Tuesday, March 29, 2005

antiphrasis

during my freshman year of college i was walking one friday evening with another freshman. we were lamenting "the sorry state of the church," when she spat out, "if Jesus could only see what the church has become, he'd turn over in his grave!"

as the words slipped out of her mouth, she clapped her hands over her mouth with horror.

i've fondly remembered her unintentional antiphrasis my whole life and it's been one of my favorites. yesterday a colleague emailed me a new one (this time intentional, I'm sure):

"Dear Rick,
Hope Easter didn't leave you dead!"

i love it!!

the Lord be with you,

Sunday, March 27, 2005

unless we too have risen

So many people claim to believe in the Resurrection, and yet it means so little to them. It has no effect in their lives. It is not enough to celebrate Easter and say “Christ is risen!” Indeed, it is useless to proclaim it at all, unless at the same time we can say that we too have risen.

- C. F. Blumhardt

Saturday, March 26, 2005

triduum

an old friend from the past recently told me of some creative things they were trying in his congregation (of which i once was part, long ago) to try to make Good Friday meaningful.

i was tempted to say, "oh give it up, and discover the incredible power in the ancient and classic liturgies!" fortunately, i resisted.

after going through Maundy Thursday, the Way of the Cross, and the Solemn Liturgy of Good Friday, i was exhausted. i really didn't want to get up and go the Holy Saturday service this morning. and part of me secretly wishes that Jesus had waited a few more days to rise again, as myself, by soul and body, isn't quite sure it's up to the Great Vigil tonight.

and then it struck me -- "duh... how appropriate."

if these liturgies were really about thrilling us, about inspiring us, then certainly, we should do much less, and come to fewer services but experience more pizazz. but what if the point were not to thrill and inspire us? what if the point were to help us seriously try to walk with and connect with Jesus through HIS experience rather than ours?

beginning with the Last Supper, he moved, relentlessly, exhaustingly, from encounter to enounter until He cried out "It is finished." there was no inspiration, no glory. only relentless confrontation, exhaustion, horror, and pain. perhaps the closest i will ever get to understanding something of what He experienced, short of the cat'o'nine tails, the fists, the chains, the nails, and the suffocation, will be to press on, relentlessly, from encounter to encounter.

i wonder if that would catch on in american churches: less pizazz / more pain?

probably not.

the Lord be with you.

Friday, March 25, 2005

alert parishioners - woo hoo!

an alert parishioner sent me a link to an essay reflecting on the stark contrast between our "culture according to hallmark" and the culture of the cross. imagine, it suggests, hallmark trying to write a Good Friday card :

because he bled and died,
we’re all choked up inside.
it’s not a lovely day,
but i still hope you’re okay.

wishing you and yours a joyless, grave,
and yet oddly hopeful Good Friday.

read the whole article here: Good Friday: The Holiday Hallmark Can't Handle by David Rensberger--Jesus Christians suffering Easter cross

what do you think? should i use memorize the poem for our Good Friday liturgies today? hmmmm, i think not

the Lord be with you

who would have guessed?

the usual news clips during Holy Week tend, in my experience to be sickeningly sentimentalist, or blandly dismissive. i don't know whether its worse to see overt weeping over the Virgin Mary's fuzzy (and european! face) in the scorch marks on a pancake, or to hear the typical remarks about how "scholars doubt the existance of _____ (fill in the blank)."

so imagine my surprise to pick up this week's newsweek magazine and find an even-handed, well-stated, and historically based reflection on the resurrection -- that was neither sentimentalist nor dismissive.

here's the link article: it's well worth reading. don't forget to see the video clip titled "mercy and forgiveness" by jon meacham. the concluding paragraph is weak, but the clip as a whole is surprisingly good. click here for newsweek article


the Lord be with you.

Thursday, March 24, 2005

renewals

renewals of various forms, spiritual, liturgical, and others, pop up from time to time in the life and history of the church. in answer to a recent question about the Great Vigil of Easter, i was recalling the liturgical renewal in the '50's that led not only to the restoration of the Great Vigil, but also the restoration of the ancient Baptismal covenant, and even to the restoration of the Holy Eucharist as the primary act of worship on the Lord's Day.

so reflecting on liturgical renewal put me into a mind to reflect on renewal in general. and it occurs to me that we are in the midst of yet another renewal. not so much spiritual or liturgical, but missional.

even that word "missional" is a relatively new word in our usage. the post-modern, emergent churches seem to love that word. at least their writers use it a lot. and i discovered that it has crept into my own vocabulary, unnoticed, until some people i know objected to my using a term they had never heard before. they objected to arcane jargon -- an objection with which i greatly sympathize.

so i began trying to dump the word from my vocabulary, as i generally try to do with any words that sound like jargon.

but now i am wondering. is it really jargon? what if its appearance hints that something wonderful is arising -- a deep and broad renewal in the church's awareness of its own mission?

i remember as a young Christian being told that "vocation" meant call to ministry. so, being the young sponge that i was, i absorbed that understanding. until i eventually expelled it because i knew it wasn't true. yes, we were given mission, but our primary vocation was clearly larger than our mission. i slowly became aware that our purpose in life had less to do with what we do than with how we connect to God. i came to believe that our primary vocation is to deepen our experience of the presence of God.

which led me to question how mission and ministry relates to vocation. and i began to believe these three things:
1) our ministry to others is an expression both of our humanity, created in the image of God, and of our union with Christ: His pouring himself out for others in love is expressed through us as we pour ourselves out for others in love. what that specific ministry turns out to be is always secondary (because it is an expression of our primary vocation: knowing God).

2) our ministry to others is also an essential spiritual discipline: we deepen in our dependency on Christ and our experience of God in our lives by means of and through our ministry to others. What that specific ministry turns out to be is always secondary (because it is a means to accomplish our primary vocation: knowing God}.

3) finally, our circumstances, our external realities, "the story we find ourselves in", is not so much a barrier to vocation as it is part of the particular setting in which we, as particular persons, discover and work out our faith. that is, our circumstances are the setting for the play. our external realities are the stage and the props, not the plot or characters.

and herein lies the renewing of mission: mission and ministry isn't merely something that a good Christian should do, like taking their trash after worship rather than littering the pew rack. rather, if it is truly an expression of our humanity and our union with God, then mission is essential to being a Christian, perhaps in the way that being wet is essential to the ocean. and we escape from the notion of ministry as being something that better, more dedicated, more spiritual Christians do, in contrast to loser Christians. and we further escape from the notion that ministry is somehow helping out the clergy or the institution. mission and ministry is related to our very being.

and, if is an essential spiritual discipline, then we encounter once again the "self/other" paradox: that loving others becomes the means by which i give myself the best kind of self care.

and, if our external realities are merely "the story we find ourselves in," then mission and ministry are not hampered by our circumstances ("i'd like to get involved in ministry, but i just can't right now because of...."). rather, those circumstances are the setting given to us by the Great Playwrite, the Great Director, and the Great Producer, who as kierkegaard observes, happens also to be the Great Audience. which means that the circumstances don't determine whether we have mission or ministry. rather, it is within these very circumstances that we have mission and ministry. we don't have to overcome or circumvent or resolve our particular realities before discovering our mission and ministry. rather it is within our particular realities that God expects us to sing and dance.

after all: the play's the thing. so on with the show.

the Lord be with you.

Wednesday, March 23, 2005

Holy Week

no other tree ever bore such fruit.

the Lord be with you.

Monday, March 14, 2005

Annemarie Wächter

from Wächter's letters and diaries:

what i am looking for is a life lived in the spirit of the kingdom of God. and that kingdom is not a vague, faraway ideal; it must be lived and fulfilled now, today... there will never be social justice as long as we merely give up a small part of our possessions and keep the greater share for ourselves. doesn’t every person have the right to such a life? is there not in every one a longing for light, for God, however hidden?

obviously it will demand a struggle against one’s selfish human nature; against the comforts of self-satisfied tranquility. such a life requires the readiness for sacrifice, privation, and even martyrdom. christ died on a cross, and his death did not relieve us of the necessity of going the same way. it was an example for us to follow.

i am so tired of today's sweetly gushing Christianity; of false enthusiasm and empty phrases! but I am also thankful to have found a knowledge of the burden and bitterness of Christ’s way. it is a way of conviction and faith and therefore of action, and that is what makes all the difference.

Saturday, March 12, 2005

random abstract

"be not afraid of going slowly; be afraid of standing still."


"those who ask a question are fools but for a moment; those who do not ask remain fools forever"


"those who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it."


"an evil word whispered echos a hundred miles"

-- sources unknown

the Lord be with you

Tuesday, March 08, 2005

public danger

"I believe it to be a great mistake to present Christianity as something charming and popular with no offense in it....We cannot blink at the fact that gentle Jesus meek and mild was so stiff in his opinions and so inflammatory in his language that he was thrown out of church, stoned, hunted from place to place, and finally gibbeted as a firebrand and a public danger. Whatever his peace was, it was not the peace of an amiable indifference."

Dorothy Sayers, Creed or Chaos, Sophia Press, 1949, 1974, pg. 41

Saturday, March 05, 2005

i confess

somewhere deep within i want to be both holy and classy.

unfortunately, i'm not.

one man wrote a letter to the vestry urging them not to call me to be the rector. most of his arguments had a grain of truth to them, but only a grain. yet i confess that one point was dead on. he described my public style as "embarrassing." sad as it is, i have to agree with him.

the truth is, i'm the sort of guy who just loves to watch buster keaton and charlie chaplin slapstick. which is probably why i love to watch the one penguin knock the other penguin into the cold, snowy water.



the lord be with you,

Sunday's Sermon: "The Blind Man's Story"

The Blind Man’s Story: John 9.1-38


Look at you. Just look at you.

To me, just seeing you there is a pleasure. Seeing anybody is a pleasure to me, because not too long ago, I could see nobody -- nothing. I was blind. In fact, I was born blind. What a pitiful sight I was.

Day after day, early in the morning, my poor old father would lead me to the temple, and he would leave me there alone, to beg for pennies while he worked to support us all day long. At night, he would come back exhausted, and he would lead me home. All those years; I had never even seen my own father.

I used to sit outside the temple, in one of the gates, and beg pennies from those who came to worship. Many people would feel guilty and hope to buy off God’s anger toward them by dropping money into my cup.

Then one Sabbath day, I heard a group of people coming out of the temple together. I heard them stop near me, and I began to feel strange. You know the feeling -- when you feel someone looking at you. I could feel their eyes – the whole group had stopped and were just looking at me, without saying a word.

After a while, one of them cleared his throat, and started talking. But he wasn’t talking to me -- he was talking about me. As if I were just some object on the road. As if I were deaf as well as blind. He said, “Rabbi, who sinned? This man or his parents that he should be born blind?”

Now with this, I started to listen closely. I knew I had done nothing wrong before I was born! But I have always wondered what my parents had done that was so bad that I would be born into the miserable condition as a result.

Then -- then came the Voice. At first the voice was irritated. “Neither this man nor his parents!”
But then, the voice became gentle. My heart began to beat fast as he said, “he was born blind so that the works of God could be displayed in him. “

I don’t know how to describe it. It was a strong voice, a certain voice, but such a loving voice. I don’t know why he should care about me. I had never spoken to him. I didn’t know who he was. In fact, I didn’t really care. But somehow, he seemed to be interested in me, even though I could not have cared less about him. Yet something was about to happen. I could feel it coming. I could almost taste it… a scent in the air. Something… something… and all of a sudden there were hands on me, and somebody was rubbing mud into my eyes. He said he was the light of the world -- and he rubbed mud in my eyes! Then he told me to go wash in the pool of Siloam.

Now this is crazy! Here I am a blind man, and some stranger comes up and rubs mud in my eyes, and tells me to go all the way down to the south end of the city to wash! I could barely find my way home without my father’s help. If I went off alone by myself I was liable to get lost or robbed or trampled by the crowds or animals. Why couldn’t I just wash in one of the temple fountains? More importantly, why did he have to rub mud in my eyes in the first place?

But here’s the thing. The way he stopped to look at me on his way out of the temple. The way he spoke when he said that the works of God would be displayed in me. I don’t know, it was crazy! Yet I felt he could be trusted. I felt that I could trust him. So, I did.

So I got up, and felt my way of all the way to the Pool of Siloam. Don’t ask me why. I don’t know. All the way to the pool, I kept asking myself, “why did he stop? Why was he interested in me?” and yet, I felt that I had to obey him. That to trust him was the most important thing in the world.

I found out later that he’d been in the temple having a big fight with the Pharisees. He had said to them that he was the light of the world, and that anyone who followed him would experience the light of eternal life. The Pharisees wouldn’t believe him, and even tried to kill him for blasphemy. You see, he was telling them that intimacy with God was offered by God to all people – and yet many people, the Gentiles, the sinners, the lame and the blind were being turned away from the temple gates. Jesus welcomed all people into intimacy with himself, and said that through intimacy with him, they would find intimacy with God. That’s what he meant when he said that he was the light of the world. The temple no longer was. He said that by following him, the light of knowing God personally could into the hearts of people – all people – any person – even me.

But the Pharisees wouldn’t believe him, so when he came out of the temple, he proved that he was the light of the world. You see he came to me, a man not allowed into the temple because he was blind. He said he was the light of the world, and he came to a man in darkness. He said that God’s work would be done in me. And he rubbed mud in my eyes and he sent me to the pool.

And I washed.

And, I see. I see!

They say that seeing is believing. But I tell you, I believed first. And then I saw.

The people who knew me could hardly believe it. Would you? Some even said I wasn’t I, that it was someone else who just looked like me!

Finally, they brought me to the Pharisees. The Pharisees kept asking me what happened, and I kept telling them that some man had brought light to my eyes. This only seemed to make them angry. You would have thought that they would have been glad that God was doing great works among us. But they weren’t glad. They were only angry.

Some of them said that it couldn’t have been the work of God, because God could not work miracles on the Sabbath. I guess that was because they knew their own Sabbath sermons even put God to sleep. In the end, they finally just said that I was a liar, and that I had never been blind at all. They had walked past me day after day as they passed through the temple gates – walked right past me, yet they had never noticed me. It was as if they were blind rather than I. They refused to believe that God had done a miracle. Why couldn’t they see?

One of them decided to try to prove I was lying, so they went and got my parents. My parents were scared to death. They had heard and seen how much the Pharisees hated Jesus, and they were afraid. They were so scared that they did nothing more than admit that I was their son and I had been born blind. Nobody wants to get involved anymore -- not even my own parents.

Well this only made matters worse. The Pharisees were really mad at me now. They called me in for a second hearing. But this time, instead of asking for information, they kept trying to get me to change my story. They tried to make me say that God had not worked in me

As they continued to give me the third degree, I thought about it. No matter what they said, I had been born blind, and now, because Jesus stopped and interfered in my life, I could see. Jesus had opened my eyes. Think about that! No man had ever done that before! Not even one of the prophets ever made a man see who had been born blind. So the prophets were from God, how much more of God’s power must Jesus have?

I the man born blind could see that Jesus was from God, why couldn’t the others?

Since the beginning of time it is never been heard that anyone had opened the eyes of a man born blind. Believe me I have checked into that. Obviously, this man was from God, or to he could not have had that kind of power. So I said this. And that was when the Pharisees really lost all patience. They threw me out of the court, and they excommunicated me. They just wouldn’t see.

Well, there I was. Out in the street.

Oh, what a beautiful street! The sky, the animals, the people… the people. Who was that person looking at me?

He came over to me. He touched me. He spoke. That voice! I remember that voice! That was the voice that had spoken to me before! And now he was speaking again, but this time I could see him! He said to me, “do you believe in the son of man?” The son of man? Daniels messiah?

My heart raced inside of me. “Who is he, sir, that I may put my trust in him?”

Jesus smiled and looked into my clear, open eyes. “You have both seen him and he is the one talking with you.”

And for the second time that day, my blindness left me. I could see. Jesus is the light of the world. First, he had brought physical light into my eyes, but now, as I placed my trust in him completely, the blindness of my heart totally disappeared. I could see the light of eternal life. I have come to know the God who loved even me.

“Lord, I believe!” And I worshipped Jesus.

Tuesday, March 01, 2005

no music

Lorenzo:

"But music for the time doth change his nature.
The man that hath no music in himself,
Nor is not mov'd with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils;
The motions of his spirit are dull as night,
And his affections dark as Erebus.
Let no such man be trusted. Mark the music."

from The Merchant of Venice V:1
William Shakespeare