Professorial Verbosity

The Light of Epiphany

2011-01-24T05:11:00.000-08:00

The Light of Epiphany
Third Sunday after the Epiphany
St. Paul’s Free Methodist Church
January 23, 2011

After our return from Alaska, I have decided never to take for granted the beauty of the light of day. After trying to adjust to days with less than four hours of seeming twilight surrounded by long periods of darkness, the sheer thrill of a sunshiny winter’s morning at anything warmer than twenty-below-zero has become grand enough to send my heart racing. We 21st-century folk often forget that it is only recently that people have acquired the ability to illuminate their lives by anything beyond a candle light or two. It was only a little over a hundred years ago, for instance, that the electric light displays at the World’s Fairs in Chicago and Buffalo set the entire country abuzz with news of this technological marvel which literally changed the way Americans thought about their day. As a result, most of us no longer live in fear whenever we start to see the sun dip below the horizon. But, this morning I’d like for us to spend just a few moments trying to forget the relatively new reality of perpetual light with which we live and consider the symbolic meaning of light piercing the darkness as a way of thinking about our journey with God and through the rhythms of this particular time of year.

This season of Epiphany within which we find ourselves is a relative newcomer to the liturgical calendar. Its origins lie somewhere in the fourth century, beginning with a feast which celebrated Christ’s baptism. But over a period of time it came to be associated with Jesus’manifestation to the Gentiles, and the Magi in Matthew’s gospel, in particular. So it is that over a period of anywhere from four to six weeks we go on a pilgrimage that begins with the baptism of Jesus and ends with the story of his transfiguration before his disciples. And, even more importantly for those of us in the Northern hemisphere, this particular stretch of narratives takes place during the coldest and the darkest time of the year—what we might call, using the hymn writer’s language, the “bleak midwinter.”

So, here we are smack dab in the middle of the time when Christina Rossetti reminds us of “frosty wind, snow on snow, earth standing hard as iron, and water like a stone”—appealing images aren’t they? They conjure up for me a couple of winters spent in England where, though it usually doesn’t get as cold as it does here in the American Midwest, the winter dampness seems to penetrate into one’s very bones, creating a perpetual chill. One gains very little solace from centuries-old houses without insulation or central heating. It was in such an environment that I walked into a small village parish church one morning to see the vicar before service furiously hacking away at the frozen ice standing in the baptismal font. I have thought often since then that the poor child who was welcomed into the Kingdom that day probably was forever traumatized by the event and, most likely, turned his back early on both the church and the cold of winter!

These images of darkness, cold, and perpetual dampness need to be seared into our senses in order for us to come even close to the power of our opening lessons. For, when Isaiah says, “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light,” or when the Psalmist proclaims, “The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom shall I fear?” we shouldn’t imagine a world like the one we know but, rather, one in which any illumination or warmth was seen as nothing less than a gift of God, a marvel beyond belief. In the Old Testament lesson, in particular, these wondrously warm and evocative phrases are set next to contrasting ones of “deep darkness” and “gloom.” They conjure up a world of bitter cold and harsh realities—something like the infamous NFL “Ice Bowl” game of 1967 from my childhood when Dallas squared off against Green Bay and frostbite plagued both sides of the field as Hall-of-Fame coaches Vince Lombardi and Tom Landry prowled the sidelines. This is still the way Canadians play football when the Grey Cup is hosted in the tundra of northern Saskatchewan where the wind chill approaches 40- or 50-below and the receivers slam into the turf, only to bounce quickly back up (like a rubber ball). It’s the way championship football should be played—without long silly commercials, specially-insulated boxes for the rich and famous, and certainly without the comforts of some dome in California, Florida, or Texas. For it is then, and only then, when you see beards caked in frost, frozen limbs snapping in the cold air, and spittle freezing on impact that you can appreciate players who lay their bodies out as a living sacrifice to the game.

This theme of not being able to truly appreciate the joys and comforts of life until we have experienced their opposite is not only illustrated by the biblical writers through the use of contrasting images but through the very choice of allusions. But, again, we oftentimes misinterpret them. For instance, when the Psalmist says that his one desire is to live in the temple “all the days of my life,” many of us euphemize or spiritualize the meaning, trying to force it to say something like “going to heaven, “ or “being with God.” But, “in ancient Israel, those who lived in the temple precincts were fugitives fleeing from opponents or persons given to the temple,” (Craddock, Preaching the New Common Lectionary, Epiphany Year A, 133). The dwelling place of God, then, was understood to be a place of refuge when none else was available or of providing a sense of vocation, as with the prophet, Samuel. As the lamp stands were lit each evening in the sanctuary, the light projected out into the temple precincts would have been interpreted as a beacon of hope to the hopeless and a place of safety and protection for the weary traveler and pilgrim.

While we might not break forth in rhapsodic lovelorn joy with Romeo to say, “What light through yonder window breaks?” perhaps you have experienced the comfort of arriving at your destination after unanticipated challenges along the way. At such times, the soft glow of the kitchen light back at home can be a welcoming sign to all those tired and worn out—a modern version of the Victorian “light left in the window.” This is the backdrop for understanding the gospel writer’s use of the familiar Old Testament passage as Jesus officially launches out on his ministry on the heels of his temptation in the wilderness. Unlike the Hebrews who also faced trials in the desert, Jesus successfully navigated his way into the new “Promised Land” and the time was, indeed, fulfilled in what the Gospel writer calls the “Galilee of the Gentiles.” For Matthew, Jesus has become the living presence of the reign of God. As “light of the world” (to use the Evangelist John’s phrase) Jesus beckons others to follow him, beginning with two sets of brothers employed in their everyday work of mending nets. Somehow, they recognize in this Galilean those qualities that we associate with light—illumination, hope, refuge, and a sense of comfort and joy.

But, while light carries with it all of these benevolent connotations, there are malevolent ones to bear in mind, as well. And all it takes to remind us is turning on the evening news to hear another heartbreaking story of someone who has employed an aging space heater in an attempt to find warmth and has wound up dying in the process from the accidental fire created by it. Since time immemorial, fire has also been seen as both purgative and destructive. For Elizabethan church goers, with whom I am familiar, their eyes were literally seared with John Foxe’s almost-pornographic images of the death of the martyrs. Dr. Rowland Taylor was saying the 51st Psalm as he made his way towards his death, using the English version provided in Cranmer’s Prayer Book. For not saying it in Latin, the accompanying justice, Sir John Shelton struck him boldly across the mouth. Ironically enough, the Psalm text reads: “For thou desirest no sacrifice, else would I give it thee; but thou delightest not in burnt-offerings.”

But on this day, Dr. Taylor was to indeed be burnt on the rough ground outside of his parish along what is now Angel Street. Emerging from the depths of a pitch barrel which was to act as an accelerant, the minister received a deadly blow from the local drunkard to whom he had given his boots but minutes before as an act of charity. His brain matter still staining the ground beneath him, he was lifted into the fire kindled with faggots “cut from the hedgerows and copses he had passed on his walks. The greasy smoke could have drifted down into his own rectory garden,” says Ronald Blythe (Divine Landscapes, 70). As his corpse was rendered slowly into ash, the sizeable audience which perhaps consisted of the entire population of his little parish went from crying to somber reflection rendering the execution into something of a prayer-meeting. Like the other 231 Marian burnings documented by Foxe, Taylor’s willingness to “give his body to be burned” (in the words of the apostle Paul) rendered him famous in a way probably impossible in an age when death was as common as a text message in ours. Latimer’s challenge to Ridley that their funeral pyres would set all of England ablaze took on a sense of permanence, thanks to an act of Parliament which ordered a copy of Foxe to be purchased and placed in the narthex of every church throughout the land.

If, as Matthew suggests, Jesus’ announcement was something of a continuation of John the Baptist’s preaching, then it contained not only an element of hope but one of warning, as well. Jesus here takes up the Baptist’s baton like something of a tag-team preacher and proclaims, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near,” (4:17). In John’s rendition of the message, that call had been bathed in the fires not of warmth but of purgation. The stubble-burning imagery which he had conjured up was meant to awaken an audience—not comfort it. Likewise, the candles which we light so serenely in our beautiful Advent wreaths carry a kind of double-entendre: bringing hope, yes, but also whipping up the sights and smells of fire in an attempt to awaken us from our nocturnal sleep.

On that beloved isle to which my mind so often turns, this was the purpose of the coastal watch which went back all the way to the days of Roman Britain. There, scattered along the dips and dives of Kentish countryside, fresh kindling lay always at the ready for the torch which would announce the coming of an invasion. All along the promontory, at every small hill and extended elevation, the fires would be lit like an ancient telegraph line to warn those up and down the countryside that the foreigner was at the gates and that all should be watchful and ready. These small warning fires were meant to jerk villagers from their lethargy lest larger fires of perdition descend on them from an invading Gaul, Viking, or Norman.

Likewise, today’s texts beckon us away from the familiarity of the gospel narratives which dot Matthew’s introduction to Jesus’ ministry proper. We are moving away, now, from the infant Jesus sought by the Magi and even the transitional Jesus of the temptation narrative who is in preparation for a ministry yet to come. With the calling of Peter and Andrew, James and John, our story is firmly underway and, whether we like it or not, we being propelled with Jesus towards the crowds that await him and ultimately will turn on him at his death. And, temporally, though the memories of the Christmas and New Year’s just past remain firmly imbedded in our minds, we are no longer knee-deep in holidays and the turning of the New Year. No, 2011 is firmly begun and, as those of us who teach at the college are well aware, Interterm has come to an end and this week starts what we call the “spring” term.

It has been weeks now since we passed the shortest day of the year and according to British psychologist Cliff Arnall this past week we made our way through Blue Monday, the most miserable day of the year. According to the Guardian, Blue Monday is “the most depressing day of the year, a terrible day to start a new job, try anything productive or do anything other than go back to bed and wait for it to pass.” But pass it has and we’ve only a couple more weeks to get to the Transfiguration. And then, of course, we’re on to Lent and fish fries and a couple more hours of daylight. And before you know it, the purples and yellows of crocuses will be upon us and the vernal equinox will announce that all is right with the world yet again.

But for now, perhaps it is fitting to not only say good-bye to Interterm and the Christmas holidays which presaged it, but to contemplate as Colleen Carroll Campbell did in Thursday’s Post-Dispatch just how we might engage all of this time that lies ahead of us in view of the light of Epiphany. Interestingly, she cites a recent interview by the journalist Greta Van Susteren with 92-year-old Billy Graham, now thoroughly in the winter days of his life. The evangelist who gained fame by preaching to millions, apparently surprised the vaunted interviewer by saying that he wished to “pray more, travel less, take less speaking engagements. . . If I had it do over again, I’d spend more time in meditation and prayer.” His junior partner in religious leadership, the more youthful 83-year-old Pope Benedict XVI sounded a similar note in his interview with German journalist Peter Seewald. When the enthusiastic newsman complimented him on his prolific publishing career and energetic schedule, the Pope said he wished he had cultivated “discretion, deeper examination, time for interior pondering, vision. . . and meditating about God.” He went on to say that “one should not feel obliged to work ceaselessly,” but instead to concentrate on “his inner view of the whole, his interior recollection, from which the view of what is essential can proceed.”

In her column, Campbell suggests that “our postmodern fixation on round-the-clock productivity and constant communication may be making our winter blues a year-round affair. Several studies,” she says, “have linked multi-tasking—especially the electronic sort—to increased stress and diminished concentration.” She even cites Eric Brende’s book, Better Off, in which he recounts “his journey with his wife from MIT to an Amish-type community and, eventually, a low-tech life as a rickshaw driver, soapmaker and homeschooling-father in St. Louis.” While few of us might wish to follow this kind of radical turnaround in life, it does shine a light on the nefariousness and subtle nature of how we can become encumbered by all around us to an extent that we fail to focus on the most important things in life.

So, this morning’s texts have attempted to illuminate something of the darkness around us, to offer us words of hope, to warn us of getting too near the fires of cultural death and destruction, and to begin to pay attention to the journey which lies yet ahead towards life, death, and resurrection. This, my friends, is the perpetual light of Epiphany which shines for all those with eyes to see. May God grant us wisdom as we join with those first disciples in following Jesus on life’s journey.

Paying Attention to the Landscapes of our Life in Christ

2010-09-06T13:09:00.000-07:00

Paying Attention to the Landscapes of our Life in Christ
Deuteronomy 6:4-9
Greenville College Chapel
September 6, 2010

Some of you this morning are adjusting to a new life lived at a distance from loved ones for the first time. I can still vividly remember that hot August day 35 years ago when my parents drove the 550 miles from Oklahoma City to deposit me, my typewriter, my filing cabinet, and my drums outside of Joy Hall. It would be at least three months before I would see them again and, in those days without cell phones, we were dependent primarily on the Postal Service in order to remain in regular contact. It was a bit different when our own daughters decided to go to Greenville since they only resided a few blocks away. Nevertheless, my wife wept copiously at the Covenant Communion service as we walked away from them during Freshman Orientation.

This summer, though, was a bit different as we loaded our younger daughter’s belongings, including her car, onto a large transport truck before she boarded a plane to take up a new kindergarten teaching job in Fairbanks, Alaska—some 3,500 miles away. A graduate of GC’s class of 2007, she decided after three years of teaching in Illinois that she was ready for a new adventure in life. And so, this young woman whom I walked to her first day of school in Toronto—wasn’t that only yesterday?—is now a proud resident of our northernmost state where she is learning to split wood, ride snow machines, and field dress a moose carcass. In fact, she took great joy in reporting to me her surprise a few days ago when she looked up and suddenly realized that the birches along the roadside were already resplendent in their golden-spangled glory. She knows that my favorite season is fall, so she had fun rubbing it in that in this, as in most other cases involving nature, Alaska supersedes the autumnal beauty of the lower forty-eight.

That conversation got me to thinking about how little most of us pay attention to what is going on around us these days. As I walk out of the classroom, I am always somewhat startled at the number of folks who are on their cell phones. I am something of a latecomer to the cell phone phenomenon myself, having grudgingly secured one for my last sabbatical when I was ensconced in a monastic setting in north central Minnesota. It took me the better part of a year to figure out that I didn’t have to punch in the full phone number whenever I called my wife. And, the people at ATT were somewhat befuddled when I asked them to turn off everything except the ability to make and receive telephone calls. I have no idea how to text and, as Chaplain Gaffner can attest, I didn’t even know that the phone could be turned on and off when I first got it—resulting in an embarrassing incident when we were at a chaplains’ conference together and I went running from the room as the ring tone exploded at full volume. Now, please don’t get me wrong, I appreciate modern technology and love the convenience of not having to look for a pay phone in order to make a telephone call like I used to when I was a student. But the sheer ubiquity of this technology has become so invasive that I find myself oftentimes making a Faustian bargain when I take my laptop computer home. With all of the world that it puts at my finger tips, I am concerned that I am not paying attention to my surroundings as much as I used to. Whether it is the changing of the leaves or the sound of my wife’s voice, it becomes easier to be walled off or to simply ignore the beauty of all that is around me.

Now, I think that there is a principle at work here that is central to those of us who make up the Christian community. And that is that each of us is called to learn to pay attention to the landscapes of that common life. But the fact of the matter is that we are oftentimes so absorbed by our attempts at multitasking that we miss out on the here and now—or, as my colleague, Dr. McPeak, oftentimes puts it, we fail to be “fully present” to one another or to God. In his case, this may result in my no longer seeing him as primarily Rick, my good friend and colleague, but reducing him to friend #138 on my Facebook page. (Read text: Deuteronomy 6:4-9)

As the people of Israel prepared to come into the Promised Land after their long decades of wandering in the wilderness, the Scriptures suggest that Moses, too, worried about whether they would remain attentive to God. After all, God had just spent the last forty years making sure that they were paying attention. The desert was a wonderful place for this lesson to be learned. As some of you know, when we are in the desert we must be clearly focused on the environment around us. Cinematographers have oftentimes played on this fact—whether in such films as “Lawrence of Arabia” or “The English Patient.” In both of these classic movies, the desert takes on an identity unto itself and reminds us of the harsh reality of what happens to those who find themselves captivated by anything other than surviving the sand and sun.

In the book of Deuteronomy, Moses is pictured as delivering to the chosen people a series of messages which call them to not forget the lessons learned in the desert. None is more captivating than the instructions given in chapters 6 through 8 where nothing less than disciplined devotion to God is demanded. In the Jewish liturgy, the beginning of this passage is known as the Shema. This word, which begins the reading, is in the imperative and calls the people to listen up, to “hear.” And, alongside the levitical call to love one’s neighbor, Jesus affirms what we have here as the heart of the so-called “Great Commandment.” So, whether in the Jewish or the Christian tradition, this passage is central to our understanding of what it means to be a person of faith. We are called to pay attention, to listen and to hear.

Unfortunately, like the people of Israel, we tend to get sidetracked and pay little attention to God or to others—until some kind of crisis happens in our lives. When that happens, when all the props in our lives are knocked out from under us, then, and only then, do we find ourselves turning to God and asking for help. So, in the few minutes that we have remaining this morning, I’d like for us to key in on four verbal imperatives that jump off the page from this text and explore what they might mean in a 21st-century context as a means of grappling with living out our call to Christian community as faculty, staff, and students.

For the Hebrews, the heart was not seen primarily as the organ of emotion but the seat of identity and decision-making. So, when Moses says, “keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart,” he is not talking about some sentimental Valentine’s Day card. Instead, he is positing that the land where they are heading will be filled with peoples who have a very different worldview and a different set of orienting values. The challenge for them will be to remember the lessons they learned in the wilderness and to let those memories become their central orienting compass—particularly when challenged by a different set of presuppositions. In retrospect, it is clear that it was the loss of this memory and their adaptation to other cultural values (what religious scholars call “syncretism”) that particularly plagued the house of Israel.

As a community with its primary allegiance to the God of Israel, we, too, must find ways of keeping our hearts set on our collective memory. This is where regular attendance at worship, regular reading of Scripture, regular reception of the sacraments, and regular private and corporate prayer become all important. In an American culture which is largely committed to consumerist values built around entertainment, popular culture, and nationalism, keeping our hearts centered on the Christian narrative can be quite difficult. For instance, spending ten hours a week in front of an X-box while we spend one hour in worship and a few minutes in prayer or Bible study, will most probably yield a stronger commitment to the cult of entertainment than becoming a servant of Jesus Christ.

That is why the second command is one of recitation. This creating of an individual memory is understood here in a corporate, largely liturgical, context. It is no surprise that when Israel wished to enter into covenant with God it recited the narrative of God’s mighty acts in history. And this has been the task of the church throughout history—particularly in the context of worship. In worship, we come together not primarily to “feel good” or to participate in Christian forms of entertainment, but to retell the grand narrative of God’s gracious acts throughout all of salvation history—particularly as made known in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

Unfortunately, the temptation in our age is to “water down” this narrative or as Regent College professor, Marva Dawn, puts it in the titles of her books: to attempt to reach out by dumbing down without remembering that worship is primarily “a royal waste of time.” In an age primarily concerned with efficiency accompanied by “lights, cameras, action,” we may be tempted to remove the holy silences and mystery from our worship and to recite, not the story of Zion, but the story of “same time next week.” The center of what we are called to demands that we continually tell and rehearse the Gospel story and that we not sell it for a mess of culturally-relevant, but severely malnourishing, mess of pottage.

Third, the people of Israel were commanded to “talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise,” (6:7). One of my favorite preachers, the Rev. Barbara Brown Taylor, claims that we live in an age when words are cheap and numerous. Everywhere we go we hear words—particularly consumerist messages through the electronic media to which we remain tethered much of the time. The Rev. Taylor suggests that this inundation of information has literally made us “hard of hearing,” and created a culture that no longer knows how to listen.

In the midst of this cultural reality we serve the God who spoke creation into being and whose son is boldly proclaimed as “The Word.” The suggestion here in Deuteronomy is that we become, to some extent, that which we pronounce. To those who spend time pronouncing blessings, they hold the potential to be a blessing to others. But to those who spend their time cursing the darkness, they, too, are in danger of getting wrapped up in their negative language. This morning there are probably numerous friends and relatives who could benefit from your words of encouragement set loose upon this community and the world. What difference would it make if you made it a priority to begin to look for ways of speaking God’s goodness and blessing into the mess that we call life? What might happen if you would unplug from your IPOD as you walk across campus and greet others with a smile and a word of kindness?

This issue of language becomes especially crucial as we come to God in prayer. Learning to pray is not easy and requires our immersion in the scriptures and in the liturgy of the church. I have learned so much from others, particularly from the Psalmist and the saints of God who have labored over finding the right language for addressing God. I collect prayer books and never cease to be amazed at the schooling that language provides in helping me better understand who God is and what God desires of God’s people. As I labor through words of prayerful repentance and join the chorus of sinners, I am better prepared to join the throngs in thanksgiving at the end of my time of prayer. Oftentimes I will take that time and write a note or two to someone who is on my heart and mind—hoping that the note will become a means of encouragement to him or her.

This is certainly nothing original with me—I have had to learn the importance of it for not only reshaping my thinking but of trying to speak forth the gospel, a “good word,” to others. Like many of you, I was the recipient of older mentors who taught me the power of this practice. As I undertook graduate study at Princeton, my faculty advisor here, Dr. Mac, would oftentimes send me the most magnificent words of joy and prayerful praise on my behalf. And, there was an elderly couple in our congregation, Rev. A. R. Martin and his wife, Blanche, who would occasionally tuck a five-dollar bill in with their note of encouragement. But no one was a better model of this for me than was Dr. Robert E. “Ish” Smith, past president of the college. Ish literally has friends all around the world and was largely responsible for getting the sport of baseball into the Olympics. I am convinced that no small part of his influence on others comes from the way he holds them up as better than himself and continually writes words of encouragement that spread the love of Jesus around the globe. Continually living in a state of repentance and offering words of thankfulness to God and to others, morning and night, has the potential to form you into people more like the Master.

As we prepare to enter the High Holy Days of the Jewish calendar, our Jewish friends give themselves over to a number of ancient practices. One of those practices is the hanging of mezuzot on the doorposts of their homes. Oftentimes it is these very verses that we are considering that are carefully inscribed on a slip of manuscript, placed in a protective case, and hung where they can be seen. Before the item is hung, one is commanded to say: Barukh ata Adonai Eloheinu Melekh ha-olam, asher kidshanu b'mitzvotav v'tzivanu likbo-a mezuzah. “Blessed are You, Adonai our God, Ruler of the universe, Who sanctifies us with holy commandments and commands us to fix a mezuzah.” This act of both inscribing and hanging offers the supplicant a very concrete and kinesthetic way of entering into the binding/fixing/writing imperative of this verse. In this way, it is possible to reenact the redemption of the world in God as we literally reclaim territory in God’s name.

This final act reveals a rather audacious theology of which we were reminded by our convocation speaker, Dr. Witherington: “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof.” What might happen if we were to see the world in the words of John Calvin as the “theatre of God’s glory.” Much of the current dispensationalist language would deny this fact and boldly proclaims that “Satan is alive and well on planet earth.” In this worldview, there is a demon behind every door that needs casting out and the earth is “going to hell in a handbasket.” The only possible redemption is some kind of rapture where the believers in Christ are somehow jerked away to a private nirvana while the rest of God’s creation is left to fry in torment. But we dare to sing, “This is my Father’s world!” and to proclaim that the God of all creation is in the process of redeeming the entirety of the cosmos. And if that is the case, there are no boundary restrictions, there are no limitations on the scope of God’s economy (Telford Work, Deuteronomy, 97). So, just as we begin by referring to the past as we remember, keep, and recite, we end by referring to the future as we bind, fix, and write the whole earth into God’s redemptive order. And the wonder of it all is that we are invited to participate in this redemptive work.

So, as you go out today I would encourage you to begin to look around, to notice your surroundings, and to embrace the whole world as God’s. Like Thomas Hardy’s character, Jude, do not be afraid to see the academic world as one that you, too, can begin to feel at home in. And in those moments when you are missing the ones you love—whether they are a few miles or thousands of miles away—remember that this is the place to which God has brought you and that He longs for you to simply wake up and pay attention to what He is already doing. May the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob go before you, and may His face shine upon you and give you peace. Amen.

An Alternative Kingdom Vision

2010-08-09T05:55:00.000-07:00

An Alternative Kingdom Vision
Isaiah 1:1, 10-20; Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16; Luke 12:32-40
Proper 14, Year C
St. Paul’s Free Methodist Church
August 8, 2010

For a good portion of the summer I have found myself immersed in sixteenth-century documents which provide many of the mundane details of worship in her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth’s court. There are battles over music—whether it is appropriate to include instruments like viols and sackbuts on special occasions. There are squabbles over the behavior of the choir boys. And, in particular, there is the give and take regarding who is most appropriate to preach before the Queen during the annual Lenten round of sermons, as her advisers look for those young men who are articulate and promising but who won’t attract the ire of a monarch known for her willingness to call speakers out whom she deemed to be abusing their preaching privileges. But perhaps the question that has dogged me the most as I have tried to stitch together the various fragments of theological, historical, and sociological data is the relationship between this beautiful daily round of worship and the very real problems that dogged the decades of the mid- and later-sixteenth-century Englishman as he sought to eke out an existence in a rather precarious time and place.

For instance, the year 1563 was the worst year of the plague in London with thousands dying in the capital and thousands more throughout the country side. As priests lit the torches that lined the urban squalor to try and burn away the miasma that it was believed caused the sickness, the Chapel Royal continued its regular round of daily prayer with young lads sounding forth in their most beautiful voices the words of the Te Deum or the Sanctus. And while rumors of excommunication swirled throughout the city, the Queen continued on about her regular duties dealing with both domestic and international crises, pausing occasionally for private prayer in her chambers or public prayer with her court. The political climate was rife with bad news, both at home and abroad, and yet people continued to gather to worship and to pray—especially the Crown, as if to suggest that immersing one’s self in worship were, at best, an antidote and, at worst, a panacea to the ugliness of life taking place on the street.

Suffice it to say that I have come to believe that one of the most important roles of Christian worship is to offer us an alternative vision of the Kingdom—perhaps most importantly during those times of deepest and darkest personal or corporate darkness. This extends beyond the typical verbiage we use when talking about whether we were “fed” by a service or whether, as many churches today might put it, we “had our needs met” by a particular Sunday worship service. This way of thinking, while perhaps partially perceptive in terms of what it means for us to be human, actually subjects God to our way of thinking—to our human categories. No, what I am talking about is God’s inviting us into a new and different way of seeing the world—of offering up for us a different language and a different set of lenses for thinking about whose and who we are. And, I would like to suggest that today’s Scripture texts partake of this alternative vision.

In our opening lesson, the problem is one of total disjunction between worship and the hearers’ way of life in the world. Unfortunately, the hyperbolic language used here by the prophet is oftentimes misread out of its historical and cultural context in a very literalistic way that would suggest that worship is somehow unimportant. But we know from the biblical canon that a great deal of time and attention is paid throughout the first Testament to the niceties of the priestly ritual. Anyone who has gotten bogged down in the later chapters of Exodus or the lengthy descriptive sections in Leviticus or Numbers can’t help but wonder why so much time is spent on the description of worship furniture!

No, the problem here is not with the act of worship itself but with its disjuncture from a life of corporate integrity before the Lord God of Israel. The people had come to see worship on Mt. Zion as protection against their enemies—as a sign that God was always on their side. Yet, as Christopher Seitz points out in his article on Isaiah, “Zion is not an inviolable fortress offering sure defense against all foes. Zion is God’s own abode,” (Anchor Bible Dictionary 3: 487). And, as “God’s own abode,” the priestly worship was meant to beckon its hearers to a new way of living, a change in their orientation, not only towards God, but towards their neighbors, as well. That is why the middle section of the opening salvo in this book is a call for the people to not only ceremonially “wash themselves,” but to also “remove the evil of your doings” and to “seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow,” (Isaiah 1:16-17). Instead of living in two different worlds, the people are being called to live one integrated life where what they see, do, and practice on the Temple mount provokes them to a different way of living out their everyday lives.

This vision of faithful living is perhaps best summed up in our second lesson from Hebrews, where faith is defined as “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen,” (1:1). In a recent article in the New York Times, Gary Cutting, who teaches at Notre Dame, points out that many of his students see faith as something of a “trump card”—they view religion as a comfort and believe that having faith means “never having to explain why,” (http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/01/philosophy-and-faith/). But that is most certainly not what the author has in mind here. In fact, the word he uses which gets translated as “assurance” is hypostasis—perhaps one of the most heavily-debated words in the early church during the formulation of its creeds in the fourth and fifth centuries. Philip Hughes writing in his commentary describes this powerful word as “something that underlies visible conditions and guarantees a future possession.” He goes on to contend that “in striking contrast to the man whose values are entirely those of this present world, the Christian is animated by the conviction that it is the very things which are not (yet) seen, those things which he appropriates by faith, that are real and permanent,” (A Commentary on Hebrews, 440-441).

Faith, then, is not really a “trump card,” but something of a second sense which allows us to see and understand the world in a different way than our secular counterparts. F. F. Bruce claims that “physical eyesight produces conviction or evidence of visible things; faith is the organ which enables people to see the invisible order,” (The Epistle to the Hebrews, 279). In contrast to our penchant for thinking in terms of “blind faith,” there is actually a strong systemic foundation that underlies the way Christians see the world that should form the basis on which we make choices. When we are called upon to make difficult decisions, we do not do so irrationally—we do so based on a set of foundational principles which underlie our entire orientation towards the world. These principles claim that there is a god and that that which he created is good. They also suggest that this god is not simply a giant clockmaker in the sky but continues to remain intimately involved in the world, calling people into fellowship with God’s self and into fellowship with one another through God’s primary instrument of redemption, the church.

The paradigmatic example which the writer uses here is Abraham whose entire life was built around a set of principles quite different from those of his contemporaries. He stood out not because he made irrational choices, but because he chose to build his life around a set of principles quite countercultural. His eyes, according to the book of Hebrews, were firmly fixed on a heavenly city and, as a result, he found himself something of a wandering nomad without a place of fixed residence and loyalties. In the stories that surround his life, we see him holding attachment to places rather lightly while his attachment to God grows ever stronger.

What animated Abraham was his longing for and commitment to “a better country.” When the author says that “he set out, not knowing where he was going,” he is not describing some character in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” Instead, he is describing someone whose entire life was centered around a godly vision based on a reality hidden deep within the created order. For Abraham, faith was not a “thing,” a noun; no, for him, faith was a verb, something that demanded action—yielding to critical and somewhat difficult choices, in his everyday life. Yet, in a culture caught up with instant gratification, we are told that he “died in faith without having receiving the promises,” (11:13). His life ended, then, based on this set of principles and beliefs that were yet to come to full fruition.

In Jesus’ commands for preparation in today’s gospel lesson we can hear some of this same desire to attach our lives to something of worth that may yet lie in the future. His command to sell possessions fits with the scriptures from the previous two Sundays which have called upon us to hold our material goods lightly. But today, we are given the further insight that “where your treasure is, there your heart will be also,” (Luke 12:34). As I turn a year older here quite soon, I have begun to realize just how quickly the sands of time are draining away. We Baby Boomers have this tendency to believe that we will remain forever young, but mortality creeps up on us just as it has on previous generations. And like those previous generations we must begin to ask what kind of legacy we wish to leave behind.

One possibility is the commitment to hedonism and pleasure which I heard voiced last Sunday in an interview with Hugh Hefner, now 84 years of age. Clothed in his signature silk robe and surrounded by Playboy bunnies, he nevertheless is beginning to show his age. An icon to a certain set of presuppositions which challenged our culture a half century ago, he said, “I’d like to be remembered as someone who played an important part in changing the social-sexual values of my time.” And, his dogged pursuit of those values remains his animating purpose in life as strongly at 84 as they did at 34.

I wonder if we, the followers of the one who walked the way of the cross, can be said to have lived our lives with as much singularity of purpose? What vision guides us, not just on those days when the sun shines brightly and all seems well with the world—but on those days when our world seems to be caving in and the corpses line the streets? What I have learned from my studies this summer and over the course of the last decade or so is the need for an alternate vision for God’s people through our worship and through our everyday choices that we make throughout the day. Though we may not be Elizabethans, we, too, are called upon to choose how we will live our lives each and every day. What role will prayer play? How often will we gather together? To what vocation and meaningful work are we called? How will we invest our resources of time, money, and focus? The drip, drip, of time marches on and each day we awaken to the beauty of a new dawn we have less time than we did the day before.

The temptations for conformity to this world and its all-too-apparent values can seem overwhelming. The calling to become, in the words of the writer to the Hebrews, “strangers and foreigners on the earth,” has little appeal to most of us. But, as Jesus reminds us: “where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” And, though worship may not be the only place we learn to realign our priorities, it has historically been the time and the space where we experience how God intends to “make right” the world. Every morning at prayer we learn that this begins with confession and repentance and concludes with thanksgiving. Letting these words roll off our tongues and conforming our bodies to these liturgical actions begins to shape us anew into people of faith, people whose hearts are fastened on those things “not seen.”

In his magisterial study, The Cult of the Saints, written two decades ago now, Peter Brown pointed out that the early church posited an entirely different understanding of the city than had the Romans. For the latter, there were tightly drawn parameters that separated men from women, slaves from free, and the living from the dead. But by late antiquity the emerging Christian society had provided access for women to positions of power as benefactors, leaders, and ascetics. In the pilgrimages that were beginning to places like Jerusalem, all classes of people freely mingled, breaking down previous social barriers. And bishops like Ambrose brought the bodies of the saints into the church, literally building places of worship over their bones and forever linking together heaven and earth in a new worldview previously unknown throughout the ancient world.

These Christians challenged the present order based on the hope rooted in their crucified and resurrected Lord. They were unafraid to confront the powers that be with a new vision, a heavenly vision, based on the principles of their Christian hope. Though their lives were lived in very concrete places which called for their very real attention and commitment to ministry, their vocation was predicated on the reality of a heavenly city. “All these died in faith without having received the promises, but from a distance they saw and greeted them. . . they desire a better country, that is a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God; indeed, he has prepared a city for them,” (Hebrews 11: 13, 16). The question is are our eyes fastened on that same city? Are we motivated by an alternative vision different from the one predicated by our culture? May God grant that it would be so and that, we, too, might have the courage to embark on the journey of faith, “not knowing where we are going.”

Tuttle-Tomaschke Wedding Homily

2010-08-01T05:52:00.000-07:00

Wedding Homily for Patrick Tomaschke and Kristin Tuttle
Song of Songs 2:10-13, 8:6-7; Ephesians 3:14-19; John 17:20-26
St. Paul’s Free Methodist Church
July 31, 2010

Well, here we are at long last. If you’re like me, you are not at all surprised that we have gathered to celebrate the joining together of Patrick and Kristin. About five years ago when they took their first class together with me, they were oftentimes the last two to leave the classroom. Not because they stayed for each other but because they each demonstrated what teachers love to see in their charges—a desire to learn, a willingness to ask questions, a passion to better understand the world and all that is in it. In a class packed with wonderfully bright students, Kristin and Patrick were perhaps the most intense, the most diligent in seeking out answers to their questions. Oftentimes it would be necessary to continue the conversation outside in the shadow of old Hogue Hall or later in my office. In would walk the girl with the nose stud and road-weary running shoes, followed close behind by the rangy young man with curly chestnut hair. They would pepper me with questions, sometimes working as a tag-team. And I began to notice something: if Patrick thought that I was mishandling a question from Kristin, he would quickly come to her defense—much like a knight might have hundreds of years ago for the sake of a damsel in distress. But Kristin was an “equal opportunity employer” and, not to be outdone by her male sidekick, would do the same if she thought I was somehow short-changing Patrick.

These two seemed to be passionate about many of the same things but I’m not sure they quite recognized at the time how that passion would kindle a mutual interest in one another. I oftentimes thought to myself that if they could only turn half of the intensity they brought to the classroom towards something of a mutual understanding they would set off fireworks enough for all of us! So, over the past few years what began as a smoldering fire has emerged into something of a conflagration today and I, for one, feel privileged to simply be here to watch the fireworks go off. And, though I’ve never been much of a prognosticator, I would predict that the energy and passion for life and for service to Christ that the Tuttle-Tomaschkes will bring to the table holds the potential to enlighten and enliven not just their own lives but that of all those who will surround them—those of us standing her this afternoon, included.

But, as good students of my course on Christian Worship, Patrick and Kristin know that today is not really about them at all. In a culture obsessed with all things nuptial, I was once told by a photographer that weddings are all about the bride. To which I was quick to respond, “No, Christian weddings are all about God.” So before you take these time-honored vows today, my dearest Kristin and Patrick, I want to remind you and all of us of why you are here together in a public space dedicated to the worship of God to say these few words.

You are here both in protest and in affirmation. Now, anyone who knows Kristin should not be surprised about the former. For months she has wrestled with the words of the wedding liturgy to make sure that she can fully own them. In a world filled with sappy lyrics about love, today’s texts and service speak of a commitment to lifetime fidelity in the midst of the hard reality of pain, sacrifice, and, ultimately, death. It is no coincidence that both of our New Testament texts which soar so beautifully into rhapsodic prose are couched in the context of suffering. Throughout chapter three of Ephesians the apostle speaks of the difficulties that have dogged his ministry, while Jesus’ so-called “high-priestly” prayer is spoken on the cusp of his arrest, passion, and death. As Christians, we embrace a worldview that is not primarily about a picture-perfect day and tens of thousands of dollars expended on such niceties as the release of pigeons into the air for the cameras.

We know that life is hard and oftentimes filled with uncertainties. In fact, one of the tasks for those of you who are parents and grandparents here today is to remind Patrick and Kristin that life may not go exactly the way they have planned. Your task is to share openly and honestly about the tough times that you have faced—“in sickness and in health, in joy and in sorrow,” so that they might have a realistic understanding of both the highs and the lows of marriage. In such a way, we stand together in protest against the miasma of “they lived happily ever after” fairy-tale like lies that the culture would have us believe, when all around us are people who are struggling to keep households together in the wake of the late terrible recession.

But we stand here not only in protest, but in affirmation, as well. We affirm with Paul that though the phrase “wedded bliss” may be somewhat oxymoronic, that a life of committed love brought together under the lordship of Christ remains a mystery—something that transcends our human categories. And, while today’s liturgy is littered with legal language with phrases like, “to have and to hold,” and, “till death us do part,” we affirm that for those of us who claim Christ as both Savior and Lord, today’s ceremony extends beyond a legal contract (complete with witnesses) to incorporate the covenantal understanding embedded in the gospel.

At the heart of this covenantal picture stands Christ himself whose self-giving love is meant to be a model for the Tuttle-Tomaschkes as they work out their salvation together. They are not simply embarking on a legalistic journey but they are covenanting that this relationship will be permanent, exclusive, faithful, and long-suffering—the one to the other. Like the apostle in today’s text from Ephesians, they will come to understand and know the love of Christ best as they wrestle and work out what this means in the context of the crucible of their very lives. The longing echoed in today’s reading from the Song of Songs in which the male first beckons to his lover and she then responds, declaring the fierce power of her love, may be what brings them together, but it is Jesus’ prayer, offered not only for his disciples but for the entire church, which will keep them together.

And, can you imagine the passionate exchanges that will take place around their dinner table? If the past few years are any indication of what the future holds, theirs will be household filled with great passion, fierce struggle with the meaning of the Gospel, and an intensity for service that will make of their house a home in which the stranger will be welcomed and the young child embraced—perhaps even a few of their own! And, in so doing, the blessing that we offer here today will find its meaning, not just in their own lives, but in the life of their family, their church, their community, and in the larger Kingdom of God.

Patrick and Kristin, in closing, I want to remind you of our visit to St. Meinrad’s Monastery a few years ago where we spent some time talking together in the cemetery. If you remember, we spoke of the service that demarcates a Benedictine’s final vows during which he gives himself wholeheartedly to the community and lies prostrate over the patch of earth in which he will be buried while the bells symbolically toll out his death. Well, I want you to think of this place and the words you are about to speak to one another in a similar vein. While it is not true that you, individually, will die today, it is true that you take on a new identity this afternoon as husband and wife. You will no longer be simply Kristin or Patrick, but you will be Patrick and Kristin Tuttle-Tomaschke, together. And, just as the monk rises to a new identity and renewed commitment to the community, you two will now have something of a new identity with a renewed commitment to a lifetime together.

Our prayer is that these vows and this lifetime covenant will not only bring love, hope, and peace to you, but to the broken world to which you will give yourselves, as well. God’s blessings on you as you go forth in service to Him. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Lessons in Spiritual Formation

2010-06-20T17:08:00.000-07:00

Lessons in Spiritual Formation
1 Kings 19:1-15a; Galatians 3:23-29; Luke 8:26-39
St. Paul’s FM Church
June 20, 2010

Thirty years ago this spring I stood before the Oklahoma Conference to be ordained a minister in the Free Methodist Church. In many ways, I viewed that day as the end of a long process during which I had been interviewed, probed, and mentored to see whether I had the makings of someone fit for pastoral ministry. In other words, I thought that I was celebrating the culmination of years of hard work. But looking back now, it is clear to me that what I viewed as the end of a lengthy process was really but the beginning of a much longer journey of spiritual formation. For, in the thirty years since then, not only have I grown older but along the way I have been privileged to baptize, bury, and minister to countless individuals and families who have forever changed the way I think about God and the journey of faith. In short, what I thought of at the time as an ending was really only a beginning.

Today’s texts all share a similar theme stretching from the story of Elijah, to the musings of Paul, and concluding with the wonderful healing narrative of the Gerasene demoniac. In each case, the individual involved believed that he had reached a terminus in life, only to be confronted by God with a very different understanding that opened up a new chapter in vocation. And, not only are these stories interesting artistically as a result of this epiphany but I think that they reveal to us something about the very nature of our life in God. That is, they tell us that what we oftentimes tend to reduce to an accomplishment, an event, or a destination, is to misunderstand what it means to follow Jesus. Instead, we are challenged to view our life, not as a series of achievements, but as an opportunity to move ever more deeply into the very heart of God. What we are provided with this morning are some crucial lessons, then, in spiritual formation.

No one had more reason to celebrate a lifetime accomplishment than did Elijah here in I Kings. Just prior to today’s text he has routed 450 priests of Baal at Mt. Carmel. He, and he alone, had stood up to Queen Jezebel and her coterie of temple priests who had danced in a frenzy to produce a religious experience that would have made our student Vespers service pale in comparison. Their Baalistic theology of worship through self-expression whose canons, Eugene Peterson says, “are that it be interesting, relevant, and exciting—that I ‘get something out of it,’” (The Jesus Way, 110), had run head-on into Yahweh and His demand that worship is not something we experience but something that we do, “regardless of how we feel about it or whether we feel anything at all,” (Peterson, 111). On that day on top of the mountain, Baal was shown to be an illusion and Yahweh as the one true God. Elijah’s willingness to stand in the gap was rewarded, the 450 priests slaughtered, and the elaborate Baal myth totally deconstructed.

But Queen Jezebel was a sore loser. Elijah had dared to defy the powers that be, those in charge as Ben and Ruth have reminded us over the last few weeks, and the prophet of God is as good as dead. He decides to leave her jurisdiction in Israel and hightail it south of the border to Beersheba. In a rather short period of time he goes from being conquering hero to pursued fugitive. The journey that ensues covers close to a hundred miles and leaves him exhausted and ready to die. Twice he is fortified by heavenly visitors as he makes his way into the desolate Sinai on a pilgrimage that takes him from the heights of victory on Mount Carmel to the depths of prophetic desolation on Mount Horeb. At the end, he finds himself in a dark cave, which surely must serve as a symbol of all that Israel’s greatest prophet had so far endured. And when he emerges from that cave to confront the God of Hosts he is accosted by wind, earthquake, and fire—“not unlike the thunder, lightning, fire, smoke and trumpet blasts that Moses met on this same mountain,” (Peterson, 118). And, perhaps like Moses, he expected God to reveal Himself in a mighty peal of thunder and lightning (Exodus 19:19), much like the one that recently struck and melted the 62-foot “Touchdown Jesus” outside an Ohio megachurch--lighting up the sky all along Interstate 75.

But, instead, the revelation of God for which the great prophet has been longing comes in quiet inarticulate breathing. The Hebrew phrasing here, as Peterson says, “is tantalizingly elusive,” (118)—qol d’mamah daqqah. The old King James had translated it as “a still small voice,” which the NIV here renders as “a gentle whisper.” God is not to be discovered in some chaotic frenzied ecstasy the writer seems to suggest, but in the bowels of nothingness—what the NRSV calls, “sheer silence.” The climax of Elijah’s story, you see, is not in the noisy victory on Mt. Carmel, but in the quiet vocational renewal discovered at Mt. Horeb. Elijah, like many of us, had thought that he had accomplished something in front of those 450 priests, but today’s story reminds us that this is but prelude to the true revelation of God. This new prophetic understanding emerges out of the boundless nothingness of the Sinai desert to break forth in the silence of the God of All Creation who restores to Elijah his prophetic breath. Elijah, this man who lived life on the margins, not only challenges the powers of the world, but suggests an entirely different orientation towards that world run by the mighty and powerful and what truly counts in God’s counter-cultural Kingdom.

In Galatians, we read of another man who, according to chapter one, was “advanced in Judaism” and “violently persecuting the church of God and trying to destroy it,” (1:13). But, confronted by the same God in Christ on his way to Damascus, he, like Elijah, withdrew into the deserts of Arabia. This man, one Saul of Tarsus, had believed that accomplishment was to be discovered in meeting the demands of Torah—what gets translated here most often with the word, “law.” A version of this was now being preached in Galatia by those sometimes called “Judaizers,” provoking Paul to say at the beginning of chapter 3, “You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you?” (3:1). Torah, he claims in today’s passage, does play an important role in our journey of faith. He calls it here “our disciplinarian until Christ came,” (3:24). The Greek used here, paidagogos, is the root for our English word, pedagogy, and comes from the experience that many wealthy young Greeks had of an older, wiser, male teacher who served to guide them through their education and prepare them for living out their calling in the adult world. One thinks immediately here of the philosopher, Aristotle, mentoring the young Alexander for his future role as world conqueror and benefactor of the Hellenistic way of life.

The key principle here, though, is that what Paul once thought of as the goal of life (service to the law) was but a preparation for the life of faith in Jesus Christ which was yet to come. Tutors provided a very important service in the ancient world. They helped to prepare their charges for what they would have to face as adults. But once one became a full citizen it became imperative that one move from the needs of childhood to the embrace of one’s life’s calling. Paul reminds the Galatians that they have now been baptized into Christ and, as such, have taken on the life of faith—a life in which racial identity, economic status, and even gender identification no longer are relevant. To continue to find one’s primary identity through such markers is to mistake calling for privilege, the journey of faith for a string of accomplishments. And for Paul, this was no abstract concept but a calling to the cruciform life which would lead to his own martyrdom years later in Rome. One born to Roman citizenship and Jewish privilege voluntarily gave himself over to the margins of life when he discovered and embraced his new identity as “apostle to the Gentiles” and “servant of Jesus Christ.”

But no one is better at highlighting the place of the marginalized than is the writer of Luke’s gospel. Time and time again he uses as his main cast those who would have been considered outside the boundaries of God’s grace. And no one is more isolated than is this Gerasene demoniac who is portrayed in today’s text as naked and making his life “in the tombs.” According to Jewish law, such a man was not to be looked at, let alone touched. And to further indicate just how far removed we are from Jewish respectability, the story moves next to swine herders—Gentiles who made their living off of meat that was considered unclean by the people of God. Jesus’ entry into the narrative clearly shows that he has crossed numerous boundaries as the man’s first words are, “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God?” (Luke 8:28).

I think the key to understanding the power of this particular story is the contrast of the man’s appearance at the beginning of the narrative with the characterization in verse 35: “they found the man from whom the demons had gone sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind.” In the course of a few words, the gospel writer manages to elicit for us the power of healing and transformation wrought by Jesus and the fear experienced by Elijah in our first lesson is here shared by the citizens of this Gentile territory—so much so that they ask Jesus to leave them (8:37). The restored man, however, thought that he had now discovered his lot in life—to sit at the feet of Jesus, to join him and his merry band of disciples. His healing had been accomplished and now he was to be afforded the opportunity to enjoy his newfound status as a disciple of the master.

But like Elijah in the first story standing in triumph at Mt. Carmel or Saul wrapping himself in Torah righteousness, this newly-healed man misunderstood his calling in life. He was not healed to enjoy the triumphs of basking in the accomplishment of a redeemed life with infinite promise; he was healed in order to return and to bear witness to the goodness and power of God. The end of the story, like so many of the Gospel lessons, is not the building of booths as the disciples had hoped in the wake of the Transfiguration so that they could live their lives in peace and harmony up on the mountain. No, Jesus says, our calling in life is to come down from the mountain to bear witness, to proclaim, what God has done, is doing, and yet desires to do.

This worldview stands in stark contrast to much of what is preached and practiced in 21st century American Evangelicalism. Worship services in many of our churches bear more resemblance to the cutting-and-dancing priests of Baal than they do to the retreat into the wilderness to listen for the voice of God. In the midst of our “culture of distraction,” many churches simply wish to offer a bolder, brasher, more mesmerizing event to counter the bells and whistles of the secular culture. That is, we simply want to dress up a “Christian version” of our secular counterpart. We have no desire to preach the hard truth of a God who calls us to sacrificial service, what Dietrich Bonhoeffer labeled the “cost of discipleship.” We simply want to offer attractive “Christian desserts” alongside worldly ones in what the Canadian sociologist, Reginald Bibby, labels “religion a la carte.”

But today’s texts speak of something else—an entirely different orientation towards our life and God’s calling on it. Instead of spiritual experiences they call us to a life of Christian spiritual formation, that which the Book of Common Prayer labels “the process of allowing God to bring our ‘unruly wills and affections’ into order with what is healthful to our spirits and to the spirits and lives of those around us,” (David A deSilva, Sacramental Life, 2008). In his recent book, Sacramental Life: Spiritual Formation through the Book of Common Prayer, Dave deSilva calls this “the process by which Christ’s mind takes shape within us. . . it involves learning to love what God commands and to desire what God promises. . . it is to come to the place where to do what God wishes is our pleasure and desire,” (Introduction). Those of us who have grown up in the Holiness tradition recognize something of this language because it goes to the heart of what we have believed that salvation is much more “fully orbed” than a get-into-heaven pass. We have traditionally preached, practiced, and believed that God is interested in all of creation, in all of us, and in all (not just part) of our lives.

Today’s scriptures tell us the story of three men who would have been considered rather peculiar in their time. Eugene Peterson says that Elijah “took the marginal way. He held no position, lived a solitary life in obscurity, appeared from time to time without fanfare and disappeared from public view without notice,” (The Way of Jesus, 125). He modeled the quintessential life of the prophets who, Frederick Buechner reminds us, “were drunk on God and in the presence of their terrible tipsiness no one was ever comfortable,” (Wishful Thinking, 74-75). Buechner goes on to say of Paul that “his mads were madder and his blues bluer, his pride prouder and his humbleness humbler, his strengths stronger and his weaknesses weaker than almost anybody else’s you’d be apt to think of; and the splash he made when he fell for Christ is audible still,” (67). He made plenty of enemies who “accused him of being insincere, crooked, yellow, physically repulsive, unclean, bumbling, and off his rocker,” (68). And yet, he was willing to set aside whatever pretensions he had in order to follow in the wake of the crucified Christ. Marginalized by much of the eastern church, beat up, shipwrecked, imprisoned, and hauled halfway across the Roman empire, he came to understand that the calling to follow Jesus was not a one time moment of salvation made on the road to Damascus, but a lifetime of service and of making hard choices to become more like his master over the course of the rest of his life.

That is why this morning we need to come to understand that the good news is not about the absence of anxiety, but the realization that we are not alone. That is why we are not called to an everyday experience of spiritual ecstasy, but a growing trust amidst the whisper of a still, small voice. And that is also why we are not offered freedom from our bodily existence, but a growing sense of Christ at work within all of creation. This, my friends, is the true nature of the gospel of Jesus Christ which reminds us that God still continues to beckon us from the safety of our fearful hovels to the road that leads we know not where. Elijah, Paul, and the unnamed Gerasene demoniac demonstrate for us something of that life of faithfulness. All that remains for us is the choice of whether to join in their company.

A Change of Itinerary

2010-05-10T05:35:00.000-07:00

A Change of Itinerary
Sixth Sunday of Easter C
Acts 16:9-15; Revelation 21:10, 22-22:5; John 5:1-9
St. Paul’s Free Methodist Church
May 9, 2010

One of my favorite activities is the planning of a family vacation. Mind you, these days we don’t take them as often as we used to when the girls were younger and lived at home with us. In those days, when time was short and money was tighter, making sure we got maximum “bang for the buck” was absolutely essential. So, for instance, when we flew to Seattle in the summer of 2000, I figured that since we were going so far west we needed to take in as much as possible. So it was that I meticulously put together a ten-day adventure that took us not just to Seattle, but to Portland, Vancouver, Victoria, via the Columbia River, various and sundry ferries, a jaunt into the British Columbia wilderness and even the more arid eastern part of Washington. In order to accomplish this, every minute had to be scheduled, every penny accounted for, and reservations secured well ahead of time.

My family somehow put up with my anal-retentive approach to discovering vacation bliss but they have never let me forget how exhausting it all was. I doubt that I would have remained as cool and collected as the Apostle Paul in Acts 16 who wound up in Philippi only because he had been forbidden entry into Bithynia. In fact, the story as it is told in the verses just preceding today’s opening lesson is one of doors slammed shut and continual frustration for the apostle to the Gentiles. Having just come away from the infamous Apostolic Council in Jerusalem where he had received official permission to continue his ministry to Gentiles, he found himself losing his traveling companion, Barnabas, in a tiff over the head-strong Timothy and then confronted with continuing issues whenever he tried to follow his prescribed itinerary. Finally, according to the text, he has this rather strange dream of a man from Macedonia who asks for help. From this point on, Paul’s willingness to change his itinerary will not only make a difference in his ministry but will impact, I would like to suggest, all of Christian history.

First, Paul crosses the Aegean from Troas to the island of Samothrace, to the port city of Neapolis, to the Roman colony at Philippi. Though this may not seem much different from many of Paul’s other travel narratives, we should note that this marks the point at which the gospel officially moves from Asia to Europe. Grammatically, this shift is all too apparent in the text as we move from third-person to first-person narrative, but historically the shift is even more important. In short, without this hop-skip-and-a-jump, those of us who are descendants of European immigrants might very well not even be Christians today.

Second, there is a curious shift in missiological strategy in our passage that often goes unnoticed by preachers. Up until this time, Paul’s approach has been to go looking for the synagogue on the Sabbath as a springboard for Christian evangelism. But, remember, that the narrative suggests that he is coming fresh from the Apostolic Council back in Jerusalem where, with a few provisional agreements, he has been “released for denominational service” outside of the Jewish community. So, whether it is the fact that Philippi simply doesn’t have a synagogue or because Paul is intentionally changing his approach, on this particular Sabbath the text says, “we went outside the gate by the river, where we supposed there was a place of prayer,” (Acts 16:13). In all the previous accounts of Paul’s ministry he has gone to the sunagoge, but this day he finds himself at the proseuke. Instead of joining his brother Jews in a house of worship, he finds himself perhaps out in the open air “outside the city gates.” Now, later in the sermon I want to come back to this description of ministry near the city gate, but for now it is important that we simply be aware that there is this second “sea change” afoot as he not only moves outside of his planned itinerary in Asia Minor into Europe, but moves, as well, from the synagogue to a place of gathering near the entrance to the city of Philippi.

And this then leads us to a third interesting shift. Had he gone to a synagogue, he would have been seated, no doubt, on the “male side” with a bunch of bearded guys who smelled of testosterone. But, here in Philippi, he must do the unthinkable as a Jewish man and begin a conversation with a group of women. In an article written almost forty years ago now in the British periodical, The Expository Times, Derek Thomas suggested that this initial contact with Lydia “points to a new status for women, a new estimate of the value and place of woman in the purpose of God,” (“The Place of Women in the Church at Philippi,” 118). While I think that perhaps the Rev. Thomas waxes a bit overly hyperbolic here, it is the case that women played a key role in the leadership of the early church as is made clear by the numerous references throughout the Pauline literature.

But women seemed to have been absolutely front and center in the church in Philippi. In fact two of them, Euodia and Syntyche, seemed to have undergone something of a falling out that spilled over into the larger church body. While Paul never discloses the nature of their disagreement, that he includes a personal appeal in a letter sent to the entire church suggests that this went beyond a mere difference of opinion. In fact, the majority of scholars believe that this may well suggest that these two women were openly expressing their views in the church and because they were probably in positions of leadership it may have had a deleterious effect on the larger congregation.

Now, all of this is well and good, providing interesting little insights into our opening text, but what of the larger context in which we find ourselves on this Sixth Sunday of Easter as we prepare for the Ascension of Christ in a few days and the celebration of Pentecost, or Whitsunday, which is yet to follow? I would like to suggest that the travel itinerary from the book of the Acts of the Apostles is something of a miniature of the radical healing or therapeusis which lies behind all of today’s readings. For, if you look closely at the texts which follow from both the Revelation of the Elder John and the narrative with which we are provided in John’s gospel, we are confronted with pictures of healing and redemption—both of which take place near the city gates.

In the case of the former, it is a vision of great hope. But much of the imagery we get in the Bible is quite pastoral—that is, we are used to hearing of green swards, rustic shepherds, and the clean smell of the great outdoors. But this vision, this dream, which captures the imagination is set in a city. And the curious thing is that normally one would look for an element of health and redemption in the precincts of the synagogue, or temple. But notice what the writer says: “I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb,” (Rev. 21:22). And, then, just a few short verses later we hear of this great heavenly city, that “its gates will never be shut by day,” (Rev. 21:25). This is a place of vast hospitality where fear is not the order of the day but openness which involves vulnerability to all that many might consider “diseased”—since disease is what is classically defined as that which comes from outside and infects the body.

And then in the latter gospel lesson, we find Jesus heading into this very earthly city on the first of several journeys at holiday time. In this respect, John’s gospel is quite different from the other three Synoptic Gospels. For in them, Jesus only goes once to Jerusalem and that is to die. But in this gospel, Jesus is seen striding into the holy city on several different festive occasions. And this time, we are told he finds himself at the Sheep Gate near the pool of Bethesda—an area which many of our students know has recently undergone archaeological preservation. Here, we encounter a diseased man—one of many invalids afflicted with blindness, lameness, or paralysis. As on many occasions, Jesus brings healing to one considered ritually unclean. But what is fascinating about this story is the note on which it ends—a line which we might easily overlook. The gospel writer says simply, “Now that day was a Sabbath,” (John 5:9). Again, the gospel challenges traditional ways of thinking about boundaries between sacred and secular. Just as the gospel has come to the pagan culture of Philippi and to a gender considered second-class, or just as the gates have been left open and no temple necessary in the heavenly city, here Jesus is not in the synagogue as one would expect but at the city gates on the Sabbath healing one who would have been considered ritually unclean. What are we to make of all of this boundary-crossing in three different narratives?

At the heart of the Easter season there stands this curious element of surprise—from Mary waiting outside the tomb, to the disciples on the Emmaus road, to Jesus showing up for a fish breakfast with the disciples. For those of us old enough to remember his voice, in the words of Private Gomer Pyle, the message of Easter is, “Surprise! Surprise! Surprise!” And yet, every year we fail to be surprised by the return of spring, by the next bend in the road, or by the sheer wonder of the sacraments discovered in the mundane as my new friend, Dean Nelson, points out in his book, God Hides in Plain Sight. And, we bring that same failure to pay attention to these familiar texts of scripture so often that we forget that the element of surprise is at the very heart of inductive Bible study.

Perhaps what we need is a change of itinerary—something like that which the apostle Paul experienced in today’s text. But this begins, not by seeing the difficulties in life as God not paying attention to us, but by seeing such times as opportunities to be confronted by a new way of seeing our world and taking a road we had perhaps never thought of before. Like those living in the first century, we may have become accustomed to looking for God in only certain places or in only certain ways. But perhaps God wants to take us out of the church building to the city gates or even, heaven forbid, open the very gates of the city to those whom we have marginalized. What might that look like? Where might such a thing happen?

I want to tell you about a couple of alums from our department who have forced me to rethink my itinerary. Because some of what I want to share is somewhat sensitive, I have chosen not to reveal their real names lest it be embarrassing to them. So, for the sake of today’s narrative I’ll simply call them Moe, Larry, and Curly. These three guys all came to our department a number of years back and were somewhat nondescript. They were, like many of my students, fun-loving, somewhat carefree guys. They had their passions—most of which, I came to believe, were outside the classroom, though their love for Jesus was apparent to anyone who knew them. They enjoyed sparring with Dr. McPeak and myself, but I have to confess, I wasn’t sure if any them would make a big impact on the world because they were “C-level” students who sat in the middle or at the back of the class and didn’t seem to get fired up about spending the evening reading in the library the way I do.

Over the years we have remained in casual contact. And they each have gone their separate ways, all of them eventually getting married. So, I was somewhat surprised to hear a few years ago that two of them had come together to plant a church. They were absolutely convinced that this was what God wanted them to do and they were willing to put their lives on the line for this venture of faith. When they came by to tell me about it, I have to admit that I thought they were a little bit crazy. They told me how they wanted this to be a “safe place” for people and an open space situated near the “city gates” where they lived. They didn’t want to invest a bunch of money in an expensive building, they just wanted to find some space they could rent where they could share the gospel narrative and help people discover Jesus in their everyday lives.

And you know what, that is just what they did. Recently I had occasion to see some of the work they put in to make this church happen. In fact, one of the guys who participated in that new church plant is now a student of mine. And when I watched Curly preach, I sat back in awe at how he took a text from one of Paul’s epistles and made it come alive for a group of people who sat on the edge of their chairs. Were these the same guys who stayed up at night playing video games and fell asleep in my class because of my boring lectures? Were these the guys that I had written off as accumulating too much debt without spending enough time in the library? What had happened to my assumptions that these guys would not leave a mark on the world?

To say that I was surprised would be to put it mildly. I had mistakenly plotted out an itinerary for these students and had been trying to send them to ministry amongst a bunch of Jews when they had been called to a place down by the river. I had all of the costs worked out, but these fellows decided to be more like Jesus and not count the cost. So, this morning, as we prepare for the Ascension of our Lord, comes these gentle reminders that the resurrected Jesus is not to be held onto and touched in our houses of worship but to be discovered outside our doors, perhaps even outside our carefully-drawn boundaries. And maybe next time I need to learn to just get into the car and drive wherever the wind might take Darlene and me. (Well, at least I’ll think about it.) But even more importantly, I invite you to join me in seeing God’s purposes for the redemption of all of creation in each and every person and in each and every place. And, in so doing, our hearts may yet be ready to get just a glimpse of what a change in itinerary can do when we celebrate the birthday of the church on Pentecost. It is to this open-ended journey that God invites us this morning.

God Has a Story, Too

2010-05-03T12:45:00.000-07:00

“God Has a Story, Too: Do they all Live Happily Ever After?”
Ruth 4:1-17
Greenville College Chapel
May 3, 2010

Some of us are glad we never have to repeat adolescence. For me, the worst part was trying to figure out how to engage in building a relationship with someone of the opposite sex without falling completely on my face. Somehow or the other the toxic mix of teenage hormones produced a combustible effect whenever I tried to figure out how to be sauve and debonair. That is why I depended on my friends, like Mark Skaggs, to help me by participating in what usually turned out to be disastrous amorous adventures.

Mark and I became friends because we were the two male outsiders in the percussion section of the high school band. The only difference was that I was a complete and utter nerd while Mark could at least fake being cool. On the infamous trip to San Antonio in the spring of 1974, while the rest of the drum section was engaged with a strange smelling weed, downing a variety of hard liquor, and testing out a collection of Cuban cigars, we were simply looking to bag a couple of dates back to our room. This, however, didn’t work out so well since the aforementioned remaining members of the percussion section were busy filling the room with a combination of marijuana and cigar smoke laced with the distinct odor of Jim Beam and Johnny Walker.

So it was that we decided to try again when we returned home and my parents granted me the use of our house for a day while they ventured off to some area minister’s conference. The plan was quite simple: pick up of the ladies in question, followed by a bit of romantic music played our favorite rock group, Chicago, while sitting out on the screened-in porch enjoying grilled burgers and franks. The first part of the plan was sure to impress, given the fact that Skaggs owned a gorgeous 1969 Yellow Mustang, complete with oversized enging. That car looked and sounded of brute male testosterone. When we drove down the street beautiful women would come running out of their houses yelling, “I want to ride! I want to ride!” The second part should have been easy as well. Haul over Mark’s oversize speakers and hook them up to my turntable and, then, get the charcoal going on the grill outside.

The problem was, though, that I had never actually been allowed to start a fire on my father’s precious grill—I had only watched him do it. And I knew that anything that demanded mechanical ability or the use of one’s hands usually ended in disaster for me. So, I decided to make sure that the charcoal would light. I emptied the entirety of a bag under the metal grill and soaked it with a portion of a can of gasoline my dad had out in the garage for use on the mower. As I bent low over the grate to apply the match to about ten pounds of blackened charcoal, I remember hearing this incredible “whoosh” all around my head and literally leaping back from the force of the flames. Fortunately, my oversized aviator glasses protected my eyes. But the first thing I noticed was this incredible stench as Mark came running out of the house and threw a towel over my head. My precious locks of hair that usually fell down over my collar had been deeply singed and were still smoking. Worse yet, my eyebrows were pretty much missing. Not being able to see myself as others might, I couldn’t understand why my friend, Mark, was on the ground laughing like a hyena. “Hartley!” he said. “You were on fire, man! And your hair is a mess.”

What were we to do? We had to pick up the women in a few minutes and I looked like something out of a Boris Karloff horror flick. I will always be grateful to my friend, Mark Skaggs, for his attempt to restore me to manhood. He carefully clipped away my singed hair and even tried to replace my eyebrows with my mother’s meagerly collection of women’s cosmetics. He was laughing so hard, though, that when he tried to redraw my eyebrows with a pencil the line went up and down in dark jagged lines. Even his muscle-car Mustang could not salvage our long-awaited rendezvous with the first-chair clarinetist and flautist. They would spend the evening trying hard not to laugh at me or Mark’s version of how I tried to prepare for our “hot date.”

Well, unlike my experience, Ruth’s story ends, not in disaster, but with its exact opposite: complete and total restoration. Having taken the road less traveled and followed Naomi back to her home in Bethlehem, having slogged away in the field day after day, and having risked everything on the threshing floor, at long last her hopes and dreams were coming true. Perhaps challenged by her courage and his lack of it, Boaz had made his way into town the next morning and confronted a nearer kinsman, much as Ruth had bravely challenged him. Though the unnamed man had been enamored of the opportunity to acquire additional property, when he heard that Ruth was part of the deal, he balked. For the first time in the entire story, a man takes charge, receiving the other’s sandal as a physical representation of agreement to the deal. And, before numerous witnesses, we are told, Boaz proclaimed to all his intention to make Ruth his wife.

Some might be tempted at this point, to view the story as setting to rights the true patriarchal nature of society. How odd it must have seemed to the original readers to have these women as the central actors in this historic narrative. But, now, at long last, has emerged a masculine hero on his white horse. Yet, we are surprised that the narrator frames the ending of the story with as much care as its beginning, choosing to focus on Naomi, instead of Boaz. For this is a story of redemption not only for the younger woman, but primarily for the older one. In fact, we are told that, “Naomi took the child and laid him in her bosom, and became his nurse.” To which the women in the neighborhood proclaimed not, “A son has been born to Ruth,” but, “a son has been born to Naomi.” This woman who had once self-proclaimed that she was changing her name to Mara (“bitterness”), has now been redeemed and restored, herself.

But even that does not end this rather strange tale, for the narrator concludes of the child: “They named him Obed; he became the father of Jesse, the father of David,” (4:17). And then we are allowed to overhear in a final text which we did not read this morning, a recounting of the connection between this David and the generations extending back to Perez, the child born to Tamar by her father-in-law, Judah. It is almost as if the writer is seeking to reassert the scandalous nature of the connections that bring together these women who have survived by their wits, relying even on sexual craftiness when necessary. Think of it! Because of the role of tracing one’s genealogy in the ancient world, and particularly in Israel where proof of pure blood was considered essential by some, this “ending” to a tale would have been the ultimate insult. That such a book even made its way into the biblical canon must signal something very important to us.

For the reality is that, though unmentioned, the real power behind the scenes, the real director of this story, is none other than YHWH, the God of Israel, himself. That David, the one whom the Bible describes as “a man after God’s own heart,” could have come from such poor and scandalous circumstances surely says something about the way that God works. Ruth, as important as she is to this story, then, is relegated only to the role of lead actress. The curtain rises and each player comes forward to present herself and to bow, linking hands one with the other. But, then, the line parts in the middle and the actors and actresses step to the side as the unseen and unnamed director is acknowledged because, “God has a story, too.”

And the wonder, for those of us who call ourselves Christians, is that the story doesn’t end there: not even with Ruth, not even with David. For linking the Old and New Testaments together is this hinge we call The Gospel according to St. Matthew, chapter 1, in which the scandalous lineage is extended both backwards and forwards to include, not only Ruth and Tamar, but Rahab the harlot and Bathsheeba, one of the victims of David’s greatest abuses of power. And, the gospel writer tells us, from these lives, from these stories, God has woven a tapestry beyond belief. For, you see, Ruth’s story and Rahab’s story and Tamar’s story and Bathsheba’s story lead us invariably to another scandalous young couple in another out-of-the-way place in a world that still believes that God should work amongst the rich and the powerful in spectacular ways for all to see. But there, in Matthew 1:16 we are told that God’s story moves not in palaces of kings but in the midst of the everyday mundane life of a poor peasant girl from Nazareth, whose name was Mary. And, like Ruth, she will have to risk everything whenever she chooses to say “yes” to God. But, my friends, her “yes” will have historic consequences for all of human history. For, when Mary chooses to bear the Christ-child, God’s story intersects with our story.

You know, when Wilson Hogue took the reigns of the new Free Methodist College here in Greenville near the end of the nineteenth century, he knew that perhaps his most important faculty appointment would be the person he chose to head up the Religion Department. For that task, he turned to a poor itinerant pastor out west in Oregon who had taught himself Greek and was hungry to further his education. John LaDue packed his wife and everything he owned to head to the Midwest, where he would have to work harder than any man should on starvation wages. In 1894, he made a total of $400--$300 of which came from his full-time teaching post and the rest from pastoral responsibilities to which he was assigned. Within ten years, he had earned an advanced degree from the famed University of Chicago and began to be called, “Rabbi,” by the many students who sat at his feet and came to love him. In 1918, when the Spanish Influenza swept across this nation, John’s wife died caring for their ailing daughter. Brokenhearted, he dove back into his teaching responsibilities in an attempt to assuage his grief. By 1923, he was worn out, so friends, alumni, and students raised enough money to pay for his way to Palestine, to see the Holy Land, during his lone sabbatical. You can read the journal he kept over in the archives situated in the basement of Ruby Dare Library.
LaDue believed in studying history carefully to see how God was at work in and through the church and he knew that our perspective is oftentimes distorted. He wrote of the First World War which was center-stage for the Greenville community and the rest of the nation for much of the second decade of the twentieth century: “What an end it is towards which the purpose of God is moving. This present colossal European contest with all its mighty implications is but a mere local incident in His all embracing cause.” Though he later would return from the Middle East, his health remained in poor condition and by the mid-twenties, it was clear that someone would have to replace Greenville’s first Religion Professor.

That someone proved to be none other than Wilson R. King, a proud alumnus of G.C. who had won honor as a scholar-athlete. King served with distinction during a time of division and fissure in American Religion. Following in the footsteps of his mentor, he sought to steer a course between the twin specters of theological liberalism and fundamentalism which threatened to engulf Protestants in both open and covert warfare. Calling for a radical combination of a critical, inquiring mind, with a warm and compassionate heart, Dr. King inspired a generation of students through the thirties, forties, and fifties of the last century.

Replacing King, the professor committed to inductive Bible study whose curmudgeonly ways had sustained him when under withering theological attack, would require someone like David, after God’s own heart. So, in 1957, back onto campus walked the winsome, young Jim Reinhard, behind whose eyes framed by those large horn-rimmed glasses, beat the heart of a giant. I can’t imagine anyone not loving the one we called “Jimmy”. He poured himself out for his students and developed with his wife, Marilyn, the COR trip that most of you students have taken. While away on his sabbatical pastoring a church in Evanston in the late seventies, he was tempted not to come back to teach. The people there loved the way he cared for and challenged them to follow the gospel. Teaching large classes here was draining, as John LaDue had learned, and Jim knew there would be a price to pay. But come back he did and poured his heart into every class he taught. And many of my younger colleagues like Brad Shaw, Randy Bergen, Karlene Johnson, and Scott Neumann got to sit under his teaching as a result of that painful decision.

But, on Good Friday, 1993, Dean Richard Holeman called to tell me that Dr. Reinhard had suffered another heart attack and to put him back in the classroom in the fall would be impossible. Would I consider coming back after 14 years away? I was mighty comfortable in Toronto. Life was good. My family was happy. We had what I still think is one of the greatest congregations of loving parishioners, representing over thirty different ethnic groups. Six years in Canada and a year in England had allowed me some distance from the narrow American provincialism I had so longed to leave behind. But, to make a long story short, it quickly became clear that the call of my alma mater was the call of God.

And so, I returned. I was scared to death. When I had arrived on campus as a student in the mid-seventies I was something of a caricature later portrayed best by Dana Carvey with his character, “Garth,” complete with the long hair and the drumsticks protruding from my back pocket. Sitting there in 222 Hogue Hall, I felt like an intruder. That, after all, was Dr. Reinhard’s office and there was a hundred years of teaching in the department to try and live up to. Students quickly learned that I was no Jim Reinhard. I wouldn’t think of trying to skate down the aisle in chapel and I was never known to bring balloons or dress up like a clown.

But, as I reminisce a bit here on this beautiful spring morning, I’m reminded that my former teacher and colleague, Dr. Royal Mulholland, has now been retired long enough that most of you have never had one of his classes. And it was Royal who told me about one of his early chapel addresses which incorporated language which some found offensive and even moved some Board members to call for his firing. But I also know that one of Royal’s students, Aaron Cobb, is taking a job this summer as a Professor of Philosophy at Auburn University. And, Aaron got turned on to reading philosophy because of Dr. Mulholland and my former colleague, Dr. Craig Boyd. And, heaven knows, how many other countless alums there are out there because of Royal’s and Craig’s passion for philosophy and the liberal arts. The great Art Holmes, former professor of philosophy at Wheaton College, once said that his goal was to produce a hundred Christian philosophers for the academy and the church and, as a result, his legacy continues on even today. So, I figure if I can just hang in there like Drs. Mulholland and Holmes, something good is bound to happen.

But, in the end, you see, it’s not really about me at all. Because one of these days, even if I stay here for the rest of my career, somebody else is going to inhabit my office and pick up right where I left off and the institution will be better for it. And, I will eventually take my place out there in Montrose Cemetery, a few blocks west of where I currently live. You see, eventually, every professor at Greenville gets a permanent sabbatical and never has to worry about reading a paper ever again. Perhaps I’ll get lucky and someone, maybe you, will occasionally dredge up a story about old Prof. Hartley or maybe my grandson, Tristan, will come back here to try and figure out what attractions this place had for me. I don’t know. But I do know that my story is being carefully interwoven with that of others here, in this place. And when I have a cup of coffee with my friends Joe and Jeff or sit down to discuss literature with Brad or Christina or Lesley, I sense that there is something much bigger at work here than them, or me. Was it simply chance that brought me here or something much greater?

The apostle Paul tells us that God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself. And I happen to believe that this work of reconciliation will go on, whether I am a part of it or not. But, my friends, what a privilege it is to be a part of this cosmic plan and this grand adventure! It’s a story that reaches back into the very mists of time. It’s a story that reaches its zenith in the events which we have so recently celebrated in the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. And, it’s a story that reaches even into the nooks and crannies, the crevices and cracks of a little Midwestern town that fails to register nary a “blip” on the radar of most of the rich and powerful.

So, here we are, headed into the homestretch at the end of another academic year. And I want to encourage you to not be afraid to throw a little gasoline on the academic pyre. Sure it’s risky and sure your hair may catch on fire. But, just like my friend, Mark Skaggs, you’ve got a lot of us in this community who are prepared to douse the over-exuberant flames and to trim the locks of your scorched intellectual head. So, like Ruth, our semester’s heroine and example, commit yourself to the dangerous journey to the threshing floor and the risky business of transformational learning. And don’t worry about the consequences, since God may have something much more exciting in mind than even you can imagine. Because after all: God has a story, too.

The Climax of the Story

2010-04-20T06:15:00.000-07:00

“’What Do You Think You’re Doing’: The Climax of the Story”
Ruth 3
Greenville College Chapel
April 19, 2010

My friend, whom I shall simply call “Bill”, always seemed to be in need of money. But, back then, in the mid-seventies here at Greenville, most of us were without cars, cash, and many of the technological gadgets which most of us now take for granted. So it was that I came to set up two avenues to increase my income: typing up and proofreading papers for guys who didn’t know how and the establishment of what later came to be called the Joy Hall betting pool. It was the latter which proved to be both a lucrative source of income for me, and occasionally “Bill”; but which also almost led to our downfall and a quick exit from these ivy-covered halls.

That fall, Bill was particularly worried because he wanted to impress this girl who worked at the library. His plan was to locate a tux, buy a dozen roses, and borrow a friend’s car to take her into St. Louis. What he needed was cold hard cash. My idea was quite simple. Bill would strip off and get buck naked (remember, this was the height of the streaking days), and then he would oil down his body and slither out onto the roof of what was then the bookstore and what is now the mailroom. Now, anyone who has actually looked out onto the flat terrain of that roof knows that it is littered with all kinds of little, sharp rocks. The question was: How long could Bill lie prostrate on that roof completely nude in the cold night air? Surely such a question was worth betting on!

So it was that I began to round up the usual suspects and the pot began to grow. The great thing about my scheme was that, no matter what happened, Bill and I would get paid—whether he lasted a long or a short time. But from the very beginning, things began to go wrong. The day turned cold and by sundown the clouds had lowered and it was starting to rain. By ten o’clock, the officially posted time for the event, little pellets of ice were falling out of the sky and littering the roof. Bill had to psyche himself up for the event while we secured box seating for the betters along the south side of Joy Hall—rooms 203, 205, 207. The guys had been looking forward to this all day and I was having a hard time keeping them calm and quiet. My biggest fear always was of getting caught and having the whole lucrative business enterprise somehow unravel. While I “shushed” the crowd, Bill carefully and gingerly made his way out the window and onto the roof. He immediately began to chatter as he spread himself flat against the rocks in something between a cruciform and fetal position. The guys went crazy. Those who had their money on a matter of a few short minutes began to urge him to feel the bitter cold and wet and to get up—like some kind of nude Lazarus who would squeeze back into the warmth of the men’s dorm. But those who thought he might last ten or fifteen minutes were trying to cajole him to remain calm and to enter a Zen-like state in which he might ignore the cold. To those driving past on College Avenue, it must have sounded like some kind of prison break in the offing.

Then it was that my greatest fear began to be realized. It just so happened that that night, of all nights, Dr. Orley Herron, President of Greenville College, had decided to work late in his office before retiring to Joy House. Now what you have to know about Dr. Herron (or the “Big-O” as my friends Jay Kennedy and Mark DeMoulin had later dubbed him) is that he struck fear in freshmen guys—particularly those who were doing what they shouldn’t be doing. Tall and barrel-chested, “The Big-O” could oftentimes be found with his shirt off, leading a pack of a half-dozen or so faculty and administrators in a noontime run. He had this big basso-profundo voice and was the epitome of what my friend, Dr. Randall Balmer, has labeled “muscular Christianity.” Orley couldn’t fail to notice the racket emanating from Joy Hall or the flashlight beams careening over Bill’s naked body on the roof of the bookstore. I knew that if Bill stood up, we were all dead. Everything after that happened so fast that, to this day, I break out in a sweat remembering it. Suffice it to say that the Dean of Men was not very amused and I was warned that the continuation of any such illegal and nefarious activities might well result in my dismissal from the college.

Within weeks of that event, my entire life would change. I decided that I was no longer going to be a Pre-Med major, but to give in to my passion for literature and become an English major. The band I was in disbanded and I found myself the lone freshman with a group of upperclassmen loading my drums up to go out and represent the college. My quest to date my way through the better part of the female populace was dropped and I actually got the Chaplain of the Sophomore class (known for her upstanding character) to go with me to that year’s performance of Handel’s Messiah (today, I am happy to report, she is my wife of some 32 years). Looking back now, I can see how, in many ways, that night on the roof marked a crisis-point, a climax, in my narrative in this place and forever changed the trajectory of my student years.

Such crisis-points come along in our lives occasionally, but it is usually only in retrospect that we recognize them. In Ruth’s continuing saga, the days had probably begun to blur together—beginning and ending the same, falling into a regular, routine, and mundane pattern. Each morning she would probably get up early, before dawn, dress herself, and make her way to the fields to glean a little something for herself and Naomi. But, just as the women have been the primary actors throughout this brief narrative and the men oftentimes passive, at best, so it is in this chapter of the story. Naomi comes up with a bold plan which is filled with double-entendre. Her instructions clearly represent a woman who understands both the hearts of men and the ways of the world. Ruth, she says, is told to wash and anoint herself (the ancient equivalent of putting on cosmetics), to put on her very best and most attractive clothes, and then to go to the threshing floor to lie in wait for Boaz after he has had his fill of food and drink. In other words, Ruth is to be at her most desirable exactly at the point at which Boaz will perhaps be most susceptible to her charms, having eaten a big meal and swilled one too many beers. In Hebrew, these opening verses are dominated by the powerful verbs which get translated with English words like, “go down” and “lie down.” These terms are not neutral—they are freighted with sexual overtones. Further, the Hebrew term for “feet” is the same as that which is used to represent the sexual organs, the “private parts” of an individual. At the end of reading Naomi’s instructions, the reader is left to wander, exactly what is this older woman suggesting? The text remains intentionally ambiguous and the only conclusion we can reach is that, at the very least, Naomi’s plan is, as Danna Fewell and David Gunn suggest, both deceptive and dangerous (Compromising Redemption, 99).

Ruth’s partner in this dangerous dance is Boaz, the one remaining righteous man who has emerged in the story. But here he is at first something of a cardboard cutout, a kind of poster child for “The Best Damned Sports Show Period.” Just as Naomi had predicted, he walks onto the threshing floor filled with food and drink and, according to the narrator, “he was in a contented mood.” Think American Thanksgiving, lots of turkey and pumpkin pie, an hour into the football game, all the males in the household with belts unbuckled and fast asleep.

This was the moment of crisis. Naomi’s instructions had been clear: “observe the place where he lies; then go and uncover his feet and lie down.” My professor at Princeton, Katherine Sakenfeld, raises the question about what is at work here: Is Ruth now about to engage in the ultimate act of self-sacrifice, offering her body for the sake of the older woman’s economic welfare, or is she merely naïve and unaware of the sexual implications of Naomi’s plan? Again, the text retreats from any real clues. What we do know is that, according to the writer, “she came stealthily and uncovered his ‘feet,’ and lay down,” (verse 7). Hours later, at midnight, he turns over, the writer says, “and there, lying at his feet, was a woman!” Now the moment of reckoning had come. Naomi’s instructions had been clear: “he will tell you what to do.” But, instead, Boaz asks a question, “Who are you?” This is a scene Hollywood has provided for us numerous times over: the drunken man awakes to surprisingly find a female in his bed, at his side.
Now, for the first time, Ruth departs from the script. Here is how Fewell and Gunn describe what follows:

She puts her identity up front with all that it entails—she is a foreigner and she is ‘lower class’ (“your maidservant”). But she puts it up front together with a challenge: Extend your kanaph, because you are a rescuer/redeemer. As with Naomi, Ruth allows Boaz freedom to make a choice. See her as but an ephemeral sexual object (“extend your penis”), or see her as a person in need (“spread your wing/skirt”), a person who offers an enduring relationship, in which sexuality will have its home. She ‘calls’ him on his words of faith in chapter 2. It’s fine to talk about the wings of YHWH, but how about something a little more tangible? You can afford to wait for YHWH to recompense, reward and offer refuge. I can’t. How about putting your action where your fine words of faith are. You talk of my hesed (“faithfulness”). Now let’s see yours. Not only does she pull his religiosity to the level of human interaction, she pulls it to the most basic level of human interaction—sexual intercourse. His blessing (back in chapter 2) allowed him to remain distant; she challenges him to cut through the distance, to become as intimate as two people can be. She appeals to desire and closeness as a condition for faithfulness. And she extends to him her trust.
(Compromising Redemption, 102-103).

To say, then, that Ruth found herself in a “compromising situation” would be an understatement. It is clear from the text that the narrator wants us to see clearly the possibility for sexual misconduct. The instructions that Naomi issues may indicate that Ruth is to go to the threshing floor prepared to speak, “as a bride.” There is intentional ambiguity about the uncovering of Boaz’ legs—how much was to be uncovered? Eight times in this relatively brief drama the verb, skb, “to lie down” is used, alongside the frequent use of the verb, yd’, “to know.” But, in no way is this an attempt by the biblical writer to titillate those of us overhearing the story. The purpose is to draw us into this difficult question of whether Ruth, caught in the crucible of a difficult choice, will emerge the righteous person she was when the story started. What happens at the threshing floor is but the climax of the narrative that began on the highway in Moab and continued in the harvest scene of the last chapter.

I would like to suggest this morning that all of us come to our own threshing floors at one time or another. Most of our lives, as I suggested last time, are spent in the realm of the everyday and the mundane—following the same ritualized pattern from sunup to sundown. But, there are points of crisis: moments in our histories where we are confronted with a realm of possibilities, one is chosen, and life from then on is almost indescribably different. The question that confronts us at such moments is: What will we do and what will be the basis for our lives from here on out?

Ruth could easily have seduced Boaz on that night. A young widow in desperate need of security, it would have been a convenient way to force Boaz’ hand. We stand in awe of such a righteous woman who was yet willing to be so forceful, so courageous, and to take such a risk with the one possession which she truly owned—her reputation. It could all have ended so much more disastrously, but Ruth’s commitment to Naomi, to her care, and to her God, brought her to this point where her faithfulness and moral responsibility would, at long last, begin to provide a concrete sense of security.

Boaz, too, could have succumbed to the moment. Here was a man of wealth, who could have had most anything he wanted—and clearly Ruth’s purity was well within his grasp. It would have been easy to yield to the temptation to sin without ever muttering a word—no one would probably even have believed her. But Boaz, too, recognized a higher calling to purity and faithfulness and, prodded on by this foreign woman, he chose to accept his responsibility as her redeemer. One wonders to what extent Ruth’s willingness to help Naomi and to risk her reputation became such a challenge to Boaz that he was even able to rise above his own drunken stupor and lay claim to the challenge of a higher good.

And so, she who was without protection found herself covered by the “wing of righteousness”—here obviously meant to be both Boaz and Naomi’s God. And, in a direct reference to Naomi’s earlier lament of bitterness and her proclamation of being “empty,” was extended a generous gift of barley with which to return to Naomi. No longer would the older woman need to remain empty, but God, through this foreigner, would restore to her a sense of “fullness.” From here on out, the story will simply reveal how this “fullness” will come to fruition in the lives of each of these three main characters.

And what of us? Faced with issues of equal consequence in our own lives and in the life of our community, how will we choose to respond? When the time for decision comes, will we choose to give in to the temptations of the moment or will we yield, instead, to a higher moral calling? In those times of crisis, when our life is at something of a climax point, when action is called for, on what will we base our decision? These are not abstract questions, I would remind you, but are all too real. During the time when I was doing graduate work at Oklahoma State University, I became friends with a brilliant chemist, involved in groundbreaking research in what would later become a part of such shows as “Crime Scene Investigation,” where chemicals are analyzed as evidence that may lead to conviction. Mark was offered millions of dollars and a quite lucrative stipend with the promise of additional contracts, if he would agree to work with chemical weapons which might be used offensively in a time of war. It was the height of the cold war during the Reagan administration and all the stops were being pulled out and money spent brazenly in an attempt to break the back of a waning Communism. Dr. Rockley chose, however, to say “no,” to give up his security for the future, and to be forever black-listed by the defense industry. Our decisions may never require us to turn down millions of dollars, but they will, inevitably, demand us to surrender the security of the present for the hope of the future.

I have something of a concern this morning, and it is not a concern rooted in whether many of you will be successful by the world’s standards. I have no doubt that many of you will leave this place, get married, buy homes, and attain a reasonable standard of living. What I fear this morning, though, is that you will come to equate this (the pursuit of the American dream) with God’s call on your life. I fear that you will find yourself so busy on the Internet, with computer games, listening to your IPOD, and texting one another on your cell phones, that you will have no time for God and no ability to hear Him, even if you so desired. I fear that you will get so enmeshed in our culture’s attempts to make money and to build a security fence of protection around our lives that you will see risk as something inimical to the Christian life itself.

A few years ago, a twenty-something independent journalist named Jill Carroll, was working for the Christian Science Monitor, when she was arrested by a group calling themselves the Revenge Brigades and then held hostage for several months. If you remember reading the reports, you know that Miss Carroll had gone to the Middle East, learned some Arabic, and had immersed herself in the culture in order to engage the Iraqi story with integrity. Some suggested that at least part of the reason that she may have eventually been released was because there were so many pleas by both Sunni and Shi’ite leaders on her behalf stemming from the great respect she had earned for her attempts to delve behind many of the “fluffier” portrayals of Iraqi life. No matter what one thought of her politics, or perhaps even of her naiveté, one couldn’t help but be impressed by her willingness to risk all in pursuit of the truth. Like Ruth, in this morning’s scripture, Jill Carroll is simply representative of the risk-taking to which we are called in this Easter season.

Unfortunately, all too often, those of us in the Christian community have held up a different model, especially for women. While we have certainly emphasized the need for moral purity, we have downplayed the necessity of the willingness to risk, even to risk all for the cause of Christ. Those of us most privileged in the power structure, particularly we males, have tacitly and sometimes even blatantly put forward a picture of docile femininity which, though not physically burkha-clad, is at, the very least, somewhat verbally “burkha-ized” and muzzled. It is this version of Christian womanhood that writers such as Anne Lamott have so vehemently regaled as more cultural construct than true to the radicalized models we see both in Scripture and throughout the history of the church. Sexualized (within proper limits, of course), quiet and demure, always hiding in the background behind “their man”--such has been the ideal of Christian womanhood perpetuated by American Evangelical pop culture.

It is high time that we laid aside such cultural chicanery and encouraged a different model of faithful, yet risk-taking, faith. Such a commitment would result in a different kind of young man and woman leaving this place than walk away from all-too-many Christian campuses. Instead of simply blending into the culture and naively accepting its technology, its vision of success, and its commitment to materialism, we would understand it for the secular fundamentalism that it is and engage it with all the powers of the Spirit and reason at our disposal. But such a feat would require a willingness to rise up against both the cultural blinders of our age and to break the shackles, as well, of the Evangelical sub-culture’s fear of empowered women and righteous and liberated men willing to stand, not over, but beside them.

So, alongside my fear, I have a dream—a dream that we, as a community, will begin to read ourselves into the Scriptures, the whole scriptures, and that, in so doing, we will be challenged to die and to be buried with Christ in order that we may live with him in the joy of this Easter season. And that, somehow, in learning to die to ourselves, we will be raised up a new people--a people empowered for service and committed to a life of risk, so that when we find ourselves on the threshing floors of our lives, like Ruth, we needn’t be afraid to uncover whatever lies in front of us and to hazard everything we are and might yet hope to be, so that our story might become a larger part of God’s story of redemption and reconciliation of the world to God’s self.

Easter: The "Eyes of Faith"

2010-04-05T06:16:00.000-07:00

Easter: The Eyes of Faith
Isaiah 65:17-25; 1 Corinthians 15:19-26; John 20: 1-18
St. Paul’s Free Methodist Church
April 4, 2010

Trying to make sense of the Easter faith has become something of a cottage industry—witness the recent publication of Diarmaid MacCulloch’s new tome, Christianity: The First 3000 Years. At something just short of 1200 pages and weighing in at over four pounds, Sarah Bryan Miller writing in this morning’s St. Louis Post-Dispatch sees it as a timely advertisement for nothing less than the recently-released Mac I-Pad. A curate’s son, Diarmaid is a prodigious scholar who occupies a prestigious chair at Oxford, yet feels uncomfortable describing himself as fully a believer but, instead, opts to call himself a “friend of the faith.” Whenever Dr. MacCulloch speaks of Christianity, he, like much of the academic world prefers to label himself more "fond observer" than active participant. In this respect, he is clearly the inheritor of an Oxbridge tradition that extends back at least to World War I when the future dons, C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien, were thrown into one of humanity’s greatest killing machines.

I have always been struck by Lewis’ testimony that his conversion to the Christian faith was impeded merely by his own lack of imagination. He had pushed reason to the limits, but yet remained something of a skeptic. It was only through a famous conversation held one starry night with his fellow veteran, colleague, and drinking companion, the quiet philologist Tolkien, that Lewis was able to begin to accept the narrative concerning a God whose dying could transform all those who believe in him. It was, claimed Tolkien in his official biography by Humphrey Carpenter, “the truest of myths,” an outlandish story come to life in Jesus of Nazareth. And because of its almost fantastic nature, both men reverted to telling the story through the eyes of children, fauns, and hobbits.

Lewis chose to enter the imagination of young Lucy whose rather playful antics in a wardrobe transported her and her siblings into the realm of a strange, new reality—none other than the magical land of Narnia. In Narnia, there are kingdoms, creatures, and all sorts of adventures bigger than life where, though difficulties transpire, there exists yet the wise and gentle lion, Aslan, Lewis’ Christ figure, who protects and rescues the children. Through these wonderful stories, Lewis gives one the sense of both the majesty and the wonder of today’s gospel narrative, the ultimate good news writ large in capital letters. It strains the imagination and tugs at our credulity. In fact, in St. Luke’s gospel, the disciples are described as listening in utter disbelief, openly scoffing at these emotional, irrational women, in the end branding their report nothing more than “an idle tale.”

St. Paul, in his own probing testimony to the resurrection penned for the church at Corinth, abandons his legal brief, departing from stale, arid logic and breaks into rhapsodic poetry: “Lo!” he says, “I tell you a musterion (a mystery).” His assertion of resurrection faith cannot be subjected to empirical proof, yet this enigma of God raising from the dead the Nazarene prophet is the apostle-to-the-Gentiles ultimate peroration as he brazenly asserts, “If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised; if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. . . If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied,” (1 Corinthians 15:13-14, 19).

Like Lewis, like those first disciples, this morning we long to come to the tomb and to peer in—to have a look for ourselves and to determine whether to be fond observer or awe-struck participant. Reason abandons us as we stand before this ineluctable mystery. We stand before the graves of our loved ones, some of you perhaps even this past year, and we are tempted to claw the soft sod beneath which we have laid them. We stifle our cries of lament hoping, longing for a reasonable explanation of death, and yet none comes. The mystery remains. We find ourselves tired, worn out, and sick of reasoning. Reason has transported us to the lip of the grave and there left us, like our loved ones, for dead.

This day, however, from Nairobi to Nome, from London to Lima, from Grenoble to Greenville, the people of God, the living body of Christ, stand trembling upon sacred turf, not to argue from logic or to hold up an artifact that somehow might prove the resurrection story true. No, Christians come together on this glorious day merely to tell a tale almost too fantastic to believe. We come not to offer a logical proof. We come not to preach damnation or destruction. We come simply to tell a story, a very simple story. We have no photographs of a risen Christ floating through the clouds of a hurricane like some apparition appearing in a moment of maximum terror. We come not armed with evangelistic leaflets or an infallible shroud , for trinkets and artifacts from or about an empty tomb are not the substance of our faith. We come, though, to listen once again, like little children, to the Story with a capital “S”, that interprets all our stories.

And what does this story have to say to us? In this morning’s gospel lesson from John, we see three very different characters come to the tomb and react in three very different ways. This is not so unusual. Times of crisis, such as that which many of our brothers and sisters in Haiti are living through this season, have a way of helping us understand what motivates us and what we really believe. As a minister of the gospel, I have stood beside men and women who appear to be the strongest of the strong and watched them paralyzed or completely out of control when confronted with a difficult situation. In like manner, I have observed, at times, those considered weak and frail, people we would normally think would be the first to fall apart, show amazing strength and resolution when placed in a similar set of circumstances. Yet, John’s story not only suggests to us that different people can encounter the same situation and yet act quite differently. It also insinuates, I believe, that God brings people to resurrection life in quite different ways.

The story opens with Mary Magdalene, one about whom we have so little information. In Luke’s gospel, it is suggested that she was the one out of whom Jesus had cast seven demons. According to tradition, her life had been literally reclaimed from the dregs of sin and degradation. In the rock opera, Jesus Christ Superstar, she is the one who sings, “I don’t know how to love him!” And, like many who have found new life in Christ, Mary’s story was perhaps one of a dramatic healing and conversion. She who had sinned much, also, perhaps, came to love much, and the story hints that she is on her way to the tomb on an errand of love as soon as the rosy-fingered dawn will allow her. Yet, what she discovers shocks and amazes her. She stands incredulous before the heavy stone that normally would have blocked her entrance, somehow, unbelievably rolled to the side. You can almost feel the tingling in her spine as she stands there and attempts to take it all in. This gospel does not attempt to tell us what she felt, though St. Mark portrays the women fleeing in terror and amazement. What we do know is that she ran. Now, I don’t know what kind of shape this woman was in. However, I do suspect that she ran for all that she was worth, heading in the direction of her friends and all that was familiar.

When you think of it, it is somewhat amazing that Peter was still acknowledged as the leader of the apostles. When last we had seen him in John’s gospel, he had stood witness to his own thrice-fold denial of his Lord and Master. And yet, here he is, once again, swallowing his pride and meeting with the others. In short gasps, Mary blurts out what she has seen. Not to be taken in, Peter and the Beloved Disciple set off a fast trot to try and discover what could possibly have driven the poor woman out of her mind. Tradition has it that Peter’s companion was John, certainly the younger and perhaps even the stronger, who soon outstripped his older companion and went up to the tomb and looked in. He, too, could well have been quite frightened, for the narrative suggests that although he looked in, he made no move to enter. Not so, though, with bold braggadocio Peter, the “Rock.” He barges right in and discovers an empty tomb with only the grave clothes left behind. What is distinctive is the fact that the story suggests that the clothes that bound Jesus were left undisturbed. They looked as if they had not been removed at all, but simply left lying where the corpse had been—except for the head wrappings, that is.

How can we possibly reconstruct what must have gone through their turmoiled minds? It is impossible. The gospel writer makes no such attempt to play psychoanalyst. Yet the narrative is told in such a way that it is almost as if we are there observing their every move and catching some hint of their mental processes. The difference, though, is in their reactions. Bold, brash Peter will have to wait until the next chapter before he can be convinced of the resurrection and reconciled to his Lord. But, it is said, that the Beloved Disciple believed at that very moment. The younger man is brought to faith through what he sees. Yet, Peter is not. In this story, only the Beloved Disciple is shown to have “the eyes of faith.”

And, just as there are many whose stories are similar to Mary’s, there are many who come to faith like John. It is not Jesus they want to see, it is some evidence that he has left behind. For such, the resurrection is a means of validating his authority. Mind you, it is not irrefutable proof. The mere fact that the grave clothes were lying there is not enough to force the conclusion that he must have arisen. But, they are enough to move some, those like Lewis’ Lucy, who have the eyes of faith. These are those who, unlike Lewis, have lively imaginations in the first place. Their capacity for faith is enormous and they have this childlike ability to embrace the story as story, as good news, without the need for explanation. The sense of mystery and paradox only serve to heighten their joy.

The disciples then leave the scene. But, the Scriptures suggest, Mary stays behind. Frantic and frustrated, her broken heart now shattered, she is at a loss what to do next. The one who loved her uniquely, the one who set her free, who supported and affirmed her, who gave meaning to her life, had been brutally torn from her and, apparently, his body had been stolen. And so, she does what we so often do when faced with tragedy and anger—she begins to cry. This is probably not an ordinary cry, but a real-life break-down-and-sob-your-heart-out wailing and weeping. Her world has come undone and she feels so alone, so desolate. In her despair and grief, she then stoops to look inside the tomb and has something of a vision. According to the rather apocalyptic-laden imagery, she is confronted by two angels. Yet, it makes no difference. She simply cannot stop crying. “Woman, why are you weeping?” they ask. “Because,” she exclaims, “they have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.” It is the heart-cry of children in Haiti and other third-world countries today whose voices resonate with that self-same answer. Confronted with loss, misery, and indescribable pain and death, their voices are caught up with Mary’s this morning.

Where, I ask you, is Jesus for the thousands of women throughout the world whose husbands have been murdered by repressive governments? Where is Jesus for children who are starving in Africa and Asia this morning? Where is Jesus when that young man or woman walks into a café or motel and blows to smithereens their parents’ hopes and dreams, along with countless innocent men, women, and children? Where is Jesus? Would it not make much more sense today that people in bondage and pain would cry out with Mary? Or, have our hearts become so cauterized by our damnable pursuit of pleasure and possessions at the expense of hurting and marginalized people that we can’t even hear their cries any more?

Mary turns and sees Jesus standing, but she doesn’t know yet that it is he. He simply asks, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom do you seek?” Notice that he doesn’t tell her to dry her tears and to buck up, to put on a stiff upper lip. He simply asks her why she is crying. He invites her to give voice to the name behind her pain. Maybe if she can put her finger on the depth of her hurt there can yet be healing. “Sir,” she replies, “if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” Mary hopes beyond hope simply to be able to live, perhaps to caress once more, the crucified man, the punctured body of the one to whom she owes her all. And then it happens. The story-teller simply has Jesus pronounce her name. There is something of a pregnant pause while this tear-stained woman turns and calls him by the familiar, “Rabbouni,” teacher.

Note here that it is not physical evidence that brings this woman to faith—it is a spoken word. It is nothing more, nor nothing less, than her name. Mary is not concerned about the logical evidence and the exact position of the grave clothes. In fact, the vision of two angels seems hardly to have had any effect upon her. It is only when she hears her name that she has this wondrous epiphany that Jesus is alive. As a true disciple (yes, it is only a scandalous woman in this story who reacts as a true disciple), she recognizes the voice of the Master and it is enough.

It takes a leap of the imagination to move from Good Friday and its horrific darkness and agony to Easter Sunday and its incredulous hope. That hope can be seen in each of these three characters this morning. Sin and evil and death are not to be allowed the final word. God’s word, God’s eternal Logos, is proclaimed the first, the last, and the Living Word in our midst this morning. His risen presence made known that first Easter Sunday is still at work prompting men and women to faith. And, lest we miss it, we should not forget that Mary, herself, is tempted. She is tempted to grab hold of Jesus and to not let go. And, many of us wish to do the same this day. “Take the whole world,” we used to sing, “but give me Jesus!”

Yet, the story-teller reminds us, to revel in an experience of the risen Lord while others are yet locked in fear, bondage, anxiety, and depression—without any real sense of hope—is not an option; it isn’t a luxury in which a loving disciple can indulge. Jesus gently reminds her, “Don’t cling to me.” The relationship has forever changed. For, anyone who has seen the Lord, there exists an urgent need to share that good news with others. To continue holding onto the Lord reveals our own egocentricity, our own willfulness in spite of the news that life has been snatched from the jaws of death.

John and Mary, and a few verses later, Peter, all came to a newfound faith and restoration in the risen Lord. Each of them learned to have new eyes, but for each the experience was different. We, however, oftentimes wish to make our individual experience normative, to draw lines in the sand and suggest that the life story of others must conform to our norm. Yet, even as these resurrection narratives witness, God, in his infinite wisdom, brings different people to himself in oftentimes quite different ways. Some, like John, may need some physical manifestation. Others, like Peter, need the gift of forgiveness and a new challenge to ministry. And still others, like Mary, desire simply to hear their name spoken and the arms of the Savior made available. For all of these, and for all of us, God offers hope this Easter Sunday.

My friend, Dr. Randall Balmer, has a collection of somewhat autobiographical essays entitled, Growing Pains: Learning to Love My Father’s Faith. The book is filled with stories of deep hurt--dashed hopes and dreams. You see, Randy never quite managed to live up to his father’s story. Clarence Balmer had been gloriously and wondrously saved from a wretched past and he wished for his son a similar experience and a similar faith. Randy, however, grew up in the warm glow of generic American evangelicalism, and never quite fit, either literally or figuratively into the miniature pulpit his father had constructed for him on his sixth birthday. His journey was more circuitous and less certain, but no less grace-filled. At the end of one chapter he speaks a language some of us may recognize, enter twining his own story with the familiar strains of the creed when he proclaims:

“I believe because of the epiphanies, small and large, that have intersected my path—small, discrete moments of grace when I have sensed a kind of superintending presence outside of myself. I believe because these moments—a kind word, an insight, an anthem on Easter morning, a chill in the spine—are too precious to discard, and I choose not to trivialize them by reducing them to rational explanation. I believe because, for me, the alternative to belief is far too daunting. I believe, because, at the turn of the twenty-first century, belief itself is an act of defiance in a society still enthralled by the blandishments of Enlightenment rationalism. I no longer envy the seminarians I knew twenty years ago, even though I’m sure those spiritual athletes are far ahead of me on the journey. I congratulate them on their self-confidence. They figured out all of their answers before I even knew the questions, and I will never be able to match their strides.”

Rowan Williams suggests that, “the Lordship of Jesus is not constructed from a recollection but experienced in the encounter with one who evades our surface desires and surface needs, and will not subserve the requirements of our private dramas. . . Jesus grants us,” he says, “a solid identity, yet refuses us the power to ‘seal’ or finalize it, and obliges us to realize that this identity only exists in an endless responsiveness to new encounters with him in the world of unredeemed relationships,” (Resurrection: Interpreting the Easter Gospel, 76). For some of us, that call to continue to encounter the risen Lord may be a challenge because we long to experience him in the ways that others have. But Christ reveals himself in different ways to different persons for different reasons. For me, those abstract claims of resurrection life were rendered most concretely as the people of faith surrounded me and my wife as we both buried a daughter and as, just this past year, we baptized a grandson. In both cases, we stood in bewilderment before a mystery greater than ourselves. In both cases, we were graciously invited to become part of a story much bigger than ourselves—a story with its roots in an empty tomb. So, wherever you find yourselves this day, with Mary or Peter or John, or even with my friend, Randall, hear these words of the once agnostic C. S. Lewis, from his first book, The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe: “Aren’t you dead then, dear Aslan? said Lucy. Not now, said Aslan. You’re not—not a--? asked Susan in a shaky voice. She couldn’t bring herself to say the word ghost. Aslan stooped his golden head and licked her forehead. The warmth of his breath and a rich sort of smell that seemed to hang about his hair came all over her. Do I look it? he said. Oh, you’re real, you’re real! Oh, Aslan! cried Lucy, and both girls flung themselves upon him and covered him with kisses.”

“Why are you weeping? Whom do you seek?” our Lord asks. To which we, the church, the body of Christ, may now respond in words both mysterious and wondrous: “He is risen! He is risen, indeed!”

When "All Hell" Breaks Loose in our Lives

2010-03-22T12:05:00.000-07:00

“All Hell Breaks Loose: Discovering the ‘Who’ in the Story”
Ruth 2
Greenville College Chapel
Monday, March 22, 2010

This is the woman with whom my wife is occasionally in competition for my attention (display picture of Queen Elizabeth in gold gown). Unfortunately, when I am engaged in research and writing, good Queen Bess oftentimes receives more of my time than does my beloved. I always try to remind Darlene, however, that it’s rather unseemly to be jealous of a woman who’s been dead for over 400 years! My particular interest in the “Virgin Queen” centers around her role as Supreme Governor of the Church of England. When she wore this particular hat, she was always careful to position her public self in a posture of private piety (display picture of QE at prayer). Unfortunately, this particular side of public self has little appeal to most biographers today, so this is the way that we have come to think of her, as in this recent Hollywood portrayal by the sensual and seductive Australian actress, Cate Blanchett (display Cate Blanchett as QE). In any event, it is clear that this rather charismatic figure from the past continues to exercise a certain magic even after so many centuries have passed. How did such a woman come to hold so much power over our imagination?

It was late in the morning of the seventeenth of November, 1558, that Elizabeth Tudor was proclaimed Queen of England, France and Ireland, and Defender of the Faith. In the years preceding, she had been held a virtual prisoner by her sister, Mary, and was now inheriting a kingdom riddled with debt, deeply divided, and ruled by a pervading uncertainty. A young woman in her mid-twenties, well-educated, whom most believed would soon be married to a proper king, she faced the daunting challenge of setting the agenda and determining the course the bereft island nation would sail in the latter half of the sixteenth century. Probably no one on that day would have believed what would actually happen over the course of the next 45 years. The development of the young queen in her role as a wise and strong monarch was to prove decisive in providing England with a long stretch of peace—what some would later look back to and proclaim as a “Golden Age”—during which some of the country’s greatest preachers, poets, and statesmen would come of age. And the way that this child of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn would accomplish that task is by putting one foot in front of the other each and every day and, slowly but surely, transforming the fortunes of a third-rate nation-state into one of the greatest empires in human history.

One of my favorite theologians, Woody Allen, has quipped that “80% of success in life is just showing up.” In my experience as pastor and teacher over the past thirty years one of the lessons I have learned is that success is not always determined by promise. Oftentimes, it comes about by sheer doggedness—the willingness to work hard, day in and day out, without immediate reward towards a simple goal. Today’s text from Ruth reminds us of this important lesson that when “all hell breaks loose” in our lives, the single most important thing we can do is get up and be about the business of the routine. The challenge for us, in the midst of a culture that lives for the spectacular, is to learn to embrace the seemingly ordinary as the primary place where we work out our own salvation.

Kathleen Norris speaks boldly of this in her wonderful little book, The Quotidian Mysteries: Laundry, Liturgy, and “Women’s Work.” Norris is able to elevate the meaning of what we think of as menial work to a place of holiness and sacrality. She writes, “we want life to have meaning, we want fulfillment, healing and even ecstasy, but the human paradox is that we find these things by starting where we are, not where we wish we were. We must look for blessings to come from unlikely, everyday places—out of Galilee, as it were—and not in spectacular events.” Having arrived back in Bethlehem, Ruth knows that the survival of the little family constituted by herself and Naomi is dependent on her getting up and going to work. Now a “theology of the spectacular” would suggest that what Ruth needs most here is a miraculous in-breaking of the Holy Spirit into her mundane existence. But God is not to be found on the mountain in this story. Instead, God is hidden in the interstices of normal, everyday life in Bethlehem. And so, Ruth does what women have done throughout time: she gets on with the everyday necessities of simply surviving.

For the first time in this short story, we are introduced to a man who does not die off within a few verses—one, Boaz. And, there is no question but that Boaz, operating out of a patriarchal context, wields the power in this second chapter, carefully looking over Ruth, the foreigner, and seeing that she has opportunity to at least not be openly molested or harmed. But, as Phyllis Trible points out in her book, God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality, while Boaz exercises patriarchal power, he does not have narrative power in the story. “He has authority within the story but not control over it,” (178). It is Ruth, the inferior foreigner, who has by her own choice to get up and do what needs to be done, created this situation. As Trible suggests, “Her deference results from her daring; it is derivative, not determinative. . . The favor that Boaz gives her is the favor that she has sought. Therefore, she, not he, is shaping her destiny,” (176).

The narrative framework of this second chapter further reinforces Trible’s point. The feminist nature of this patriarchal narrative comes through clearly by the circular design which surrounds the episode with Boaz. Today’s text begins with two women, the younger taking the bull by the horns to go work in the fields, and ends with the same two women engaged in critical reflection on the events of that day. Naomi even seems to perk up a bit from the ashes of her bitterness to proclaim, “Blessed be he by the Lord, whose kindness (the Hebrew word, HESED) has not forsaken the living or the dead!” Yet, it was Ruth’s dogged determination to provide for them that had set the entire set of events in motion.

In his little masterpiece, In the Name of Jesus: Reflections on Christian Leadership, Fr. Henri Nouwen engages in a powerful critique of the temptations which so often surround us. During the season of Lent in which we currently find ourselves, one of our tasks is to carefully evaluate the layers of cultural lies which so often enmesh us and prevent us from denying ourselves, taking up our cross, and following Jesus. Nouwen points out that the three temptations which confronted our Savior continue to haunt us: the temptations to be relevant, to be spectacular, and to be powerful.

These temptations are fueled by a culture that presents to us a false picture of life. We are encouraged to believe that if we are not enjoying great food, experiencing great sex, and making great money, that somehow we have missed out on the American dream. The church has, all too often, been sucked into a spiritual version of this secular vision, proclaiming that God is primarily to be found where there is health and wealth. But all of these promises are devoid of the message of the cross and claim that God is not in the everyday and the mundane, but in the spectacular.

The result, Nouwen maintains, is that when you look at today’s church, “it is easy to see the prevalence of individualism. . . that, if we have anything at all to show, it is something we have to do solo. You could say that many of us feel like failed tightrope walkers. . . most of us still feel that, ideally, we should have been able to do it all and do it successfully. Stardom and individual heroism, which are such obvious aspects of our competitive society, are not at all alien to the church,” (55-56).

Nouwen, himself, experienced this temptation to be someone and something spectacular and found the privileged college yards at Harvard and Yale to be deadening to his own soul. On a trip to Central America, he rediscovered the joy of life among simple peasants who shared their modest meals with him in a true spirit of love and peace. Henri’s work with the mentally handicapped at L’Arche, just north of Toronto, helped him to recapture his faith as he bathed, fed, and prayed over those marginalized by our society. There, he had to find a way of reclaiming the everyday, the ordinary, as a means of working out his own salvation.

One of the places that I came best to understand this principle was in the conversations I had among the elderly during my ministry in London. Most of you, I trust, are familiar with the efforts of the German Luftwaffe to bomb England into submission during the summer and autumn of 1940. Day after day and night after night, young men would climb into their small aeroplanes to combat the Messerschmidts that rained down fire from above. But less is told about those who carried out their duty below. Donald Purr, a retired accountant, would oftentimes join me for tea on Mondays. Well into his eighties, he would regale me with stories of the London Fire Brigade, called out to do battle with the conflagrations that threatened to render the capital into one giant ash heap. Purr, himself, was given the job of taking up a station near the dome of St. Paul’s, from whence he could watch the fireworks both above and below. His assignment was to stand prepared with sandbags and fire extinguishers in case of a fire on the roof of Wren’s cathedral. A direct hit on the dome, he told me, would have carried he and his men into the very pits of a fiery inferno below, along with the remnants of the German bomb. Why did they do it, I wondered? Donald would invariably get a twinkle in his eye and with that wry sense of British humor that I came to love say, “Because it simply had to be done. There was nothing else for it. It was either climb up there every night and wave our fists at Hitler’s planes or give in; and we damn well weren’t going to surrender to that bastard!”

I came to admire Donald’s pluck and stiff upper lip and he helped me to better understand the response of the London congregation where I worked. As the war was winding down in the early months of 1945, a new menace came to haunt the populace: the sound of the deadly V-1 and V-2 rockets launched from Penemunde. The last of those rockets came winging its way across the English channel on a Saturday night and landed in the West end right on top of the shops that lined Tottenham Court Road, taking with it Whitefield’s Victorian Chapel. By the next morning, Palm Sunday, the congregation no longer had a structure in which to worship. They did what folks did in New Orleans a few years ago, they didn’t stand around waiting for a miracle but dug right in to try and reclaim what was left and to rebuild what wasn’t. They decided to get on with life as they knew it, in order to render life as they yet hoped it might be.

An ocean away back here in Greenville, during the same era, the college had had to adjust first to the Depression and then to the loss of students to the Armed Services. Dr. Long, the President, had insisted that the atmosphere of the classroom must be to enable students “to face life squarely and come to grips with it,” (Tenney, 314). A scholar of chemistry by profession, H. J. never met a challenge he didn’t think hard work and prayer couldn’t solve. It was through his efforts that Greenville came to achieve that all-important accreditation with the North Central Association which propelled us into the next chapter of our history and created a campus that could accommodate all of those returning veterans from the recent war.

One of those veterans was John Strahl, whose name would eventually come to embody all that was best in Greenville College athletics. As a young soldier the age of many of you freshmen and sophomores, John found himself at the Battle of Anzio in Italy in early 1944 watching his buddies being killed and later having to scoop their body parts into bags for shipment back home. Such an experience surely shapes one so young. Like the young captain John H. Miller depicted in “Saving Private Ryan” by Tom Hanks, Strahl simply wanted to get through the hell of war so that he could return home and get on with life. But in order to do so, John had to learn to put one foot in front of the other and to do whatever that day demanded. For he and countless other soldiers like him, war wasn’t about heroism or the spectacular; it was about survival and getting home. And when he got home, he decided to make his life count, not by doing something extraordinary, but by giving himself over to the mundane day-to-day existence of a coach and teacher, carefully carving out lessons in life from the everyday and the ordinary.

This same attitude can be seen in today’s story. It would have been quite easy for Ruth, this young Moabitess, to give in to despair or to prostitution. Her situation was grave and there was no one any longer to look after her. Like many of you today, Ruth may well have wondered what the future held for her and where God was in the midst of her crisis. All hell had broken loose in her life and no miracles seemed to be in the offing. With a bitter old woman at home and having taken up residence in a foreign land, like numerous migrants who have come to this country looking for something different, all she knew to do was to put on her work clothes and to get on with the business of survival. So, she rolled up her sleeves and set to work. And from that decision came all that was to follow.

Now, my friends, I want to tell you that I am concerned this morning that some of you have opted for a very different approach to life—one which flies in the face of the mundane existence suggested to us by Ruth. Some of you believe in a god who ropes off the ordinary and is to be found only on the extraordinary and the ecstatic. And so you spend much of your time searching for the next spiritual high, like a crack cocaine addict in search of a fix, working yourself up into an emotional frenzy in hopes of discovering a spiritual buzz that will get you through the day. You live a divided life, a Gnostic one, in which the sacred and spiritual exist in two separate compartments and “never the twain shall meet.” You aren’t here for an education or to ask hard questions about God and the nature of the world in which we live, but for two things: a degree and a spiritual high. You are convinced that God is like some Santa Claus in the sky and that if you can only speak the right magical words, lay claim to the right spiritual gift, or reclaim the right frenetic music and lyrics, that you can escape all of this muck and mire of normal existence and attain some spiritual nirvana.

And then there are some of you who are so enslaved to the gods of consumption that you find yourself in an almost untenable condition with less than half a semester to go. You stay up late playing computer games or surfing the Internet and haven’t read much at all for your classes. You are a thorough believer that a semester’s worth of work can be done in the last ten days of the semester and that a paper is best written the night before it is due. You won’t admit it to yourself, but your life is thoroughly out of control and you have no discipline whatsoever. Your attitude is to enjoy life, to live in the present, and to expect that God will work a miracle at the end of the semester converting your “F” into at least a “C,” if not a “B,” through the good graces of my colleagues who will have pity upon you.

Both of these are essentially unbelieving, ill-informed approaches to life. For those in the first category, there will come a day, if it hasn’t already happened, when there will not be a spiritual high and the realities of everyday existence will strike you right between the eyes. Your best friend will be hit by a car or your dad will come down with cancer and, try as you might to pray for a miracle, none will be had. And then the temptation will be to think that there was no God there in the first place. And for those in the second category, you may manage to limp through life for a little while with your lackadaisical attitude but, sooner or later, your “sins will find you out” and your lack of discipline and unwillingness to do what needs to be done will result in a self-precipitated crisis, a crisis of your own making. And, as you struggle to work yourself out of a near-impossible situation, you will be tempted to blame it all on God. After all, if God is a god of miracles, why isn’t he helping you out?

In their recreation of the Ruth story entitled, Compromising Redemption: Relating Characters in the Book of Ruth, Danna Nolan Fewell and David Miller Gunn describe the heroine’s approach in this chapter like this: “Ruth gleaned every day in Boaz’s field. She tried not to think of what would happen once the harvest was over. She simply worked as hard as she could, taking advantage of every dropped sheaf, so that they could store as much grain as possible for the coming winter,” (39). Ruth, in short, gave herself over to the ordinary and from her commitment, from her faithfulness to Naomi and to the task before her, God wove an extraordinary story—a story of faithfulness in the midst of tragedy and pain.

I want to invite you in this Lenten season to not only begin to see yourself in Ruth’s story, but to ask what it would take for you to rise up and to discover yourself and God’s will for your life by simply doing what you know needs to be done: by putting one foot in front of the other and being faithful to your calling as a student. It is only when “all hell breaks loose” that we begin to discover the character of which we are made. That character isn’t magically forged when you leave home and depart this campus, it happens each and every morning when you make simple choices about how to spend your time, where you will, and what you will do. This day marks a new opportunity for you to be stripped of the veneer of spirituality which so far has sustained you and to get serious about life at Greenville College. My colleagues and I welcome you in joining us in creating this beautiful tapestry of life and encourage you to talk with us during this advising week, not only about your classes for the coming year, but about the changes you want to make in your intellectual and spiritual life in learning to become more like Christ.

Now, I know that Ruth’s story can seem quite bland compared to glitz and glamour held out there by the culture. But the reality is that most of life is not glamorous but is made up of everyday plodding. Our calling is to remain faithful in the little things and, by so doing, to allow God to spin a story beyond our imagining. This is our challenge as we begin the shorter half of the semester this morning. This is God’s invitation to you and our firm belief that, by so doing, you will discover the God who stands behind all things and the person of character He has created you to yet become.

Once Upon a Time. . .

2010-03-01T09:59:00.000-08:00

“’Once Upon a Time’: All Beginnings are Hard”
Greenville College Chapel Address
Ruth 1
March 1, 2010

Word of my colleague, Dr. Kurasha’s injuries sustained last week brought back to me the memories of similar, sometimes, tragic automobile accidents. None was more difficult than the call I received literally weeks before leaving my pastorate in Toronto to come back to Greenville and teach now some 17 years ago. My Australian friend, Peter, was exploring the Ontario countryside with his wife, daughter, brother and sister-in-law. Within a matter of seconds, apparently, they were all dead or terribly injured. (As best as I can remember),while I sped to the hospital to identify the bodies and tend to the living, my associate hurried to a local high school to tell Peter’s daughter that she was now an orphan without a father, mother, or sister. Later, I would have to meet up with her dead sister’s fiancé to inform him that his bride-to-be was gone and there would be no forthcoming wedding. Over the six years of ministry in Canada, I wound up burying a dozen babies, infants, children, and teenagers, along with a score of more typical, though no less tragic, adult funerals. At times, it seemed that everywhere I turned, there was something of the pall of death in the air, and this was certainly not the way I had imagined concluding my years of ministry in the adopted city I had come to love amongst a people who had taken me and my family to their hearts.

But, unfortunately, of such painful stories are our lives often made. Life is oftentimes a mess, filled with, as Eugene Peterson puts it, “the daily round of failed plans, disappointed relations, political despair, accidents and sickness and neighborhood bullies,” (Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places, 137). And into this mess walks our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. For, as the gospels remind us, the story of Jesus, “is not a happy story, not a success story. What it is is a salvation story,” (137). Peterson’s contrast is absolutely essential to help us understand the scriptures, our lives, and the world in which we live: our narrative doesn’t begin on an oasis of safety, but in the muck and mire of everyday human existence. And what we are called to is not a life of success, but a life of faithfulness. It is this message that lies at the heart of the Lenten season.

Perhaps no biblical narrative conveys this quite so powerfully as this little book of Ruth which, in the space of five short verses, plunks us down in the very vortex of human misery. In today’s text, we are introduced to most of the major characters in the story, three of whom are dead within a matter of a few sentences. In these opening lines, the narrator is concerned to establish both a context and a dominant mood for all that will follow. We are presented here with landscape and feeling one might expect in a Thomas Hardy novel. The country to the east of the Dead Sea was fertile, but produced primarily grain crops as opposed to the orchards and vineyards of Palestine. Like the plains of Oklahoma which I remember well from my adolescent years, Moab was known as a land where the wind blew constantly and was relatively unimpeded. Across this barren landscape emerges a family in search of a better existence. They are leaving behind all that is familiar, pulling up their roots, and heading into this dark, foreboding land.

Elimelech and his wife, Naomi, are fleeing the certain famine of their home, like the Joads in Steinbeck’s American version, and going in search of a better life for their two sons, Mahlon and Chilion. For all of us who are familiar with the realities of moving, it is a painful scene. No matter how much they may have looked forward to the new challenge ahead, the prospect of leaving behind friends and family, familiar faces and established ties, brought with it a sense of loss and anguish. Anyone who has ever moved without knowing what awaits on the other end, knows the special dread and sense of trepidation that must have accompanied the family of Elimelech during those days of transition. In leaving behind all that was familiar, they were consigning themselves into the hands of God, facing their new life without the help of the support system they had left back at home in Bethlehem.

And, as if moving and uprooting their family were not enough, they were journeying into a foreign country. This is an experience difficult to describe to those who have never been through it. When one crosses the border into a different country, one immediately becomes at best a “landed immigrant,” or at worst, a “resident alien.” There are at least a few of you sitting here today who understand something of the culture shock of which I speak. Gone are the familiar customs and language of home; every day brings with it new reminders that you are an expatriate. No matter how much you may love your new homeland, as my wife and I loved both the United Kingdom and later Canada, you can never forget that you are somehow different, an “outsider.” The adjustment can be a difficult one. I’ve seen those who never quite adapt, who hide themselves behind four walls and pine for home. But for this family, the adjustment became even more difficult, as their situation went from bad to worse.

First, Elimelech died, leaving Naomi with no visible means of support. In those days, and even for many today, this was the worst possible scenario. In the patriarchal culture of the ancient Near East, a woman was totally at the mercy of men. There was no possibility of a job for her, for all the jobs were filled by men. So, she might choose from three possibilities: prostitution, slavery, or professional begging. But apparently Naomi was fortunate in that her two sons were old enough to make their way in this foreign land and somehow manage to provide for their mother as well. They were, in a very real sense, her salvation, and the only elements which stood between her and desperation.

These young men somehow adapted. They settled down, found themselves wives, and set to work building for their families a new life in a new land. Their new spouses were natives, and probably helped to form a link between them and the land that their mother would always consider a “foreign country.” What kind of a life they lived we do not know—it isn’t important to the main story line. What we can surmise is that the wounds of the past now began to recede into their memories, and they had a chance to heal in the company of their new-found mates.

But before much time had passed, the final calamity struck. This was the most horrific possibility imaginable for Naomi—a bad dream from which she would never fully recover. Her two sons, the pride and joy of her life, died as well, leaving behind no male heirs to continue the family line, but only two defenseless brides. If the plight of this family had been desperate before, it was almost hopeless now. Where would they go? What would they do? If the landscape of the setting is bleak, the predicament of these three women is equally somber. The storyteller’s task is set: How will he rescue this family from almost certain destruction?

The spotlight is now thoroughly centered on this woman pummeled by the vicissitudes of life. Naomi calls forth our sympathies. Battered, beaten, and bitter, she decides to make for the only place in which she had known any real happiness—her home in Bethlehem. In this little Judean village she had probably played, worshipped, and met the man whom she would marry. Bethlehem had been the home in which she had set up house and given birth to two happy sons. In the midst of all of the calamity that now surrounded her, perhaps it was only the pleasant memories of those days in what would later become the city of David which provided for her any sense of solace. Now her mind could think of nothing else but getting home to Bethlehem.

But before she left, she had one final duty as matriarch of her now disintegrating family: to charge her two daughters-in-law to return to the homes of their childhood, as well. This scene literally drips with pathos and, as it was being told, the storyteller must have verbally leaned into the narrative. According to the laws of that day, these women had nothing any longer which bound them together, except a common memory embedded in a family story. Since Orpah’s and Ruth’s husbands had died, their responsibility was to return home where their parents would receive them, probably somewhat grudgingly. Yet, even though there was no law that bound them to this bitter old woman, there was something even greater—those common memories and the strong bonds of a love forged from shared difficulties. Through the fires of mutual trials, they had each earned the other’s respect and with all of their men gone—the only gender that counted in those days—Naomi was now their leader and their only tie to what they thought of when they remembered back to what had once been their sense of “home.”

What is even more incredible than their lack of common blood is that these women come from different nationalities—they don’t even have the bonds of culture to bind them together. And yet Ruth still persists, remaining adamant in the face of leaving behind all of the familiar landmarks. I’ve often wondered to myself: How many of our ancestors must have seen in this strong young woman a hero and exemplar as they crossed seas, plains, mountains, and deserts? While Naomi cried out, and perhaps rightfully so, against the heartlessness of God, here in her midst stood one who represented to her the love, care, and commitment of the deity against whom she remained angry and bitter. While she had lost all that she regarded as safe and homelike, here stood one before her who reminded her of the foundation on which a home is built.

It is little wonder that Ruth’s words of response have become a standard epithet in Christian weddings. This willingness to go, to love, to stand beside, remains the ideal for the married couple and can be seen in the archetype presented for us in the gospels of the Christ who mirrors exactly these same qualities as he ministers to the needs of others. But in this story it is not Jesus but a Moabitess who is modeling an extraordinary life of faithfulness. According to our scriptures, the Moabites were a cursed clan who owed their origins to an act of incest that took place between Lot and his daughters. As such, this woman was the consummate outsider, a non-entity amongst “true Jews” who were probably some of the first hearers of this tale. Like other women in the scriptures, Ruth could in no way be branded here a “good girl” who acknowledges Naomi’s authority—one owed her by virtue of her age. Instead, she chooses to stand over against all accepted protocol and to leave everything familiar behind in order to set out on a journey to an unknown land.

Good storytellers know that how and where one chooses to begin a story establishes whether folks will continue to listen. Although the bulk of this story is yet to come, something is already becoming abundantly clear from these opening verses: the picture of life that is being portrayed in this book is not one that is necessarily pleasant or happy. In a time in which the barriers between fantasy and reality remain as unclear as ours, the picture here is one of stark reality. In a time when folks are consumed with self-indulgence, chasing after beautiful bodies, and always believing that compiling a few more things will lead to comfort and security, the storyteller here presents us with a picture of life that is minimalist in all its aspects. This narrator has the audacity to suggest that we can expect difficulties and unanswerable questions in life—in fact, that they are inevitable. This runs counter to many of the myths which make up 21st century America.

Growing up in our sometimes isolated ghettoes we are told a different story. In a time of uncertainty and in a climate of fear, we are encouraged to look for strength in security. As Pax Americana stretches out her wings below whom all are called to bow, we naively believe that where we go, we take with us primarily freedom and liberty—all of which falls largely on the deaf ears of others who view our actions as both paternalistic and full of hedonistic self-interest. Here at home, we are told a story which posits consumption and competition as the highest values. All that we aspire to in life has behind it the singular goals of economic and political power. Many, if not most of us, may have even been lured here, to this place, not for an education, but for a degree. And the reason we need a degree is so that we can get a good job, so that we can make more money, so that we can accumulate more stuff, and thereby, discover our primary purpose in life.

Or perhaps we have fallen prey to a different narrative which circulates in the evangelical subculture. Here, we are promised health and wealth this side of eternity and eternal bliss the other side if we will simply “come to Jesus.” Having said the sinner’s prayer and displayed Jesus on the bumper stickers of our cars, we somehow believe that if we work hard, give occasionally to Christian causes, and fill our lives with Christian rhetoric (or, Jesus-speak), we can expect good things to happen to us in life. We are warned not to get too caught up, however, in the pleasures of this life, but to learn to live cautiously and pray for those poor bastards who are unlike us. Just maybe, if they listen to our words of warning, recognize that we are the true messengers of God, and come to Jesus--even they can find a place in heaven and a life filled with lots of good stuff this side of eternity. And, more importantly, they can be assured of a “get into heaven” pass via a direct rapture while all the rest of the world goes to hell in a handbasket.

The Bible unmasks both of these narratives for what they are—blatant falsehoods, facades of the gospel. Instead, the Christ who walked the way of the cross is better seen in the death and destruction of today’s story in Ruth. This story literally drips with irony and would have caused its original hearers to have suffered a bit of religious shock. For here, the story of God’s people lies suspended by a thread that is both foreign and female. God’s salvation history hangs precariously on the faithfulness of a woman who will risk everything she has and, as we will see later, by so doing provide one of the crucial links that leads inexorably to Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord. To a world which clings to a narrative freighted with power and prestige, the shocking reality to which we are introduced in this little book has the potential to turn the world upside down.

And that’s just what good storytelling does. It insists on beginning in a way we might not expect and in a place far removed from our own and, by so doing, shocks us out of the lethargy of our current comforts. This biblical story, this story of salvation which confronts the opposing story of success insisted on by our culture, claims in Peterson’s words, that, “salvation is not a one-time stand,” (147). For the Hebrews, this could be summed up in the word HESED, which was most often attributed to God. Sometimes simply translated with the word, “kindness,” the roots of the word are probably better expressed with our term, “faithfulness.” What is being represented is long-standing commitment, no matter what the cost. This is a word of relationship which refuses to reduce one’s connection to another to issues of blood, contract, or economic benefit. HESED means a willingness to die with or for another, even if one cannot see or understand the reason for doing so. HESED is what led Dietrich Bonhoeffer to not flee the German prison at his first opportunity, but to remember those who were imprisoned with him. HESED is what a man demonstrates when the doctor tells him that there is no hope for his wife, but he refuses to leave her bedside. HESED is what the best soldiers demonstrate whenever a comrade has been wounded and, at the risk of their own lives, they stay behind not knowing whether there will be any other opportunity for rescue.

And HESED is what Ruth demonstrates at the end of this narrative to Naomi who has now chosen the name, Mara, to represent her bitterness and loss. In the midst of her grief, the matriarch of the story cannot even see the grace of God made manifest in this young woman who refuses to leave her side. The story concludes on this single thread of hope in which the emptiness of the older woman is set alongside the HESED of this foreign, powerless, child of incest. “Ruth the Moabite has chosen Naomi the Judahite. Ruth the daughter-in-law has chosen Naomi the mother-in-law,” (Phyllis Trible, God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality, 174). On such a choice hangs the outcome, not only of this particular narrative, but of God’s larger salvation story. This is no one-night stand. This is a commitment almost beyond comprehension.

Of such a beginning are great stories made. Into such a world came Jesus Christ. Out of such bitterness and through such faithfulness will emerge hope for all people, of all ages, and of all nationalities. And that, my friends, is a story worth telling!

Why We Tell Stories

2010-02-01T12:00:00.000-08:00

“Why We Tell Stories”
A Chapel Address at Greenville College
February 1, 2010

At the time, I did not think my childhood and adolescence was all that odd. But in retrospect, I have come to understand just how different was my experience from most. Because my father was a Free Methodist minister, more often than not we moved from community to community every few years. Something of a recluse by nature, this meant that I never could form long-term attachments with people so I simply opted for creating my own reality. As a result, I lived much of my childhood and adolescence in an interior world shaped by stories and books.

That world was absent of many of today’s current distractions. There were no computers, no cell phones, no video games, and, at least in our tradition, no going to the movies and very little television. My father did have a cabinet stereo which included such outstanding vocalists as Frank Sinatra and the Ink Spots—still two of my favorite performing artists. But, by and large, my primary form of entertainment was either listening to old southern men spin stories or retreating into a corner to bury myself in a book. This meant that I either hung out uptown where the whittling and storytelling was going on or, particularly as I got older, at the community library. In addition to reading my Bible, which began at about age five or so, I early on discovered the great heroic narratives which have shaped Western civilization: Howard Pyle’s retelling of King Arthur and His Knights and Robin Hood and his Merry Men, the lavishly decorative prose of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, and Andrew Lang’s 12-volume collection of Fairy Tales (which I own to this day).

My favorite haunts were the library in the winter in front of a warm grate or fireplace or an isolated spot under a shade tree in the summer. On long, languid Saturdays, I would make a full day of it, packing up the briefcase my mother had given me for a birthday present with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, carrot sticks, and the occasional homemade cookie. Away from the noise of people and the taunts and jeers of my peers who were off playing ball somewhere, I discovered that I could be anyone I wanted to be. When I was in about fifth grade my parents, neither of whom had gone away to college and both of whom were working multiple jobs, responded to my heartfelt plea and purchased our prized possession—the Encyclopedia Britannica. These were special books—arrayed in cream-colored calfskin and stamped on the spine in gold lettering, each page made of smooth onion-skin and breathing the wisdom of the ages. And along with our new Britannica came a “Reading Guide,” put together by Robert Hutchins and Mortimer Adler from the esteemed and far-off University of Chicago. Inside the guide was a plan of action for becoming an educated citizen—a plan marketed under the awe-inspiring title, the “Great Books.” The authors suggested that one start with the Bible, Shakespeare, and the Greek Tragedians—Euripides, Sophocles, and Aeschylus. So that is exactly what I did.

I can’t tell you how thrilling it was to revel in the poetic language such works contained! They introduced me to a new vocabulary and a new world beyond the rather constrained one in which I lived. As my colleague at Westmont College, Marilyn Chandler McEntyre, says in her recent book, Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009): “We need story, poetry, play, and song to replenish the wellsprings of imagination, to feed the spirit, to foster compassion. Indeed,” she concludes, “I would go so far as to claim that there are certain kinds of understanding that we have no access to except by means of story,” (112-113). The combination of these narratives, oftentimes dubbed “classics” within the Western literary canon, alongside the familiar Biblical stories which framed my church experience came to deeply shape my own self-understanding and notions of the mysterious world spun by these ancient storytellers.

In their liturgical response which is ordered by God Himself in Deuteronomy 26, the people of Israel were ordered to declare as the priest received their offering: “A wandering Aramean was my father” (26:5), following which they would enumerate the story that gave to them their primary tribal identity. The Bible itself, scholars like my mentor Northrop Frye have suggested, is one long narrative from Genesis to Revelation which is meant to draw us into its contents. As Eugene Peterson claims in Eat This Book: A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading (2006), “story is the primary verbal means of bringing God’s word to us. . . story doesn’t just tell us something and leave it there, it invites our participation. A good storyteller gathers us into the story,” (40).

I had learned this lesson quite early, under my grandfather’s tutelage, and would learn it again, as a father myself. My grandfather Holcomb, though devoid of much formal training, had a propensity towards the spinning of yarns which mark to this day so many mountain people. I grew up nourished by his accounts of the Civil War and of the men and women who had cut and hacked their way through the Cumberland Gap, the Midwestern frontier, and the Ozark brush to build a cabin and try to raise a vegetable garden on the flinty soil of Arkansas and southern Missouri. I would hang on his every word and try to make sure that I got the story just right in its retelling. Later, as a young father who meticulously attempted to spend time with his children before sending them off to bed, I would most often read to them age-appropriate materials, whether Goodnight Moon or later, Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia. But, invariably, they cried out for a “made-up” story from my rather meager repertoire. And so it was that I began to branch out and invent characters to their liking, whether Tito the Baby Rhino whose horn always caused him to bounce between the thicket of rubber trees which encircled him, or Underwear Bear, on Her Majesty’s Service, “fighting for truth and justice everywhere, all the while popping underwear!” Or, to put it in rather crass terms, a proper British bear who performs wedgies on nasty, brutish types who dare to pick on people weaker than they, who are usually of superior intellect but mediocre physical ability.

Why did my daughters always request these stories, I have come to wonder? What is there within each of us that causes us to lean out on the edge of our seats whenever a good story is being told? This morning I would like to propose several possible answers to these questions as a means of challenging much of the pablum that is being thrown at us these days by a culture which is concerned primarily with the immediate and the consumable. In an “information age” in which much of the familiar narrative is pre-packaged in thirty-second sound bites meant to market consumable goods, “the church needs to be a place,” says McEntyre, “where stories are told, where we are invited back into the stories we live by, and where we come to find ourselves at home again in a dwelling made of words that is reconstructed in every telling,” (122). Stories are necessary not only for stretching our imagination and providing us with an alternative worldview, but for proclaiming the gospel, giving us words of poetry with which to pray, and for making of us a people of both passion and compassion.

In a little essay entitled, “On Fairy-Stories,” the Roman Catholic scholar of Early English Language and Literature, J. R. R. Tolkien, suggests that stories awaken in us a desire for something beyond the known. He claims that true stories provide for us a fleeting glimpse of joy that partakes of an underlying reality or truth. That is, I would suggest, that stories are to some extent sacramental—they impart to us a certain nourishment which sustains us whether we are four or sixty-four. C. S. Lewis, Tolkien’s colleague who specialized in Medieval English Literature, says in his own essay, “On Stories,” that, “no book is really worth reading at the age of ten which is not equally (and often far more) worth reading at the age of fifty—except of course, books of information. The only imaginative works we ought to have grown out of are those which it would have been better not to have read at all,” (Essays in Honor of Charles Williams, 100). That is why Lewis can go on to say that, “an unliterary man may be defined as one who reads books once only,” (102).

Tolkien claims that the reason we tell stories in the first place is because we are made in the image of God: a peculiarly Christian thing to say. If God is by nature a creator and storyteller, because we have God’s DNA in our systems, we should expect to be storytellers as well. Stories serve to remind us of not only who we are, then, but whose we are. That is why Lewis was so vehement in his attack on movies, which he believed shut down and limited the human imagination. “Nothing can be more disastrous than the view that the cinema can and should replace written fiction,” he thundered. “The elements which film excludes are precisely those which give the untrained mind its only access to the imaginative world. There is death in the camera,” (102). Marilyn McEntyre agrees when she says that while some films have become cultural touchstones, they are “mostly commercial products, scripted and recorded in such a way that they often subordinate the verbal to the visual. They can be rewound and replayed, but not retold. They may help to draw us into communities as viewers and reviewers, but they engage us in a way that forfeits face-to-face human presence and spontaneous revision,” (118-119). She, along with Lewis, Tolkien, and current writers like Frederick Buechner, believe strongly in this sacramental nature of storytelling—that stories which are true (not historically or factually, mind you, but true in terms of their truth content) have the ability to get at and shadow the Truth, with a capital T.

But I think that stories go beyond both Lewis’s and Tolkien’s Platonic and Augustinian categories. From the very first words we encounter in the Bible, the Hebrew Torah, we see God speaking and imposing an order on His creation. The very Hebrew word for that chaotic void—tohuwabohu—conveys verbally something of the disorder which opposes the Creator. The liturgical sameness of this creation story framing each day of creation in the same way, even suggests that its original context may well have been the sacred sanctuary of worship. For a people caught up in a world that appeared untrustworthy and spinning out of control, such a perspective is nothing less than a radical reorientation towards nature. Leaving the sanctuary or the temple, one would have emerged with the sense that words give to the world an order by which we can understand God, ourselves, and that world—all of which is impossible without the very gift of narrative which speech makes possible.

Fr. Walter Ong suggests just such a thing in his voluminous writings on Orality and Literacy. In the age of the ancient Hebrew prophets, the very speaking of a word from God brought terror to the most powerful and wealthy of kings. The language of the prophets conveys this fear as such messengers as Isaiah draw on the temple imagery of hot coals to suggest the burning nature of the Word of God. The prophets and the scribes which followed in their wake, came to understand that the words they spoke and wrote had enormous power to shake or to shape the communities to which they were sent.

Perhaps no one in recent history had this kind of ability in our American culture more so than the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., whose holiday we recently celebrated. Dr. King’s speeches cut to the quick for Americans because he knew how to tell the story and he understood the power of words. A trained rhetorician in the African-American tradition, he, like all great storytellers, could shame us by reminding us what we had not yet achieved, while uplifting us by describing for us what we could yet be. Beaten by police and hunted down by dogs, discouraged Civil Rights workers discovered that it was primarily King’s ability as a storyteller and prophet which sustained them in their darkest days. Drawing on the great motifs of Biblical narrative and the rhetorical pathos of the American Revolution set alongside the Black experience, Dr. King described for us not only the possibilities of our greater communal selves but spun a story and revealed a dream that re-described how we could get there.

We all need stories to sustain us. Not as some kind of escapist entertainment, but as a way of helping us to hear the truth and begin to live it. For the Creator of the Universe has laid alongside each one of us a story about God’s calling on our lives. But, today, some of us are orphans. We don’t yet have a story. Some of us, too, need to be claimed by a story in the first place. Some others of us have been told a story but it is a lie. We may have been told that we are no good, that we are evil, worthless, and of no significance. We may need to have that story re-scripted in our life and there is no better place for that to happen than right here at Greenville College.

Those of us who serve on the faculty and staff are here because we feel called to this place and we long to see you rediscover who you are as a child of God. I want to especially commend those of you who feel weighed down by these negative images and stories to seek out those who can assist you. This begins by coming to know and to trust your faculty advisor and my colleagues who are passionate about inviting you into the gospel story and the life of discipline to which Christ calls us. I also know that those in the counseling office and Dr. Hall and all the Residence Life staff stand ready, willing, and able to assist you in writing a new story while you are here. And, believe it or not, as you will hear from the lips of members of our own community often this semester, those of us who are among you have struggled with many of the same issues and long to help you re-claim your birthright.

I know that Greenville certainly helped me in this regard. A bookish boy with only a smattering of social skills, I was deeply in need of some mature models who might show me what I could yet become. I had my fair share of failures here: relationships wasted, opportunities missed, and hoped-for appointments unfulfilled. But here, I also found people who loved me and saw in me potential of which I was unaware. My hope and firm belief is that you will, too.

This semester we want to explore something of the world of narrative and to ask how stories function and shape us, both individually and collectively. So for the next couple of months I want to walk us through the basic patterns, the rhythms of a story, using as a touchstone one of the most powerful little pieces in the First Testament: the book of Ruth. We will examine not only the various aspects of narrative but focus, in particular, on how stories shape and build community. For, at its heart, God’s greatest story is not just about us individually, but about how God is building for God’s self a people and reconciling and redeeming the world not for our private purposes but for God’s cosmic purposes. And it is into that story that we are, each of us, invited.

Learning to Pay Attention

2010-01-18T06:34:00.000-08:00

Learning to Pay Attention
Second Sunday after the Epiphany C
Isaiah 62:1-5; 1 Corinthians 12:1-11; John 2:1-11
January 17, 2010
St. Paul’s FM Church

Every time the train would approach a station the engine operator would repeat the drill. “Ladies and Gentlemen, please be careful descending the stairs as you disembark from the train. The steps are slippery and you should use the handrail. The conductor will assist you with your bags.” And, just before arriving at a stop, the conductor would magically appear, sweep the steps free of ice, and warn the entire car that the snow had made the descent somewhat precarious, demanding our full attention. Folks would cue up and, for the most part, take their time with their bags as they negotiated the four or five steep steps to the ground—all that is except for one terribly distracted woman who insisted on talking on her cell phone while scurrying towards the front with a handful of bags and parcels. She blasted past an elderly gentleman who was trying to shuffle into the aisle while yelling at someone on the other end of her phone line. And, instead of grabbing the hand rail and gently walking down the steps, she refused the porter’s offer of assistance and stepped boldly into the great beyond. The sound of her feet coming out from under her was something of a pregnant pause before she landed on her posterior with a thud. The entire car took in an inhaled breath as invective poured from her mouth at all those gathered around her. I suppose had I had more empathy, I might have stepped to her defense but, instead, I simply chalked up the entire incident as irrefutable truth of Darwinian evolution.

The fact of the matter is that this poor woman is simply emblematic of where most of us live—stuck away in our own little worlds, ignoring what is going on all around us. We mistakenly believe that God is to be found primarily in the great and spectacular, so we oftentimes miss God’s activity in the everyday and the ordinary. That is why Frederick Buechner says, “Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery that it is. . . There is no event so commonplace but that God is present within it, always hiddenly, always leaving you room to recognize him or not to recognize him,” (Now and Then, 87). As Dean Nelson, who teaches at Point Loma says in his most recent book, “When we’re paying attention, we see that grace is breaking into our everyday moments, making them different—sacred—drawing us into the presence of God. It’s not about us getting a hold of the sacred. It’s about the sacred getting a hold of us,” (God Hides in Plain Sight, 17). And this morning’s texts both reaffirm and develop this idea of God’s presence in the mundane interstices of our lives.

We have just come through one of the two high points of the Christian Year—Christmastide. We have exchanged presents, eaten voraciously, and gorged ourselves on football. We started hearing Christmas music soon after Halloween and this year we have even witnessed and lived through a truly “White Christmas.” But now the tree has been taken down, the seasonal partying has come to an end, and we find ourselves facing the prospect of another two full months of winter weather. Some of us may be tempted to go into hibernation—to pull the covers up over our heads and to sleep-walk through the next few months. While others of us find ourselves with our noses to the grindstone—pulling our taxes together and forging through the mental snows all around us. The danger in both cases is that we may well miss the signs of God’s presence all around us, mistaking the stripped-down barrenness of the landscape which surrounds us as being devoid of hope or meaning.

That is why we have this church season in the depth of winter known as Epiphany which began last Sunday with the story of Jesus’ baptism in the River Jordan by John. Other words for epiphany are “manifestation” and “appearance.” That is, glimpses of the Divine that take place where we might least expect them. This is certainly the case in today’s Old Testament lesson where the people cast out of the Promised Land hear hints of God’s restoration. And that restorative process begins by being given a new name. Now names are important. They signal to the rest of the world something of who we are. One of the unfortunate aspects of having the simple name of Brian (spelled with an “I”) is that people are always inverting the middle two vowels so that I have received an enormous amount of mail addressed to “Brain” Hartley. In the schoolyard there were always taunts and jeers of “Brian the Brain” and “Brainy Brian” which seemed to accompany me. Because we moved quite often, I even tried changing my name to my initials once asking people to call me “B. T.”—all to no avail. As soon as people found out my name, they were calling me “Brain” all over again. After awhile, I just decided to quit fighting it and to try and live into my newly given name.

In today’s text, the change of name couldn’t be more dramatic. From “Forsaken” and “Desolate,” the people are now known as “Delight” and “Married.” From having experienced death, destruction, and exile, they are now promised restoration and fruitfulness. No longer known by the Hebrew Hephzibah, they are now endowed with the beautiful name of Beulah. The sheer intimacy being signaled here of relationship is an announcement not only to the exiles but to all those who have known these people primarily by their separation from God and the land as now being restored into loving relationship. And yet, the reality for the exiles who returned to the land was one of continued desolation and despair. The scars left behind by the Babylonians remained deep and it took many years before the land could be brought back to fruitfulness. When one reads the narrative provided in books like Ezra, Nehemiah, and Haggai, it is clear that the people faced very real challenges despite their return into the land.

We, like they, may be tempted to despair as well. We remain dependent upon God during this season of cold and darkness for our own well-being. The earth remains locked into a perpetual deep freeze and the trees are stripped of their leaves and color. The landscape itself stands like a grim reminder of the waste of winter—think the movie “Fargo” over against the colors of Dorothy’s Oz! In such times, we can only cling to the promises of God that spring will come again. Driving into town we are haunted by the grimy snow which seems to mock the name of our town, “Greenville.” And yet we dare to hope that we will yet be able to lay claim to the summertime reality of that name which we have been given.

During such times, we must join in paying particular attention to the signs of God in our midst. And no one describes this better than does the Gospel according to St. John. In this gospel, Jesus doesn’t perform miracles but he engages in sign-acts, semeia in Greek. And these actions are never for the glorification of Jesus but are meant to be small windows into his larger identity and purpose. In this gospel, Jesus performs seven such sign-acts in the first half of the narrative, concluding with the great raising of Lazarus in chapter 11. But the first of those sign-acts is something rather mundane really—the transformation of water into wine.

The narrative begins with the phrase, “on the third day,” a clear signal to those listening in that this would be an epiphany narrative. In John’s gospel, everything operates on at least two different levels. Jesus says “water” and he really means “water.” Or, Jesus refers to “bread” and he really means “bread.” The narrative literally drips with metaphorical language, offering a severe challenge to we moderns who read the text as if it were the New York Times. But this is no newspaper—this is a theological text meant to convey meaning in a symbolic world recognizable to those in the first and second centuries, but somewhat less so to those of us living in the twenty-first century. The very next story, the cleansing of the temple, a similar third day narrative, by the way, displaced by John from its traditional order in the closing week of Jesus’ ministry in the other gospels, also serves to reveal something important about the nature of his ministry.

These stories, then, are not meant to be ham-fisted empirical data to prove that a miracle was performed but are meant to point us to something much more important. As Fred Craddock is wont to say: “The Evangelist is saying that a sign is not a miracle to amaze or an offer of proof for his teaching. The sign was a window through which God was revealed. To attend to the miraculous and to miss the revelation would be no more than curiosity wallowing in the unusual,” (Preaching the New Common Lectionary: Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Year C, 130). And yet, we get all caught up in the hocus-pocus nature of the event, interpreting it both woodenly and literally—at least, until, we have to square it with our own propensity towards abstinence and teetotalism. Then, we come up with cockamamie theories about how this wine was really a form of unfermented juice.

But, we are neither the first or the last to look for God primarily in the spectacular. As Paul says in the opening chapter to the first epistle to the Corinthians: “Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles,” (1:22-23). And nobody fell harder for the spectacular than did the residents of Corinth. They were the embodiment of the character, Herod, as portrayed in Jesus Christ Superstar who sings out to Jesus, “prove to me that you’re no fool, walk across my swimming pool. If you’ll do that for me then I’ll let you go free. Come on, King of the Jews!”

They had created their own hierarchy of gifts and at the top they had the most ostentatious and spectacular. Paul here takes them to task, challenging outward signs as the primary manifestation of the presence of the Spirit. Some scholars have surmised that there may well have been Gnostic-believing Christians in this congregation who disparaged Jesus’ humanity and, so, called down curses on the human figure, Jesus, whom they saw in opposition to the “spiritual Christ.” Paul’s pastoral concern is clearly linked to addressing this faulty theology which emphasized “speaking in the Spirit,” when their actions revealed something quite different. If we are looking for the revelation or epiphany of God in these outward and exterior manifestations, we may well be led astray this chief of the Apostles suggests.

In fact, in his own list of gifts, Paul mentions tongues last. This would fit the larger point he is making here that there is both a diversity of gifts and that the primary purpose of these gifts is for the good of the community, not the individual. If we expect God to manifest God’s self in the same way in different people, we are denying one of the key elements of how God works in the world—through diversity. There is no one gift, like a “silver bullet” that marks the presence of God. No, God works through a variety of people in a variety of ways. And so, if we go looking for God in one place to be demonstrated in an extraordinary way, we will, more than likely, miss the signs of His grace in our very midst.

All of which brings us back to the dark and barren season in which we find ourselves. For some of us there may be a tendency to see this wintry time as something to get through so that we can get on to the “sunny” times of our existence. But like the very common wedding in which Jesus finds himself, we may be in danger of living much of our lives longing for what lies around the next corner only to discover one day that we have missed much of our life. These ordinary cold days make up a prime time for us in which to look for God in the everyday and the ordinary. As Barbara Brown Taylor says, “Like a silver spoon in the drawer with the stainless, like a diamond necklace on the bureau with the rhinestones; the extraordinary hidden in the ordinary, the kingdom of heaven all mixed in with the humdrum and ho-hum of our days, as easy to find as an amaryllis bulb in the dark basement that suddenly sends forth a shoot, or a child’s smile when she awakes from sleep, or the first thunderstorm after a long drought—all of them signs of the kingdom of heaven, clues to all the holiness hidden in the dullest of our days,” (The Seeds of Heaven, 44).

And so, on this day, we are called like the hearers of the prophet Isaiah, the congregation at Corinth, and the community of the Beloved Disciple, to start paying attention to where God is at work in the quiet and barren seasons of our lives. This may, however, demand that, unlike the woman in our opening story, that we quit trying to do so many things at once and start paying attention to what is going on all around us. For me, this took place watching the faces of a couple of children in a seat behind me as they stared out the train window at the snow falling all around us a week ago Thursday. For many of the adults on that journey, the snow and ice were impediments to travel—something we had to get through in order to get on with life. But for these children, that snow was something magical. They pointed out the window, they laughed, they watched the vapor form as they breathed on the glass, and they reveled in the little boy waving at us across the tracks as he built his snowman. For them, winter was not a time to be gotten through but a time of fairy magic when the world comes alive with all kinds of new possibilities. And so it might become for all of us—if we have eyes with which to catch sight of the Incarnate Logos in our midst.

Sometimes, it is most difficult, but most important, for us to look for signs of Christ’s presence where they are least likely to appear—such as in the most recent tragedy in Haiti. Yet, perhaps in the midst of so much destruction and suffering is exactly where we should most expect the living Christ to be at work. As I watched the video from just yesterday of Bishop Roller officiating at a service of remembrance for those three Free Methodist missionaries who are still missing and now presumed dead, I was reminded of that transforming vision for which they gave their lives. For they, like so many before them, went believing that Christ is present and at work, often in unseen ways bringing beauty and shalom even in the midst of so much devastation. If nothing else, then, their deaths should prompt us to open our eyes to the possibilities all around us of the signs of the Kingdom. And, as we gather at table this day, we do so sharing in that vision, mouthing the words of this “anticipatory liturgy,” and believing, as that liturgy says, “in sure and certain hope of the resurrection.” Amen.

Advent: An Invitation to Adventure

2009-12-14T05:13:00.000-08:00

Advent: An Invitation to Adventure
Zephaniah 3:14-20; Philippians 4:4-7; Luke 3:7-18
St. Paul’s FM Church
December 13, 2009

One of the first great experiences I can remember as a child is going to Disneyland. Since my two favorite television programs growing up were “The Mickey Mouse Club” and “Davy Crockett,” a visit to Disneyland meant an opportunity to embrace a world I only knew through our rather small black-and-white picture tube. In those days, this place was newly-minted and spic-and-span from top to bottom, while within the park, there were a variety of rides and shows grouped around different themes. One of my favorites was known simply as “Adventureland,” a place inhabited by dense vegetation, ominous animal noises, and surprising creatures, like elephants and crocodiles, that might rise up unexpectedly out of the waters around your boat causing women to scream and young children to wet their pants. The fact was that visiting Adventureland always brought with it a conflicting mix of emotions that oscillated between excitement and fear.

That same stew of feelings marks our own dwelling at this point in the season of Advent. After all, these two words—“advent” and “adventure”—come from the same root. As one of my favorite English authors, Ronald Blythe, says in his little book of reflections on the church year, “Advent is a thrilling season and a solemn season. . . To set out on an adventure is both exciting and risky. Unsafe. Adventure means a hazardous enterprise,” (The Circling Year, 2). It is to this “hazardous enterprise” that we are called on this third Sunday of Advent and I would like to suggest that this morning’s texts invite us to live in this very tension as we find ourselves surrounded by words and images of judgment, on the one hand, and of rejoicing, on the other. And, for just a few moments I’d like for us to consider what it means to engage wholeheartedly this sense of adventure in the hopes that our journey together might provide for us ways of becoming more like Christ.

Every adventure requires us to begin somewhere and usually it is with a strong voice of command that catches us up short and invites us onto the road. Good authors know this and have a way of drawing us in from the very first page. One of my favorite examples of this is the Old English word, “Hwaet!” which marks the beginning of 3,182 lines of alliterative speech broken up into two half-lines each divided by a caesura, or breath mark, with two principal stresses in each half-line. The poem is known simply as Beowulf and as a young college student whose head was filled with visions of swords and bucklers, monsters and mead halls, I couldn’t get enough of it. The language was dense and earthy, yet musical and alive. It conjured up other worlds and other times, transporting me to places of exciting adventure.

In our own Advent adventure, John the Baptist plays this role of providing a commanding voice that summons us to listen. He is the last of the great Old Testament prophets whose very description reminds us of the eccentricities of these men of God who walked naked in the streets and dared kings to strike them dead. As I am wont to quote from Frederick Buechner, “the prophets were drunk on God, and in the presence of their terrible tipsiness no one was ever comfortable,” (Wishful Thinking, 74-75). And no prophet was more tipsy than John the B. He ranted, he railed, he called down fire on all those within listening distance. Where one might have expected a warm handshake, a cup of coffee, and a “Cheerio, mate!”, John bellows forth in today’s gospel lesson, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?” This is not a guy you would want on a welcoming committee or a public relations junket. When John entered a room, all those powerful people probably ran for the exits hoping their hair would avoid catching on fire.

But just as the scop (the medieval bard) spun a tale meant to awaken his hearers from their lethargy and slumber, John’s iconoclastic language was meant to shock his hearers out of their complacency and gain their attention. For, you see, it is quite easy in this season of food, family, and frivolity to find ourselves lulled to sleep by the sound of the Christmas carols and the hum of commerce all about us. But this wooly figure from the past insists that the road of adventure must begin not in Santa’s workshop but in the wilderness; and not with a summons to drunkenness and carousing, but with a call to repentance. The seasonal colors splashed all around us during Advent are filled with purple, not the reds and greens of Christmas, and there is a reason for this: the road to Bethlehem requires us to be stripped of all that might encumber us on this journey.

One of my favorite contemporary travel writers is Bill Bryson whose wry wit stands him in good stead when telling the tale of his own adventures. In one of his books entitled, A Walk in the Woods, he tells the story of a journey with his former college roommate, Stephen Katz, who flies in to meet him at the head of the Appalachian Trail from his home in Iowa. Unfortunately, Stephen (whom he has not seen in many years) has gained a great deal of weight and is in no shape to be hiking anywhere, let alone one of America’s longest and most rugged trail systems. Furthermore, he has not given much thought to the weight of his pack or the necessary provisions for the journey and so shows up with about seventy pounds of gear made up primarily of Hostess products like Ding-Dongs, Ho-Ho’s, and Twinkies—intended to provide nourishment over the several weeks spent on the trail. In one of the most hilarious bits of contemporary travel writing, Bryson tells how his friend finds himself so weighed down by snack cakes within hours of departure that he decides to start chucking them, hand over fist, into the ravine below—an action which not only deprives him of any form of sustenance for the days ahead, but leaves him on the point of despair.

In like manner, many of us may come to this season encumbered by expectations of creating the perfectly decorated house or the ideal Currier and Ives Christmas day family dinner. We expect our children to behave magnificently and our spouse to purchase us the perfect gift to (according to the advertisement) “last a lifetime.” But soon, all our visions begin to crumble and we find ourselves prone to grumble. Our children prove all too fallible and we discover our spouses once again to have feet of clay. Advent, though, is not a season of perfect gingerbread houses, suggests the prophet John, but a time of ridding ourselves of all these unrealistic expectations. We are beckoned into a different land, perhaps even a barren place, during this time. We are called not to speed up and buy, but to slow down and listen. And, just as that opening word in Beowulf admonishes the reader to be still and to pay attention, John’s language is meant to clear our hearts and minds and strip us bare of our pretense.

And there, once we find ourselves naked before God, we are called to repentance. In last Sunday’s gospel lesson, in the verses which immediately precede ours, John was seen calling people to a “baptism of repentance.” This idea of repentance comes to us wrapped in certain cultural packaging—a la the recent statements posted by one Tiger Woods. But Kathleen Norris challenges the way we oftentimes think about the word when she says in her book, The Cloister Walk, “Repentance is coming to our senses, seeing, suddenly, what we’ve done that we might not have done or recognizing. . . that the problem is not in what we do but in what we become.” Recognizing the error of our ways is taken very seriously at the monastery where I spent last weekend with some of you who are present here this morning. While there, we encountered a very concrete example of a community which practices repentance. At early morning prayer last Sunday, when Fr. Harry, the esteemed professor of theology from Kentucky, made an error in the reading and the cantor sang the wrong song--they both were required to kneel before the monks as their compadres filed past at the end of the service to acknowledge and repent of their transgressions. Now, while we might consider such behavior totally unnecessary and a bit over the top, it demonstrates the seriousness with which Benedictines understand all of life as an opportunity to be conformed to the image of Christ in the everyday actions which make up our rather mundane lives. And, as flawed creatures, this requires us to both acknowledge and to repent of those behaviors which might take us in a very different direction.

But if our adventure begins with a call to listen and repent, much of the rest of today’s texts begin moving us in a very different direction—a way of juxtaposition to these earlier images. For now that we find ourselves at the third Sunday of Advent, we have already covered a little over half of our journey. In fact, next Sunday our primary gospel character will not be the fiery John the Baptist, but the obedient and somewhat demure Virgin Mary. She and her message will stand in stark contrast to this fire-breathing prophet and will take us fully over into the New Testament or, as it is oftentimes referred to, “the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.” By next Sunday we will have our eyes firmly fixed on Bethlehem and the manger and all of the joy that it portends. But today, at least for these few moments, we find ourselves neither at the beginning nor at the end but somewhere in between, caught between our hopes and our fears.

That is why the other cry that we hear today is a call to act. Notice that in today’s gospel lesson three different groups—the crowds, tax collectors, and soldiers—all ask John, “What are we to do?” And, in each case, the prophet offers up concrete activities—to share, to not overcharge, and to not extort money. These clear admonitions are paralleled in both our epistolary and Old Testament texts. Writing from prison to one of his favorite churches—that in Philippi—Paul commands (in the imperative) the receiving congregation to “rejoice” and to “not worry.” The irony, of course, is that he, of all people, had every reason to complain and to be worried. Within a matter of months, he would probably be dead and, although we don’t know for sure his immediate circumstances, living a life in chains in a Roman prison could not have been very comfortable. And yet, he had the audacity to call his hearers to live a countercultural life of discipline and peace in the midst of the personal storm through which he, himself, was living.

Curiously enough, this same call to rejoice is sounded in this little book of the prophet Zephaniah. Now, most of us probably haven’t spent a lot of time with this book tucked away near the end of our Old Testaments. But what I find so curious is that the entire text of this prophetic book is given over to indictments and woes. As some of you who are a bit more “hip” than I might describe it, this is a real “downer” of a book. Except for this one little passage which makes up today’s reading. In the midst of terror and destruction comes a call to rejoice (twice) and to exult in the coming of the Lord. The setting for this text is probably what was known as the cry of the heralds who would call for public rejoicing because of the arrival of messengers bringing good news of victory or deliverance to the city (J. J. M. Roberts, 222). In the very midst of community life which is rooted in the reality of Exile and defeat, the people of God are beckoned to find hope as they anticipate what will yet be. This requires learning to pay careful attention to one’s surroundings and to embrace them fully, while also living with the tension that something better has been promised.

In her book, By Willoway Brook: Exploring the Landscape of Prayer, Cindy Crosby links the life of prayer with her experience of living through a year in the natural landscape of the Schulenberg Prairie near Chicago. She challenges her readers to really begin to pay attention to the flora and fauna of one’s surroundings as we pass through the various seasons and to do so as a cue to the mystery and goodness of God. She sits and stares at birds’ eggs or dragonfly larva, anticipating their maturity into full-grown birds and insects. Her book is a summons to not miss the marvels of God at work in the world by failing to pay attention to the here-and-now as signals of what God has promised to do in our lives. At one point, she says quite baldly, “When I die, I want to know I have paid attention. To have read creation’s journal from cover to cover, and not skimmed the pages,” (35). Her intentionality and careful eye force me to try and slow down and embrace the moment in ways that seem so foreign to my own personality.

Perhaps that is why I found our trip back from St. Meinrad’s the real challenge to my spiritual life—not the time there. I have been back and forth to monasteries, particularly this one, probably thirty or forty times. I enjoy watching students try to drink in what I first experienced on a beautiful April weekend now a full third of a century ago. In some ways, once the schedule has been set, the drill has become somewhat routine. But then we encountered the challenge of a vehicle that required constant attention and loving care as we nursed it back home, exiting the highway to look for compressed air several times along the way. As someone who is very focused and concerned about the welfare of students, my mind was caught up in the whirl of decisions necessary to bring the trip to its desired end. I found myself so tense that all my senses were trained on the future and oftentimes not paying adequate attention to the present.

That is when God really began to challenge me to quit being the One-in-Charge and start being a listener again. I marveled at the fact that we had a student on board whose father was a mechanic at the end of a cell phone line. This same student, undeterred by a tire that kept going flat, said at one point, “I love a crisis!”—words, I can assure you, that have never crossed my lips. And as I drove down the road intent on the horizon ahead, checking the mirrors on each side, trying to hold my bladder in check—another student reached across the cabin and patted my leg simply saying, “It’s going to be alright, Dr. Hartley.” It was only then that I began to think about how years from now whenever this class tells the story of our visit to the monastery it will be a unique one—a story of how we worked together to get everyone home safe and sound, a story about how God provided for us along the way, a story of excitement and danger, laughter and despair. In short, an Advent adventure that may well be told long after I am gone. And I was in grave danger of missing out on the story—simply because I was so focusing on finishing a task.

So, where is your attention focused this morning? Are you in danger of missing the adventure in life because of the “to-do” list that dominates your journey through the holidays? In the midst of putting up lights, baking desserts, and coordinating the kids through their Christmas activities, are you paying attention to the miracle of life that marks the season? Or, has the rush through work, exams, and all of the paraphernalia that makes up the end of the year so dominated your focus that you have failed to hear the words of this morning’s lesson?-- “The Lord is near…rejoice! Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus,” (Philippians 4: 4-7). Amen.

All Saints' Day

2009-11-02T12:46:00.000-08:00

All Saints’ Day
Isaiah 25:6-9; Psalm 24; Revelation 21:1-6a; John 11:32-44
St. Paul’s Free Methodist Church
November 1, 2009

I know that some people find the behavior quite strange, but I actually enjoy strolling through old cemeteries. And, this time of year, you get the added bonus of a panoply of added color as the maples, in particular, set loose their bright array of reds, yellows, and oranges. But, walking regularly through the land of the dead also brings with it the benefit of realizing both the brevity of life and the finality of death. Though there are some notable differences in the size of headstones and the quality of material and workmanship, each of us is limited to two dates, a dash, and the very briefest of epithets. No long homilies are to be abided on tombstones!

Even though John Donne says in one of his famous sermons, “It is a rebellious thing not to be content to die,” none of us seems all that comfortable with the subject. In fact, as Thomas Lynch has reminded us in his work, death has replaced sex in our culture as that most taboo of subjects, unfit for dinnertime conversation. And yet, for those who have recently suffered the loss of a loved one, the mere fact that words cannot be spoken endangers even that which we can recall through the power of memory. I think that is really what we all fear even more than death—the idea that we will not be remembered, that our story will not be told, that our presence on the earthly stage will be forever forgotten, wiped clean from the slate of recorded memory that makes up human history.

Now, I must confess that I have given more thought to this of late than even before, thanks to the advent of a little red-headed boy into our extended family, known as Master Tristan Edward. I haven’t yet entirely figured out how it was that I went from being a cool, young pastor and faculty member to being a graying grandfather. I distinctly remember the birth of my own two daughters and of reading them to sleep at night. One day I woke up and realized that they were becoming young women in their own right, dashing off to school to be with their friends. But then they followed me to my place of employment and it was like something of an extended stay. Until, that is, the ivy was clipped and they went off to work in other places to live out their vocation. And, then, one hot summer July day a few months ago, there was suddenly this little man, this wee boy, to remind me of the fragility of life. And so, I looked around for my grandfather to take his rightful place as family storyteller, only to realize that he had passed on a few years before. Then, and only then, it was that I realized that now it is my turn—to sit in the rocker, to hold my grandson, and to tell him the stories that have been passed on to me. Though I can only recall with any clarity about seven generations back, the responsibility for not losing the memories of my forefathers and mothers, now rests thoroughly on my shoulders.

This, then on something of a more communal scale, is what today is all about. All Saints’ Day is that one day in the calendar that we blast a hole in time and space and think about the church in cosmic terms. All Saints’ Day provides us with an opportunity to stroll through our cemeteries of communal memory and to retell the stories that have formed us as the people of God. All Saints’ Day stands as a stark reminder that our lives are short and, as the old gospel tune proclaims, “only what’s done for Christ will last.” Today’s texts, then, are an invitation to this journey of memory that begins in the holy city and ends in the heavenly city, and all of them remind us that our destiny begins and ends with God.

In the text provided us from Isaiah, we find ourselves surrounded by a rich and sumptuous feast taking place on Mount Zion, the site of God’s royal rule. The sharing of heady and strong wine alongside the quality and quantity of food suggests deep friendship at an intensely intimate level between God and his subjects. If I may be so bold, it points us in the direction of the consummate Eucharist, the shadow of which we experience as we approach this table. For the writer of this text, the mythological universe of the ancient Sumerians and Babylonians would have been the dominant cultural motif with which they would have been surrounded. In this ancient literature, Death was oftentimes pictured in a personified form swallowing up everything before him. It is no accident, then, that this writer uses the same Semitic language and analogy, but reverses it in a most powerful way so that the Hebrew God is seen to be swallowing up death, itself! Whether the shroud and sheet referred to here refers to the death pall, mourner’s garb, or even the temple curtains themselves, the image of destroying that which alienates us from God symbolizes an ultimate victory beyond the grave itself.

It is exactly that image which confronts us in the powerful narrative from John’s gospel where Isaiah’s language, as it were, takes on the clothing of the dead Lazarus. This account in John 11 parallels the funerary customs which we later encounter regarding Jesus in each of the gospels. For instance, both Lazarus and Jesus, we are told, were buried wrapped in linen strips and with their faces covered with a cloth. This is an earlier version of what my friend, David Cressy, has documented in his chapter on “Ritual and Reformation,” in his book, Birth, Marriage, and Death: Ritual, Religion, and the Life-Cycle in Tudor and Stuart England (Oxford, 1997). In his discussion of the order for the burial of the dead, he provides a popular artist’s rendering from an early 17th-century book on the Ars Moriendi (or, art of dying) in which a corpse is pictured covered in a shroud with a cloth over the victim’s face. Surrounding the art work is the phrase, “A shroud to grave, men only have,” (397).

The point that all of these texts are making is that the body was usually covered up with some sort of cloth to protect it from exposure to the elements or the potential ravages of animals. In the case of the first-century stories of Jesus and of Lazarus, the other concern was to house the bones which would typically have been collected a year or so after the person’s death and taken to the ossuary for later storage. Had the person come back to life by virtue of some sort of miracle, these coverings which were meant for protection would suddenly have become encumbrances to the person given new life. So, unlike the resurrected Jesus whom, we are told, left the funerary wrappings behind because he would never encounter death again, Lazarus is pictured as literally being “bound up” with these physical symbols of death. All of which leads to the dramatic conclusion of today’s gospel lesson with the memorable line, “Unbind him and let him go,” (John 11:44).

This juxtaposition between the Old Testament and gospel passage for today is perhaps continued through yet another important connection—the reference to crying. Most of us who have spent time with English translations of the Bible know that this Johannine narrative contains the shortest verse in the Bible: “Jesus wept.” And, from a young age I can remember hearing countless sermons preached on this passage about how this reveals our Lord’s compassion for Mary, Martha, and Lazarus—particularly in light of the surrounding narrative which seems to suggest that Jesus intentionally waited until after his friend’s death to approach Bethany. Even though we, the readers, have been clued in that this is for the greater glory of God, it still creates a rather callous portrait of Jesus which can only be offset for many of us by virtue of the fact that he now is seen to engage in that most human and vulnerable of acts—crying.

Now, I hate to cry. Like most men of my era, I grew up believing that crying was only for girls and for sissies. We were encouraged to encounter the worst that life could throw at us like men and never to cry. Then God gave me this woman, whom I love, who can cry with the best of them. And, if that weren’t enough, he provided me with daughters who would sit on either side of me in the theatre their arms intertwined with mine, tears running down their faces. They won’t watch “Old Yeller” with me for this reason and my younger daughter even bristles if you dare to mention “ET: the Extraterrestrial.” Further, I have decided that age plays tricks on us and makes older men more prone to cry. I have no idea if this is scientifically true, or not, but I have watched it happen with my father and am now experiencing it even myself. I don’t know that I have any more empathy, but I do know that I tend to be much more vulnerable than in the old testosterone-driven days of my youth.

And so, here is Jesus—one of us—shown crying by the Evangelist. But, remember, the prophet had said not only that death would be swallowed up, but that God would wipe away the tears from all faces. And so it is that in this very story Jesus, the God-man, the divine Logos, cries out, “Lazarus, come forth!” And, in that moment, the one seen as most human through his tears, is also boldly revealed as the Divine one who will wipe away all tears. Since this is John’s gospel, this event is called by the evangelist the last of seven semeia, or signs—something which point beyond their literal quality to something even greater.

And, it is here that the narrative bends and we find ourselves caught up in the language of the Apocalypse, the Book of Revelation. As the mystic Austin Farrer suggested, this book is “the one great poem which the first Christian age produced,” (Reversed Thunder, 5). Most of our misreading of this text flows, in fact, from our refusal or inability to deal with the author as a poet, rather than a predictor. As Eugene Peterson tells us, “Poetry is not the language of objective explanation but the language of imagination. It makes an image of reality in such a way as to invite our participation in it. We do not have more information after we read a poem, we have more experience,” (5).

While both today’s Old Testament and Psalter readings are strictly centered in the Jerusalem of earthly kings, this passage takes us into the first segment of a lengthy vision of the new Jerusalem. What we have before us is Jerusalem transformed. Gone are the images of primeval waters with their attendant malevolent mythical creatures, and before us descending from the heavens comes the holy city arrayed “as a bride adorned for her husband,” (21:2). This vision of purity receives reinforcement with a repetition of the prophetic words we heard from Isaiah: “he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away,” (21:4). Peterson’s description may be helpful to us here: “There is not so much as a hint of escapism in St. John’s heaven. This is not a long (eternal) weekend away from the responsibilities of employment and citizenship, but the intensification and healing of them. Heaven is formed out of dirty streets and murderous alleys, adulterous bedrooms and corrupt courts, hypocritical synagogues and commercialized churches, thieving tax-collectors and traitorous disciples: a city, but not a holy city,” (Reversed Thunder, 174).

Our journey this morning, then, to borrow Peterson’s phrase, takes us on a pilgrimage of healing. This is a journey not to a heaven distant from an earth subjected to destruction, but to an earth made new from the heavens above. Heaven is not some fantasy, these texts suggest, “simply a dream to retreat to when things get messy and inhospitable on earth. Heaven is not fantasy. We have access to heaven now: it is the invisibility in which we are immersed, and that is developing into visibility, and that one day will be thoroughly visible,” (Peterson, 172). Jesus’ words to Lazarus in today’s gospel lesson are not just for his friend, they are for us, as well—“Come forth from the grave!”

This morning we gather to remember and our remembrance of things past, of those who have gone before, leads us not to despair, but to hope. As the good Platonist that I am, I remind you that we dwell, in C. S. Lewis’ words, in the Shadowlands where things are not quite as they shall be, but where we still may catch intimations of God’s glory. Death has already been defeated and we are surrounded, whether we realize it or not, by those who have “fought the good fight and have kept the faith.” As the prefatory prayer to this day expresses it: “Their glory fills us with joy, and their communion with us in your Church gives us inspiration and strength as we hasten on our pilgrimage of faith, eager to meet them,” (A. Adam, The Liturgical Year).

That is why, standing in a cemetery to officiate at a committal service is like standing at the very precipice of hope. In the words of my beloved Cranmer, “In sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life through our Lord Jesus Christ, we commend to Almighty God our brother, and we commit his body to the ground,” (Book of Common Prayer, 485). And, if we have eyes enough to see, we can look over that precipice and hear the sounds of great celebration of the Saints who have gone before. For in the life, death, and resurrection of our Lord, death is never allowed the last word. On this day, our pilgrimage brings us home to a place called hope. Thanks be to God!

Ministry in Community: Forging a Corporate Relationship with Jesus

2009-10-19T08:43:00.000-07:00

Ministry in Community
Greenville College Chapel
Monday, October 19, 2009

Eugene Peterson tells a wonderful story of growing up in Montana which I believe is worth retelling—particularly if you were one of those kids like me who refused to fight and usually wound up pummeled by the school bully. Peterson had a similar experience in the depression-era West, being accused by Garrison Johns, his local tyrant, of being a “Jesus-sissy.” Like most of us, he tried “finding alternate ways home by making detours through alleys, but he stalked me,” Peterson says, “and always found me out. I arrived home every afternoon, bruised and humiliated. My mother told me that this had always been the way of Christians in the world and that I had better get used to it,” (Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places, 135).

But, one day, something unexpected happened and little Eugene turned into a Christian soldier: “For just a moment the Bible verses disappeared from my consciousness and I grabbed Garrison. . . I wrestled him to the ground, sat on his chest and pinned his arms to the ground with my knees. . . At my mercy. It was too good to be true. I hit him in the face with my fists. It felt good and I hit him again—blood spurted from his nose, a lovely crimson on the snow. By this time all the other children were cheering, egging me on. ‘Black his eyes! Bust his teeth!’ A torrent of vengeful invective poured from them. . . I hit him again. More blood. More cheering. Now the audience was bringing the best out of me. And then my Christian training reasserted itself. I said, ‘Say, “I believe in Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior.”’ And he said it. Garrison Johns was my first Christian convert,” (Peterson, 136).

Now, although we might like to think otherwise from this narrative, many of us might even go so far as to defend Peterson’s pugilistic activity because, after all, in the end his actions produced the all-important salvific outcome in his victim. “Doubtless you have heard the saying,” South African theologian, Michael Battle, suggests, “that, in order to be a Christian, you must have a personal relationship with your Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. And surely you have heard it preached that, if you were the only one alive, God would still come and die for you. You have heard these things—but these ways of naming Christian life are individualistic and unintelligible to the way that Jesus taught his disciples to live,” (Placher, Essentials of Christian Theology, 281-282). That is, that which we have dared to label the sine qua none of evangelical Christianity is, at best, a mistranslation, and, at worst, a bastardization, of the faith delivered to the saints. The result, Battle claims, is what he calls “baseball spirituality,” a belief that “as long as you can verbalize the formula of Christian salvation, then all requirements of the Christian life are accomplished.”

The dangers of such reductionistic, privatistic thinking are all around us in Western culture and pervade the sub-culture of generic American evangelicalism. We have so distorted Christ’s call to death and discipleship, that “many people practice a form of spirituality in which there is no conceptual space to confess that there is someone who is and should be greater than one’s self,” (Battle, 290). “What we often call a personal relationship with God is shorthand for my own version of God,” and, “instead of seeing ourselves made in the image of God, we, like the great sociologist Emil Durkheim, see that God is made in our image,” (291). This “fulfillment of personal salvation” makes itself manifest in a variety of ways, from an overemphasis on the theory of Christ’s vicarious atonement to our conception of heaven as some kind of individual, existential bliss. What kind of theology is this that transposes the New Testament vision of the inbreaking of God’s Kingdom into some kind of idiosyncratic “get out of hell, get into heaven” ticket?

Perhaps, Battle maintains, we should begin by asking one another, “Do you have a communal relationship with Jesus Christ?” I would like to propose that what we need is nothing less than a radical reorientation in the way we think about God, so that we can begin to break out of our cultural conceptions of the person and work of Jesus which are so separated from any understanding of the importance of relationship. Because, in the Kingdom of God the great mystery which confronts us, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer maintains, is that we need others in order to know both God and ourselves. We discover God only in and through the community of faith and, in order to minister, we must be taught important lessons through that community. This morning I want to outline briefly the seven important ministries which we are called upon to carry out in the community and without which we are at a loss to become truly Christian and to have a communal relationship with Christ. And, I want to say to those of you who know me all too well that I am preaching as much to myself this day as to any of you.

(1.) The first calling is to what Bonhoeffer calls, “the ministry of holding one’s tongue.” There is something about giving voice to our most evil thoughts that sets them loose upon the entire community. During the last World War there was a famous motto which was plastered on walls along with war bond sales: “Loose lips sink ships.” And, no one who has been paying attention to the political battles brewing in Washington over the last few years can deny the power of a word spoken against one of our comrades. Bonhoeffer’s words fit all too well the experience of many of us when he says: “to speak about a brother covertly is forbidden, even under the cloak of help and good will; for it is precisely in this guise that the spirit of hatred among brothers always creeps in when it is seeking to create mischief,” (Life Together, 92).

Christian community demands that we see each person as an absolutely indispensable link in a chain and, “only when even the smallest link is securely interlocked is the chain unbreakable,” (94). One of the huge dangers that exists in the popular culture is the way we create an artificial hierarchy in our community and tend to de-value the work of some and over-value the work of others. This results in constant scrutiny of one another, a judging and condemnation so that we can gain ascendancy over that brother or sister. Learning to reserve judgment of the other and keeping our tongues in check allows us to embrace the other as a child of God given as a gift to the entire community. It also teaches us, as individuals, that we can never know beforehand how God’s image can and should appear in another.

(2.) Our second calling is to meekness, a word that is often misunderstood in a culture committed to brute force as a means of gaining power. The word came early into middle English as an attempt to make sense of its Greek counterpart. Particularly as applied to one in a position of power, it means to be free from haughtiness and self-will, piously humble and submissive, one who is patient and unresentful even when injured or reproached (Oxford OED, 1761). Thomas a Kempis puts it this way: “This is the highest and most profitable lesson, truly to know and to despise ourselves. To have no opinion of ourselves, and to think always well and highly of others, is great wisdom and perfection.” I don’t know about you, but I find this calling particularly challenging. As a person who early on learned the power of words, I discovered that when all else failed I could always cut and sting with a rhetorical rapier and no one was in greater danger than some one who had dared to make fun of me.

Henri Nouwen in his little, In the Name of Jesus, has helped me to understand why this is particularly true amongst Christian leaders: “It is precisely the men and women who are dedicated to spiritual leadership who are easily subject to very raw carnality. The reason for this is that they do not know how to live the truth of the Incarnation. They separate themselves from their own concrete community, try to deal with their needs by ignoring them or satisfying them in distant or anonymous places, and then experience an increasing split between their own most private inner world and the good news they announce,” (67). Bonhoeffer maintains that the way to call ourselves to meekness is by always remembering that we are sinners, ourselves, in need of forgiveness: “To forego self-conceit and to associate with the lowly means, in all soberness and without mincing the matter, to consider oneself the greatest of sinners,” (96). Meekness requires me to understand that, “my sin is of necessity the worst, the most grievous, the most reprehensible. Brotherly love will find any number of extenuations for the sins of others; only for my sin is there no apology whatsoever.”

(3.) Our third calling is an extension of that recognition of our own inherent sinfulness: the ministry of listening. Perhaps observing what has taken place regarding public debate in our culture might be helpful here. Our airwaves are constantly filled with invective and conversation has largely become something of a blood sport with the goal being to wound your opponent mortally. And, if this cannot be accomplished through traditional methods, wielding words as battering rams and refusing to listen to one’s conversation partner, all the while destroying his character through cheap ad hominem argument, has become the order of the day. I won’t recognize those celebrities in our culture who have made their fame and fortune in such a manner, but we all know who they are: assassins on both the left and the right who take great pride in shutting others up through a combination of bluster and bravado.

In contrast, Bonhoeffer says that the very first service that we owe to one another in community is listening to them (97). And, particularly for those of you heading into ministry, it is important to remember that the greatest service you have to offer are not your words, but your ears. Listening to one another is extraordinarily important because, Bonhoeffer claims, “he who can no longer listen to his sister will soon be no longer listening to God either; he will be doing nothing but prattle in the presence of God too,” (98). In the Scriptures, one of the most prominent metaphors for leadership is that of the shepherd and, every time this image is trotted out, there is a reminder that the shepherd must always have his ears pricked up to hear what is going on around him. Learning to recognize the voice of the sheep is absolutely essential to protecting and caring for them. As Bonhoeffer says at the close of this section: “We should listen with the ears of God that we may speak the Word of God,” (99).

(4.) The fourth calling is that of active helpfulness, oftentimes consisting of simple assistance in trifling, external matters. I have a number of colleagues here who teach me about this on an almost daily basis. There is Joe who makes his truck available whenever I need it and treats me to a sweet roll with my coffee. There is Jeff, who always comes to my rescue when planning worship with music that is heaven-sent. There is Christina, whose skills at data collection and departmental organization saw me through the last departmental review and who regularly reminds me of what I might be if I only had a bit more humility and were willing to be even more transparent. And then there is Ruth, whose boisterous personality and culinary skills bring riotous laughter to our household and splendiferous joy to my taste buds. In fact, there are many, many others—too numerous to mention. These are people who are true gifts from God: those who are willing to allow themselves to be interrupted and, though they have their own agendas full, are willing to take on additional tasks in order to help a sister or brother. They have come to understand what Bonhoeffer says, that “it is part of the discipline of humility that we must not spare our hand where it can perform a service and that we do not assume that our schedule is our own to manage, but allow it to be arranged by God,” (99).

In the monastery, monks take vows of obedience which means that their time is not their own—they are responsible to obey the Abbot’s voice. We, on the other hand, are free to offer our service to our brothers and sisters because we have not taken on such a vow. Our unwillingness to do so only marks out our belief that we are more important than others; that our time is more precious than that of others. The opposite, I would maintain, of this ministry of helpfulness is the tendency to fill up our schedules as a badge of importance to somehow prove our own worth by virtue of the fact that we are busier and more in demand. We need to be reminded that, “only where hands are not too good for deeds of love and mercy in everyday helpfulness can the mouth joyfully and convincingly proclaim the message of god’s love and mercy,” (100).

(5.) Our fifth calling is to the ministry of bearing, which means learning to forbear and to sustain another. The earliest Christians read the life of Jesus through the lens of Isaiah: “Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows. . . the chastisement of our peace was upon him,” (53:4-5). This led to the invitation to see the Christian life as one of bearing the cross of Christ—what my friend, Mike Gorman, characterizes as living the cruciform life. As Bonhoeffer claims: “It is the fellowship of the Cross to experience the burden of the other. If one does not experience it, the fellowship he belongs to is not Christian. If any member refuses to bear that burden, he denies the law of Christ,” (101).

I have been fortunate throughout my life to have others who have borne my burdens. There was a nurse who raced from Oklahoma City to the hospital in Stillwater when my baby daughter died. She helped us to hold her, take pictures with her, take a lock of hair from her head, and embrace our pain. She helped us do the hard things involved in grief then, so that we could move on later. When I was in the midst of trying to complete my dissertation, there was a whole host of people here who covered for me so that I could get done what needed to be done. In fact, I remember one day almost collapsing in Lori Gaffner’s office up the hill and dumping on her my own impending sense of doom and failure.

What marks out the Christian community is our willingness to bear with and for one another. In the larger culture such a thing is sometimes seen as weakness. As Bonhoeffer remarks: “For the pagan the other person never becomes a burden at all. He simply sidesteps every burden that others may impose upon him,” (100). This “dog-eat-dog” attitude can penetrate and permeate the Christian community as well, creating a vicious atmosphere. We must always be on guard against it and our best defense is by engagement in the ministry of forebearance. This can take place daily as we enter our closets of prayer. And, as we do so, come to recognize that, “he who is bearing others is himself being borne,” (103).

(6.) Where all of these exist, we can begin to move into the sixth ministry, that of proclamation. This is not something that is confined to those who are ordained ministers. Instead, each of us has the responsibility to speak words of both comfort and affliction to our brothers and sisters. Because we live in a false community most often, we instead settle for an atmosphere of “niceness.” Niceness is the enemy of community because it does not allow for authenticity and honesty. Now, I am not particularly a fan of confrontation. In fact, I tend to flee from it. But there have been times when it was absolutely necessary. I remember, in particular, one instance where I had to go to a member of the pastoral staff, confront him with evidence, and ask for his resignation. It was a particularly painful event. This person had overcome a severe disability, had begun to flourish in ministry, was beloved by the entire congregation, but had a dark side that had threatened to engulf the entire church.

Bonhoeffer tells us that “reproof is unavoidable. God’s Word demands it when a brother falls into open sin,” (107). The danger with the ministry of proclamation, though, is when it is severed from the qualities we have already mentioned—meekness, helpfulness, and forbearance. Holding one another up in times of need creates a sense of trust between people so that when admonishment is called for we can hear the other without giving way to feeling aggrieved. The willingness to both give and receive such a word, however, requires close attention to the Word of God alone. We must be willing to speak that word, and that word alone.

(7.) Finally, we are called to the ministry of authority which is predicated on all of the ministries which have gone before. As we think of those who are called to leadership, we must be careful about using a secular model which emphasizes the cult of personality and is impressed by the distinguished qualities, virtues, and talents of another. The reality is that the “genuine authority of service appears to be so unimpressive,” (108) and, most often, those who make the best leaders are the ones who tend to flee from it. In the early church there are even stories of overnight ordinations where the most promising leaders were lured into a situation from whence they could not flee in order to make of them preachers of the gospel. The desire to be relevant, spectacular, and powerful, which Nouwen warns us of, continue to pervade the church and the academy and to warp our perspective.

Jesus, on the other hand, “made authority in the fellowship dependent upon brotherly service,” (108). “Whosoever will be great among you, shall be your minister,” (Mark 10:43). Near the end of In the Name of Jesus, Nouwen comments: “Formation in the mind of Christ, who did not cling to power but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, is not what most seminaries are about. Everything in our competitive and ambitious world militates against it. But to the degree that such formation is being sought for and realized, there is hope for the church of the twenty-first century,” (90). That is why, quite frankly, I remain somewhat concerned about a language of leadership that has more in common with Madison Avenue than with Calvary. There are some of you here today whose gifts are greatly needed by the community and by the church, who would never think of yourself in such a way. As Bonhoeffer reminds us: “The Church does not need brilliant personalities but faithful servants of Jesus. Not in the former but in the latter is the lack,” (109).

I want to close this morning by asking you to pause for a few moments to reflect upon this counter-cultural call to ministry which Bonhoeffer suggests to us in his Life Together. It can be somewhat overwhelming to be hit with all seven of these qualities—much like hearing the Beatitudes read off to us and recognizing our own inability to measure up. In order to begin applying them, I want to challenge you to do three things. First, I want you to commit to praying for someone today from whom you may feel estranged. It may be a roommate, a friend back home, or someone who has hurt you recently. Second, I want you to consider sharing a commitment to one of these qualities with someone you trust—your R.C., a good friend, a professor or staff member. And, third, I want to challenge you to begin to isolate what it is that is preventing you from becoming a full member of this community. What is holding you back from commitment to Christ in the concrete time and place in which you find yourself? If you are willing to begin to come to terms with that impediment, you may want to share that with a trusted friend as well and ask for the prayer of whatever small group or groups you are a part. By so doing, you will begin to experience the joy of both ministering and being ministered to. And, in the end, I hope that you can respond affirmatively if and when someone asks you, “Do you have a communal relationship with Jesus Christ?”

The Day Together

2009-09-28T12:51:00.000-07:00

The Day With Others
Greenville College Chapel Address
Brian T. Hartley
September 28, 2009

This morning, change is all around us. Yesterday, for instance, felt like summer, but when we got up this morning we were reminded that it was really fall. I’ve just returned from a conference in Indianapolis where the entrance to and exit from the airport has been completely rerouted. Just last year, business around the hotel where we met was humming along. But within just a year’s time, things have significantly slowed and we all noticed many of the businesses along High School Road have shut down or boarded up. In the short period of one year, the world economy has significantly shifted.

In such times, our tendency is to look around for some way of getting our bearings—of reaffirming our essential identity. Such was also the case for Jesus’ disciples in the wake of his death, resurrection, and ascension. They suddenly found themselves facing a very different world and without the guidance of the one they had called, “Master.” It was in such a maelstrom that the early church was born, a church in which, according to the book of the Acts of the Apostles, “they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers,” (2:42). This morning we want to briefly explore one aspect of what this vision of the church has to teach us about our “life together” (Bonhoeffer’s title).

Several years ago, thanks to the granting of a sabbatical by my colleagues and the administration, I was fortunate enough to spend a semester as a scholar-in-residence at the Institute for Ecumenical and Cultural Research in Collegeville, Minnesota, associated with St. John’s University and Abbey, a Benedictine community attached to the Liturgical Press and something of a think-tank for Christian theologians looking to build bridges through the practice of common liturgical traditions. Praying with the monks there, while spending afternoons hiking in the woods on their thousand-plus acre nature preserve, proved to be a powerful stimulus to my own thinking, writing, and understanding. Finding a rhythm to my prayer life and making a vow to pray with and for the church and the world has since become an important part of my own spiritual development. Front and center to that growth has been learning from others, both now and in the past, who have emphasized the importance of starting the day with communal liturgically-based prayer.

In his little volume, The Rhythm of God's Grace, Anabaptist theologian, Arthur Paul Boers, points out the problems of a form of prayer that is always ad hoc, self-directed, disconnected, and subjective. I know that I need the discipline that comes from praying daily in a fixed fashion which provides spaces for me to hear and be engaged by the larger community. I find more freedom in framing my own prayers when I am guided by the words of the saints, hammered out over time. Boers concludes: "Such fixed-hour prayer helps us pay attention to God and God's realities, 'the deepest thing we know.'" It embraces the whole of one's life. It offers consistent disciplines on a daily basis," (5).

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in his second chapter of Life Together, entitled, “The Day with Others,” speaks of the value of these elements of common devotion and of the necessity of beginning and ending the day in such a way. “Morning does not belong to the individual,” he proclaims, “it belongs to the Church of the triune God. . . the beginning of the day should not be burdened and oppressed with besetting concerns for the day’s work. . . . Therefore, at the beginning of the day let all distraction and empty talk be silenced and let the first thought and the first word belong to him to whom our whole life belongs,” (41, 43). The pattern for this, of course, is found in the Scriptures themselves where those who sought most closely after God are always to be found rising early to commune with the Lord. And, according to the gospel according to St. Luke, Jesus himself became the primary paradigm for such activity. Paul Bradshaw points out that this Jewish practice had clearly established itself in the pattern of morning and evening prayer which emerged in the fourth century. As the church came together first thing in the morning, intercession on behalf of both the church and the world was the central orientation (Daily Prayer in the Early Church, 150-154).

That life of prayer for the church has always included learning to pay attention to the Psalter—the community of faith’s first great hymn book. As Bonhoeffer says, “From ancient times in the Church a special significance has been attached to the common use of psalms. In many churches to this day the Psalter constitutes the beginning of every service of common worship,” (44). Why is this? It is because the psalms occupy that liminal space between God’s Word and the prayer of men and women; praying them helps to guide us in the great school of prayer. They do this both by giving us the appropriate content for prayer, as well as the classical patterns for praying. They give us permission to be fully human before God—something we recognize in Jesus, himself, who cries out from the cross the words of the 22nd psalm: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

Typically, after the prayer of the psalms, there follows a hymn and we move directly into the reading of Scripture. Early on, the church sought to bring together both Old and New Testaments as a means of reflection and teaching. Responding to the challenge of Marcion and other early Christian heretics, the church adopted the tradition of the synagogue where both Torah and Haftorah readings were meant to fit together and mutually illuminate one another. By setting the New Testament alongside the Old, by juxtaposing them, our fathers and mothers in the faith were saying something about how they viewed these texts as being mutually dependent on one another.

Sometimes, though, Bonhoeffer maintains, we may complain that these readings are too long or that we cannot understand them. To this, he suggests that we remember that the Bible is always bigger than we are, that it will always challenge us to rise up to it, rather than our maintaining that we cut it up into bite-size pieces. The Scriptures, Bonhoeffer reminds us, are a corpus—a living body—so that by reading them through using the lectio continua, or consecutive reading method, or by following the lectionary, we are being woven into the larger narrative of the people of God. “Consecutive reading of Biblical books,” he says, “forces everyone who wants to hear to put himself, or to allow himself to be found, where God has acted once and for all for the salvation of men,” (53).

Learning the Scriptures simply takes time and effort. I like Eugene Peterson’s translation of the Hebrew word at this point, where he speaks of the necessity of “masticating,” of chewing over, the words before us. One who refuses to do so, he claims, can make no claim to the title of “evangelical Christian,” (55). The truth is that, when all other words fail, the Scriptures remain are one true resource. When I teach my course on worship, I always remind students of the power of God’s word in the funeral liturgy. When we are wounded and vulnerable because of the death of a loved one, we long for the tried and true—the comfort food of the Body of Christ. We turn, naturally, to such passages as Psalm 23 or John 14, because we know that therein lies a common voice, a perpetual question.

The prayers of the Psalter and the reading of the Scriptures are normally followed by the singing together of a hymn, something Bonhoeffer calls, “the voice of the Church, praising, thanking, and praying.” All of our singing is done together as wayfarers, people who are on a journey. In response to the question of why Christians sing when they are together, Bonhoeffer responds: “The reason is, quite simply, because in singing together it is possible for them to speak and pray the same Word at the same time; in other words, because here they can unite in the Word. . . The fact that we do not speak it but sing it only expresses the fact that our spoken words are inadequate to express what we want to say, that the burden of our song goes far beyond all human words,” (59).

Congregational singing, though, is not the same thing as musical performance. Bonhoeffer is quick to call for rigorous elimination of vanity and bad taste, especially castigating “the bass or the alto who must call everybody’s attention to his astonishing range,” or the solo voice “that goes swaggering, swelling, blaring, and tremulant,” (60). Congregational music is meant to supplement, not dominate, the worship setting. The seminary chapel where I take my students on retreat demonstrates this not only theoretically, but architecturally, as well. The musicians who accompany in worship have their places off to the side—not center stage. Or, as in many Jewish synagogues, the music leadership comes from behind the congregation. These are all clear ways of demonstrating that singing is meant to widen our spiritual horizon, not focus it on a few performers who are front-and-center.

All of these elements—being guided by the prayers of the church, reading from the Psalter, hearing the Scriptures, and singing the hymns of the church together—lead us to the fellowship of the Table. The Scriptures, Bonhoeffer reminds us, “speak of three kinds of table fellowship: daily fellowship at table, the table fellowship of the Lord’s Supper, and the final table fellowship in the Kingdom of God,” (66). That is why the Table of our Lord is oftentimes situated in the central position in the chancel of the congregation: it teaches us that everything that comes to us comes from God the Father, through Jesus the Son, and is made known in the body of Christ through the Holy Spirit. It also reminds us, as Bonhoeffer claims, that table fellowship has both a festive quality and implies obligation. This particular time of year has traditionally been thought of throughout the West as a time of thanksgiving as the fields and fruits of harvest are brought in. Anyone who has tasted the glories of an apple pie from fresh fruit here in southern Illinois can attest to the joy that it brings! But, as we sit at table together, we are reminded that this is not my food, but our food, our daily bread. “The fellowship of the table,” Bonhoeffer says, “teaches Christians that here they still eat the perishable bread of the earthly pilgrimage. But if they share this bread with one another, they shall also one day receive the imperishable bread together in the Father’s house,” (69).

The world in which we live makes tremendous counter-claims. We are encouraged to indulge ourselves in hedonistic behavior and to spend our way to happiness. We eat fast-food individually, separate from the community. We say a quick prayer on our own, separate from the community. We listen to our IPOD’s pre-programmed to music self-selected, separate from the community. We surf the Internet in an isolated cubicle, separate from the community. Whether we like it or not, the culture is telling us that we are primarily individuals, independent consumer spending-units, whose goal is to, according to the market mantra, “have it your way.”

In contrast, as Christians, we have been called to sing an entirely different tune to a different God. Like Christ’s disciples, we are beckoned away from doing our work only unto self into a community of the faithful who learn to pray together, listen to one another, and to become the people of God in service to the world. Doing this requires enormous effort in the midst of the toxicity of a self-indulgent, me-oriented, capitalistic American culture. Learning to speak the language of Zion oftentimes seems quaint, at best, and dangerous, at worst.

This month of September, a time when the verdancy of summer gives way to the slow dying of the light, is always tinged with some sadness for me. I have inscribed in my calendar the anniversary of the death of three of my four grandparents—all of whom died in this month which begins the slow slide into autumn. Yesterday marked the fourth anniversary of the death of my maternal grandmother—the last to go. The world that she and my grandfather sought to tame was harsh and difficult—one wracked by the vagaries of economic depression, agrarian failure, and childhood maladies. She and my grandfather learned to work with their hands and to toil long and hard for their meager fare. They served congregation after congregation, dodging mice in the basement as grandpa labored at building a sanctuary above; boiling dandelions and scraping the bottom of the barrel for grains of corn meal in order to feed themselves, their children, and their charges. They did the best they could, handing on the traditions of the faith and both my parents and those in my generation have had to rewrite a somewhat different understanding of the old, old story in words more appropriate for the brave new world in which we find ourselves.

As a child, I can still remember my grandmother’s parents kneeling together next to their bed on the cold wooden floor praying our names aloud as the winter wind whistled through the cheap clapboard frame house which stood defiantly against another Iowa snowstorm. A faithful child to this pious couple of German descent, grandma was raised to read her Bible faithfully, to labor in the Lord’s service diligently, and to pray as if her life, and those of her children depended on it. On the last day on which I saw her alive, she had been reduced to a shadow of her former self. She sat hunched over in a wheelchair, an afghan draping her withering legs for protection as she stared somewhat incoherently ahead. She seemed mostly lost and unresponsive, resorting most often to guttural grunts and groans. I looked deep into her eyes, hoping to somehow detect a faint flicker of recognition.

After a few minutes, the one-way conversation died out and I wasn’t sure what else to say—other than to pray with her, as I always did. But in the background, the piano was playing and a few of the residents were singing along. The nursing home administrator had told our family that this was my grandmother’s favorite activity, the one time when her tongue would be loosened and she would seem to become herself again. And so, I looked right at her and began to sing: “Jesus loves me, this I know; for the Bible tells me so. Little ones to whom belong; they are weak but he is strong. Yes, Jesus loves me. Yes, Jesus loves me. Yes, Jesus loves me—the Bible tells me so.” And, sure enough, the hint of a smile began to cross her lips and, like a child, she joined right in.

These are the words of the Christian community, along with so much else that make up our common liturgical heritage—from the Gloria Patri, to the Prayer of Confession, to the words of the Psalter. These eternal truths make their ways into our minds and onto our hearts, conforming us to another reality than the cultural construct which surrounds us. They make up the liturgy of Zion and, when all else has faded in our memories, they remain with us. They have been said and sung by countless generations before us and they will continue to exist long after we are gone. This is how the people of God begin their day, with others—both the living and the dead—and we are invited to join in.

The Day Alone

2009-09-07T08:32:00.000-07:00

The Day Alone
Greenville College Chapel Address
September 7, 2009

Standing on high places can be both a dizzying and an isolating experience. Whether gazing down at the Colorado River valley at the Grand Canyon or at the remains of Glastonbury Abbey from the tor above, there is a sense of utter aloneness that comes from the feeling of the wind cutting into the flesh and the sense of perspective that comes from seeing an entire civilization at one’s feet. The monks at St. Meinrad’s Abbey in Indiana, where I take my class every fall, inhabit what they refer to winsomely as “the hill,” a summit first occupied in 1854 when a few brave Benedictines built a cabin in the- then western wilderness. Over the next fifty or sixty years they would drag huge blocks of Indiana sandstone from the quarries miles away up the formidable climb using horses, donkeys, mules or whatever animal power was close at hand. The current abbey church, completed in 1907, stands as a stark monument to all of this hard manual labor which must have gone on day-after-mundane-day. That labor enables others who come to the monastery the rare experience of being alone as the chill of the night air steals across the grounds on a cold wintry evening or early morning.

Though this experience of “aloneness” was common for our ancient ancestors, it has become something of an anomaly for modern men and women. Wherever we go, we find ourselves constantly accompanied by others or, at least, by “virtual” others. For instance, I have noticed a trend on our own campus that has developed primarily over the last five or six years. Between classes, it used to be that our quad was lined by small groups of people in conversation with a few lovers sprinkled about. While I still see these smaller beehives of activity, they are fewer and particularly less noticeable in this ten minute interlude. Instead, they have been replaced by scores of individual conversations going on between persons crossing the quad and the “unseen other” at the opposite end of a cell phone conversation. It would be interesting to try and add up all of the variegated conversations happening at once during this brief span as we ignore the real presence of one another while engaging an invisible conversation partner at the end of an invisible communication uplink. Being “plugged-in” in this way, whether on a cell phone or a computer, has become “normal” for us in a way previous generations would find extraordinarily abnormal.

This desire to constantly be “connected” creates an environment where noise is our constant companion. Barbara Brown Taylor (When God is Silent, 13-16) points out that we live our lives against a wall of constant noise. For some, it is company, like the “white noise” that comes from the hum of electricity. For others, it is an addiction, like those who seem to have IPOD plugs permanently implanted in their skulls. The result is something of a paradox: we have become hard of hearing even as we have become afraid of being alone. We do not know how to listen well and, instead, have substituted the endless chatter of talk radio for the dinner table believing that we are engaging in an actual conversation while all the time we are simply droning on without listening to one another. And, because we can no longer really listen, we have turned elsewhere for “listeners”: to places like chat rooms, radio hosts, or psychotherapists. Our worst fear, after all, is that we might actually have to be alone in a world of silence.

It is in this, our own present existential predicament, that Bonhoeffer’s words seem perhaps prescient: “Let him who cannot be alone beware of community. . . (and) Let him who is not in community beware of being alone,” (77). The German theologian points out that neither can we escape ourselves, nor can we escape having to stand alone before God, concluding with, “If you refuse to be alone you are rejecting Christ’s call to you, and you can have no part in the community of those who are called.” This model is clearly imbedded in the gospel tradition where we see Jesus continually withdrawing for solitude and prayer in order to face the challenges of the day and the “life together” he attempted to inculcate in this little band of disciples. This retreat into solitude remains one of the unique traits of our Lord’s Galilean ministry.

In his little book, Clowning in Rome, Fr. Henri Nouwen develops further this connection between solitude and community:
Solitude is not private time in contrast to time together, nor a time to restore our tired minds. Solitude is very different from a time-out from community life. Solitude is the ground from which community grows. When we pray alone, study, read, write, or simply spend quiet time away from the places where we interact with each other directly, we enter into a deeper intimacy with each other. It is a fallacy to think that we grow closer to each other only when we talk, play, or work together. Much growth certainly occurs in such human interactions, but these interactions derive their fruit from solitude, because in solitude our intimacy with each other is deepened. In solitude we discover each other in a way that physical presence makes difficult if not impossible. Writing later in The Way of the Heart, Nouwen claims that, “solitude is not simply a means to an end. Solitude is its own end. It is the place where Christ remodels us in his own image and frees us from the victimizing compulsions of the world. Solitude is the place of our salvation,” (17).

During the dozen years or so that I was serving as a full-time parish pastor I found myself growing ever more frustrated trying to live up to the demands of ministry—particularly in cities like London and Toronto. The cries of occasionally well-meaning, but ill-informed, church leaders to grow the church ever larger and to buy into an entertainment-oriented, celebrity-pastor-focused congregation began to grate on my ears and were counter to everything I read in the gospel. At times, I’m sure I sounded biting and cynical with some of my colleagues. No matter how many hospital visits I made, how many sermons I wrote, how many committee meetings I attended, it was never enough. Time with others was considered essential and necessary, while time alone was thought to be simply retreating for the next charge up the hill.

It was at such a juncture that my friend, Fr. Henri, wrote to me in a personal letter:
There was a time when I really wanted to help the poor, the sick, and the broken, but to do it as one who was wealthy, healthy, and strong. Now I see more and more that it is precisely through my weakness and brokenness that I minister to others. I am increasingly aware of the fact that Jesus does not say, ‘Blessed are those who help the poor,’ but, ‘Blessed are the poor.’ For me, this means that I have to come in touch with my own poverty to discover there the blessings of God and to minister from that place to others. . . I pray that you embrace your own weakness and your own suffering and your own pain with trust that, in this way, you can follow your Lord and make your own wounds a source of healing for others. Thus you can also become a true light for the world and a sign of hope and a prophetic voice that calls for peace and justice, (Private Correspondence, March 28, 1991).

As a result, I returned to what I knew to be true and began to try and live out the importance of time alone and the embracing, not of my own gifts and talents for ministry, but of my weakness. That meant intentionally carving out more time alone whether for a run in the park, a day on retreat, or a week in the summer secluded in a cabin in the north country. Building definite blocks of time into my daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly calendar became absolutely necessary and helped to save my own soul, as well as those around me who were in danger of my misplaced attempts at salvation. When we engage such solitude, as Bonhoeffer points out, we cannot lay down conditions as to what we expect from the encounter. We must simply accept what we are given. He suggests: “There are three purposes for which the Christian needs a definite time when he can be alone during the day: Scripture meditation, prayer, and intercession,” (81).

Scripture meditation requires us to carefully ruminate over the text for the day and to hold it up like a mirror to our daily lives. As we do so, we don’t ask what it has to say to other people, but what God is saying to us—now. At such times, the text is not some desiccated object upon which we perform surgery, but it has the possibility of being transformed into God’s living Word. I tell my Homiletics students that you know when this word is ringing true because it should both “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” That is, as I wait upon God and allow the words to wash over me and deep into my heart I am always asking, “What is the word for me today, Lord?” This takes time; it cannot be rushed. A few years ago a company even came out with a product intended to reduce the Bible to a singular 100-minute exercise.

We live in a world that confuses the gospel with efficiency, as if God really cares whether we worship according to a script carefully integrating the latest technology. Instead, the gospel message tells us of the first disciple, Mary, Jesus’ mother, who “pondered all these things in her heart.” Scripture meditation is a bit like making a good stew. One does it slowly, over low heat. Over a several hour period you keep coming back to it and sampling it, adding a bit more salt here and there, dumping in another onion or clove of garlic. And, just as the stew doesn’t always turn out to be what we expected, meditation oftentimes results in dry patches. Bonhoeffer suggests that we should not be discouraged at such times: “’Seek God, not happiness’—this is the fundamental rule of all meditation. If you seek God alone, you will gain happiness: that is its promise,” (84).

Scripture meditation then leads us to prayer, which Bonhoeffer defines as, “nothing else but the readiness and willingness to receive and appropriate the Word, and, what is more, to accept it in one’s personal situation, particular tasks, decisions, sins, and temptations,” (84-85). Learning to pray, though, takes time. We live in a world of distractions where we are constantly being entertained. I sometimes find it helpful to allow certain ideas and persons to come into my head, and then to incorporate them into my prayer. Above all else, such prayer is more about “listening,” than “telling.” We think that we have to tell God what is going on and what He needs to do about it. Instead, learning to simply wait with one’s ears open is central to private prayer.

Such prayer usually brings us back around to intercession—the lifting before the throne of God the needs of others. In fact, Bonhoeffer maintains, “a Christian fellowship lives and exists by the intercession of its members for one another, or it collapses,” (86). Of central importance is owning up to and confessing before God our inability to get along with others. Intercession provides us with the opportunity to be open and transparent about our need to paint the other as our enemy. Bonhoeffer says, “Intercession means no more than to bring our brother into the presence of God, to see him under the Cross of Jesus as a poor human being and sinner in need of grace. . . to make intercession means to grant our brother the same right that we have received, namely, to stand before Christ and share in his mercy,” (86).

Now, if you are anything like me with a tendency to demonize a large portion of humanity, you could spend your whole day in intercession. Learning to lay one’s burden down for critique and self-judgment comes harder for some of us than others. But this is at the heart of what the apostle Paul understood to be putting to death the “old man.” We are no more alone than when we are with ourselves and when we begin to realize the deceitfulness of our own hearts. Intercession, if done regularly, reminds us of our common need for grace and of the lying in which we daily engage, if only to ourselves. This is why it is absolutely necessary to find time to be alone--even if it makes us extraordinarily nervous at first. For some, it will come as close to peering into the abyss as any other encounter.

Today, the necessity of finding time to be alone has been exacerbated by our unwillingness to face up to our own mortality. Behind our extraordinary need to be connected at all times, our desire to be immersed in a culture of toxic noise, and the value we place on sheer busy-ness, lies, I am convinced, our fear of death. No topic is perhaps quite so off-limits in our culture of youth as is this ultimate and final appointment. One scholar has even gone so far as to suggest that whereas in the Victorian era the forbidden topic for discussion was sex and everyone was obsessed with death, today the obverse is true.

Thomas Lynch, in his wonderful little book, The Undertaking, sketches out the history of many of the rituals we have devised to avoid having to think too long or deeply about death. He says, “a person who has ceased to be is as compelling a prospect as it was when the Neanderthal first dug holes for his dead, shaping the questions we still shape in the face of death: ‘Is that all there is?’ ‘What does it mean?’ ‘Why is it cold?’ ‘Can it happen to me?’” (21). Lynch posits a connection between the emergence of both the toilet and the modern-day funeral home: “Just about the time we were bringing the making of water and the movement of bowels into the house, we were pushing the birthing and marriage and sickness and dying out. . . And just as bringing the crapper indoors has made feces an embarrassment, pushing the dead and dying out has made death one,” (36-37). Barbara Brown Taylor goes so far as to claim that death is God’s final defense against our idolatry, that, “when we run out of words, then and perhaps only then can God be God,” (When God is Silent, 39). As we approach death, “the breath goes out and it does not come in again. No one knows it was the last until it is gone, and the silence that follows it is like no other sound in the world,” (Taylor, 37).

I was seventeen the first time I watched a man die. By that time, I had already witnessed half a dozen autopsies. I had stood by as the coroner’s saw had done its worst—severing sinew from bone and carving thin slices of tissue from the brain, heart, lungs, liver, and various other organs in order to look for signs of disease. But those had been lifeless bodies which, while striking a certain curiosity in one so young, I had been able to depersonalize. But working with the doctor on call that night on a man younger than I am now, sending volt after volt of electricity into his non-responsive body was somehow different. Yes, a typical cardiac arrest could be construed as essentially accidental, as the author, Joan Didion, writes: it is a sudden spasm rupturing a deposit of plaque in a coronary artery, with ischemia following, and the heart, deprived of oxygen, entering into ventricular fibrillation. But to the emergency workers gathered around, it is also, as my British friends would say, “bloody hell.” For, when it was all over and the doctor had pronounced the inevitable, I looked down at my hands which, in those days before AIDS, were blood-spattered and devoid of gloves of any kind. Someone had mentioned reaching for the rib-spreader which would have meant everyone donning gloves, but it was clear that cracking the man’s chest would have been an exercise in futility.

Because this was my first time to prepare a body to take down to the morgue, the veteran nurse, Barbara Dungee, came and walked me through the entire procedure. I won’t attempt to mortify you with the details; they only serve to reinforce the ignominious nature of death itself. By the time I was twenty, your age, I had performed the routine so many times that I could almost do it in my sleep. But what never changed was the cold, antiseptic chill of death itself that pervaded the room after yet another battle with the great enemy. The monitor which had faithfully belched out its blips and alarms always stood silent sentinel next to the remains. In that brief window of time, between life and rigor mortis, the body almost miraculously retains its warmth and only gradually yields to its waxy glaze of morbidity.

In those liminal moments, I would oftentimes reflect on the conversations I had had with the deceased as I would circulate from room to room emptying catheters, supplying ice chips, carefully washing the flesh and applying lotions and ointments in an attempt to hold death and disease at bay. When a man who is used to commanding others finds himself alone in a room, draped only in a hospital gown with a pimply-faced adolescent extending a warm cloth with which to wash his privates, the conversation can oftentimes turn quite personal. I found myself, not necessarily by choice but by default, playing father confessor to more than one wayward executive. I heard confessions of sexual indiscretions, unethical behavior--all the loves and hates that make up a man’s life. There were requests for morphine, for smuggled-in pornography, for forbidden foods. One time I even had to sneak a girlfriend out the back when a wife arrived early, rather unexpectedly, at the nurse’s station.

But, in the end, each person had to face death alone and prepare to meet his or her Maker. At such times it was my privilege—something I didn’t recognize at the time, but have only come to realize in hindsight—to listen to final confessions and to overhear tearful good-byes. Later, as a pastor, those death-bed experiences would come in handy when I stood guard beside loved ones with dying family members. Watching the divine breath (the ruach of life) leave a person is a holy and sanctified moment. One is tempted to turn away from beholding the face of God. The ancients developed a process called the ars moriendi, the art of facing death, and spent a lifetime preparing for the inevitable. Because death was so prevalent in their society, they learned to be prepared at any moment. We, on the other hand, go through life glibly denying its reality and so find ourselves always surprised by its inevitable knock at our door. We find ourselves reduced, as Didion reminds us in her prize-winning book, The Year of Magical Thinking, to “the most terrifying verse I know: merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream.”

The best way to prepare for the event is by learning to live in the silent interstices of life, recognizing the need to be alone with God and to listen for all we’re worth. Because what deadens us most to God’s presence within us is the inner dialogue that we are continuously engaged in with ourselves. If we choose to seek the silence of the holy place, or to open ourselves to its seeking, there is no surer way than by keeping silent, (Frederick Buechner, Telling Secrets, 105). Out of that void you will find prayer happening: waking at night when the silence in your room is palpable, or rising in the morning to trace the emergence of the autumnal sun against the horizon. But, whether it is alone in the dark or alone in the breaking light, it is then, and only then, that you begin to recognize that still, small voice and you know in your heart of hearts, that it is He, the One you have longed for all along. And in that fragmentary moment when the fear of being alone, truly alone, is realized, then, and only then, is it that you recognize that you have never really been entirely alone after all.

An Introduction to Bonhoeffer's Life Together

2009-09-01T13:13:00.000-07:00

“Life Together”
A Chapel Address by Brian T. Hartley
Greenville College
August 31, 2009

Will Willimon, who served for many years as Dean of the Chapel at Duke University, relates the story of a student who came to visit him in his office after a life-changing experience in Philadelphia under the direction of Dr. Tony Campolo. The young man told Willimon that Campolo had gotten everyone fired up about Jesus, herded them onto several buses and proceeded to drive them deep into the heart of the urban core. What had once been a raucous, hand-clapping, back-slapping group degenerated into a bunch of quiet, scared, college students. When the bus pulled up in front of one of the worst-looking housing projects in Phily, Tony jumped on the bus, opened the door, and called out, “Alright gang, get out there and tell ‘em about Jesus. I’ll be back at five o’clock.”

“We made our hesitant way off the bus,” the student said, “stood there on the corner and had prayer, then spread out. I walked down the sidewalk and stopped before a huge tenement house. I gulped, said a prayer, and ventured inside. There was a terrible odor. Windows were out. No lights in the hall. I walked up one flight of stairs toward the door where I heard a baby crying. I knocked on the door.”

“’Who is it?’ said a loud voice inside. Then the door opened a crack and a woman holding a naked baby peered out at me. ‘What you want?’ she asked in a harsh, mean voice. I told her that I wanted to tell her about Jesus. With that she swung the door open and began cursing all the way down the hall, down the flight of steps, backing me onto the sidewalk. I felt terrible. ‘Look at me,’ I said to myself. Some Mr. Christian I am. How in the world could somebody like me think that I could tell about Jesus?

I sat down on the curb and cried. Then I looked up and noticed a store on the corner, windows all boarded up, bars over the door. I went to that store, walked in, looked around and remembered: the baby had no diapers and the mother was smoking. I bought a box of disposable diapers and a pack of cigarettes. I walked back to the tenement house, said a prayer, walked in, walked up the flight of stairs, gulped, stood before the door and knocked.

“’Who is it?’ said the voice inside. When she opened the door I slid that box of diapers and those cigarettes in. She looked at them, looked at me, and said, ‘Come in.’ I stepped into the dingy apartment. ‘Sit down,’ she commanded. I sat down on the old sofa and began to play with the baby. I put a diaper on the baby, even though I have never put one on before. When the woman offered me a cigarette, even though I don’t smoke, I smoked. I stayed there all afternoon, talking, playing with the baby, listening to the woman.

About four o’clock, the woman looked at me and said, ‘Let me ask you something. What’s a nice college boy like you doing in a place like this?’ So I told her everything I knew about Jesus. It took me maybe five minutes. Then she said, ‘Pray for me and my baby that we can make it out of here alive.’ So I prayed. That evening, after we were all back on the bus, Tony asked, ‘Well, gang, did any of you get to tell ‘em about Jesus. And I said, ‘I not only got to tell ‘em about Jesus, I met Jesus. I went out to save somebody, and I ended up getting saved. I became a disciple (The Intrusive Word, 75-77).

Like the young man in Willimon’s story, many of us may believe that we wield the keys to the kingdom—that God has somehow seen fit to bestow upon us special knowledge with which we must somehow save the world. In that same vein, we believe in an individualistic, lone-ranger Christianity where, having once whispered a prayer we have now become God’s gift to humanity. As such, we march off confidently like the soldiers in World War I, only to find ourselves dispirited in the trenches of the real world—trying to make sense of what could have possibly gone wrong. What has gone wrong is that we have a misconception of what the Christian faith is all about and we have confused the kingdom of our Lord with our own petty empire-building. We, who have gone out in an attempt to convert others, are greatly in need of conversion ourselves.

In the first of a planned five-book series, Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places: A Conversation in Spiritual Theology, Eugene Peterson claims that, “Getting saved is easy; becoming a community is difficult—damnably difficult,” (250). Having just come off a lifetime’s project of translating the entirety of the Bible, perhaps no one has a better insight into this theme than does Peterson. For, it is clear as one reads through the story of both the people of Israel and the emerging Christian community that our call to be “little Christ’s” as Martin Luther suggested, is oftentimes thwarted by our own misperception and misunderstanding. Those of us who use the lectionary on a regular basis, are all too aware of this in the readings this year from Mark’s gospel where the disciples appear, all-too-often, to bear more resemblance to the Three Stooges squabbling amongst themselves than to the saintly alabaster figurines with which they are portrayed in medieval cathedral art.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, whose book, Life Together, forms the basis for our thinking this semester, came to understand this difference between some kind of initial encounter with the gospel and the necessity of being converted into a Christian community. A classically-trained, brilliant, young German theologian, Bonhoeffer did his academic work in the wake of the destruction of the modern optimism which had characterized life in Europe prior to the Great War. That war resulted in millions of deaths and the loss of an entire generation—mostly men who were just slightly older than he. While we rightly mourn the loss of lives on 9/11 or in the more recent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the casualties in both were miniscule compared to what Europe lost in the first quarter of the last century. This unprecedented slaughter by those who called themselves “Christian nations,” led to a severe crisis of faith from which the church in Europe has never fully recovered.

The young Bonhoeffer knew that the tired clichés of the past, the old paradigm for living one’s life, would no longer work. So, in the early 1930’s he began to beckon several of his more serious students at the University of Berlin to a seminary community in Finkenwalde. I picture the young Bonhoeffer as being someone like my colleagues Kent Dunnington, Lesley Allen, or Christina Smerick, who seem to ooze a kind of charisma that is attractive to impressionable students. Bonhoeffer’s seminars, his open-ended evening discussions, and field trips, all attracted a number of students, many of whom became his closest colleagues in the nascent church struggle. In 1932, these young theology students began to organize frequent weekend trips to a rented cottage in the country to “talk theology,” to engage in rudimentary spiritual exercises, to take long walks in the woods, and to listen to Bonhoeffer’s record collection. The young professor was absolutely enthralled with two forms of classic Americana: the emerging jazz scene and the old African American spirituals. In fact, he had been tempted a few years earlier to accept a post at Union Theological Seminary in New York City, where he had stood out like a sore thumb at Sunday worship in predominantly black churches where segregation was still deeply imbedded in American culture.

As Bonhoeffer and his younger charges listened to records, cavorted through the countryside, and joined together for prayer and reflection, they began to think seriously about how to form authentic Christian communities through a structured spiritual life into which would be integrated appropriate forms of service to people in need. Though these beginnings in community life were informal and spontaneous, they provided the earliest sparks for the creation of the sense of community which was to be front and center on his agenda for the next decade or so. Bonhoeffer had grown restless with those who spoke of Christianity only from their academic ivory towers, but he was also concerned about the “no-nothingism” that was allowing groups like the Nazis to make inroads into the national church. From this point on, he was interested not merely in reflecting upon the church but in being a part of a church-setting committed to God’s Word, accepting the self-sacrifice embodied in the cross of Jesus Christ. His longing for a type of community that was both courageous and obedient would prove fortuitous in the emergence of the crises which came to face the German nation and the world at large over the next ten to fifteen years.

As one reads through Bonhoeffer’s opening chapter, it is clear that he believed that uniting with others for a life together under the Word of God was not an option for some (that is, a kind of self-selected monastic model), but was a necessity for all who called themselves by the name of Christ. This community of Jesus Christ, according to his work, contains three essential requirements for life together.

First, Christians need one another because they represent and authenticate the origin of salvation outside of ourselves, as those who are given to us and yet are not under our control. That is, our brothers and sisters in Christ become the objective bearers and proclaimers of the divine Word of forgiveness and grace. This flies in the face of some of the methodologies which are popular today in both evangelism and discipleship which smack of both prideful hubris and manipulation. If we see each human being as made in the image of God, we come to realize that ours is not necessarily the task to deliver the Word to them and walk away, but to learn to listen carefully and thoughtfully for God in and through the other.

Sometimes those of us who are something of control freaks recognize this need only when all of the familiar props are torn away from us. I have with me today a major league baseball signed by a group of theologians with whom I was ensconced at Wheaton College a few summers ago. I was at that point where I was beginning to write my dissertation and felt totally overwhelmed by the task before me. That night, several of us caught the train into the city and made our way over to watch the White Sox do battle with my favorite team, the Toronto Blue Jays. There we sat, a group of up-tight theologians of every denominational brand and stripe, in the midst of a drunken crowd in south Chicago, waiting and hoping for a foul ball to come our way. The only home run hit that night was by Jose Cruz, #23 for the Blue Jays, who just so happened to foul one off in our direction. While a big bad Southern Baptist brother blocked those to the right, Jeff Kisner, my Presbyterian friend held off a horde of evil-smelling Brewskies to the left. Diving under the seats, I retrieved the ball for our fearless leader, the late Dr. Robert Webber, as a token of our esteem. On the last day of the conference, Bob and my friend, Steve Moroney, who teaches at Taylor, proudly pulled out that ball, signed by one and all as a sign of encouragement to me as I did research and wrote over the next three summers. If you read the dedication at the front of my dissertation, you will see a whole host of names of brothers and sisters without whom I could never have finished that task.

Second, just as salvation comes to us from Christ alone, so community with God and with one another is restored only through Christ. As the origin and source of all community, Christ remains the mediator between God and human beings. In that capacity, Christ is also the mediator between human beings themselves. When we try and establish community on our own, we discover nothing but abject failure. If you take a course with my colleague, Theresa Holden Blue, you will find that there were many attempts at community in 19th century America. In fact, one such utopian community, New Harmony, is just across the border from us in Indiana as you traverse Interstate 64. Reading the records of these communities is a reminder of how difficult it is for people to simply learn to get along unless there is a point of reference. The early church discovered such a point of reference in Christ as they devoted themselves to prayer, the Eucharist, and to the mutual sharing of their goods. If one attempts to establish community based only on human energy, the result is always failure.

Third, the nature of the church as community is encountered in the Bible under the metaphor of the “body of Christ.” This presupposes that all Christians are chosen and called to community with God in and through Jesus Christ, the one who initiates and represents the new humanity. Bonhoeffer puts it this way: “Not what a man is in himself as a Christian, his spirituality and piety, constitutes the basis of our community. What determines our brotherhood is what that man is by reason of Christ. Our community with one another consists solely in what Christ has done to both of us,” (25). This means that the one who wants more than what Christ offers is looking for some kind of extraordinary spiritual experience grounded, not in the reality of the crucified Christ as he is made known in the community, but in some ideal, what Bonhoeffer calls “psychic,” reality.

This leads Bonhoeffer on a rather lengthy excursus through the second half of the first chapter where he continues to maintain that, Christian brotherhood is not a human ideal, but a spiritual reality. At the heart of his argument is the fact that this community is one brought together by Christ and grounded in Christ; as such, it includes what I oftentimes refer to as a motley band of rejects. One of my favorite illustrations of this is the classic 1939 film, “The Wizard of Oz,” where four unlikely characters are brought together in order to accomplish a task. Individually, each has a fatal flaw which threatens to undo him or her; but, collectively, this almost comical group is able to do what none of them individually could accomplish. As they learn to trust one another’s gifts, to employ their strengths—not for themselves, but for the good of the group—they become not a random group of improbable friends, but a divine “communitas.”

Likewise, this year, you may find yourself thrown together with other individuals not of your own choosing. Whether it is that guy lined up next to you on the football field or that pesky girl who lives across from you, you do not have the human power within yourself to build community with him or her. As Bonhoeffer points out: “Human love lives by uncontrolled and uncontrollable dark desires; spiritual love lives in the clear light of service ordered by the truth,” (37). Our human inclination will always propel us in the direction of sectarianism, not fellowship and forgiveness. In contrast, spiritual love does everything in and through the cross of Jesus Christ. It doesn’t take pleasure, as Bonhoeffer says, “in pious, human fervor and excitement,” but, “it will rather meet the other person with the clear Word of God and be ready to leave him alone with this Word (the living Christ) for a long time, willing to release him again in order that Christ may deal with him,” (36).

Bonhoeffer’s writings reveal that his understanding of Life Together was not some pie-in-the-sky seclusion of the cloistered life or some miraculous super-spiritual highly-charged assembly for worship. The experiment which he put forth was one that would have to ring true in everyday life, not just with the ones who are like us, but even in the midst of our enemies. He was especially cautious of those who developed a false sense of community through retreats of short duration. “Nothing is easier,” he said, “than to stimulate the glow of fellowship in a few days of life together, but nothing is more fatal to the sound, sober brotherly fellowship of everyday life,” (39). In this respect, his warning is analogous to what I oftentimes say to engaged couples. To play a bit on Peterson’s words: Getting married is easy, building a marriage of mutual love and support is hard—damnably hard.

In the Exodus story narrated in our Bibles, there are 14 references to the people’s incapacity for community in the first three months of their salvation. Quarrels and arguments were the order of the day. I find great comfort in discovering that “these saved people don’t know the first thing about getting along with each other,” (Peterson, 251). Throughout this coming year, whether it is your first or your last, I hope that you will remember Peterson’s words and begin to embrace your calling to the cruciform journey. I pray that you will discover at Greenville College a home, a safe place, where you will be valued for who and whose you are. This can be a reality if you understand that this requires learning to die to self and live to Christ. And, this “life together,” this grace gift from God, can and will transform your understanding of the God we serve and the challenge to be peace-makers and kingdom-builders in the restoration of all of Creation.

The Free Methodist Church Faces Forward

2009-07-16T05:46:00.000-07:00

“And Beyond”: The Free Methodist Church Faces Forward
An Address to the 150th North Central Annual Conference
Rev. Brian T. Hartley, Ph. D
June 12, 2009

Permit me to begin by congratulating you on the 150th sitting of your annual conference. I feel a certain amount of kinship with you in that my own great-great grandfather, the Rev. Nathan Thomas Holcomb, began preparing for ministry in the Free Methodist Church about 150 years ago far to the south of here. His grandson, my grandfather, in fact came north to pastor several churches in the old West Iowa conference about seventy or so years ago, and it was there that he met and married Miss Della Marie Ades, the Superintendent’s secretary during those hard-scrabble years of the Great Depression. Within a couple of years they would welcome my mother, their first child, into the parsonage at Shenandoah, Iowa, where my grandfather worked on one of many church buildings to follow. Some of my earliest memories as a child, in fact, were the visits we made to my great-grandparents’ home in Boone, Iowa, where we would visit the little Free Methodist Church for worship on Sunday morning.

When I joined the Oklahoma Conference thirty-three years ago this summer as a Ministerial Candidate, I represented the fifth generation of continuous ministry to the Free Methodist Church and I knew then that I stood on the shoulders of those who had gone before me. Early on, I had a propensity to listen to the “old-timers” to try and discover how I might succeed in ministry. A few years later, when I was ordained a deacon in the church, one of the older ministers whom I deeply admired took me aside to share with me from his fount of wisdom. “Brian,” he said, “the key to success in the pastorate is the mimeograph. It will transform your ministry!” Now, I have no doubt regarding the sincerity of Rev. Martin’s advice. I am sure that he thought, like many of my students do today, that the latest technological marvels are going to significantly change and reshape how we carry the gospel to the next generation. In fact, just a few weeks ago the St. Louis Post-Dispatch carried a story about a couple of churches that are experimenting with what is known as “Twittering”—allowing parishioners to send electronic text messages during the worship service which are displayed on a screen for the entire congregation to see. But, I dare say, that when I mentioned a mimeograph machine here a moment ago, some of you are young enough that you probably have no idea to what I was referring. You have never been blessed with the smell of a fresh cut purple stencil rolling through ink to produce a bulletin for the Sunday morning service of worship!

Now, I know that many of you may have come to this session hoping to hear some kind of predictions about the future and what new gizmos and exciting trends we might anticipate. But, as I perused attempts at such projections in the past it quickly became apparent to me that most previous attempts had proven largely incorrect and baseless, partly because of the fact that, like the mimeograph, they tend to take what already exists and project forward rather than asking deeper and more basic questions about the direction we need to move based on our core values as an ecclesiastical community. So, what I’d like to actually do this afternoon is not so much try and predict the future, but rather re-examine where we we’ve come from and where we now stand and then issue a prophetic challenge regarding where we need to go over the course of the next generation if we are to prove true to the inheritance which has been given us.

The Questions of Method and Identity

Perhaps we might begin by asking why we have become so enamored with all that is pragmatic across the spectrum of much of evangelicalism in America. It is representative of what has oftentimes been called an “attractional model” for worship, best illustrated by the phrase, “If you build it, they will come.” During the 1980’s, it was associated with what was called the Church Growth movement and over the last couple of decades it can best be seen in the so-called “mega-church” movement where the basic biblical and theological principles of worship have become subservient to a much more consumerist orientation whose primary goal is attracting as many people as possible into a weekend service and making them feel comfortable. That is, as we have seen attendance drop off and our paradigm for understanding and doing church challenged, we have most often become “instrumentalists” when it comes time for describing our theology of the church, or ecclesiology. If it appears to work, even in the short term, we have scrambled to adopt new methods—no matter what the consequences.

The practical result of this approach, which goes back at least to Charles Grandison Finney in the nineteenth century, has been an abandonment of our theology and a kind of practical atheism in our churches. We no longer typically practice the biblical movements of worship grounded in the historic church and throughout most of our Free Methodist churches you would be hard-pressed to discover folks who know and can articulate the Wesleyan theology which led to our own creation and development throughout America a century-and-a-half ago. Today, much of Free Methodism is captive to the American culture and could best be defined as representative of generic American evangelicalism—a wing of the church that has historically been mostly shaped by Reformed and Baptistic elements (what the historian Martin Marty called the “baptistification of the church”), and today is being strongly challenged by neo-Pentecostalism (which emphasizes private spiritual experience and the outward manifestation known as “speaking in tongues”). Though there exist some elements of diversity between our struggling churches in rural or small-town settings and those located in the suburbs and growing bedroom communities and exurbs, this lack of doctrinal understanding and larger sub-cultural influence remains one of the most salient developments over the course of the last few decades.

Reclaiming our Historic Mission

In contrast to these current prevailing winds, I would like to suggest that if we are to survive as a church, it will only be because we find ways of reclaiming our historic Wesleyan mission—a mission that brings together personal piety and accountability with an emphasis on social ministry and global mission. As Howard Snyder has documented in his writings, including his recent book, Populist Saints, and as Henry Rack and Randy Maddox point out in their books, Reasonable Enthusiast and Responsible Grace, Wesleyanism is deeply grounded in a view of full salvation that extends well beyond a moment of justification to include the entirety of life—from the extension of God’s prevenient grace through sanctification and even into glorification. As Wesleyans, we are heirs to the gospel message handed on by the early church to the Church of England which brought together liturgical practice and evangelical zeal to produce what some labeled as the “via media” or middle way between the Roman Catholic communion and the Reformed wing of Christendom. The theology that drove Wesleyans saw the entire created order as God’s domain and enabled our forebears to articulate an apologetic of identity which led us to boldly engage the culture through the establishment of institutions of higher learning, hospitals and social service agencies, missions and printing houses—in addition to the planting of churches amongst the neediest of persons, whether in urban or rural locations.

Free Methodists took on the most difficult of challenges, whether it was slavery, illiteracy, economic injustice, capitalistic greed, or gender inequity. We dared to live simple, unadorned lives committed to a holistic view of the world and of the gospel and we remained rooted in the historic church and the classical Wesleyan core values. Though at times in the past century we veered dangerously close to sectarianism or fell into the trap of legalism, there remained a dynamism to what a former Greenville College professor, Dr. Mary Alice Tenney, called the challenge of Living in Two Worlds, (a book first published in 1958 by Light and Life Press, Winona Lake, Indiana). I believe that Dr. Tenney’s model is thoroughly rooted in the Wesleyan vision of which I have spoken and I want to return to my own re-articulation of this way of thinking near the end of my comments this afternoon as a means of providing a paradigm for thinking through how to meet the challenges of the 21st century. But before we do that, we need to better understand the nature of what some of those challenges are that will face us in the future—recognizing, of course, that the mimeograph of today may prove to be totally irrelevant within the course of another generation.

What Has Happened?

A couple of months ago, Michael Spencer, writing in the Christian Science Monitor (March 10, 2009), created quite a splash with his article entitled, “The Coming Evangelical Collapse.” At the heart of his argument is that we have, by and large, sold our inheritance for a mess of pottage in the social and political spheres. But even more telling, I believe, are the charges he lays against the church regarding our inability to hand on the faith to the next generation. He says, “We Evangelicals have failed to pass on to our young people an orthodox form of faith that can take root and survive the secular onslaught. Ironically, the billions of dollars we’ve spent on youth ministers, Christian music, publishing, and media has produced a culture of young Christians who know next to nothing about their own faith except how they feel about it. Our young people have deep beliefs about the culture war, but do not know why they should obey scripture, the essentials of theology, or the experience of spiritual discipline and community. Coming generations of Christians are going to be monumentally ignorant and unprepared for culture-wide pressures,” (2).

When I was a child in the waning days of revivalism in mid-twentieth century Free Methodism, we still maintained a connectional network within the church in which the education of our youth (what the early church called catechesis) was front and center. It began with an integrated curriculum that came from our denominational presses which infiltrated and underpinned our Sunday Schools and midweek programs (some of you will remember the old CYC and FMY acronyms and nomenclature). We even memorized, as children, answers to questions posed in the Free Methodist Catechism, which remain with some of us to this day. When we reached adolescence, many of us were piled into automobiles and taken off to our denominational colleges—places like Central, Spring Arbor, Roberts Wesleyan, and Greenville Colleges—where we met current students, visited with admissions personnel, and conversed with Free Methodist faculty who sought to build on the unified catechesis which we were receiving in Sunday School, Morning Worship, and the midweek programming. Though, as a preacher’s kid, I knew that I was a part of a holiness minority in my school, I also knew that I was a part of a larger network that stretched around the country and linked me to persons and institutions which shared common DNA and common mission.

And, there was a certain kind of uniformity to Free Methodist worship across the country. This was held together by the Discipline, the notes regularly disseminated from the Bishops’ Office, the production in the 1970’s of the Pastor’s Handbook, and, perhaps most importantly, by the Free Methodist Hymnbook, the last of which was produced and published in 1976. (In fact, in many earlier editions of the Hymnbook, the “Order of Public Worship” was printed in the front pages for both pastors and laity to see). Some vestiges of this concerted attempt still survive. For instance, the Pastor’s Handbook contains a lectionary of scripture readings carefully put together by Dr. Paul Livermore under the aegis of the Study Commission on Doctrine and Board of Bishops. But as I travel the Free Methodist Church these days, I dare say not one in ten churches actively use the lectionary as a resource for preaching and congregational worship on a regular basis.

Even more disconcerting, however, is the lack of any real musical canon which shapes our congregations and particularly our young people. Throughout history, Methodists have been known as people who “sing their theology.” Each of the hymnbooks put together was a communal effort, drawing on the best of ecclesiastical and academic leadership, bringing together a committee to hammer out a theology in music for the disparate congregations. In the preface to the last (1976) denominational hymnbook, the editors of the Joint Hymnal Commission state, “The hymnal teaches and inspires. . . It is a rich source of biblical theology. It is where we join with the saints of other centuries in a common expression of joy, praise, and worship.” Anyone who looked through that hymnal would be struck by how carefully the Commission had worked to reflect Wesleyan theology. In the opening section, entitled, “The Worship of God,” there is a clear Trinitarian order provided, while in the section called, “The Christian Life,” there are six major sub-headings which moved from gospel, to conversion, to holiness, to discipline, to maturity, to grace.

Here is a clear demonstration of the holistic approach to salvation which I mentioned earlier. Most importantly, at the back of the hymnal were what were called “Rituals,” those central worship events which all Free Methodists everywhere and at all times practiced--supposedly on a regular basis. I can still remember, as a child, sitting in a hot sawdust-filled tabernacle and hearing the bishop read these words that were filled with both joy and solemnity. I had no idea that these rituals were rooted in the early church and came in English form largely from the pen of Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, some four hundred years before I was born. I only knew that when we read them, I felt deeply connected to something that stretched beyond the boundaries of that small camp meeting.

Now, I rehearse all of this not in order to lament or to glorify the past. The past is gone and the world we now inhabit almost two generations later is quite different. But I think that it is important for us to be reminded of the fact that not so long ago we had a unified, concerted, and programatic effort to baptize our children, to catechize our youth, to reinforce the connection between our churches and our educational institutions, and to rehearse on a regular basis our core values and common theology. Much, if not all, of this has now largely disappeared and we must be honest in asking what has replaced it. Perhaps most of the shaping of our young people now takes place through the attactional model I mentioned earlier in our worship which is largely driven by music. In fact, when I ask my students to define Christian worship, I rarely hear any of the classical definitions which are organized around Word and Sacrament but almost always they think of worship in terms primarily of the music which they sing—something I have labeled as the “sacramentalization of Contemporary Christian music.”

The Theology of Worship Music

If music has become the primary, if not the only, catechetical tool for passing on our theology, we must ask how well we are doing this. Now before I continue in this vein, I feel it necessary to lay my cards on the table. I am an early practitioner and product of Contemporary Christian music. I brought along my drums to Greenville College, traveled in music ministry groups for the church and college, even performed in some of the earliest Christian rock concerts. Further, I am convinced that bringing a multiplicity of instruments into the church has largely been a good thing and has helped us to understand and communicate the gospel on a worldwide basis in a way we could not before. I also am not inherently opposed to the singing of worship choruses. There are some well-written choruses that, sung alongside hymns, can provide a necessary diversity to our corporate singing. Many of these choruses rightly emphasize the role of praise, though oftentimes they err on the side of being overly individualistic.

All that being said, I have become convinced that the mass adoption of Contemporary Christian music into our churches as the primary, if not the sole focus of our worship, has wrought horrific theological consequences which we must no longer ignore and must begin to address. First, music, which John Wesley believed in and used on a mass scale, was always to be about unifying the church and was, thus, to be done corporately. The model, however, which is at work in many of our churches is a performance-based one which divides the church, sometimes generationally and most often into two separate services, while operating via tunes designed for soloists which do not function well in terms of congregational song. Many of them arise out of what are called “rock ballads” prepared for soloists and are dependent primarily on emotion and a spirituality that verges on the sexuality of the rock concert. I have been reminded of this quite often when I have found myself behind some scantily-clad coed swaying rather lasciviously in front of me, her hands held high and her hips gyrating in something of a sexually provocative motion—much like one would expect in a hip-hop video on MTV. Whenever I broach the issues of performance or such sexually-laden movement with my students, many of them are horrified and stunned that I would dare attribute such meaning to either their singing or their response. Yet, such a reading is in concert with much of the scholarship currently being generated which examines such symbolic-making behavior in religious ritual.

But perhaps even more disconcerting are the lyrics being sung in our services of Christian worship. Here, again, the literature is overwhelming and can be read in such popular studies as Marva J. Dawn’s Reaching Out without Dumbing Down or John Witvliet’s collection of essays, Worship Seeking Understanding. As Dawn points out in her book, the church’s worship is meant to turn the culture’s perspective on its head, teach an opposite set of values, and enable believers to make authentic differences in the world (17), but oftentimes both the musical genres and lyrics capitulate to cultural values and proclaim a version of the gospel virtually indecipherable from the culture. Further, much of the music is, at best, theologically inadequate and, at worst, outright heretical. In his study of the top 300 Praise & Worship songs over the course of the last generation, Professor Bert Polman at Calvin College discovered just how skewed our presentation of God is and how theologically bereft much of the music is of classical Christian theology.

Lest you think I am overreaching, let me simply cite as one example the study done by Dr. Lester Ruth, Professor of Worship at Asbury Theological Seminary. In the opening paragraph of a recently-published essay, he says: “. . . my study of the most used contemporary worship songs in the last fifteen years shows that there is a danger our songs reflect love for a god who does not fit the message of the classic, scriptural Christian faith. I grow fearful that our songs disclose intense feelings but do not worship the God revealed in Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit. We are in danger of losing the Father and the Spirit in our worship. If songs have the power to form a people’s faith, then we stand at the edge of losing scriptural worship,” (“Lex amandi, lex orandi: the Trinity in the most-used Contemporary Christian Worship Songs,” The Place of Christ in Liturgical Prayer, 342).

I have grown particularly concerned about the theological shaping that occurs with congregations where the majority of what is sung corresponds to what I call “happy-fun-ball theology.” By continuously singing songs that only talk about the cheerfulness of believers, we create a false impression that if Christians experience struggles or difficulties in life something must be wrong with them or with their faith. This leaves them particularly vulnerable to the neo-Pentecostalism to which I referred earlier, with a false belief that participation in the natural human predicament is not a part of our calling. This flies in the face of the words of the Psalmist or the writings of the apostle Paul who suggest that pain, sorrow, and struggle are a part of what it means to be human, to search for God in the complexities of life, and to follow Jesus in the way of the cross.

Marva Dawn points out why this full-orbed Christian theology embedded in our music is essential to our everyday human existence. “Last year,” she writes, “when I was very ill from chemotherapy I found it extremely difficult when my freelancing took me to congregations that sang only ‘happy’ songs. I could respond with Joy when we sang about God—those truths encouraged me in my struggles with the constant pile of physical afflictions I’d been facing for several years—but I couldn’t enter into songs that spoke only about wonderful feelings, (Reaching Out without Dumbing Down, 176). Dawn goes on to complain that there is a general lack of room for lament in most of our worship. Lament is important, she suggests, because it “forms the believers’ character by providing the means for worshipers ‘to reflect upon and articulate their sense of God’s hiddenness.’” Churches must assume responsibility for assisting congregants in making the distinction between “music appropriate for private enjoyment and music suitable for public worship,” (176-177). Unless we begin to do so, we are not taking seriously our call to Christian formation. “Shallow music,” she points out, “forms shallow people,” (175). And, shallow people, it is my contention, will not be able to face the complex challenges and the difficult ethical issues which will confront us in the next generation.

Broadening Our Vision

Furthermore, we need to embrace both different genres of music as well as music that will help our people develop a sense of community that extends beyond the parochial borders of our typical parishes. As Philip Jenkins has pointed out in his writings, particularly his ground-breaking book, The Next Christendom (Oxford, 2002), the face of Christianity is changing in the 21st-century with two of every three Christians now living in countries south of the equator. There, amongst the poor and persecuted, the Christian narrative is challenging allegiance to secular nation-states through culturally-located worship combined with strong social outcomes. The music from these communities has the potential to “widen our vision of Christ’s church, as these are offered in solidarity with those indigenous communities from which they arose—just as ancient psalms, canticles, and other liturgical songs bring us close to universal praise among the saints and in heaven,” (Elise S. Eslinger, Upper Room Worshipbook, 375). In our own college chapel, we are attempting to introduce examples of this music to broaden our students’ understanding of what it means to belong to the body of Christ. Whenever we sing prayers from the Taize community in France, chant a South African praise tune, lay claim to a sung piece of Chinese liturgy, or introduce a Guatemalan hymn, we extend the vision of our young people beyond their own restrictive cultural lenses and assist them in seeing themselves as part of a church that stretches backward in time as well as forward in space.

But, make no mistake about it, college students from the “Me Generation” who have spent much of their lives dictating their own musical tastes and have avoided much theological stretching, do not always appreciate what it is we are attempting to do for them. And parents and church leaders, many of whom have likewise been shaped by an attractional model to ministry that focuses on comfort and safety, oftentimes don’t understand why this approach is necessary. In fact, most often when I share some of this material with Christian leaders, the initial response is that we should simply teach more Bible—that the Christian college should attempt to do with “twenty-somethings” that which the church has failed to do with its charges at a much earlier age. But, the long-term results of this lack of catechesis, ecclesiastical vision, and dependence on popular Christian music to carry our theology is not only a deficiency in biblical literacy when our children become adults, but a culturally-captive faith imbedded in a stunted or warped theology—all of which appeals primarily to the heart and the affections and denigrates the life of the mind. Such people are particularly prone to doubt a faith which inhabits both head and heart and which challenges many of the presuppositions they have come to embrace in their music.

One clear example of this is in the way we try to lay out for students in chapel and in the classroom a call to a faith that is both personal and communal. For many of them, they think of their faith in merely private ways, separate from the church and from the Christian tradition. They are shocked when they encounter Christians who attempt to practice corporate responsibility with one another or who challenge the primary values of American culture. Further, when we couch the claims of the gospel in cosmic terms laid out in the Scriptures they find this befuddling because they have come to so embrace a view of the gospel that is solely private and is wedded to a dispensationalist theology of the rapture in which God’s creation is meaningless. As N. T. Wright points out in his book on the importance of the theology of the resurrection, Surprised by Hope, many of our young people are both dualistic and Gnostic, more like the secular Gentiles Paul portrays than their Christian forbears.

The Myth of Technology

This, then, brings us back around to the mimeograph comment with which I began. If any one category might need examining by the church, it is the myth of technology which has come to so dominate our culture. Today, electronic devices are ubiquitous and if I would suggest to my students (as I do when I take seniors on a monastic retreat) that they should leave their computers, cell phones, and other various and sundry devices behind, they absolutely begin to panic. In fact, I compare our senior retreat to a weekend detoxification in which we can only begin to hear God individually and corporately as we learn to “turn off” the other voices around us. Now, mind you, I am no Luddite and I am not calling for us to abandon technology. When used appropriately, these devices can expand our worlds and assist us in the spread of the gospel. But, all technology brings with it both gain and loss, and when we blithely adopt the latest technology without examining the consequences of such use we fall prey to, at the very least, distorting the message of the Gospel.

This particular subject needs much greater discussion in our local congregations and at the denominational level. Oftentimes, technology needs seem to drive our local budgets in ways that go unquestioned. Ministry to people and care of our pastors oftentimes are moved to secondary considerations because of the felt need to purchase ever larger and more costly sound systems and projection equipment. I was reminded of this just last year when one of my colleagues was asked to go and hold the final service at a congregation within our home conference that was being closed. He told me that he was met at the door proudly by a lay leader who proclaimed to him with much joy that the conference would no longer need to close the church since they had just spent thousands of dollars on new equipment which was bound to attract more people into their church building.

It would be quite easy for me to continue this litany of lament across various aspects of church ministry, from evangelism to discipleship. The loss of theological identity, the lack of training for most of our pastoral leadership, the identification in the culture between evangelicalism and political conservatism are all issues that should concern not only our bishops and superintendents but those of you who are lay leaders, as well. Some reports in the last year or two are already predicting wide defection from evangelical churches, with Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, and Pentecostal churches in the ascendancy. Perhaps this is the case, and I certainly would not want to denigrate my brothers and sisters in these other wings of the church who bring other voices to the table that are equally important. Certainly, recent statistics for our denomination should have all of us wondering if we can weather another twenty years and, if not, how we might be preparing our churches to be enfolded into other denominations.

Forging a Working Model

But before anyone pronounces the death-knell of the Free Methodist denomination, I would like the opportunity to suggest a model for the future and to ask how it might assist us in adapting to certain changes of the 21st century. As you have heard, I have spent much of my time so far in contrasting the so-called “attractional” model of the last generation or two with what some would call a more “missional” model we inherited from John Wesley and B. T. Roberts. And, as I mentioned with Dr. Tenney’s book, I think that there was an understanding with our Wesleyan-Holiness fathers and mothers in the faith that at the heart of this vision was the willingness to sacrificially give of ourselves to a broken world so that God’s Kingdom might begin to be made manifest in our midst (not just in the “sweet by-and-by”). Drawing on the work of Dr. James I. McCord, I have tried to flesh out my reiteration of this model in my teaching and writing through what I have come to call “riding the barbed-wire fence.”

The essence of the barbed-wire fence metaphor is two-fold: it demands that we be willing to have our feet firmly planted in two very different worlds and it requires us to remain open to the world and one another in a position of radical vulnerability. The two worlds to which we are called are spelled out in Dr. Tenney’s Preface to her book in her description of the Christian: “He is not other-worldly, for his chief concern is for this world and its need. So he lives in two worlds, maintaining the vertical upreach to God who has transformed him, and the horizontal outreach to men, whom he loves as never before,” (7). This is mirrored in the model attributed to the theologian, Karl Barth, who infamously spoke of the preacher doing his work with the Bible in one hand, with the newspaper in the other (though, given the precarious nature of the newspaper business these days, we may need to amend that image a bit!).

I would maintain that this imagery is inherent in the cruciform nature of the gospel itself with the cross serving as its most powerful image. If one reads carefully the Pauline epistles, it becomes clear that the Apostle to the Gentiles understands the cross not just as representative of past sins forgiven but of the very calling to which the believer has given his or her very life. As my best friend from seminary days, Dr. Michael J. Gorman writes, “For Paul, Christ’s cross is both the source and the shape of our salvation. When we respond to the gospel, we embrace the cross not only as gift but also as demand. To borrow the language of Jesus, we ‘take up the cross,’ beginning a life that can be best described with one word: cruciform—cross-shaped. Our devotion to God, our love for others, and our hope for the future are all grounded in and shaped by the cross,” (Apostle of the Crucified Lord, 585). I believe that it is the reclamation of this vision that will help sustain our church in this century—and only if we reclaim this vision. We must come to understand that, “in such a cruciform spirituality, sacrifice, difficulty, and suffering are not to be seen as intruders, but as part and parcel of the arrangement, sustained by the presence of the Spirit as the foretaste and guarantee of a future resurrection similar to Christ’s,” (Gorman, 585).

Preaching the Scriptures

That is why a reclamation of the theological significance of worship, though not our sole focus for the future, must be our primary one. For it is only as we worship rightly that we will have a compelling vision to share with our broken world and which will inform all other aspects of our individual and corporate Christian lives. And, I believe the place to start with the reclamation of this vision is with our reading and teaching of the whole counsel of God as discovered in the Scriptures and in the tradition of the church. Instead of arguing over the nature of the biblical witness, we must incorporate its story into our worship and into our very lives. Unfortunately, it currently serves primarily as a convenient backdrop for bulleted points on our PowerPoint slides—not as the majestic narrative which beckons us towards Christ, his cross and resurrection, and the new creation in which God is engaged through his primary instrument of redemption, his church. Whether we “twitter” or not is inconsequential. What is important is that we begin to preach from the entire canon of the scriptures, not for the formation of some private, detached spirituality, but for the restoration of the communities of faith in which we live out our lives.

Communal Prayer

As we begin to allow the scriptures to speak to the church (instead of bending the text to conform to our predetermined message), we must bring alongside them the god-given means of grace through prayer and the sacraments. In particular, we should consider the place of corporate prayer in our churches. In his little book, Patterned by Grace, Methodist pastor, Daniel T. Benedict, Jr., points out that daily common prayer “is quite different from solitary prayer or ‘daily devotions,’” (40). “Communal prayer goes on around the world through all the hours of the day,” he points out, with liturgical prayer occurring in every time zone day by day by day. “Part of the gift of the daily office and occasional immersions in its practice,” he claims, “is the discovery that even when we pray alone, we are not alone. . . This practice enculturates a sense of solidarity among all the baptized as a priestly community before God. It also draws us into the life and heart of God,” (41).

Though this practice may seem somewhat “Anglicized” or unfamiliar to some, as Mark Stamm reminds us, “Methodist piety and its language of prayer is rooted in the prayer book tradition. . . the roots of the movement are clearly within the Church of England,” (Let Every Soul be Jesus’ Guest, 66). In fact, many evangelicals are looking to this ancient practice as a way out of an overly-privatized faith. My first-year students know, because I read with them last fall a new text entitled, The Attentive Life: Discerning God’s Presence in All Things—a book organized around the eight hours of corporate prayer. In it, the author, Leighton Ford (who, by the way, is the brother-in-law of famed evangelist, Billy Graham) uses the practice of communal prayer to probe the various seasons of the Christian life and the kind of attentiveness that each calls us to. Ford, an elder statesman in the evangelical community, says: “For me, discovering these new practices has not meant in the slightest jettisoning either the foundational beliefs or the spiritual disciplines that I have followed since my youth. It has meant exploring other ways: silence, stillness, art and poetry, reading Scripture not by going through great chunks but by meditating on smaller portions, listening carefully to God and my own heart, having a trusted spiritual companion as a friend on the journey,” (14). Corporate prayer, which is thoroughly grounded in the practice of the apostolic church and developed by our Anglican forebears, provides our congregations, and particularly our youth, with a means of moving outside of their own solipsistic existence and of being united with the saints of old and the church worldwide. It forces us to begin to see ourselves in light of the church both past and present, as well as on a more global scale in which our connections with Christians around the world forge a common identity which transcends ethnic and nationalistic boundaries. It compels us not only to pray for our brothers and sisters around the world, but to act on those prayers.

Restoring the Sacraments

And alongside a reclamation of the ancient practice of communal prayer, we will need to restore the place and importance of the sacraments to our worship. Especially in an age when there is this Gnostic tendency to speak of a disembodied existence or of a dualistic view of the universe between the natural and supernatural, the reclamation of God’s creation as a means of grace (celebrated in our historic Free Methodist rituals) will become an all-important means of catechetical training for all who take up residence in our pews—both young and old. (In fact, I understand from Erick Ewaskowitz that over the course of this past year he has implemented the practice of communion every week with his high schoolers.) Recovery and regular practice of the Lord’s Supper is particularly important because it offers hope and healing via a therapeutic understanding of grace. This particular theology was captured by John and Charles Wesley in their 166 Eucharistic hymns through such tunes as “O, the Depth of Love Divine,” in which mystical union with God is encountered in the reception of consecrated bread and wine.

That is why John Wesley spoke so passionately in his sermon, “The Duty of Constant Communion,” to his followers, reassuring them that “it is the duty of every Christian to receive the Lord’s Supper as often as he can.” He challenged those who partook infrequently, or even monthly, to communicate more often in order to “come to a better mind.” Like Luther and Calvin before him, Wesley understood the power of sacramental reception and communed himself, on average, at least once every five or six days. At the very heart of Wesley’s understanding stood a commitment to the open table, something written into the opening invitation. He believed “that all Christians are guests of Jesus, than none deserve their place at the Gospel Feast. As guests at that feast, Methodists believe that they speak for Jesus as they invite all people to join them,” (Mark W. Stamm, Let Every Soul be Jesus’ Guest, ix).

This open invitation incorporates a culture of mission inherent in Wesleyan Eucharistic spirituality. As we, as a people gather, we pray for the hungry, the homeless, the abused, followed by praying with our feet, “working to feed the hungry and provide a safe place for others in need,” (157). Celebrating the Lord’s Supper regularly, then, becomes not only therapeutic for ourselves or even the congregation, but extends the healing ministry of the church into our communities and around the world. The bread and wine act to convey to us the divine love of God, reconsecrating us individually and the church corporately for service to the world, reminding us that God’s ultimate goal is nothing less than the reconciling of the entire creation to God’s self. As one of our graduates, the Rev. Maureen Knudsen Langdoc, put it in a recent e-mail to me about her own Free Methodist congregation in Southern California: “I have experienced the community of Jesus Christ as the most determinative marker of my identity (when) I received a piece of bread and dipped it in a cup, celebrating Holy Communion together with my Mexican brothers and sisters.” Maureen and her husband, Bryan, represent, I believe, examples of the bright hope for our denomination as they weekly feed about a hundred day-workers at their church and put feet to the faith they discover at Christ’s table.

This same therapeutic, cleansing element, which has evangelistic and missional outcomes can also be seen and experienced in and through the sacrament of baptism. Will Willimon points out that baptism is “the principal, primal, initiating, and continuing way that we experience our Christian identity,” (Worship as Pastoral Care, 148). Baptism is not dependent on me or my ability to lead a holy life, but upon God and God’s promises. While it does call forth response, it is always a response to the saving activity of God. Baptism reminds me that I never cease being dependent upon the rest of the community—that there is no such thing as “lone-ranger” Christianity. My primary identity is given to me, just as I do not name myself but am given a name by my parents. Baptism, as Willimon says, “is an action done to me and for me, rather than by me,” and always occurs in the context of community. It never takes place in private because the identity it confers is socially structured and communally derived. It is an identity not only given to me by the community but that is forever responsible to and dependent upon the community.

Forming a Missional Community

I believe that in order for us to move forward as a people we must come back to that sense of community which was so operative in the early church, which permeated the sense of distinctiveness for early Methodists, and which bound together these odd folks in the nineteenth century who chose the moniker “Free Methodist” with which to forge a new identity in a rapidly-changing world. During my own adolescence, I was privileged to work as a hospital orderly at Deaconess Hospital, then one of the premier social service institutions of the Free Methodist Church. In those days, the slogan for the hospital was, “where care comes first”—something that I learned firsthand as I emptied bedpans and cared for the bodily and spiritual needs of my patients. That hospital, however, existed only because there were a handful of women, “Deaconesses” we used to call them, who had given sacrificially year after year to carve out a place for healing in the relatively new state of Oklahoma at the turn of the last century. For them, the cruciform life, a life lived riding the barbed-wire fence with absolute vulnerability to God, to one another, and to the broken people to whom they ministered, was not some abstract model. For them, it was a way of life.

My late friend and mentor, Dr. Robert Webber, suggested that, “the leadership of the younger evangelical is not shaped by being right, nor is it driven by meeting needs.” Instead, he claimed, “it arises out of a missiological understanding of the church, theological reflection, spiritual formation, and cultural awareness,” (The Younger Evangelicals, 2002). That being the case, I have great hope for reclaiming our ecclesiastical mission in the first half of the 21st century—beginning with our youth. In fact, I hope what I’ve said today is of particular interest to those of you who are serving in smaller or even struggling parishes. The good news is that you don’t have to have the latest sound system or rock-concert worship band to begin to train your youth and empower them for ministry. Instead, you should focus on the celebration of our core values which led to the establishment of our denomination and, indeed, of the Methodist movement, as a whole in order to, as Bishop Marston once reminded us, “serve the present age.”

This begins, I would like to suggest, by recognizing our primary responsibility to tell the story and to tell it right; to baptize our babies and catechize our youth; to celebrate the good news through scripture, prayer, and sacraments; and to sing the songs of Zion in a way that does not distort or detract from the faith once delivered to the saints—a faith that transcends categories of gender, race, and socioeconomic status. In short, the vision that we are compelled to cast is that of “one faith, one Lord, one baptism.” Finally, we are called to embrace the cross, to plant our feet firmly in two worlds, and to open ourselves up to the needs around us—as did our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. If we will do this—if we will reclaim that ancient vision and these time-tested tools—we can once again face forward with confidence that the one who began a good work in us will bring it to completion in the day of Jesus Christ.

Listening for God through Silence

2007-10-18T05:08:00.000-07:00

Learning to Listen for God through Silence
1 Kings 19:9b-12
Greenville College Chapel Address
October 15, 2007

I have spent a good portion of my life laboring in and curious about places of silence. During my high school years, Miss Dungee, the ICU nurse, assigned me the task of transporting bodies to the morgue at Deaconess Hospital, where I would oftentimes stay on to assist with the autopsies. Having struggled to resuscitate one of my patients and oftentimes still covered in blood, I would clean up, board the elevator with my charge, and wheel down the dark basement corridor filled only with the hum of the motor driving the freezer located deep within its bowels. Once the pathologist arrived, we would carefully remove the body and begin the meticulous and laborious process of removing and weighing the bodily organs. Attention to detail was important and we would usually work together quietly in sync, my mentor pausing only to point out any deviation from the normal in human tissue.
This same attention to quiet detail dominates my work with sixteenth century books, such as that which I have undertaken at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C. Sometimes, in fact, I have to don rubber gloves—much like I did in the morgue—in order to prevent damage to the five hundred year old texts with which I work. I carefully observe any differences in the printed editions and attempt to transcribe fading marginal notations. Behind these theological tomes, I oftentimes hear the voices of their earlier owners, whispering across the centuries into the void of that still, quiet place.
And, about ten days ago I took my senior theology students to St. Meinrad’s Monastery in southern Indiana—another place where silence reigns supreme. Last Saturday morning about five a.m. I lay on my back on the west steps of the abbey church, staring up into the dark early morning sky. The stars were ablaze in all of their glory, Venus, the morning star, hanging just below the moon. At least on three different occasions, I saw shooting stars blaze across the panoply of space, all in complete and darkened silence. As I shuffled up the steps and into that beautiful building, occasionally a monk cleared his throat—but, otherwise, there was not much sound, simply a resounding silence.
We live in a culture both “hard of hearing” and addicted to noise, like no other time in history. There are radios and IPOD’s, televisions and computers, cell phones and automobiles. In fact, a recent report on the emergence of the IPOD suggests that people are literally listening to their pre-recorded songs for hours each day at a decibel level guaranteed to render many with hearing problems within a matter of a few short years. Whether it is words as company, such as the incessant elevator “muzak” which follows us everywhere, or the words as addiction signaled by the buds which seem to sprout organically from our ears, noise trails us everywhere throughout our lives. Even here in Greenville, when things begin to settle down on campus, say around 4 or 5 in the morning, we are still treated to the incessant hum of air conditioners, heaters, and electrical generators. As Barbara Brown Taylor has commented: “There are fewer and fewer oases of silence in our noisy world. Communication has higher value for us than contemplation. Information is in greater demand than reflection. There was a time when only doctors wore pagers and the only person who carried a telephone around with him was the President of the United States, in case of nuclear attack. Now we are all that important. We can be found anywhere, at anytime, by anyone who needs us. When a cell phone goes off in a room full of people, a banner unfurls above the wearer’s head: I am necessary. I am involved in something so urgent it cannot wait,” (When God is Silent, 43).
The Bible is quite insistent that God is not to be discovered primarily in noise or in pyrotechnic displays, but that hearing God speak requires a certain silence in us. The central Jewish declaration begins, “Shema, Israel,” (“Hear, O Israel”), with the focus of the believer being centered in the act of hearing. For the Jew, God’s name, in fact, was unsayable. If one encountered it in Holy Writ, one substituted a different name (such as “Adonai”). The only human being allowed to vocalize the Holy Name was the high priest in the temple in Jerusalem and, even then, only once a year on Yom Kippur, as he pleaded for the life of the people. In fact, people were so afraid that he would die standing in God’s presence that they wrapped a rope around his ankle so that they might drag him out should he be struck dead for his audacity in daring to stand before the Lord of Lords in the Holy of Holies even to murmur the name of God.
For most of us, we prefer to be surrounded by our own words, rather than to listen to someone else. To become silent means to open ourselves up, to risk having to deal with our own existential predicament. The vast majority of students who come to me to talk about learning to listen to God, come hoping that I will have some kind of trick up my sleeve, some special little technique that will provide a shortcut to engaging in deep unrequited silence. Unfortunately, as Fred Craddock reminds us, the voice of God in Jesus was never made with a shout. In him, Craddock says, the revelation of God comes to us as a whisper. So, if we expect to hear it, we are required to be quiet, to lean forward, and to be silent.
Perhaps one of the reasons we insist on surrounding ourselves with noise is that we are afraid of what we might actually hear in the silence. Since 9/11, the rhetoric of fear has become all-encompassing. Fear seems to have gripped the national and international psyche leading to something of a state of paranoia amongst some. This fear has the capacity to paralyze or cause us to engage in irrational acts. In some, it even brings out the basest of animal instincts. There are, of course, those who profit from such fear and have a vested interest in seeing it perpetuated. In a controversial book by Barry Glassner entitled, The Culture of Fear: Why Americans are Afraid of the Wrong Things, the author suggests that the use of fear and diversion tactics allow politicians and powermakers to divert attention away from society’s most important and pressing issues. Frightened citizens, he posits, make better consumers and more easily swayed voters. Thanks to opportunistic politicians, single-minded advocacy groups, and unscrupulous TV “newsmagazines,” Glassner claims that people must unlearn their many misperceptions about the world around them. As evidence, the author claims that the youth homicide rate, for instance, has dropped by as much as 30% in recent years, and up to three times as many people are struck dead by lightning than die of violence in schools. “False and overdrawn fears only cause hardship,” he writes. In fact, one study shows that daughters of women with breast cancer are actually less likely to conduct self-examinations—probably because the campaign to increase awareness of the ailment also inadvertently heightens fear.
This culture of fear bathed in a climate of noise can create in us a sense of foreboding and a heightened anxiety about too much quiet. The self-sustaining drumbeat of 24-hour-a-day news produced by innumerable media outlets, the constant political warfare and rhetoric which dominates the airwaves, not to mention the so-called “reality” programs with which we surround ourselves, all coalesce to deliver a cacophony of images and noise which threaten to sweep us up into a perpetual state of fear and anxiety. “There was a time,” writes Henri Nouwen in his little book, Open Hands, “when silence was normal and noise disturbing. But today, noise is the normal fare, and silence—strange as it may seem—has become the disturbance,” (16).
In this world of too many words, Taylor claims, “silence affects people who are no longer affected by sound,” (31). Silence, by itself is polyvalent, open to numerous meanings. If you and I both enter a room together and choose to be silent, it may be because we don’t know each other at all or it may be because we know each other so well that words are unnecessary. Whenever we go to the monastery, the silence is experienced by many as natural to that environment, though somewhat strange for our sub-culture. Whenever President Mannoia goes home to Joy House after a busy day at work these days, however, he encounters a very different kind of silence. It is a silence that reminds one of the absence of a loved one; a silence that is bottomless, like the grief which it reflects.
“In his poetic eulogy, The World of Silence, the French philosopher Max Picard maintains that silence is the central place of faith, where we give the Word back to the God from whom we first received it. Surrendering the Word, we surrender the medium of our creation. We ‘unsay’ ourselves, voluntarily returning to the source of our being, where we must trust God to ‘say us’ once again. In silence, we travel back in time to the day before the first day of creation, when all being was still part of God’s body. It had not yet been said, and silence was the womb in which it slept,” (Taylor, 33).
For me, this became all too clear on the morning of May 21, 1987, as the body of my daughter, Hannah, lay silent and still in a stainless steel bassinette beside me. Instead of the cry of life we had anticipated, she lay there like a limp and lifeless doll--her limbs blue, her cherubic face expressionless, her body still emanating the very heat of life which surrounded her like an aura in that cold, metallic room. Had she lived, she may well have been here today as an upper-classman seated amongst you. I am oftentimes led to wonder how she would have negotiated with her two older sisters and which of them she would have been more like. But my silent ruminations never simply end with Emily and Evangeline. I also wonder, would she have been filled with joy and laughter like Amanda, or perhaps outgoing and empathetic like Cori? Might she have studied diligently like Alyssa, written eloquently like Emily, or worked hard and dazzled us with her productions like Justine? Could she have run like Kristin with her face, body, and spirit directly into the wind or sang passionately with her eyes aglow, like Christy? To some extent, I’ll never know, for her story came crashing to a halt before it ever really began. But when I look at my two other daughters and at you, my students, I am filled with joy that the potential that died with her is somehow being realized in you.
Barbara Brown Taylor says that, “between human beings there may be no silence as loud as the silence of death. To sit beside a bed, day after day, listening to the ragged intake of breath—to hear the lungs fill, to hear the unproductive cough until finally there is so little need for air that there is only the slightest flutter four or five times a minute—no clock measures time like this, nor is it possible to describe the moment when there is a tick but no tock. The breath goes out and it does not come in again. No one knows it was the last until it is gone, and the silence that follows it is like no other sound in the world,” (36-37). I had watched that moment of death scores of times before and would and will continue to watch it many times after, but to see one’s own issue silenced in such a way strips away the veneer of any sense of objectivity or distance. And, out of that silence and from that day forward, I have become a marked man. Having encountered the ultimate silence of death in “bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh,” I not only am no longer afraid of the silence but earnestly seek it out. I have come to appreciate what Richard Foster calls the “little solitudes” that fill our day, such as the morning cup of coffee before my wife, Darlene, and I head off to another day of work. A quiet spot in the park, a walk in the local cemetery, a desk in the corner of the library—all of these offer opportunities to come away from the distraction of 21st century post-modern America and to simply be quiet and learn to wait upon God. Like Elijah in this morning’s scripture text, it is often times there, in the crevices of life, that we can best hear God’s voice. And so, it is to those same quiet places that I most often point others.
And it is through the gift of these silences, great and small, that I can experience the joy that comes from the wonderful life that God has granted to us all here at Greenville College. I walk out the door of my house on my way to work to the sound of birds chirping, the sound of leaves falling, and the smell of wood burning in the air. Before 7 in the morning, this little hamlet struggles to wake from its slumber. I pass Greg moving the water sprinklers and joshing with the grounds crew as he greets me with a sense of mirth. I pass Kathy on the stairs where she is laboring to sweep up the detritus of another day’s worth of dirt and leaves dragged into Hogue Hall. Grabbing my Daily Office Book, I head back down the stairs and pass Pam Davis coming in to give another day’s service in the Dean’s Office—working to juggle the complexities of a hectic schedule, all the while calming anxious faculty nerves. I stride up College Avenue on my way to St. Paul’s, greeting my friend, Sharon Alger, as she comes from the opposite direction. I step up into the sanctuary where T has prepared the elements and turned on the lights, the sound of coffee dripping downstairs. All is quiet as the congregation slowly gathers for prayer. Here comes Andrew, having parked his bike precariously outside, followed by Keeley, whisps of blonde hair trailing her soft footfall. Marilyn walks slowly by, offering me her slight smile, trailed by Frank, his cane thump-thumping down the nave towards his appointed place. Rich swings by with his typical greeting, “Brother Brian,” while Paul and Andre come to lend their voices to the upcoming Gloria Patri. Little clans of students hurry in as we prepare to begin and, at long last, the silence is pierced by the single clang of a bell. Joe stands to sing the Introit and we all prepare to read our parts. The night is over; the day has begun. Silence has once again given way to the sounds of life and the danger is that somehow we may take it all for granted. For the glory of it all is that it is nothing but grace, another of God’s daily miracles.
I was reminded of that recently when I received a message from one of my former students, the Rev. Kari Morris-Guzman. A beautiful and talented young woman, Kari graduated from GC, went on to pastoral work, and had landed in Southern California, where she was finishing her Master of Divinity degree at Azusa Pacific University after marriage to a wonderful and loving young man. She had a great pastoral job and I remember the laughter with which she greeted me on an April morning just a two short years ago. That summer, she and Aaron flew out to attend the wedding of a friend and rented a car to drive on to the church. When they came around the curve of a two-lane road, he suddenly saw an oncoming car and had to make a split-second decision that sent them careening through a corn field, flipping the car so that they wound up hanging upside down their heads crushed against the roof of the car. Aaron managed to extricate himself and kept Kari conscious until the ambulance arrived, but the damage to her upper spine was substantial. Today, she remains essentially paralyzed from the neck down. In response to my last chapel message she said, “I've been thinking about the senses lately. My sense of physical touch is gone now. My other senses are kind of hyper-sensitive. So loud noises, even white noise, is probably somewhat exaggerated. Therefore, in order for me to concentrate on listening, it's necessary that I filter out the peripheral. I've been doing contemplative prayer lately. I believe that even my physical paralysis has increased my ability to quiet my "inner noise" so that I can listen more intently.”
Kari, and others like her, teach us just how important learning to embrace each and every day is. To not be afraid of the silence, but to enter into it with our ears open wide. So it is that I ask you to join me in prayer as we close with these words from my friend, Fr. Henri Nouwen:
O Lord Jesus, your words to your Father were born out of your silence. Lead me into this silence, so that my words may be spoken in your name and thus be fruitful. It is so hard to be silent, silent with my mouth, but even more, silent with my heart. There is so much talking going on within me. It seems that I am always involved in inner debates with myself, my friends, my enemies, my supporters, my opponents, my colleagues, and my rivals. But this inner debate reveals how far my heart is from you. If I were simply to rest at your feet and realize that I belong to you and you alone, I would easily stop arguing with all the real and imagined people around me. These arguments show my insecurity, my fear, my apprehensions, and my need for being recognized and receiving attention. You, O Lord, will give me all the attention I need if I would simply stop talking and start listening to you. I know that in the silence of my heart you will speak to me and show me your love. Give me, O Lord, that silence. Let me be patient and grow slowly into this silence in which I can be with you. Amen. (From A Cry for Mercy, 18).

Faithful Holiness

2007-08-07T12:29:00.001-07:00

The following is from a sermon I preached on Sunday, based on the lectionary texts:

In an essay entitled, “A Tale of Two Stories: On Being a Christian and a Texan,” Stanley Hauerwas suggests that it is much easier to embrace and understand our American culture than it is to be embraced by the Christian story. Yet, he says, “it is a story that is every bit as concrete and particular as that story of Texas. The difference is that it is not just a story of a land or a family, but the story of a man which, when told and lived rightly witnesses to the God who is the creator and redeemer of all people yet who chooses to be known through the calling of the people of Israel and the life and death of Christ,” (Christian Existence Today, 40). In the end, he maintains, “the truth of the story we find in the gospels is finally known only through the kind of lives it produces. If such lives are absent then no amount of theory or manipulation can make those texts meaningful,” (40-41).

And yet, the pursuit of greed has been baptized in our culture as not only being a legitimate one, but both a desirable and important one. The American attitude towards life is illustrated by the old TV commercial where the person says, “Mastercard, I’m bored!”—only to be whisked off to tropical islands and magnificent culinary delights. The American attitude is that life consists in pleasure and pleasure is to be found in acquiring and experiencing things. And, in the end, we slip dangerously towards the idolatry of which Scripture speaks, perhaps best encapsulated by our egocentric hero, Bart Simpson’s smart-aleck grace: “Dear God, we paid for all this stuff ourselves, so thanks for nothing!”

In contrast, Hauerwas claims, by reading our own lives through the lens of God’s redemptive story in Christ, we come to understand that the pattern that makes up our own life is in fact a story of grace. But in order to come to that understanding, we must first begin to pay attention to the gospel story itself. We learn that story, he claims, by “caring for the tombstones of the saints,” (40). Now, many of you know that I spent some time a few weeks ago taking my father to visit the old Hartley cemetery I had discovered back in Kentucky from whence my great-grandfather set out on a life of adventure in 1892, the year that Greenville College was founded. Through years of painstaking research and several important connections I made, I was able to visit that cemetery six summers ago with Bert Hartley, the last of his generation. So, this summer I was determined to get my dad there while he could still get around and experience what life in that backwoods environment must have been like during the 19th century. But one of the major problems is that there is no one left to care for the over 600 family cemeteries which exist in Greenup County alone. The weeds are growing high and the stones slowly sinking into the ground, even as the letters fade due to weathering. Before long, even these monuments will be meaningless and unreadable—as over twenty of the plots in that cemetery already are.

But Hauerwas means something a bit more metaphorical when he speaks of “caring for the tombstones of the saints.” In the ancient church, folk would literally picnic on the graves of their spiritual ancestors. And, as they shared a meal together over the burial plot, they would begin to tell the life story of the one whose feast day they were celebrating—surely raising the eyebrows of the children who listened in, as well as passing on the valuable narrative from one generation to the next. Those stories were treasured because they not only kept the memory of the loved one alive, they held up before the living the model of the one who had gone before. For, faithful holiness, claims Hauerwas, is only possible when living a faithful life takes on a concrete form.

Some Thoughts on Marriage

2007-07-24T08:24:00.000-07:00

Last weekend, I had the privilege of officiating at the wedding of two of my former students, Zach Heyveld and Lindsey Row, in Iowa City. Below are a few of the thoughts I shared with them and the congregation in a portion of the wedding homily:

You will both have your lives apart, as well as your lives together, and you will each have your separate ways to find along the pathway of life. But, as Frederick Buechner reminds us, “a marriage made in Heaven is one where a man and a woman become more richly themselves together than the chances are either of them could ever have managed to become alone.” How that all happens, we can’t really explain. But I would venture to guess that if you asked a few of the gray hairs here this afternoon to tell you the story of their marriage, you would discover a common thread: marriage teaches us to become more fully alive to one another and to the world. And for many of us, marriage saves us from ourselves.

How did we get here? The very same way you will today—by saying words so improbable that the angels are probably laughing and by taking vows that your parents took and their parents before them. These are time-honored words; not words thrown together overnight for some fly-by-night ritual. No, these words have weathered the test of time and though they may sound archaic they are like the rings you will share with one another, hard and beautiful and able to weather all kinds of change. So, when you say these words today, though they may sound old and antique, learn to trust them because they have carried many of us through the seas of marital difficulty and provided safe harbor. And what these simple words reveal stands in stark contrast to what the culture suggests about the nature of love. For, today, you promise to love, honor, and cherish, not just when you feel like it, not just when the emotional intensity burns hot, but till death finally separates you. Today you have the audacity to claim love, not as some fleeting emotion, but as an act of the will, something which you choose to do—come what may. And, like Ruth in the biblical story, it is that very abandon to another and to the God who stands waiting in the wings that will sustain you in the days that lie ahead.

In fact, I would like to suggest to you that if you will hang on to these words and hang on to one another, that your marriage holds the possibility of being salvific—that it can and will save you from your very self. For, in the days to come, you will have numerous choices to make about how to respond to one another as you learn to negotiate this new and rather awkward relationship. You will be tempted, at times, to draw back and to draw in upon yourself in selfish and egocentric ways. Do not, I repeat, do not, yield to that siren song. Remember the words that you speak here today and give in to the challenge to rise above yourself. Remember the God who had the audacity to not remain in the wings forever but who, “emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness,” who, “humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross,” (Philippians 2:7-8). It is to that downward way that I invite you this afternoon as it is portrayed in an essay by the surgeon, Richard Selzer, as he walked late one night into the hospital room of a patient who was in his surgery just hours before:

“I stand by the bed where a young woman lies, her face postoperative, her mouth twisted in palsy, clownish. A tiny twig of the facial nerve, the one to the muscles of her mouth, has been severed. She will be thus from now on. The surgeon had followed with religious fervor the curve of her flesh; I promise you that. Nevertheless, to remove the tumor in her cheek, I had cut the little nerve. Her young husband is in the room. He stands on the opposite side of the bed, and together they seem to dwell in the evening lamplight, isolated from me, private. Who are they, I ask myself, he and this wry-mouth I have made, who gaze at and touch each other so generously, so greedily? The young woman speaks. ‘Will my mouth always be like this?’ she asks. ‘Yes,’ I say, ‘it will. It is because the nerve was cut.’ She nods, and is silent. But the young man smiles. ‘I like it,’ he says. ‘It is kind of cute.’ All at once I know who he is. I understand, and I lower my gaze. One is not bold in an encounter with a god. Unmindful, he bends to kiss her crooked mouth, and I so close I can see how he twists his own lips to accommodate to hers, to show her that their kiss still works,” (Mortal Lessons: Notes on the Art of Surgery, 45-46).

Now, I doubt, this afternoon, that you will have much trouble kissing one another. You are still young and passionate and the day is fair. But in the days and weeks and months to come, you will need to learn to accommodate yourself to one another. And, that may take more than a little effort. In those rather difficult times, may the vows that you make here today and the memory of all of us who surround you, sustain you. But most of all, may the God who waits in the wings, who gives you the strength to undertake these most improbable vows, and who promises to bear you safely together to the other side, go with you both. And may his faithfulness towards us and his ultimate act of accommodation in Christ Jesus bear fruit in your common life together and to any children who may grace your home. For it is in his name we pray it. Amen.

A Baptismal Community

2007-07-18T07:19:00.000-07:00

On Sunday, we baptized young Caden, the baby boy of Ben and Michelle Wayman who are joining us in ministry at St. Paul's. Using the lectionary texts for last Sunday, I tried to weave a narrative regarding the nature of a baptismal community. Below are a couple of paragraphs from the sermon:

The Free Methodist Church in our day and, in fact, much of American Christianity is faced with a severe crisis of identity. We no longer know who and whose we are. The temptations of our culture and sub-culture threaten to overwhelm us and perhaps render us impotent or irrelevant. And so we grab for all the outward appearances of success at hand and reward any one and any place that shows a jump in statistics, a showy worship program, and beautiful and wealthy people. But today, my friends, we engage in reaffirming whose and who we are through the simple act of splashing a bit of water on the forehead of a child. Believe it or not, this is one of the most counter-cultural acts in which we might engage. As Gordon Lathrop says in his book, Holy Things, “If bread and wine are at the center of the assembly, water is at its edge, marking its boundary, slaking its thirst, holding its life and its death.” And this water refuses, like the Good Samaritan in today’s gospel lesson, to know boundaries. It embraces the high and the low, the rich and the poor, the young and the old, the powerful and the disenfranchised. And just as that parable was meant to shake up the Jews who overheard it, shattering their misconceptions and stereotypes about what it meant to be one of God’s people, so, too, do these few drops of water challenge us to rethink our own identity as children of God.
Through the gift of baptism, we are offered an opportunity to be converted yet again. As Will Willimon claims in his little book, Peculiar Speech: Preaching to the Baptized, “Infant baptism can be a reminder that conversion, and the repentance it entails, is not usually (contra much of American evangelicalism) a momentary, instantaneous phenomenon. Baptism, whenever it occurs, sets in motion a lifetime of turning and detoxification. As Luther said, every day of our lives we must wake up and volunteer for death, praying to God to finish in us that which was begun in our baptism,” (63). Baptism reminds us that our citizenship is not something stamped in a passport but one discovered in a community. Our home is not a place, I tell you, but one found among a people. And we are called to live out that charge this day as God’s holy people.

My Old Kentucky Home

2007-07-16T08:22:00.001-07:00

I spent part of last week taking my wife, father, and mother to eastern Kentucky to visit the Hartley family cemetery which I discovered several years ago. "Bert" Hartley (who introduced me to the final resting place of my 19th century ancestors) died last year after a long bout with prostate cancer. The terrain in this part of the country is mountainous and somewhat isolated--good country for making moonshine and hiding from the rest of the world. One has to want to get to Oldtown--a community about 15 miles south of Greenup. There are the remains of a general store and a few remnants of old tobacco barns but, otherwise, it is stony backwoods farmland.

It was a special joy to help my father put these pieces of the family puzzle together. The key was an entry in the 1880 census I found which listed my great-grandfather (Clyde Centennial Hartley) as a four-year-old boy. When he ran away from home at about age 16, he left that part of his life behind so it took some sleuthing through old records to discover his mother (America Wheeler) and father (Abraham Goble Hartley). His dad had remarried after the death of his first wife and was 59 when his son was born. When his mother remarried a few years later after his father's death, young Clyde reported that his step-father beat him unmercifully. Hightailing it to Oklahoma to drive a mule train probably appealed to his zest for adventure.

So it was that he lit out for the west in 1892, the same year that the trustees bought Almira College and renamed it "Greenville College." Meanwhile, over in the Ozark hills of Arkansas, my maternal great-great grandfather was riding a circuit as a Free Methodist pastor, leaving his wife and children behind for long periods of time. Putting these pieces of the family tree have helped me to gain a perspective on the humble roots from whence I come. There are no college graduates whatsoever until my father labored for ten years at a degree as a non-traditional student--finally finishing during my years as an undergrad at Greenville. So, for both my wife and I, we are, literally, the first in our families to go off to college.

This makes me appreciate the struggles for those who come into my classroom without a history of family success in college. Earning a degree was the first step for me on a wonderful journey of discovery that led to Princeton, Oklahoma State, Toronto and London. I hope I can share something of that joy with the new freshmen who will arrive in a few short weeks.

The Challenge of Discipleship

2007-07-02T07:12:00.000-07:00

Here's a portion of Sunday's sermon which addressed the challenge of discipleship:

The challenge of discipleship is not about adopting a new ideology, but about being grasped by a new way of living. Following Christ submerses us in the waters of baptism and transfers our citizenship from one dominion to another.

No one understood this better than did John Wesley who, in his classic essay, “The Character of a Methodist,” laid out an order of salvation that was committed to a lifetime of growth. The Methodist class meetings met weekly and provided a place for mutual study, correction, forgiveness, and prayer. Wesleyans, Will Willimon maintains, experienced the gospel call, not merely as the intellectual question, “Do you agree?” or its emotional opposite, “Do you feel?” but as the more politically-loaded question, “Will you join?” The danger in our culture is that the Christian faith may simply get reduced to a merely private or individualistic matter. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, facing the power of the Nazi state, knew that this kind of withdrawal from the culture would never empower Christians to resist. The only hope for Christians in an alien world, he suggested, was membership in a community that would enable them to stand up to the forces of Nazism. In his, Cost of Discipleship, he says: “There is a certain ‘political’ character involved in the idea of sanctification and it is this character which provides the only basis for the Church’s political ethic. The world is the world and the Church the Church, and yet the Word of God must go forth from the Church into all the world, proclaiming that the earth is the Lord’s and all that therein is. Herein is the ‘political’ character of the Church,” (314).

Perhaps living in a country such as ours, it is easy to mistake the veneer of religiosity for the gospel of Jesus Christ. In his most recent book, The Jesus Way: A Conversation on the Way that Jesus is the Way, Eugene Peterson shows us just how counter-cultural this call to discipleship really is. He says, “I cannot follow Jesus any way which I like. My following must be consonant with his leading. . . More often than not I find my Christian brothers and sisters uncritically embracing the ways and means practiced by the high-profile men and women who lead large corporations, congregations, nations, and causes, people who show us how to make money, win wars, manage people, sell products, manipulate emotions, and who then write books or give lectures telling us how we can do what they are doing. But these ways and means more often than not violate the ways of Jesus. North American Christians are conspicuous for going along with whatever the culture decides is charismatic, successful, influential—whatever gets things done, whatever can gather a crowd of followers—hardly noticing that these ways and means are at odds with the clearly marked way that Jesus walked and called us to follow,” (8).

Top Ten Places to Discover in Greenville

2007-06-25T11:01:00.000-07:00

As I've been preparing to teach another group of freshmen at GC (as well as breaking in some eight or nine new faculty members), I've decided to try and put together my top ten places to discover in Greenville. Some of these are well-known and public, others reveal more about my own preferences than the town. If you have others to add to the list, be sure and make a comment below. . .

1. Montrose Cemetery--designed in the mid-nineteenth century, some of the headstones are beautiful. And, besides, some of my favorite people from Greenville's past lie buried here.
2. Almira House--restored to its 19th century glory, this is where higher education began in Bond County in 1855 and now houses the fascinating Bock sculpture collection.
3. The Gullies--the best place to see the infamous trees of Greenville, it has hosted numerous outdoor classes, make-out sessions, and lonely introverts whose only company is a good book.
4. Simcoe Prayer Chapel--dedicated a little less than a year ago, this cozy corner of the Whitlock Music Centre provides a place to pray, read, and meditate. Thanks to a generous gift in honor of Edith and Riker Simcoe, the simple pews, prayer benches, altar railing, communion table, and lectern bespeak sacred space.
5. Town Square/County Courthouse--the center of town, this is where the MUNY Band plays, infamous trials are held, numerous memorials to the military dead may be found, and all things interesting takes place.
6. Patriot's Park--about a mile outside of town, there are swings, a playground, benches, and a lake. And, this is where the annual Independence Day festivities take place. A gorgeous place to sit on a cool autumn day (besides the Gullies).
7. Globe Theatre/Will's Coffee House--thanks to Dave Willey, Greenville's City Manager, we have a place to watch films and drink coffee. The movies tend more towards popular action shtick, but if you talk to Dave real nice sometimes he'll risk something a bit more artsy.
8. Greenville College Archives/LaDue Memorial Wall--think the famous scene with Robin Williams whispering in the boys' ears, "Carpe Diem!" Papers of famous faculty (along with various and sundry other articles) and a spot to remember those who have given a lifetime to Christian Higher Education.
9. Sunset Point/Carnegie Library--if you're walking west just at the right time, you not only can pass a famous piece of architecture made possible by the Carnegie Foundation but you can see the sun begin to dip below the horizon on one of Greenville's most interesting cul-de-sacs.
10. Upper Union looking across Hogue Lawn--thanks to the energy of Dr. and Mrs. Mannoia, you can look out across the south lawn on a spring day and see all of nature coming to life. Renovations to the Upper Union make it a great place to socialize, watch a movie, or enjoy a hot cup of coffee. Make sure to check out the "old" pictures displayed on the south wall, including one of yours truly with my then-girlfriend, now wife, and another of ENOCH, our band that went to Toronto in 1976-77.

The Need for Desert Sojourn

2007-06-15T07:38:00.000-07:00

Here's a portion of what I preached this past Sunday (Season after Pentecost 5C):

In his book, The Solace of Fierce Landscapes, Belden Lane traces out the role of the retreat to the desert in early Christianity. “A fierce landscape,” he claims, “was assumed to be the proper abode of people committed to an austere vocation.” Desert asceticism, for the church fathers, was held up not as an exception, but as an ideal for those early Christians. The choice of landscape was deliberate. “While it may appear recklessly wild, even dangerous, to outsiders, for this very reason it fed the spirits of those who had chosen the desert way,” (161). The sites these ascetics chose, like the one pictured in today’s Old Testament lesson, offered both prospect and refuge—“an unimpeded opportunity to see, as well as ample opportunity to hide,” (163). One literally learned to live, Lane suggests, within a context of fear tempered by grace,” (164). In the desert, one could discover death and rebirth, renunciation and abandonment, and especially the ability to renounce one’s own fears in order to discover a sense of vocation. This is essentially what the story of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness is all about—a kind of purgation and renunciation which prepares him to become the one who will redeem his people.

This way of thinking has largely been lost to those of us who are both American and Christian. In an age of “white noise,” we are literally terrified of silence, the dark, and the austerity of being cut off from our technology and creature comforts. This summer we will probably have to, in spite of the cost of gasoline, continue dodging the huge RV’s which blanket our highways in an attempt to take all that we own into the wilderness. Thanks to satellite, we won’t have to leave our televisions or computers behind as we enter the desert. And, with the wonder of electricity pumped from a generator, we needn’t even suffer from fear of the dark. In short, we have attempted to tame the desert to rid it of its austerity and challenge to the self.

But, in so doing, perhaps we have missed the very point of this sacred geography. Without the brokenness that the harsh desert winds create, without the heat of the sun which strips away from us every vestige of self-reliance, we are never brought face-to-face with our need of God. Those who observe the greatest hospitality amongst the poorest of people often write about how with possessions comes an underlying belief in our own power and the sense of God being an unnecessary add-on to our lives. Though we may long to find a sense of meaning and vocation, we find ourselves caught up in a solipsistic circle of self and things with no room for anything or anyone else. Consumed with ourselves and our needs, we wouldn’t dream of leaving behind the detritus which first litters and then consumes our souls.

That is why we need ordinary time: it serves to remind us that not everything in life has to be spectacular and extraordinary. It forces us to learn to pay close attention to what is going on all around us. Maybe it results in an editorial, like that of Verlyn Klinkenborg in the New York Times this past week, entitled, “Sudden Growth.” Here, he ruminates on the white spruces he planted just seven years ago, mere whisps of vegetation, which now exceed ten feet in height. Or maybe it is to notice as we are this summer the absence of a pianist or the familiarity of John leading us in worship.

For those of us who gather regularly for Morning Prayer, it may be the recognition that youth has largely fled and it is primarily the middle-aged and elderly who occupy the pews on these warm summer days. The liturgy drones on day after day in constant repetition—to the outsider, something dry and boring. But, giving ourselves over to it, it serves to focus our minds like a laser beam, distractions escaping out the window. “The ceaseless regularity of the liturgy,” one author suggests, “works on those distractions with a stubborn indifference, so that the mind is silenced and the heart made able to love,” (Fierce Landscapes, 227). Perhaps it is true that the desert can even invade our churchly habitation.

For recent graduates, it may be the recognition that there will be no more homework to get ready for this fall. The degree, hard-earned and now neatly framed, sits astride our bedroom wall reminding us that that part of our life is now behind us and the larger world awaits us. After sixteen years or so have the regular cycle of being a student, we will have to learn how to learn to sing our song in a new and strange land. We will soon be arriving for work ourselves, learning to become adults in a world in which we still think of ourselves as perpetual adolescents.

Whatever the circumstances, this season cries out for us to recognize the need for desert sojourns as a means of preparation for that which lies yet ahead. The leisurely day at poolside or the incessant hum of the lawnmower engine may really be opportunities in disguise for us to learn to listen to God and to rely upon Him for the sustenance, grace, and strength for the journey which stretches out before us. “The desert,” Lane suggests, “has to lead us, at last, from aloneness with God (in a moment of great and silent emptiness) to community with others, from the loss of the fragile self to the discovery of a new identity binding us to the world. . . Desert attentiveness and desert indifference lead necessarily to desert love,” (232). Let us then learn to prick up our ears and listen for the voice of God, to receive the morsels he has for us in this season of respite, and, with Elijah, Paul, and Jesus, to prepare for the new sense of calling and vocation which await us on the other side of the desert.

Settling Into Summer

2007-06-11T08:54:00.000-07:00

It seems impossible that Commencement is already four weeks behind us. I'm still revelling in the warm glow of graduating my younger daughter and her new job (which starts in just a couple of months). We are now officially a family of educators. My wife, Darlene, works as a Jr. Hi. librarian. Emily, my older daughter, will be adjuncting at the college this fall, teaching Composition and Linguistics (before hopefully starting a doctoral program in the spring). And now Evangeline will be heading up the Pre-K program in Kincaid, a rural community a little over an hour north of here. I guess if one is concerned about legacy, mine will have something to do with educating the next generation.

I'm working on revising an article that will be published around Christmas time entitled, "The Liturgical Reordering of the Ecclesia Anglicana: Faithful Understanding in the Elizabethan Homilies of 1563," in Anglican and Episcopal History. I have a longer article which will appear in the Proceedings of the North American Academy of Liturgy--2007 about the same time which sketches something of the history of collections of homilies for congregational catechesis. Both of these came out of my wonderful sabbatical at the Ecumenical Institute at St. John's this past fall. The friends I made there were wonderful and the setting idylic for getting some writing done.

Summer always brings with it a somewhat different pace of life as we settle into ordinary time. Yesterday I preached on the place of the desert in our spiritual journey, focusing on the narratives of Elijah, Paul, and Jesus. Darlene usually has a list a mile long of things she wants to accomplish. I have a hard time disengaging from my normal routine. We get to go to Morning Prayer together and then usually I try and work in the office for a couple of hours. This week we're breaking away for a couple of days to Brown Co., Indiana, to celebrate our 29th wedding anniversary. Sometimes, the only way I can literally change the pace is to go away into a different place. I am very much a creature of habit when at home.

I also get to indulge my role as percussionist in the summer by playing in the Municipal Band. Reading music gives me a chance to do something different and reclaim my adolescence--when band was a central part of my identity. I also am looking forward to next spring break when I'll be travelling with the college choir to Austria, Hungary, and Romania as a guest lecturer. Musicians, I have found, learn a certain discipline which can transfer over into other aspects of life--if they'll let it.

This summer is rather odd in that we are beginning to adjust to being "empty-nesters." Evangeline is engaged in a glorified nanny job in St. Charles and comes home on the weekends. We are slowly transitioning her up to Taylorville during the summer so she can start her new teaching job in August. As I zero in on my fiftieth birthday, it seems rather strange to be at this point in life. I remember when I was nineteen I wrote down a list of goals I had for my life. It's rather amazing how many of them I've achieved, but I also recognize how much I have adjusted those dreams as I've learned more about myself. Perhaps the greatest gift has been these three women in my life who continue to challenge me to think about the world in different ways and, hopefully, chip away at my rather limited view.

This fall I'm taking on a Freshman Seminar again--something I've been away from for a few years. I hope my age won't work against me too much. I'm trying to stay "connected" in ways that will keep me somewhat in touch with this generation of college students. The theme of journey and pilgrimage is at the heart of Brett Webb-Mitchell's new book (School of the Pilgrim) which I am looking forward to reading next month. I'm engaged right now in a new biography of Thomas Hardy, a popular study of the history of adolescence called Teenage, and Eugene Peterson's most recent book, The Jesus Way. One of the best parts about summer is the chance to read half-a-dozen or more books. But if I'm going to make any progress, I'd best finish today's blog!

Ready, or Not . . .

2007-01-18T12:48:00.000-08:00

I've just finished up teaching a three-day intensive course in Wesleyan Theology alongside my colleague, Joe Culumber. I had forgotten how tired I can get in the classroom--my voice becoming strained and my joints starting to ache. As a professor, one feels constrained to somehow "carry" a course, even when the pedagogical method may be varied and involve group work.

In the midst of all of this, I've been trying to get ready for the new semester with undergraduates which begins tomorrow. While I'm excited to be back where I belong, I haven't quite yet adjusted to the pace of things or, even worse, the noise all around me. While there were occasional conversations, laughter, and the drone of the liturgy at St. John's, here the pound of woofers out a dorm window and the incessant chatter of the campus create a din compared to the relative quiet and sedateness of the monastic community.

So, the time has come to roll up one's sleeves and dig in once again. At least I got word yesterday that I won't have to chair a sub-committee for Faculty Review--something I've done every spring for about the last six years. For the time being I can concentrate on learning new names, adjusting to about three hundred new faces in chapel, and trying to impart some knowledge about the Pauline Epistles, the Reformation, and Worship. Happily, all of that adolescent testosterone and estrogen may be what I need to feel alive again.

Back in Toronto

2007-01-04T11:11:00.000-08:00

I'm back in Toronto for the North American Academy of Liturgy annual meeting where I'll be presenting a paper at the "Word in Worship" seminar tomorrow. The weather is unusually warm here--probably approaching the upper forties, with not a snowflake in sight. I spent the mid-morning walking through the University of Toronto upper campus near Queen's Park, peering into the old chapel at Emmanuel and visiting the Northrop Frye Building at Victoria. The latter has a marvelous portrait of Frye hanging in the administrative building. His lion-like mane flows out behind his wire-framed glasses, making him appear to be somewhat distinguished and angelic at one in the same time.

Frye's insights on understanding literature guided much of my early graduate work, just as McLuhan and Ong surfaced later to assist me in understanding how culture and language come together in the interpretive process. On Saturday we'll take up Stephen Webb's recent book, The Divine Voice: Christian Proclamation and Theology of Sound--someone else deeply marked by these same cultural scholars. Webb claims that hearing is always primary to the Christian faith, whereas seeing is ancillary. This is particularly apropos when understanding much of American Evangelicalism's adoration of worship as spectacle--something which must have Ambrose and the Reformers spinning in their graves.

This group of liturgical scholars is committed to understanding and shaping the culture of Christian worship in the midst of one of the greatest times of cultural captivity of the church. Some of them have been marginalized, but I doubt there is any group more so than the few of us who actually call ourselves "evangelical" here. Fortunately, I have found some real kindred spirits who share many of the same concerns that I do. It is somewhat ironic whenever I am more at home with those from outside of my tradition who embrace my contributions compared to those within who see my work as at best idiosyncratic, if not irrelevant.

In any event, it is great to be back in this city which I love so much. The diversity here is always refreshing, as well as the more cosmopolitan look at the world. I'm hoping that this will serve as a springboard for addressing the chapel focus in the spring of how we, as Christians, engage the larger culture in which we live.

Saying Good-bye to St. John's

2006-12-18T08:45:00.000-08:00

I'm into the final 24 hours now--cleaning the apartment, running last-minute errands, and packing my bags. By tomorrow night, I'll be back with my wife, whose patience and long-suffering have made this sabbatical possible. It's been a long semester and I am ready to go home, but I will also miss St. John's and the wonderful Benedictine hospitality which pervades its campus and permeates its walls.

We are singing the "O Antiphons" now--beginning with last night's Evening Prayer where we sang, "O, Sapientia." It was wonderful to begin that service with Charles Wesley's "Lo, He Comes with Clouds Descending"--though, as is quite common here, the tune was one with which I was unfamiliar. The dark settles on the church early now and seems to almost seep in through its doors. As Fr. Michael Patella suggested in yesterday's Third Sunday of Advent service, the human condition of sin is perhaps most acute during this time. The physical darkness reminds us all-too-well of our spiritual state and of our need of a Savior.

I am thankful for the turning of the wheel I've been able to experience here--from the last lingering notes of summer, through the beauty and splendor of a Minnesota autumn, to the iron-cold beginning blasts of winter. There is a beauty to all of these changes and to be somewhere where they are so pronounced has, perhaps, made me even more aware of God's good creation. And, just as nature changes, so now I am having to say good-bye to my many new friends here--particularly the seven other Resident Scholars. Each has taught me much about God, the Christian life, and the challenge of making sense of this world in which we live. So to Kathleen, Ann Marie, Carol, Mary, Carmel, Margaret and Pat, I offer my humble thanks for allowing me to join your company. May God give to each traveling mercies and a very Merry Christmas.

Closing out the Semester

2006-12-15T05:44:00.000-08:00

Last night we joined with the St. John's School of Theology to celebrate those who were finishing their Master's degrees at mid-year. Several of the graduates were older and came to their program with significant life experience. All spoke eloquently of how their faith had been strengthened by the time spent here and almost to a person related how they had been personally touched by the spirit of Benedictine spirituality.

One of my new-found friends for the semester was Fr. Allan Bouley, who taught the Liturgy of the Hours course. I sat in with eight compatriots to learn more about the history of the Office and how it was being implemented in a Roman context. Fr. Allan said that my background in the Protestant celebration was helpful--particularly in its Anglican form. I was energized by the eight young men in the class and their hopes and dreams for parish work, as well as by Fr. Allan's dry wit and wonderful candor, at times.

One of the real joys of the semester has been watching how another Christian community attempts to live out its charism through higher education. Perhaps the impact of the monastic community cannot be duplicated on our campus, but, hopefully, the Wesleyan spirituality that pervades our curriculum can come shining through. One worry I have is that much of the responsibility for carrying that load and creating that ethos is devolving on our department as fewer and fewer academic recruits come out of that context. Finding ways of keeping the spirit of the John LaDue's and Frank Thompson's of the world will continue to be important to us.

The Ballad of Brother Taddy

2006-12-11T06:17:00.000-08:00

Last week, Wilfrid, one of the monks, told us about a famous murder in the Abbey that took place in the late 1930's. My colleague, Ann Marie Stock, decided it would be a good subject for a poem so she got the ball rolling. By the end of the week, she and I had jointly composed our own, "Ballad of Brother Taddy." Fr. Killian has promised that it will make its true debut appearance in the St. John's community at the annual Christmas feast. So, here's your chance to get a preview:

Br. Taddy’s Missed Christmas

Twas the night before Christmas when all through the Abbey,
not a creature was stirring--especially not Taddy.

The priests were all nestled in choir so tight,
That their ears were all stifled from hearing the fight.

And pray they did, hymnals open so wide,
Little they knew of the action inside.

From church they did file to the Great Hall,
Brothers Bernard and Cletus, Pious and Paul.

The Abbot was upstairs as were the priests,
The brothers were downstairs preparing the feast

Garden green beans and peas, juicy pork hocks,
And kraut with St. Joe Meat Market brats.

Carrots and mutton and barley-hop stew,
Chicken, potatoes, sliced beet root, too.

While the monks up above consumed their repast,
Below the glass shattered from a forceful blast.

The novice did lower his gun for a shot,
Mistook Br. Taddy for a deer--he did not.

With cell doors half windowed in transparent glass,
He made his plans, forgetting the mass.

Affection once felt, now burned like shame.
So holding the rifle, he slowly took aim.

His love for another was quite unrequited,
As he looked down the muzzle, his love now was sighted.

Abbot Alcuin ‘pon learning of poor Taddy's fate,
Didst screw up his face while scratching his pate.

Now it was clear old Alcuin must act,
But his primary focus was to form a monk pact.

The civil authorities just must never know,
For to do so that night might strike a mortal blow.

To cover up lustful desire and killing,
Henceforth would be the Abbot’s heavenly billing.

He swallowed and gulped, then looked at them all,
And said “Time for vespers; get to the Great Hall.”

The monks sang the Psalter--one choir to the other,
But meanwhile they noticed their one missing brother.

The novices squirmed as they wondered aloud,
Where, oh where, was their confrere in shroud?

In the cold of the Abbey the monks shivered to know,
Where on the campus Br. Taddy did go?

By that time their dear brother was cold, lifeless, and dead,
While his cold-blooded killer did tremble with dread.

And since that event from so long ago,
Both monks and visitors seek to know

Just how and when did the deed fade away,
And how does it shape St. John’s Christmas Day?

Second Sunday of Advent

2006-12-11T05:41:00.000-08:00

I always find preaching on this Sunday something of a challenge since the lectionary texts always center around the person of John the Baptist. After awhile one begins to wonder, "What hasn't been said about this odd prophetic ascetic from the wild places?" Fr. Robert Pierson, the homilist at St. John's yesterday, chose to focus our attention on one of the primal images in the New Testament--the "way." Growing up as a kid, he said, the Interstate Highway system was something of a marvel--cutting traveling times in half and allowing one to get to one's destination much more quickly.

But the road is also treated metaphorically throughout scripture as means of describing our journey with God. "Prepare the way. . . make straight his paths," the herald cries out. Fr. Pierson pointed out that we tend to get easily distracted along the way, sometimes even peeling off the highway and getting lost. This tendency is reflected in our journey with God, as well, sometimes forgetting our destination and allowing ourselves to get sucked into the distraction. Advent, he reminded us, is a time for renewing our desire for the destination of the journey. To hear, once again, the voice of God and to surrender to the love of Jesus which compels us ever onward. That voice and that love provide for us direction that leads us out of our own self-centeredness. God, Fr. Robert claimed, invites us to come home as quickly as we can.

This time at St. John's has allowed me to listen, afresh and anew, to that compelling voice and to ask, "What do I hope to accomplish in these last 15 to 20 years of my professional career? What is it I want to be remembered for?" As we gathered one last time as an entire group of sabbaticants yesterday afternoon in the beautiful sunshine of a December day, we shared with one another one word to describe the character of each. I was surprised that several spoke of me as caring and focused on others. This certainly would not have described my first thirty or so years of life. Certainly my wife's empathy for others has rubbed off, to some extent, over the last thirty years! But, I think what is really at stake here is getting close to the heart of God. Whenever I get so busy and overwhelmed by work, I can't hear the voice of God as clearly and I tend to become much more egocentric and shrill around others. If this sabbatical has taught me anything it is that keeping close to God's heart, listening, reflecting, finding time for solitude and silence, is not only necessary to my well-being but also to my ability to care for and love others. So, Lord, keep me close to you so that I can, over the next few years left to me, learn to care for others and be sensitive to their needs.

Feast of St. Ambrose

2006-12-08T05:56:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was the Feast of St. Ambrose, fourth-century Bishop of Milan. When I was studying for my doctoral comprehensive exams (the last time I was on sabbatical seven years ago), Ambrose was on a list of top ten or twenty preachers I most admired because of his ability to help his congregation reflect "mystagogically" on the meaning of their faith in a period when the church had suddenly come into prominence. In his time, he probably would have been looked to as one of the best intellectual preachers who could carefully articulate the meaning of the faith in its cultural context.

One young scholar who fell under the tutelage of Ambrose's preaching was Augustine (yes, the same guy who would become the most important Christian theologian of the first thousand years). Augustine toyed with a variety of philosophical approaches popular in his day, ranging from Manicheanism to outright dualism. Trained both as a rhetorician and a philosopher, he was hungry for someone to help him understand this new faith in the intellectual terms he so needed. To the rescue came the Bishop of Milan who was able to cut through the jargon of the day and help the young scholar to focus on the meaning of Christ and prepare him for the mystery of baptism.

In honor of Ambrose, we ate northern Italian cuisine yesterday up at the School of Theology. As I looked around the dining room at the numerous budding young scholars, I wondered which of them would extend the cause of the gospel and make their professors proud. In the end, today Ambrose is probably better known for his one convert than even for the wonderful sermons he produced. Augustine went on to pen many of the most important theological treatises, including his De Doctrina Christiana which became the singular textbook on preaching for the next thousand years. I think for many of us who teach and preach regularly, this is our one great hope--not that what we have said will be long remembered, but that one or two of our students will rise up to carry on the tradition of careful articulation of the faith in a new generation.

Feast of St. Nicholas

2006-12-06T17:03:00.000-08:00

Today we celebrated the Feast of St. Nicholas, a fourth-century saint who was known for having given funds to a family (anonymously) in order to save three daughters from prostitution by providing them with a dowry. Since the gold was thrown down the chimney (according to legend), he became the patron saint of children and eventually evolved into our very own Santa Claus.

This evening, his Holinenss Aram I, Catholicos of the Great House of Cilicia and a leader of a branch of Eastern Orthodoxy, received the Pax Christi award for his broad ecumenical work. Attired in purple cope and black hood, he and his retinue accompanied Abbot John into choir for Evening Prayer--complete with all the smells and bells one might desire. The joke amongst the sabbaticants was that I would have fit right in with my bright yellow goose-down parka with a hood that shrouds my face. They can make fun all they want, all I know is that with it going down to -5 degrees F. tonight with wind chills of at least -20 below, I think I'll just keep my Land's End purchase!

We sang one of the most ancient hymns tonight, the Greek Phos Hilaron ("O Radiant Light") to open the service, then alternated with the cantors working our way through Psalm 1,112,113,145, and concluding with the Abbot's reading of 1 Peter 5. Then followed a homily delivered by His Holiness without a note. He spoke deliberately, slowly, yet forcefully of our need to conform our lives to the holiness of our Lord and Savior as made known in the saints who have gone before us. One could easily sense the charism of leadership as he spoke.

But, it was clear that this was no "cult of personality." Had he died, right there in the bishop's chair, there would have been one to take his place. Though there are certainly gifts that propel one into leadership, in the Christian faith it is never about the person her/him self but about the one to which s/he points. So, let us join in emulating St. Nicholas who gave with grace and without accolades. May his spirit of giving pervade the season before us.

Baby It's Cold Outside

2006-12-04T09:46:00.000-08:00

It's almost noon here and we're struggling to get out of the single digits. The moaning of the wind mixes with the freshly-fallen snow to create a tundra-like atmosphere that blasts you full in the face when you walk outside. Yesterday afternoon I had to get out for a bit so I snapped a few photographs including two guys who were lacing up their skates beside the bridge I cross over to the main campus. Fortunately, the wind was down at that point.

It wouldn't be so bad except that just ten days ago I was home where it was close to 72 degrees Fahrenheit and I was walking around in shirt sleeves. Here, I've finally donned the yellow goose down parka and the heavy snow boots. I may look funny but at least I'm not freezing when I go outside. The apartment includes a fireplace which I have taken to using on a more frequent basis. One of the monks has split and stacked wood for us at the top of the hill, so I fill up a cardboard box outside my front door every day.

The intense cold makes one want to sleep, or at least curl up with a good book. I just finished reading over the weekend Timothy Egan's The Worst Hard Time, an account of the "dirty-thirties" in No Man's Land (the American Dustbowl). The perseverance of these people and the enormous power that the landscape threw at them is almost beyond belief. It made my encounter with the cold seem almost bearable. At least I didn't have to huddle in a hole in the ground or burn buffalo chips for fuel.

At Morning Prayer, I sat next to Kathleen Norris, an author whose works I've used regularly in class (Dakota, Cloister Walk, Amazing Grace, etc.). Unlike most mornings, I caught myself starting to nod off in the silent times after the readings. I had an awful image of falling asleep in choir, knocking my head against the railing, and blood spurting all over me, the monks, and Ms. Norris. After lunch today, I think I'll retreat from the library back to my apartment, get a rip-roaring fire going, and return to my reading. Many more such visions and I'll be ready for a vacation in the Bahamas.

The Cold Descent of Advent

2006-12-03T10:41:00.000-08:00

The lake outside my window is now thoroughly frozen, spattered with blowing snow that stirs up in pools as the stiff north wind blows. The sighing of the wind is broken only in the morning by the sounds of animals settling in--the caw of a jay, the thumping of the woodpecker, the scratching of a squirrel looking furiously for a nut. My bright yellow down-filled jacket provides needed protection, but my eyes have this terrible habit of leaking as I face into the north wind.

The advent wreath hangs ominously on the pulpit side of the chancel as the organ begins its peal and the monks huddle in the chancel around the baptismal font preparing to make their entrance. Then the procession starts, with Fr. Columba Stewart, O.S.B., bringing up the rear, bending low to the altar, and taking his place in liturgical leadership--a beautiful gown trimmed in purple and gold to signal the change of the seasons. The Advent texts speak of remaining awake and alert, our redemption somewhere just over the horizon.

"Advent has a special place amongst professional religious," Columba says, "containing a certain atmospheric darkness which ends in Christmas." Then he launches into a reflection on the curious juxtaposition of the violence of the Advent texts with the gilt-edge manger scene with which most people are most comfortable. "Salvation," he proclaims, "however near, lies at the other end of calamity." By the end of the peroration, he has reminded us that, unlike other animals, we can hope and that this liberating love, promised in Christ, will cast out our fear.

But, I think, we are a people who no longer know the sense of pervading darkness that our ancestors knew, yet we are just as fearful as they. We fear the "other," we fear a lack of security, we fear, above all else, the unknown. We want to know, to be in control, to avoid these keenly apocalyptic texts and scuttle, like bed bugs, for the comfort of that Bethlehem manger--scrubbed free, of course, of the smell of dung and the discomfort of the penetrating cold. Help us, O Lord, to learn to embrace the present darkness and, in so doing, to recognize that you are with us perhaps even more powerfully in these "in-between" times when you seem so far away.

Preparing for Advent

2006-12-02T06:28:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, after the stress and strain of the campus lecture the day before, I attended an Advent Retreat at the Episcopal House of Prayer, along with eleven other students and staff. It was hosted by Michael Dennis Browne, professor of English at the University of Minnesota and a widely read poet. Michael poked and prodded us with a bevy of poems, suggesting that this season beckons us to learn to "pay attention to the moment," to the very genius of language as it seeks to get us to slow down.

We spent time writing, praying, and sharing--sometimes in ways that bordered on discomfort. While I love the feel and power of poetic language, I don't always enjoy making public the private self--at least not with people I don't know very well. Michael's advice to graduating students, however, made perfect sense to me--he tells them, "Keep good company." By that he means, not only creating a circle of friends and mentors, but spending time with good poetry and pieces of literature. This has challenged me to read, not only the fiction and short stories which I enjoy so much, but to be more intentional about tackling poetry on a regular basis. I tend to go through spurts, gobbling up whole poems every few weeks, not allowing them to drip into my mind and heart on a daily basis.

One of the prose pieces Michael shared with us was a paragraph from Dom Bede Griffiths, O.S.B., which seems most appropriate on this day before the beginning of the Advent season:
"During most of our waking hours we live on the surface of our being in contact with all the different things which are presented to our senses. Sometimes when we are deep in conversation with a friend or reading a book or perhaps in a dangerous situation, we lose the sense of time and enter into a deeper region of the soul, where it is withdrawn from the outer world: but we are still not far from the surface. Beyond this, beyond all thought and feeling and imagination, there is an inner sanctuary into which we scarcely ever enter. It is the ground or substance of the sould, where all the faculties have their roots, and which is the very centre of our being. It is here that the soul is at all times in direct contact with God. For behing all the phenomena of the world, behind the sights and sounds, behind the forms and energies of nature, there is the ever active presence of God, which sustains them in their being and moves them to act."

Norris' "Emily in Choir"

2006-11-29T11:07:00.000-08:00

One of the great joys of coming to the Ecumenical Institute is following in the footsteps of those scholars who have preceded me. One of my favorites is the poet and novelist, Kathleen Norris, whose book, Cloister Walk, was largely written while here. Along with Annie Lamott, Norris is at the top of my list for trying to help students understand something of the permutations of the spiritual journey. As I walked through the cold to Evening Prayer, I was reminded of her poem, "Emily in Choir," which captures something of a child's perspective of a worship service and always reminds me how my own daughters have taught me much about the character of God. Here is Norris' take:

"Emily holds her father's hand,
she dances in place
through the Invitatory
and refuses the book with no pictures
'This is boring,' she whispers,
in the silence between psalms.

Candles lit in honor of the guardian angels
make rivers of air that bend the stone
walls of the abbey church. 'Why are the men
wearing costumes?' Emily asks.
'They're the brothers,' her father
explains, and Emily says, 'Well!
They must have a very strict mother!'

The Grave is strict, says another Emily;
Emily here and now plays with the three
shadows her hands make
on the open page. While the clergyman
tells Father and Vinnie that 'this Corruptible
shall put on Incorruption,' it has already done so
and they go defrauded.

Brimful of knowledge, Emily shakes my arm:
'They're the monks!' she says,
'The men who sing,' and she runs
up the aisle, out into the day.

to where the angels are:
In the name of the Bee--
And of the Butterfly--
And of the Breeze--Amen!"

Kathleen Norris, Journey (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2001), 116.

Learning to Live in the In-Between Places

2006-11-29T05:44:00.000-08:00

Today, the seniors back at Greenville are teaching the rest of the campus about the problems of poverty at home and abroad. Some have focused on the global issues of wealth distribution, clean water, and agricultural development--particularly in countries like Rwanda (where we have a college presence). Others have chosen to focus on the local context--the county ministerial alliance, a near-by shelter for battered women, the public education system. Having read Ron Sider's classic, Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger, my hope is that students have captured both something of the complexity of the problem as well as the hope that the gospel of Christ can bring to bear on specific cultural issues.

In choir at Morning Prayer today we read from that wonderful canticle of Hannah in 1 Samuel 2 where the "upside-down" revolution promised by a just and holy God brings an eschatalogical vision of what might yet be. It was this same hope that permeated all of the leading characters in the Gospel of Luke's opening chapters. Each of them is found waiting and hoping--from Elizabeth who desires a child to Simeon who longs to see the advent of the Lord. "Now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace," he is able to say at long last, while we are told that the child in Elizabeth's womb (John the Baptist) leaps for joy when she hears Mary's good news.

The difficulty for most of us is that we either confine the coming of God to "pie in the sky, in the sweet bye and bye," or we expect it to be completed today. Advent beckons us to live in the "already, but not yet" of expectancy--neither giving in to the pessimism that pervades so many that nothing can happen this side of glory or the militancy that insists on immediate change. Learning to live in that liminal place is perhaps the biggest challenge that faces the Christian community.

But, nonetheless, my prayers are with the seniors today (including my own daughter who has labored passionately on her project). I pray that they will not forget all that they have learned nor abandon their passion when the going gets tough. Most of all, I pray that they will be willing to learn to live in the "in-between" places of which Advent speaks, where we come to understand something not only of the heart of God but about both the pain and hope that pervade Kingdom work.

Ruminations Sparked by a Fire

2006-11-28T05:38:00.000-08:00

The recent news of a tragic fire that swept through the Guest House in Anderson, Missouri, has set me to reminiscing about the times I made my way through that little town with my family. Nestled snuggly in the southwest corner of the state, Anderson feeds old Highway 71 down to meet the winding Missouri/Arkansas #59 which snakes its way into the cliffs of Noel, finally emptying out onto the Ozark heights of northwestern Arkansas. When I was a kid, Anderson was one of the first spots in the road with much light as we made our way north from Arkansas headed towards my grandparents' home. Later, when I had my own family, they would groan not to take that winding road--despite the nostalgia I associated with it.

Unfortunately, the early word is that there is a possibility of arson associated with the blaze that claimed ten lives so far--nine residents of the home for the mentally ill and disabled and one brave worker who did his best to save some of his charges. Because the reading for today from one of my books is written by Henri Nouwen, I am reminded afresh and anew of all that these special children of God have to teach us. This morning, numerous families who had given family members over to the care of this institution are in mourning. Perhaps there is even a sharper grief in realizing that those who are so helpless were caught up in such a conflagration.

Because both my father and grandfather were small town pastors, they made regular rounds to this type of institution--oftentimes taking me along. I remember sometimes being scared by the aged or infirm, but I also remember the sense of being "special" in their midst. I fear we have done seniors and those who struggle with mental illness an injustice by denying them contact with the young. When I pastored in Toronto, I would oftentimes take my own young daughters with me, following the model that had been set for me. They, too, learned to open up and receive the hugs of those who were so hungry for human contact.

As we prepare to enter the Advent season, we will thrill to the promises of a faithful God--particularly to the "anawim," the pious poor, and especially to the marginalized. In our culture those who fight the stigmas of mental illness or physical disability are oftentimes confined to the margins of our society, warehoused away from those considered more "normal." Our embracing them as a significant part of our culture is not just about justice for them, it is also about our need to be changed. We, perhaps, need them as much, if not more, than they need us. We need them to teach us about the expansiveness of the love of God and the depth of our own need. Though the Anderson Guest House is no more, there are plenty of other places that could use the warmth of a visit by those of us who need to be reminded again of just what the Advent of our Lord is really all about.

Giving Thanks

2006-11-27T06:37:00.000-08:00

Being away from home for a period of time has the advantage of making one appreciate it even more. Such, at least, was the case for me over the last few days as I journeyed from Minnesota back to Greenville. Not only did I enjoy the usual repast of turkey, dressing, sweet potato casserole, vegetables of assorted varieties, and pies to make the mouth water, but especially the company of my wife and daughters in our recently-acquired brick home at our relatively-new dining room table. As I thought about all of those people in worn-torn countries around the world (especially the children whose eyes break your heart), it was clear that we who have so much need to engage in not only giving thanks, but also giving of ourselves and our resources.

Making the trip on Tuesday and Sunday proved to be an adventure in and of itself. Special kudos go to Northwest Airlines who checked me in quickly and professionally. Security checks in Minneapolis were fast, friendly, and efficient, while St. Louis kept us moving with far fewer TSA personnel. Flying to St. Louis I was surrounded by three returning deer hunters who had had far too much to drink. As they fought over the stewardess' last beer and drooled over the female passengers, I was glad that it was a short flight. Coming back, I was surrounded by young children, most of whom did fairly well, given the circumstances. The "Bad Dad" award goes to a young man caught up in his own video games while his daughter banged a singing, dancing Elmo against the tray table. By the end of the flight I was wishing one of those drunk hunters could take out Elmo (whose high-pitched voice for hours on end could profitably be put to better use in interrogating potential terrorists!).

As I returned to the familiarity of the choir at St. John's this morning and the faces of my fellow sabbaticants, it occurred to me just how much I have to give thanks for: for a loving wife, who supports me on this semester-long sabbatical; for children who love God and are committed to the classroom as a place for shaping young lives; for friends who are truly "kindred spirits" here at St. John's and back in Greenville; for work that gives meaning to life and offers privileges most will never know; for economic well-being and a new home to use for Kingdom purposes; for students who encourage and often surprise me with their insights; and, for the God above who has taken me down roads I could never have imagined and given to one from humble origins experiences never to be forgotten. For all of this, and more, I give thanks.