and you will be thrown into prison. Truly I tell you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny.

When we disagree with one another, especially about things that we care about very much, we often treat those with whom we disagree as the enemy. That may happen in the Church even more often than in other settings. We care about our faith and the communities that have nurtured that faith. Unless we are one of those who are content with "me and Jesus" and feel they have no need for a community's support in the journey, our churches mean a lot to us. And when members begin to disagree about important matters of congregational or denominational life, we can feel threatened. And when we feel threatened, we may forget Jesus' warning and call someone on the other side You fool!

Obedience to God requires listening. In the Episcopal Church and in the Anglican Communion (and other churches), there has been a fair amount of listening about human sexuality. Anglicans have come to different conclusions about whether committed same-sex relationships can have the Church's blessing. Faithful people on all sides of the debate believe that they have heard God's voice on this, but some of us have not been as faithful in listening for God's voice about how we are to treat the sisters and brothers with whom we disagree. I have at times refused to hear these words of Jesus and needed to seek his forgiveness and the forgiveness of those whom I have treated badly and needed God's grace to amend my life. I give thanks that God is faithful even when I am not.

The Good Shepherd

2010-04-27T12:16:00.008-04:00

I have been thinking a lot this past week about the Good Shepherd who is, paradoxically, the Lamb who was slain. In this past Sunday's sermon and in my sermon at Monday's Eucharist at the nursing home, I spoke about my own need for the Good Shepherd's leading. I am "prone to wander" and need each day to be drawn back to the One who in love claimed me when I was baptized 60 years ago and who has claimed me over and over again during the decades since then.

I have also been thinking about the ongoing conflicts within the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion and wondering about the connection between those conflicts and our relationship with the Good Shepherd. I have been coming to the sad conclusion that the Anglican Communion will break apart even further in the next few years. Churches in which I have friends will no longer be in communion with the Episcopal Church and I suspect that I would not be welcomed there as I was in the past. On all sides of the conflicts there are people who are convinced that they are following the leading of the Good Shepherd. I am clearly one of those people, but I have to admit that I could be wrong. Even though I don't think it is likely that the Communion can avoid schism, I still am hopeful about the future of Anglicanism.

"I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd." (John 10:16) We have usually heard these words in the light of the uniting Jews and Gentiles in the Body of Christ or as a sign of hope for the overcoming of the divisions between Christian denominations. However, it can also be a reminder that those who belong to different Anglican folds will be brought in by the Good Shepherd and united in one flock. If we remain hopeful that Methodist and Baptist and Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox Christians will be united in one flock, how much more can we hope for the uniting of now-divided Anglicans in one flock.

The Refusal of Finality

2010-04-14T22:32:00.004-04:00

Of the informing principles of theologia crucis that Douglas John Hall listed in the essay cited in my previous post, A New Name, the refusal of finality, is one that is often ignored these days. We are tempted, often sorely tempted, to treat our understanding of the faith as final. When we yield to that temptation we become idolatrous, elevating our understanding of God to the place which rightly belongs to God alone. We also marginalize within the faith community those who don't accept our understanding of the faith. As hard as it may be for people with strong convictions to refuse finality, we must do so, recognizing that as strong as our convictions are, we may be wrong.

A New Name

2010-04-13T09:34:00.003-04:00

As I prepare to retire this summer and move "back home" to Massachusetts, I have thought about possible new names for this blog. The Gospel in ToyTown will make no sense when I no longer am the rector of the Episcopal parish in ToyTown, East Aurora, New York. The new name - The Thin Tradition - is a reference to Douglas John Hall's characterization of the theology of the cross in his book Lighten Our Darkness. I have found Hall's work increasingly important during the past decade and have quoted him frequently in sermons and on this blog.

In The Theology of the Cross: A Usable Past, an essay which can be found on the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America website, Hall describes this thin tradition:

What is the theology of the cross? I have tried on many occasions, in both sustained argument and more metaphoric ways to describe this “thin tradition”—as I called it in my first book on the subject, Lighten Our Darkness. I know that I will never do justice to it because, to begin with, the theology of the cross is not an “it”—not a specific and objectifiable set of teachings or dogmas; not “a theology”—it is, rather, a spirit and a method that one brings to all one’s reflections on all the various areas and facets of Christian faith and life. I have never been able to improve on Moltmann’s metaphor when he says that the theology of the cross is “not a single chapter in theology, but the key signature for all Christian theology.” This is a theological approach that is not easy to pin down, as one can (with care) pin down terms like “orthodoxy,” or “neo-orthodoxy,” or “liberalism,” or “fundamentalism.” But theologia crucis as a spirit and method of theological thought cannot be stated in a formula. It may, however, be recognized when it is heard or experienced, whether in sermon, serious theological writing, or artistic expression.

Hall goes on to identify the Informing Principles of this Theology:

The Compassion and Solidarity of God
The Cross as World-Commitment
Honesty About Experience (Christian Realism)
The Contextual Character of This Theology
The Refusal of Finality

I continue to recommend Hall to colleagues and friends, while continuing to read Hall myself. (I am currently reading Professing the Faith, the second volume of a trilogy in which Hall addresses the future shape of Christian theology and life in North America.) For those not willing to tackle the trilogy, I recommend Lighten Our Darkness and The Cross in Our Context: Jesus and the Suffering World.

Doubting Thomas and the Community of the Spirit

2010-04-11T15:13:00.005-04:00

I was privileged in 2002 to watch part of the satellite downlink of that year's Trinity Institute, held at Trinity Church on Wall Street in New York City, just a few blocks from the World Trade Center. One of the two addresses that I heard was by Parker Palmer. In the question and answer period following his address, Palmer spoke of the need for community and identified two kinds of false communities that are present in our society. They are death-dealing counterfeits of the life-giving community that God wants us to experience.

The first false community is the kind in which everyone has to think alike, to adopt the party-line or they're out. We saw this in the Soviet Union with its Gulags for dissidents and we can see it in some Christian communities where members are required to adopt a particular interpretation of the Christian faith.

The second false community is the kind where you can believe anything you want because no one is really paying attention to you or taking you seriously. If you want to struggle with your doubts and fears, don't bother to do it in this kind of community, because no one really cares.

When Thomas came back to the community of the disciples after their Easter Say experince of seeing the Risen Chirst, he didn't find a false community which demanded that he accept Simon Peter's or anyone else's understanding of what had happened on Good Friday and Easter. Nor did he find a false community that didn't care if he had doubts. He found instead a community of unconditional love that accepted him as he was - doubts and all - and provided him a place where he could struggle with those doubts and come to faith.

Jesus had formed a community of unconditional love around himself in the months before his death by reaching out to all sorts of folks, even those who were unacceptable in the eyes of the religious establishment. When he breathed on his disciples on Easter, inviting them to receive the Holy Spirit, he gave them the power to create the same kind of community of unconditional love. And that's what they did, and it was that community that Thomas found when he met with the disciples.

We are called to be a community of unconditional love, to welcome all sorts of people with all of their doubts and uncertainties and to provide a space where together we can come to deeper faith.

Are we willing to be that kind of community?

Easter Joy

2010-04-04T07:31:00.000-04:00

Χριστός ἀνέστη! Ἀληθῶς ἀνέστη!

Domestic Terrorism

2010-03-25T10:30:00.008-04:00

I haven't heard anyone calling the violence and threats of violence against Democratic members of Congresss domestic terrorism, but they are. They are aimed at intimidating these elected officials, at making them think twice before taking principled but unpopular positions. And then there was the sign at a recent rally:

I am in favor of free speech, but when a sign suggests that a handgun is a way to achieve a political end aren't we dealing with a threat of violence, with domestic terrorism?

Theologia Crucis

2010-03-03T11:58:00.002-05:00

Jesus' prediction of his passion in today's Gospel (Matthew 20:17-28) is followed immediately by the request from John and James - through their mother - to be assigned the seats of honor in the kingdom.

Talk about missing the point!

But, of course, James and John and the rest of the twelve were not alone in missing the point. Theologia Crucis, the theology of the cross, is not nearly as popular as Theolgia Gloriae, the theology of glory. Robert Farrar Capon, whose books I began reading when I was a teenager, was right when he wrote about our rejection of the theology of the cross:

We crucify Jesus, not because he was and is God, but because he failed to come up to our expectations about how God should act. It’s not that we weren’t or even aren’t looking for a messiah; it’s just that Jesus wasn’t and isn’t what most people are looking for. Our kind of Messiah would come down from a cross not die on one. He wouldn’t do a stupid thing like rising from the dead. He would do the smart thing and never die in the first place.

For all sorts of reasons we don't want a God who suffers, preferring one who wields a powerful sword. That preference has led Christians in the US and elsewhere into embracing an unholy alliance between Christianity and patriotism, particularly the patriotism of empire. Another theologian, the Canadian Douglas John Hall, has pointed to the danger of that alliance and urged Christians to resist the temptations of the theology of glory:

What Christians faithful to the biblical and best traditions of the faith are required to do today is not to join the ranks of those who are trying to resuscitate the Theology of power and glory, but to bear witness in thought, word, and deed to the God who enters into the depths of human distress, failure, and despair, particularly, in our case, the despair of those who do not know how to admit despair.

And if all this seems a bit depressing, I want to bear witness to the joy that we share as we embrace the theology of the cross. So many Christians who focus upon the cross seem to be missing the point as well. Again I quote Hall:

The theology of the cross…is…first of all a statement about God, and what it says about God is not that God thinks humankind so wretched that it deserves death and hell, but that God thinks humankind and the whole creation so good, so beautiful, so precious in its intention and its potentiality, that its actualization, its fulfillment, its redemption is worth dying for.

The Incarnate Word of God, the Crucified One, comes to us bearing witness to the Truth - to himself as the revelation of God. Walter Brueggemann, commenting on Micah 6:8

He has told you, O mortal, what is good;
and what does the LORD require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God?

made what I found a wonderful assertion - we must walk humbly with God because that is how God walks with us.

Where I Stand

2010-03-02T16:47:00.004-05:00

I have not written much here about conflicts in the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion, although I have commented on other blogs, chiefly conservative ones. I think it may helpful to me – and maybe for others – to share my thinking more completely here than I have been able to do elsewhere. Although the disagreements in the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion are interrelated, I find it easier to address the specific issues one at a time.

Sacramental equality: I have come, over more than two decades of study and prayer, to the conviction that the Episcopal Church should widen its understanding of marriage to include same-sex unions. A key contribution to my own journey on this issue was Gray Temple’s Gay Unions. Prior to reading Temple’s book, I was making a distinction between marriage and same-sex unions. After reading it, it was clear to me that that distinction didn’t make sense, especially as I was meeting more same-sex couples who were raising wonderful children and who exhibited the kind of love that I have seen in married couples. More recently Tobias Haller’s Reasonable and Holy and his blog In a Godward Direction and the writings of James Alison have helped me to clarify my own thinking. I continue to read arguments against my position, but I remain unconvinced by them.

The authority of Scripture: Frequently those who disagree with me accuse me of not accepting the authority of Scripture. What is actually true is that I no longer accept what could be called “canonical” interpretations of Scripture. There were times in the Episcopal Church when the “canonical” interpretations of Scripture supported slavery or the barring of women from leadership within the Church. We have discarded interpretations which supported slavery and have been discarding those which supported patriarchy. In this I am glad to be call a revisionist because I believe the Church has to revise its thinking on same-sex unions just as it revised and is revising on these other issues.

The Anglican Church in North America: I am surprisingly pleased that many of those who have left the Episcopal Church have found a new home in ACNA. The isolation of some Anglican congregations was not healthy and I hope that ACNA can provide the kinds of healthy relationships between congregations and dioceses that we enjoy in the Episcopal Church. I think that it is not at all a bad thing for there to be an Anglican alternative to the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church in Canada. I have friends, some of very long-standing, who now belong to ACNA congregations and I pray for them and for those congregations. I am not at all sure about what kind of a relationship ACNA will have with the Anglican Communion, nor do I know whether the relationship of the Episcopal Church to other Churches in the Communion will be healed. What I do believe is that the Episcopal Church must be faithful to its own convictions even if that means no longer being a member Church of the Communion.

Property disputes: Living for the past twenty-one years in New York, the question of property disputes has hardly been an issue. State law is quite clear that parishes cannot leave the Episcopal Church. When members of an Episcopal parish want to leave, they can only do so as individuals, joining an existing congregation of some other denomination or forming a new congregation. I am sorry that law is not as clear in other states, but I think that the Canons of the Episcopal Church are clear on this and that, with very few exceptions, those who leave will have to abandon any claim on parish or diocesan property.

Saint Matthias

2010-02-24T11:30:00.005-05:00

Celebrating the patronal feast of our parish, I found myself thinking about several strands of the Good News communicated in the lessons for today.

The choosing of a subsitute for Judas points to the significance - for Jesus and for the apostolic community - of Twelve. Not merely as a parallel to the Twelve Tribes, but as a sign of fullness. As in the parables of sheep and coins, having the full number is important.
Whatever else may be said about Judas, it seems clear that he was unwilling to abide in the all-embracing love of Jesus. Perhaps he was unhappy that Jesus was willing to include in the community folks that Judas thought unworthy. Perhaps he saw what we often fail to see - that abiding in that love means walking the way of the cross.
When Paul wrote to the church at Philippi about those who were enemies of the cross of Christ, he wrote to them in tears. I hope that there were tears in the apostolic community over the loss of Judas, a companion with them during Jesus' ministry. I hope that our communities of faith grieve over those who have slipped away.

Solomon and Jesus

2010-02-10T11:41:00.003-05:00

I know that the weekday Eucharistic lectionary that we use works its way day by day through one of the Gospels and another book of the Bible. This week we are reading from I Kings and from Mark. Therefore, the odd placing together of today's reading about the Queen of Sheba's visit to Solomon's court and Jesus' teaching that it is what comes from our hearts that defiles us is pure accident. But was, I think, a providential accident.

We often have very conflicted attitudes towards worldly success and fame. Even though today's reading from I Kings assures us that Solomon's fame was due to the Name of the Lord, Solomon is seen in that book not only as a great king, but also as having been defiled by the desires of his heart. His desire to have many wives and to use marriage as a way to cement alliances with other kings led him into idolatry. The wealth and power that he acquired became a trap, not only for him, but for his son Rehoboam, who believed that he could do whatever he wanted and lost the support of the elders of Israel.

Jesus, in sharp contrast to Solomon, was, in the world's terms, an abject failure. But worldly success was not his goal. He came to do the will of the Father. As members of the Body of Christ we need to be very cautious about success. Certainly there are times when our success is a good thing, when increased membership in a congregation is a good thing. But success is not always a sign of faithfullness. Often it is quite the opposite. While we need to guard against the temptation to assume that our failures are signs of our faithfulness - a temptation which I have not always resisted - we need to be wary about our successes as well. We are called to be faithful, called to discern what is the Father's will for us, called to discern how God wants us to share in Christ's ministry of reconcilation, to share in the missio Dei. On the Last Day it will be faithfulness and not success or failure that will matter - and not primarily our faithfullness but God's. On the Last Day - and on every day until then - it is Grace that matters.

Telling Lies

2010-02-08T14:14:00.003-05:00

At our weekly lectionary Bible study, one of my colleagues observed that people's uninformed opinions seem to have become newsworthy. He said that whenever someone says, "I believe such and such to be true," it is almost impossible to have any rational discussion of the matter. That led to me to observe that in advertising obvious lies are becoming commonplace. One example is a recent health insurance ad which begins with the statement, "We have been talking with everyone on Medicare." Everyone? Certainly not likely. That is an exaggeration of such magnitude that I can have no confidence that any statement in the ad is true, nor any reason to do business with that particular company.

Telling lies and the elevation of one's opinion to the status of absolute truth are only two of the problems that make discussion of important issues in the "public square" so difficult. Another problem is the demonization of those with whom we disagree. Demonization is often packaged with other problems, as in the way President Obama has been demonized by those whose opinions about his birthplace or his religion are not open to factual challenges.

For me entering into any discussion of issues of importance, any issues where there are diverse convictions, requires both clarity about my own convictions and an awareness that I may be wrong. I can contribute little to the discussion if I am unable to be clear about where I stand, but I can get very little out of the discussion if I am unwilling to entertain the possibility that my convictions may in some measure be wrong. If I listen to the other person only in order to find weak points that I may exploit in debate, I miss the possibility of having my own understanding of the issue deepened and, perhaps, my own convictions changed.

I am not optimsic about our chances of having rational, respectful, and fruitful discusssion of difficult issues like same-sex marriage or health insurance reform, but I am not willing to give up hope or to stop talking and listening. While these important conservations have not and will not be easy ones, I think we have no choice but to tackle the important issues with as much honesty and respect and patience as we can muster.

The Feast of the Presentation: The Gift of Patience

2010-02-02T09:45:00.004-05:00

When the time came for their purification according to the law of Moses, the parents of Jesus brought him up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord (as it is written in the law of the Lord, "Every firstborn male shall be designated as holy to the Lord"), and they offered a sacrifice according to what is stated in the law of the Lord, "a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons." (Luke 2:22-24)

One of my favorite tehologians, James Alison, has suggested that the story of the Presentation is an example of how what God is doing is so often overlooked by those who are focused on what the world sees as important. Had I been in the Temple that day, I am sure that my attention would have been drawn to all the activities of the priests and the levites and to the other obviously important people who were there. I would not have noticed the couple from Nazareth and their baby boy as they made the offering prescribed in Torah.

But Simeon and Anna didn't miss the really important thing that was happening that day - God's Messiah had come to the Temple and Simeon and Anna had eyes to see him. I am convinced that Anna's and Simeon's vision had been nurtured as they waited patiently for God to fulfill God's promises. I am convinced as well that the gift of patience is one that we need, perhaps now more than ever. We are an impatient people. We want what we want - and that is not always what we need - and we want it now. We are addicted to instant solutions to every problem - from our aches and pains - to problems with our relationships - to the crisis in the Anglican Communion. We seem unable to see that problems that have taken years - even decades - to develop are unlikely to be solved quickly.

Simeon and Anna had the patience that I lack and were willing to wait. They could have given up waiting, as I often do, when the waiting became longer and longer. But they didn't. They received from God the gift of patience, trusting that God would be faithful and that what God needed them to do was to wait and watch and - when the time was fulfilled - to see the wonderful that God was doing in Jesus the Christ.

What's In A Name?

2010-02-01T09:37:00.004-05:00

As Jan and I prepare to retire in June, I have given some thought to the future of this blog. I have found it useful as a way to clarify my thoughts about a wide variety of topics. It has created a very small amount of controversy: a couple of snarky comments, and some questioning by a search committee about whether the political views expressed here were normal parts of my sermons (they aren't, but the committee didn't recommend that I be called to serve that congregation.)

I plan to continue the blog in retirement, but The Gospel in ToyTown will no longer be an appropriate name. I am not very good at finding the right name for things - I was amazed that I came up with The Gospel in ToyTown - and hope that some suggestions will come from readers. A little information about our retirements may get some of you thinking about names:

Jan and I plan to live somewhere near Beverly, Massachusetts.
We will be helping with childcare for our granddaughter Emmaline.
We will be spending time with friends in New Hampshire's Mount Washington Valley.
I will be spending a bit more time than I have this past year as a Trustee of Episcopal Divinity School.
I will continue to work some, taking services for vacationing parish clergy, serving as an interim priest, and helping out at whatever parish we decide to join.

Send me your suggestions (dsweir@alumni.umass.edu). There may even be a prize for the winner.

The Year of the Lord's Favor

2010-01-30T16:14:00.004-05:00

In teaching in the synagogue at Nazareth, Jesus quoted Isaiah's prophecy of the year of the Lord's favor. But quickly the one who came to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord is himself unacceptable to his neighbors. Jesus' unsettling words about God's care for foreigners challenged the narrowness of his neighbors' thinking, challenged it, not from outside the tradition of Israel, but from within that tradition. God's care for all people - articulated in the calling of Abraham and Sarah to be a blessing to the nations - was, like the theologia crucis of Christian tradition, often a neglected aspect of Israel's tradition.

The anger of Jesus' neighbors was, oddly, an indication that tradition and theology were important to them. It mattered to them how one thought about and understood God and the nature of God's relationship with Israel. As an occupied people, ruled over by pagan Rome, it is no wonder that Jesus' neighbors adopted a circle the wagons understanding of being God's chosen people.

I see the reaction of Jesus' neighbors in sharp contrast to what has been - and still in some ways is - the American response to different ways of understanding the faith. I grew up in a time when it seemed that what mattered was that we believed and not what or in whom we believed.

While I have not been happy about the acrimony - and demonization - that has marked many of the debates within the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion, the debates are about important matters. Theology does matter. Not all ways of talking about God are equally true. There are interpretations of Scripture and Tradition that are quite simply wrong. Sadly, some of them, like the prosperity Gospel or the teaching of the Left Behind series, are very popular, but that doesn't make them right. The struggle, as in Nazareth, between different theological positions is a critical task for the Church. The struggle will not, of course, result in perfect theology, in a perfect understanding of God. But that does not mean that it should or can be avoided. In that struggle we may, by God's grace, find greater clarity about who and whose we are, greater clarity about what God is doing in our time, and greater clarity about our sharing in the missio Dei.

The neighbors at Nazareth may not have come to a greater clarity about what it meant to be God's chosen people. But Luke's community, the community in which the story of Jesus' teaching at Nazareth was preserved, that community was granted a clarity about the wideness of God's love, the love incarnate in Jesus .

A Long Silence

2010-01-30T10:44:00.004-05:00

When Pope Benedict urged Roman Catholic priests to blog, there was some discussion of whether or not he should blog. One commentator that I heard said that if he did, he would have to accept the discipline of blogging every day.

So, I have failed as a blogger, having let a month go by without posting. There are, of course, reasons for that, chiefly the fact that I have been sick since I last posted. Not seriously, I am at death's door,sick, but sick enough with bronchitis and a hematoma that I managed to create by coughing to have slowed me down considerably.

Besides that, I have been preoccupied with thoughts about retiring. Not so much musings on where we will live, what part-time work I can do, and what it will be like to live near our granddaughter, but thoughts about leave-taking from a parish that I have served for the past eight years. An Alban Institute publication, which I have not yet consulted, likened it to running through thistles. Responsible leave-taking is hard work and I don't imagine that I will get it right. I will make mistakes and will leave some messes for others to clean up after I'm gone. But that doesn't mean that I shouldn't work at getting it as right as possible.

We set the date and then, for a number of reasons, decided to make that date, at least for the present, a tentative one. We now have a retirement window - June and July - and will find in the next month the date that seems to work best for all of us.