Jonah was angry

 Jonah was angry.

Angry enough to die.

God had sent Jonah to preach repentance to Nineveh, and Jonah didn’t like it one bit.

Jonah said no. Jonah ran the other direction. And God drafted Jonah anyway.

And so reluctantly, against his will, Jonah preached God’s message to Nineveh: Repent, or God will destroy your city in forty days.

This most successful of prophets declared God’s word, and miraculously, Nineveh listened. Miraculously, Nineveh obeyed. Miraculously, Nineveh declared a fast, and asked for God’s forgiveness.

And miraculously, God forgave.

God forgave even Nineveh. God forgave even Nineveh, capital of the Assyrian Empire, the slaughterer of the lost tribes of Israel.

And Jonah was angry.

Angry enough to die.

How could God forgive Nineveh?

Nineveh! Forgiven? Impossible.

Jonah wasn’t frustrated.

Jonah wasn’t confused.

Jonah wasn’t petty.

Jonah was furious.

Jonah was livid.

Angry enough to die.

What good was a God that would forgive *Nineveh*?

Jonah was angry with the fury of the oppressed.

Jonah was angry with the fury of someone who has been treated as less than human.

Jonah was angry with the fury of someone whose family had been torn apart.

Jonah was angry with the fury of someone whose loved ones had been killed or left to die.

Jonah was angry with the fury of someone whose culture, whose people had been annihilated.

The fury Jonah had at the Assyrians was only matched by the fury Jonah had at God for suggesting that the Assyrians could be forgiven. The idea that Nineveh, capital of the Assyrian empire – Nineveh, inventor of tactics for imperial genocide – Nineveh, scourge of the Fertile Crescent – Nineveh, who killed and culturally erased the Kingdom of Israel, who singlehandedly caused the “lost tribes of Israel” to be Lost – the idea that Nineveh could repent – and be forgiven – this was too much for Jonah to bear.

What good is God’s justice if it doesn’t condemn a genocidal killer like Nineveh?

What good is God’s anger if it fails to be aroused against so thorough an evil?

What good is the wrath of God if it fails to smite this sadistic tormentor of an empire that slaughters God’s people and obliterates God’s chosen kingdom?

What good is such a God if in this moment of consequence, God fails to condemn the evildoer?

How could God’s presence be welcoming to the oppressed if God so willingly welcomes the oppressors?

The story of Jonah is set before the fall of the Northern Kingdom, but it was written afterward. God had planned, had promised to destroy Nineveh for its wickedness, but when Jonah begrudgingly preached repentance, Nineveh repented, and God turned aside the destruction planned for Nineveh.

What was the cost of Nineveh being spared? How many victims of genocide would have survived if Nineveh had been destroyed? Would the Northern Kingdom have not fallen? Would the lost tribes not be lost? Judaism is called Judaism today because of the twelve tribes, only the tribe of Judah remains. Nineveh caused the very name and identity of God’s chosen people to be altered to a tiny subset of where it started. What kind of God can truly forgive Nineveh? What does it mean to worship such a God? Can God hear the cries of the oppressed and still pardon the oppressor?

Jonah was angry with the fury of the oppressed at a God whose divine inclusiveness left Jonah out in the blazing heat, unwilling to embrace a God who could embrace evildoers and oppressors, even if they allegedly repented.

This is the story of how reconciliation begins.

This is the story of how redemption begins.

This is the story of how we begin to remember how to love.

This isn’t the end.

God’s wrath is turned back in this story, but this isn’t the fullness of salvation. Not for Nineveh. Not for Jonah. This story is only the beginning. The pause in wrath, the pause in judgment that opens the door for transformation.

Nineveh fasted. They acknowledged their evil. They turned to God.

God didn’t say all is well. God didn’t say the effects of their sin were taken away. What happened here is an opening. In acknowledging their guilt, in acknowledging the evil they were capable of, God finds a crack in the armor the Assyrians build around their hearts. The briefest of openings, a way in for God. The very beginning of transformation.

Enough for God to say that there is something to work with. Enough for God to conclude that Nineveh’s destruction is not the only possible solution. If Nineveh is capable of a moment of repentance, there is room for God to work. If Nineveh is capable of a moment of repentance, there is hope for even us.

Jonah is not wrong about Nineveh’s evil. The road to their sanctification is very very very long. All is not well because of this one decision by the King of Nineveh.

Neither Jonah nor the Assyrians were ready to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.

Jonah needed healing. Jonah cannot enter into the Kingdom of Heaven until he can forgive, and he cannot forgive until he can heal. Until he can see himself as the fully human member of a family and culture and nation that the Assyrians denied he was. Jonah’s anger is his soul speaking the truth: the Assyrian degradation of their conquered peoples is wrong, and the core of our being ought to cry out in protest against the dehumanization led by Nineveh. That anger declares a truth: the marginalized, the dehumanized, the oppressed, the downtrodden are beloved children of God, and any empire that treats them as less than this is profoundly wrong, profoundly not okay. That anger has to speak its truth: when we dehumanize God’s beloved children, we rend the very fabric of the universe, and if these voices were silenced, the very stones would cry out. Jonah cannot enter into the Kingdom of Heaven until he can forgive, but expressing and not repressing this anger is a vital step on the road to forgiveness. Victims of violence and oppression must declare their angry truth that despite the empire treating them as if their lives count for nothing, the lives of each marginalized, discounted child of God matter.

Any healing, any reconciliation, any sanctification, any salvation for the oppressor must include a thorough conversion to affirm from the core of their being that those they discounted as acceptable collateral damage in maintaining the well-oiled cogs of the imperial machine are, in fact, lives that matter: beloved children of God and not inconvenient obstacles to wealth and order or means of expansion of wealth or power. Nineveh’s redemption and our own begins, not ends, with acknowledging that the carefully planned violence of their empire is supremely wicked and utterly foreign to the will of God, as every empire is. There is a long road ahead of us still if we are to turn from our wicked ways, and then to make amends. There is a long road ahead for the people of Nineveh if we are to convert to believe that the lives of conquered people matter. And it is an unlikely road for us to travel. Our power, their wealth, our existence as an empire depends on the people of Nineveh sharing widespread belief that the people they conquer are means to the end of the wealth and power and way of life of the city of Nineveh, and not fully human children of God whose lives count just as much as those of the imperial race. Accepting a conversion that threatens our very way of life is no easy task. But without it, Nineveh’s moment of repentance, their fast, their brief turn to God will all amount to nothing.

God longs to reconcile all people, to restore all creation to the presence of God. And yet within the chapters of this story, neither Jonah nor Nineveh are ready to dwell together in the new earth ruled from the new heaven that God is creating. Both Jonah and Nineveh, both trespassed and trespasser, both sinned against and sinner need conversion, transformation, and reconciliation before they can dwell together in the Kingdom of God.

We are both Jonah and Nineveh in this story, and the book of Jonah doesn’t give us a happy ending for either. Jonah did not forgive by the end of the book. Nineveh repented in the book but went on to persist in their destructive ways. 

Jonah’s anger is real and necessary, but it can’t be the end of the story if the story is to lead to redemption. Nineveh’s repentance is real and necessary, but it can’t be the end of the story if the story if to lead to redemption. Anger must be followed by truth, healing, and ultimately reconciliation, if not in this world then in the next to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven. Repentance must lead to amendment of life, penitence, atonement, and reconciliation, again, if not in this world then in the next, or we cannot enter into the Kingdom of God. But this story gives both the oppressor and the unforgiving the hope that no matter how much any of us are resistant to God’s redemptive project, no matter how much we resent those who have wronged us, no matter how much we persist in our sin and go on failing to recognize the full humanity of those we would write off as expendable – the only sign Jesus has to give us is the sign of Jonah, the sign that God is more persistent than we are stubborn. In the end, we put our hope in God’s steadfastness. Amen.

Well done, good and faithful servants

 Last week I told you about Ezekiel and I told you how terrifying it is to preach, because if God calls upon me to speak out against the demons and if I fail to do so then woe be unto me! My job as priest, terrifyingly, often calls upon me to speak on behalf of God. This is a fearsome thing to be called upon to do, to proclaim a message from God Almighty. And it's a role I'm still growing into. I had only been a priest for a few weeks when I was sent to you. One hard thing for me about this pandemic has been the fact that until March, I've had Bill by my side for almost every Eucharist I've ever celebrated. I had to learn quickly what to do without Bill and the rest of our amazing Altar Guild setting everything up and without Bill making sure everything appears in the right place at the right time. I'm still growing into my role as priest, as a man of unclean lips among a people of unclean lips, as Isaiah put it, who is nonetheless called upon to proclaim the word of God.

In our tradition, there are three messages from God we specifically reserve for priests to deliver, the ABCs of sacerdotal or priestly ministry. Absolution, blessing, and consecration. Absolution: your sins + are forgiven; go in peace. Blessing: the blessing of God Almighty, Father, + Son, and Holy Spirit be among you and remain with you always. And consecration: take, eat: this is my body, given for you. I don't forgive your sins; God does that. I don't bless you; God does that. I don't make bread and wine into the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ; God does that. But as a priest, I'm called to speak on behalf of God from time to time: to declare to you the good news that God has wrought in our midst. God forgives you. God blesses you. God is present with you in flesh and blood. I don't make these happen. I'm not forgiving or blessing or consecrating. I'm just the messenger.

Our lessons today are powerful stories about forgiveness and its importance. Hear them. Read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them. But unusually, today’s lessons are not what God is calling me to preach about today. 

Instead, I need to proclaim a different message today. Last week I had to talk about the false gods in our midst, the demons that can lead us astray. That warning is real, and the demons that turn us from love are real and dangerous. But today, on this rather dark anniversary, I have more cheerful news to proclaim to you. I stand before you as your priest to declare God's blessing: well done, good and faithful servants. Well done.

This is hard to believe, but it’s been half a year now since this crazy crisis began here and the world as we knew it stopped. It’s been an unimaginable six months that we have not been able to do almost ANYTHING in quite the way we’ve been accustomed to doing it as a church. Despite this, St. Paul’s has been able to continue its ministry through this Coronatide.  The world still needs our prayer and service, perhaps more than ever. These past six months have been a challenge, but this congregation has risen to the demands of our day and proclaimed the good news to a world that needs to hear it in ways that we might not have dreamt of a mere six months ago. I certainly hadn’t.

It wouldn’t have happened without a lot of people practicing their faith in all sorts of ways, some of them new and quite unanticipated, using their gifts to advance the kingdom of God. A lot of the people practicing their faith in all these varied ways don’t like attention called to them, so I’m not going to name names. But the canons call upon faithful Christians to work, pray, and give for the spread of the Kingdom of God, and we’ve seen so, so many examples of people stretching outside the bounds of the familiar to do just that. And I personally want to say think you, because your faith in action inspires me. The ways I see people in this church living our their faith teaches me what I can aspire to and hope for in my own life of faith. We are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses, and brothers and sisters, you are all among those witnesses.

First of all, people stepped up with praying. We’ve had a greater number of people at services in half a year since the pandemic hit than we have in many entire years. For a while we had daily services, praying for the sick, the dying, the dead, the front line workers, the mourning, the lonely, the fearful, those making decisions, and those in need. We’ve gathered electronically in ways none of us ever expected to try. We’ve had outdoor gatherings in person without our beloved music and worship space. We’ve tried to learn new technologies and new ways of gathering. People have stepped up as readers and offered their prayers. To everyone who has been praying, thank you.

Secondly, people found safe ways to keep up the physical work of maintaining our church and garden and grounds. Christians here have practiced their faith by tending to the lawn and the gardens and even the building. Plumbing has been fixed, surfaces have been sterilized, vegetables have been planted and watered and weeded and harvested and delivered, grass has been mowed, trees have been trimmed – and all of this has been done by people here practicing their faith. Thank you for showing me how trimming trees and mounding potatoes and wiping door handles and mowing grass is all prayer.

Third, people have found ways to continue our call to serve others. One spectacularly unrewarding but essential form of service is everything everyone has done to reduce the spread of disease. Staying home might not feel like a heroic act of love and service, but you do now know how many lives you may have saved by eliminating inessential contact. Difficultly, for many of you, that meant refraining even from ministries at the church that had to take a fallow season. That wasn’t what Milton had in mind when he said, “They also serve who only stand and wait,” but it is nonetheless true. Standing and waiting to slow the spread of disease has been a form of love of neighbor and service to the world. But your service did not stop there. When I’ve talked to people, I’ve heard stories about how people from this congregations have been checking in on people in need. How you’ve helped people move and get to appointments and stay connected. I know about your outreach to Grace House despite the fact that we couldn’t travel there this summer. I know that people have demonstrated to support people of color in our community. I know people have read and joined discussions to better inform themselves about issues afflicting the world, and some of you have recommended things for me to read too. I know what you’ve done to continue to serve Samaritan House. Your generosity in caring for each other and all people even at risk to your own health. I know some of what you’ve done to encourage one another. And I know how discreet so many of you try to be in this service, so I don’t even know how much I don’t know about. But God does. To everyone who has continued in our call to work in service to the world in so many ways during this pandemic, thank you for both your service and your example. Don’t hide your lamp under a bushel basket; let it shine.

And fourth, somehow through all this craziness, through loss of normal settings for employment and school and even friendship, through disruptions of every sort and turmoil in financial markets, the church bank account has remained solvent. That isn’t miraculous manna from heaven; that happened because of people’s diligence and generosity and commitment. People continued to send in their pledges and contributions, despite multiple changes in procedures. People stepped up when they could with new particularly generous donations to address particular crises. Your faithful stewardship of the money God has entrusted to you has enabled the church to continue to pay its bills and serve this community. Thank you for your stewardship. Thank you for enabling this parish to continue its work.

As your priest, my job here today is to look back on our ministry over the past half a year in exile from the usual shape of our beloved community and proclaim to you God's blessing: Well done, good and faithful servants. For six months, you have labored faithfully in exile from normalcy. For six months, you have bourn witness to God’s love in a wounded world. You have been faithful ministers of the Gospel in this troubled time. I am not a prophet, nor a prophet's son (I’m not even a herdsman or dresser of sycamore trees). I have no word from God about the things to come. There are no signs for us to see; there is no prophet left; there is not one among us who knows how long this will go on. But you have been faithful for the past six months, and we have found a way to sing the Lord’s song upon alien circumstances. Now I call upon you to be faithful again going forward into the unknown ministry to which God calls us in the next chapters.

And so with the Psalmist, we pray:

Restore us, O God of hosts; *

show the light of your countenance, and we shall be saved.

You were once gracious to your land, O Lord, *

you restored the good fortune of Jacob. 

You forgave the iniquity of your people * 

and blotted out all their sins.

You withdrew all your fury *

and turned yourself from your wrathful indignation.

Restore **us** then, O God our Savior; * 

let your anger depart from us.

Will you be displeased with us for ever? *

will you prolong your anger from age to age?

Will you not give us life again, *

that your people may rejoice in you?

Show us your mercy, O Lord, * 

and grant us your salvation.

Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit

As it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever. 

Amen.

—

I will listen to what the Lord God is saying, * 

for he is speaking peace to his faithful people and to those who turn their hearts to him.

Truly, his salvation is very near to those who fear him, * 

that his glory may dwell in our land.

Mercy and truth have met together; * 

righteousness and peace have kissed each other.

Truth shall spring up from the earth, *

and righteousness shall look down from heaven.

The Lord will indeed grant prosperity, * 

and our land will yield its increase.

Righteousness shall go before him, *

and peace shall be a pathway for his feet.

False Gods of the American pantheon

This was one of the most intimidating weeks to write a sermon, because this reading from Ezekiel is downright terrifying, where it says if God calls someone to preach the word, and I don't say all the things that I'm supposed to say, then it's going to be my fault if you aren't redeemed. So if I leave out important things that I'm supposed to preach about, and all of you aren't redeemed because of it, then God is going to hold me personally accountable for it.

So I went through a lot of drafts of the sermon this week, because this is just a downright terrifying reading. Before you think, "Well good, that's his problem not ours," I hate to break it to you, but God is calling all of us to proclaim the good news to the people in our lives. If any of us are failing to deliver the message that God has for us, then we're all on the hook for not doing what God is asking us to do and not proclaiming the good news.

I'm actually going to start with the bad news. You might think, "Why is he starting with bad news; this is supposed to be about the good news." I do have to start with the challenging part, but I want to tell you that this is going to end in a place that we've been before. This is going to end where, as Linda read for us in the second reading today, it's really all about loving one another. That's going to be where we end up, but it's going to take a little bit time before we get there, so just be patient, but know that I'm not leading youon a wild goose chase here. We are talking about God's love, and that's that's where we've been, and that's where we're going.

I do need to start by talking about the fact that Ezekiel was sent to Israel to warn the people of Israel that they were worshiping false gods. It's really a sad thing, but in our society today there are some false gods that we tend to worship, and what's even worse is we worship these false gods and we call them Jesus.

We worship these false gods and we call them Jesus, but they're really not Jesus. They're really demons. They're really things that lead us away from loving one another. In our American pantheon of the gods that we worship here in the United States, I've got five of them, and I made a list and because you know, thanks to Ezekiel, I'm terrified of leaving things off the list here. So I've got five of them that I've come up with that we need to be careful of: five false gods of the American pantheon. When we worship them, it turns us away from loving our neighbor as ourself.

As Saint Paul reminds us in the letter to the Romans, "the one who the one who loves neighbor as himself fulfills the law. Love does no wrong to the neighbor, therefore love is the fulfillment of the law." So just keep that in mind here. We've got these five demons. There's probably others, but there are five that I that I came up with this week as we were praying over this that we need to make sure that we're not worshiping.

The first one on this list here is the demon of peace through strength. This is the Roman Empire in a nutshell: the world will be at peace when the powerful can crush anyone who would rise up against them. In the world, this can look like empire, and in our own country, this can come this can look like we're worshiping law and order. When we worship peace through strength, we're saying it's not love and service that is what leads us to salvation; it's crushing anybody who would disrupt things. Sometimes we call this "American Jesus" here. This is not really what Jesus was all about. Jesus died on the cross. Jesus was about vulnerability, and not peace through strength.

Now the second demon that we tend to worship is the demon of prosperity through wealth. How do we find our salvation? By making enough money. By saving enough money. And if we've stored up enough for ourselves, then we'll be okay. Then we can buy all the things that we need. This is the worship of mammon. Sometimes we call this "rich Jesus."  In this worldview, Jesus is smiling on us if we have wealth, and therefore we accumulate wealth, and then we know that we're in God's favor.

The third demon we need to watch out for is dominance through tribe. How do we make sure that we're okay? We make sure that our people are victorious. This could look like a particularly perverse form of patriotism. This could look like white supremacism. This demon claims that Jesus is one of our tribe, and not one of those people out there. We paint pictures of "White Jesus" and think they're the real thing. We've got to make sure that that's not what our faith leads us.

The fourth demon is demon of meaning through pleasure. Hedonism. If it feels good, do it. That's also something that can lead us astray from following Jesus, and it's all about just consuming things that make us happy, and not about service. Unfortunately (or fortunately, because it's real), love often involves doing things that don't make us immediately satisfied. Getting up in the middle of the night with somebody who's sick is not the most immediately satisfying and joyful thing in the world. It might be fulfilling. It's definitely an act of love, but it's not what most people would put on their list of, "What am I going to do on my ideal day? I think I'm going to get up in the middle of the night and help somebody who's not feeling well." Sometimes, though, that's exactly where love leads us. 

The fifth demon is the demon of salvation through our own efforts. We might call that "DIY Jesus" – Do it yourself Jesus. This is when we worship self-reliance, and we don't realize that we have to put our trust fully in God's grace.

So these five demons can lead us astray. These five demons are very present in our popular culture and, the problem with each of these five demons is that they turn us away from what Saint Paul tells us in the letter to the Romans: "Owe nothing to anyone, except to love one another, for the one who loves has fulfilled the law."

To love one another could look like lots of different things, but ultimately what it really means to love someone is to deeply desire that that person thrives, and lives, and lives abundantly. To really desire good for someone is to love them. If we really desire good for someone, then that's not just an opinion we have – "oh yeah, I hope good things happen to you." If we really desire it, if we really long for it, then it's going to shape our actions. So not only do we say, "oh yeah, we want that," but we act to make it happen. We act to try to promote the well-being of other people. When we act out of love then, as Saint Paul said to the Romans, "Love does no wrong to someone." Love means that we never desire ill for somebody. Jesus starts by telling us that we're supposed to love our friends our neighbors, but then it gets harder when he tells us that we're supposed to love our enemies too. We're supposed to desire good for everyone. We're supposed to work for the good for everyone. There's no one we can push aside and say, "Well, we don't care about that person. Well, they're not one of ours. Well, they're not the ones that we care about." We really need to desire. and work for the good of all humankind.

God didn't create us to be at each other's throats. God created us to live in love with one another, and when we do that – when we put on our Lord Jesus Christ instead of quarreling and jealousy – what we put on is the full armor of light. What that means is we are transformed into people of love. We are transformed into people whose instinctive action is to act in the interest of everyone. To act out of love for one another.

Now I don't know about you, but I'm not there yet. I'm working on it. There are some days I do a great job acting out of love for other people, and there are some days that I don't. But God has forgiven us for our sins, and God is actively working to transform us into people of the kingdom of heaven. Every time we do acts of service, we're practicing being a person of love. Every time we praise God, we're practicing being a person of love. Every time we practice singing, and sing our praise to God, we're practicing being a person of love. We're rehearsing for the kingdom of heaven, because we can't live in the new heaven and the new earth until we've been born anew in love. We can't live there as long as we are slave to sin. We can't live there as long as our actions and our desires aren't for the good of all others.

As long as we have a "them" in our mind that we don't want good for, there isn't room for us in the kingdom of heaven.

But the good news is, as Ezekiel, said the Lord God has no pleasure in the death of the wicked but wants the wicked to turn from their ways and live – and by live I don't just mean not physically die, because we're all going to physically die, but there's a resurrection coming. Death does not have the final word. When we're born anew in this resurrection, Jesus wants us to be resurrected so that we can live in the kingdom of heaven, and not resurrected but exiled from the kingdom of heaven: The resurrection of eternal death, where we're cast out. That's not what God wants for us. God wants us to be reconciled. To turn back from our evil ways, and embrace, as Saint Paul says to the Romans, love from one another. That is what we are called to be. That is what we are called to do.

God's grace gives us opportunity after opportunity to turn away from the demons that distract us from God and to embrace love. Tt takes practice, and then more practice, and then more practice, and maybe by the time we're done with this life we'll have it down. Maybe we'll still need even more practice in the afterlife. Our hope though is that God is far more patient than we are stubborn. Our hope is that God will not be done working on us until each of us is reconciled to God's love. Until each of us is made whole, so that we can live in the kingdom of heaven.

Our gospel today talks about conflict, and conflict is going to happen. It talks about all the different steps to resolve conflict, and then it says if after all that you still can't resolve conflict with someone, treat them as a tax collector and a Gentile. You might think that means write them off: have nothing to do with them anymore. But remember, this is Matthew's gospel. And what was Matthew's job before Jesus called him? He was a tax collector. So this is the gospel according to the former outcast. This is the gospel according to Saint Matthew. And so when Jesus says treat someone as a tax collector and a Gentile, he doesn't mean have nothing to do with them. He means maybe you need some temporary boundaries so that they don't bring you down, but this isn't writing them off. This is having some space. Ultimately, what does God want from tax collectors and Gentiles? God wants to redeem them! This may be someone that we're not currently reconciled to, but we still very much hope and long that God grant us reconciliation with.

The good news here is that even if we're not ready for the kingdom of heaven yet, God is still working on us. God is still transforming us, and helping us to put on the full armor of light, so that we, too, can be people who live so that our only rule is to love one another. Amen.

On Sainthood 

Wow. This is not what I thought would completely take over my mind today. But a train (of thought) left one city headed north at 25 miles per hour, and another train left another city headed east at 30 miles per hour, and they both arrived at the feast of William Porcher Dubose yesterday and now this is all I can think about this morning. So I’m going to write a few thoughts down.

This is a draft. People will point things out that they disagree with. Some of them I will not go along with, and they will strengthen my resolve. Others will point out things I’ve overlooked and I’ll change my thoughts accordingly. So I’ll probably take this down eventually and replace it with something that reflects my evolved thinking. But I need to set some thoughts down now to help sort out what I believe.

What are saints, and what is the role of the communion of saints in the life of the church?

In my understanding, we are now alive. We are an embodied soul, an ensouled body. This unified combination of body and soul is who we are whilst we inhabit the earth. But at some point, we die, and our bodies and souls are separated. Our bodies are laid to rest, whether in the earth, or at sea, or to the elements. Our souls go on without our bodies to the next stage, where there are three possibilities. If we are ready for the Kingdom of Heaven, if we have aligned our will to the will of God so that we delight in God’s will and walk in God’s ways, then our souls will be at rest in the presence of God awaiting the resurrection of the dead. If we have not aligned our will to the will of God but we desire to do so, then after we die, our souls will be in a time of growth and reconditioning under God’s guidance to transform us into people of the Kingdom of Heaven in preparation for the resurrection of the dead. If we have not aligned our will to the will of God and we resist doing so, then after we die our souls are apart from God and in torment until such a time that we might open ourselves to God’s efforts at reconciliation and rehabilitation. One might name these three possible states whist the body is separated from the soul: the first might be called heavenly rest, the second, purgatory (or heavenly growth), and the third, hell.

At the final judgment at the end of time, bodies are brought back to life and reunited with souls, and the reunified whole person, body and soul, having been prepared by rest, growth, or anguish (or perhaps some combination thereof), is then either welcomed to the reign of God, where those who live according to God’s vision for abundant life join in the perpetual feast in the new earth, ruled from the new heaven, while should any continue to reject living God’s abundant life, they would be cast into the outer darkness of either suffering or annihilation apart from the presence of God. I pray that no one come to that fate, and suspect that God’s desire for apocatastasis is stronger than any of our stubbornness in rejecting God, but obviously I cannot know that.

The saints, as I understand it, are those who are now in the nearer presence of God.

We thank God for the examples they have given us as to how we might live. We hope their example might inspire us to live our lives in a way that God might sanctify us also as we live. And because they are our companions in faith and are in the nearer presence of God, we ask for their prayers, just as we do with our companions in faith who are in this life with us.

Traditionally, one function of the communion of saints in the life of the church was that we, the church on earth, called upon the members of the church in the nearer presence of God to pray for us. This practice lamentably encountered resistance during the reformation. If people invoke the prayers of the saints instead of praying to God directly, then the practice of invoking the prayers of the saints is regrettable, because it discourages direct prayer. But if the practice of invoking the prayers of the saints is coupled with direct prayer, I would argue it is a good thing, and no different than asking people on earth to pray for us. The saints do not mediate between us and God; they intercede on our behalf, as we do on theirs if they are still growing, and as we do for one another on earth. St. Paul instructs us to pray without ceasing, and when one of our prayers is silent, we can hope that others of us are picking up the prayer where the first left off. The reformation’s encouragement of direct prayer is laudable, but deprecating the practice of invoking the prayers of the saints is a baby thrown out with the bathwater of an attitude of our unworthiness for direct prayer, something indeed well discarded. We should pray to God. We should pray for one another. And we should ask one another to pray for us. That one another should include the whole church, including those who have died.

The present absence of officially sanctioned communal invocation of the prayers of the communion of saints in the liturgies of the Episcopal Church is, in my mind, the single biggest defect in our mostly laudable liturgical practice.

When I say we should invoke the prayers of the whole church, including those who live and those have died, I really do mean the whole church. I specifically include those who are undergoing heavenly growth, the so-called “Church Penitent,” or the souls who might be said to be in purgatory. I would argue that both souls in heavenly rest and souls undergoing heavenly growth are in the presence of God, and thus could pray for us. Those who are still growing in God’s love until they see God as God is can benefit from our prayers for them also, while the souls at rest already have grown to the point where they see the fullness of God, and thus need no more prayers on their behalf. In fact, the process of praying for us could help the growth of the souls who are growing, just like we can grow in grace by praying for others. I would argue that only the souls who reject growth in God are in no position to pray for us, having cut themselves off from God.

So when it comes to invoking the prayers of the saints, I suspect that both those who have attained holiness and those who still aspire to holiness are in a position to pray for us.

Now a second function of the saints in the life of the church is as examples of Godly life. Like Wenceslas’s page, we find it easier to trudge through the snow of life when we have footprints to walk in. Certain individuals have lived in specific ways that might inspire us to copy portions of their life that might help bring us closer to God. These examples of conversion, faith, heroic virtue, and Godly life can be both a template and a motivation for how we live our own lives. The lives of the saints are worth studying so they can be a template and motivation for us.

What are feast days? What are ferial days and why do they matter?

Feast days are days that we rejoice and give thanks for a gift God gave us. We mark feast days by doing special things we do not do on ordinary days. Eating special food can be an example. The most distinguishing mark of a feast day in the Church is the celebration of Holy Eucharist, which is our great thanksgiving to God for the blessings we have received and a foretaste of the heavenly feast we hope to join in at the resurrection.

Ferial days, on the other hand, are “normal” days, days not marked by feasting. In this world, we are prone to viewing things through a lens of duality: the sacred is only sacred in contrast with the profane. The holy is only holy in contrast with the unholy. The good is only good in contrast with the bad. The people of God are only people of God in contrast with the people who are not of God. In the Kingdom to come, the feast is ongoing. In the Kingdom to come, all who are there are holy. The idea that feasts cannot exist without the ferial is one that will not hold eventually, but in this life, we certainly gain a deeper understanding of the feast through fasting, and in this broken world, days which are not feast days seem appropriate as we grow toward the eternal heavenly banquet.

As long as we are removed from the fullness of the heavenly feast, it seems meet and right that our calendar should be marked by days that are not feast days in addition to the feast days. So it seems to me that as we select from the wide array of saints whose feasts we could celebrate, it seems wise that there be some days to which we do not assign feasts.

What is the role of feast days of saints in the life of the church? What feast days should we celebrate?

It seems to me that there are three roles of the feast days of saints in the life of the church. First, we give thanks to God for the example and witness of a particular saint. Second, we examine how the life of the saint we celebrate might be template or motivation for our own, and pray that we too might grow in holiness. Third, and this is where the Episcopal Church drops the ball, we pray that the saint in question might pray for us.

Now we can, and perhaps should, do all three of these things any day, without it being the particular feast day of a particular saint. But the calendar gives us a way to make anamnestically present the template and motivation from the past that we might hope would shape our lives today.

If at the most basic level, saints are those who are more directly in God’s presence than we are here on earth, then it would seem that anyone who is both dead and not in a state of rejecting God is a saint. It does not follow from there, though, that all such people would be equally beneficial for the church to celebrate their feast days. It seems to me that the decision to celebrate a saint’s feast day should be related to first, the intensity of our desire to give thanks to God for providing the example and work of the saint in question; second, the likelihood that anamnestically contemplating the life and work of the saint in question would guide and inspire people to holiness; and third, the extent to which we long for the particular intercession of that saint’s prayers. Complicating this is the question of whether there are aspects of a person’s life that are *not* the footsteps in which we should be walking, or whether aspects of a person’s story might discourage rather than excite holiness in the lives of those who hear it. The decision about whether celebrating a particular saint’s feast would be spiritually beneficial for a particular congregation here on earth is, of course, in no way a judgment of the sanctity of the person in question; our decision to celebrate the feast of a saint surely cannot change the fact of whether that soul is in God’s presence.

Visions of the Economy

The Demonic Vision:

In the worship of wealth or Mammon, supreme dignity and rights belong to those who have. The owner of property is entitled to rights and control but also admiration. In the worship of Mammon, we seek salvation by amassing as much wealth as we can, knowing that what we can buy, be it food, health care, or whatever, is what will preserve our life and well-being. In the worship of Mammon, the greatest rule of ethics is the sanctity of property rights. The worship of Mammon says, "it's too bad people die because of police brutality, but looting and rioting has got to stop." Death is regrettable, but the destruction of property is the ultimate sin against the god Mammon. The worship of Mammon cherishes things and uses people, a perversion of our creator's intent.

This is the basis of our economy today.

The Beatific Vision (as I understand it):

God intends for all creatures to thrive.

Thus, each creature should expect from the community both the material and social conditions that promote their thriving and also the opportunity to do meaningful work, according to their gifts, to promote the wellbeing of the Kingdom of God. Each creature must also give an account for how they used all the gifts entrusted to them to build up the Kingdom of God.

In this worldview, personal property is real (both talents in the modern sense and talents in the ancient sense of wealth), but the idea of allodial private property that is one’s to dispose of as one sees fit is sinfully absurd. There is no wealth that does not belong to God. There is no human ownership, only stewardship. Any asset on a ledger sheet has a debit of accountability to God for how that gift was used to build up the Kingdom of God. The earth is the Lords, for he made it, as the antiphon goes; come let us adore him.

Any wealth or skill that is merely enjoyed and not used to build up others and promote the thriving of all creatures is wealth or skill misused.

The between-times

Scarcity is a function of people living according to the demonic vision and not the beatific vision. Both underproduction (hoarding the gifts of skill and labor) and overconsumption (hoarding the gifts of God and the fruits of human labor often alienated from the workers who made it) mean that many creatures live without what they need to thrive. This is sin.

The question is what the church’s role should be in these between-times. How should the church (and each of her members) use the gifts it has to help bring the world closer to the beatific vision and away from the demonic one.

Thoughts about personal and structural racism, and the impossibility of neutrality on a moving train

I am a racist. You are too. If you're uncomfortable with that, if I'm uncomfortable with that – good! The fact that we don't want to be racist is a good thing. But not wanting to be racist, and not trying to be racist doesn't change the fact that we are members of a society. There's no neutral. Anything we do that isn't an active effort to dismantle racism likely perpetuates it. And because our efforts often fail, many things we do that *are* an active effort to dismantle racism still likely perpetuate it.

I help perpetuate a system that treats people with white skin as somehow more human than those with dark skin. I help perpetuate that system because it's the same system that we get our food from, and we get a place to live, and we go to school, and we communicate with our friends, and we are entertained and we do our work. I'm a racist because I'm a contributing member of society, and our society is built on a deeply racist foundation. When I do my job, when I stop at a red light, when I feed my children dinner – in all these things, I help our society continue. And our society is racist, so in all these things, I perpetuate racism. I am complicit.

Racism isn't what makes me stop at red lights. Racism isn't why I feed my children. Racism isn't why I go to work. But every apparently-socially-responsible thing I do that allows our society to continue continues not only the good and admirable parts of our civilization, and there are many, but also the evil, destructive, exploitative parts.

White supremacism is woven deep into the structures of our society. Laws, customs, music, culture, and the economic arrangements that generate them all have deep roots in a system that was designed to privilege white people over black people. That is certainly not all there is to our society; if it were nothing but racism, it would be easy to throw it out and walk away. There is much that is good and noble and desirable about our social structures. And there is evil embedded in it, and one of those key evils embedded in the very structure of our economic base and social superstructure is racism.

This racism is inherent in the system itself. Whether or not we have racist intent, by participating in our economy and culture, we perpetuate a system that includes structures of white supremacism, which means that regardless of our intent, we are complicit in perpetuating white supremacism.

People can actively choose to promote racism, and some do. People can choose not to think about racism, but the default is to act within a racist system in ways that perpetuate the system. This is original sin: without choosing to engage in racism, we nonetheless act to perpetuate it. Without choosing to do evil, we are guilty of being complicit therein. Our very existence in a racist structure inevitably collaborates with racism.

The alternative is to acknowledge that we are formed by a racist culture and participate in a racist economy: to acknowledge that we are complicit in perpetuating racism. I am racist and you are racist and he is racist and she is racist and they are racist because we are all the product of a racist culture and participants in a racist economy. Then we look for how we can actively participate in dismantling it. We are all complicit; the question is how to become less complicit. We are all caught up in the mechanism of racism; the question is how to become less racist.

Gotta serve somebody

The great philosopher Bob Dylan observed that no matter what your station in life, you're going to have to serve somebody. But not every higher power that people worship is the Lord our God. Today, we celebrate Trinity Sunday, a feast that is so vitally important in identifying just who is the God we worship. And the God we worship is first and foremost a community of three distinct persons knit together in perfect love for one another.

But is the Holy Trinity really the God we worship? Do we worship the perfect community of love that we know through our Lord Jesus Christ, or do we really serve somebody else?

In polytheism, the gods are distinct persons, like the three persons of our Trinity. But those gods aren't knit together in perfect love. They want different things. They sometimes fight with each other. People can do things to please one god in a polytheistic system and make other gods upset. That's not the case with our God. The Holy Trinity has one divine will. One divine ethics. What the Father loves, the Son loves, and the Holy Spirit loves. Our God is not a single person, but the Holy Trinity shares a single sense of joy, and a single yearning for the good.

Our first lesson is one of my favorite in the Bible. It's not the creation story; it's a creation story, one of perhaps twenty times our holy scripture tells us about God creating the heavens and the earth. But this creation story is an act of resistance. This creation story was written down in Babylon, during the exile, to try to preserve the religious identity of God's people in the face of Babylonian assimilation. And so this creation story takes all the "facts" from the Babylonian creation story – the order in which things were created, the timing, and so on, and subverts the Babylonian creation story to assert the most important parts. The Babylonians taught that the gods were at war in a watery chaos that predated the heavens and the earth, and that over the course of seven key phases, as side effects of the gods fighting with each other, light was divided from darkness, sea from sky, land from water. Each of these realms were populated as a result of the war of the gods, and then finally one god triumphed over the others and there was rest. The god who won the war was, naturally, the god of the city of Babylon, Marduk, but the other gods, with their competing desires, could rise up at any time, and so there was a divine mandate to keep Babylon strong to triumph over anyone who might rise up against it.

The people of Judah in exile in Babylon came along and said, "if we're stuck here, and our children keep hearing this story, we have to teach them how to resist." They picked the most important parts and changed them, to subvert the story. They didn't fight with the supposition of a pre-creation watery chaos, although that doesn't appear in any of the other creation stories in the Bible. They didn't fight with the order in which creation happened, although that contradicts other scriptural accounts. What they said was important, the most important, the thing they had to resist, was the idea that creation happened because warring gods with clashing desires fought, and creation was the byproduct. No. There is one God, who willed that creation exist, and spoke, and it happened, and God saw that it was very good. Creation is not an accident. Creation is not a byproduct. Creation is not the result of conflict between divine forces, mandating perpetual war so that the right gods might win. The love of God overflowed, and the world came to be, and it was very, very good. This is our faith, the exiles of Judah told their children. This is what we believe. You are surrounded by people who worship different gods, but we worship the Lord. We do what we do because we are who we are because we serve the Lord God, the maker of heaven and earth. So said the exiles of Judah, and they taught their children to resist the narratives that surrounded them, to avoid assimilation into a toxic polytheism of conflict and oppression, and wrote their story down: in the beginning: Genesis.

We are like the exiles in Babylon. We, too, live in a culture that actively worships false gods of conflict, exploitation, and oppression. We, too, need to tell our stories of resistance to hold firm to our faith in the God who is a community of perfect love, in the face of a culture that would assimilate us to the worship of their false gods. The terrifying thing is that so many people identify as followers of the Holy Trinity, but in fact actually look for salvation to the false gods of our civic religion. Far too often I find myself in that trap too. Just like the exiles in Babylon, we have to ask ourselves again and again whom we serve: do we serve the Lord, or do we serve the false gods that surround us? You’re going to have to serve somebody. Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord, but you’re going to have to serve somebody,

I believe we have three distinct false gods that we actively worship in the United States, and by false gods, I mean stories and sources of ultimate power to whom people honestly turn for salvation, and those three false gods are Tribalism, which includes white supremacy, Mammon or Wealth, and Empire.
Tribe, wealth, and empire are three gods that have seduced us into looking to them for our ultimate salvation. We say we worship God, but whenever you take the Gospel seriously, someone will take you aside and say, "but let's be practical," and appeal to one of these three idols.

It took me a while to realize that these three were all worshipped in our civic religion, because these three deities are fundamentally at odds with each other. Having been taught monotheism in my religion classes through my childhood and adulthood, I was unprepared to recognize that in the United States, the prevailing civic religion seems to be a polytheistic blend of the worship of all three. These three gods are at odds with each other because in the cult of each of these gods, and the ethics that flows from the worship of each of these gods, the source of dignity comes from a fundamentally different verb: to be, to have, to do.

In tribal ethics, dignity comes from being a member of the favored tribe; each one has dignity according to the relative worth of the tribe to which one belongs. White supremacism is deeply rooted here. The lives and deaths of favored ones matter over and above other lives and deaths. Some people have dignity and importance because of who they are; others do not, again because of who they are. For salvation, for protection from all ill, we work to advance the well-being of "our kind" and work to make sure "their kind" is kept down. The worship of the white tribal god leads people to call black demonstrators against police brutality "wild savages" and "barbarians" – less than human because they are not part the only "properly human" tribe. The worship of the false god of tribe insists that black lives don't matter. That only white people bear the proper image of the tribal god.

In the worship of wealth or Mammon, supreme dignity and rights belong to those who have. The owner of property is entitled to rights and control but also admiration. In the worship of Mammon, we seek salvation by amassing as much wealth as we can, knowing that what we can buy, be it food, health care, or whatever, is what will preserve our life and well-being. In the worship of Mammon, the greatest rule of ethics is the sanctity of property rights. The worship of Mammon says, "it's too bad people die because of police brutality, but looting and rioting has got to stop." Death is regrettable, but the destruction of property is the ultimate sin against the god Mammon. The worship of Mammon cherishes things and uses people, a perversion of our creator's intent.

In the worship of empire, stability and calm comes from what  the empire does: it dominates all who would rise up against it. Dignity and respect belong to those who wield power in the name of the empire and who dominate others. In the worship of empire, salvation comes from the powerful being able to keep the weak in line. We make sacrifices to the god of empire on the altars called "law" and "order." Our safety, in this system, depends on the rulers being able to keep people obedient and in line. The world will be at peace when the power of the empire extends both deep and wide: wide across the entire earth, so that no one is outside the rule of the empire, and deep, such that the empire can command obedience and proper behavior without question. In this system of worship, peace comes when people comply with the orders of the empire, and if that fails, when the empire can exert its strength, and totally dominate those who resist.

The three gods of tribe, wealth, empire each distribute their favor differently, as gods do in a polytheistic system, but the worship of all three constitutes the American civic religion. So closely bound to our culture is this polytheistic civic religion that when people protest its murderous implications, many wrongly think they are protesting against America itself.

This civic religion is fundamentally at odds with the worship of the holy and undivided Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. When Jesus commands, in our gospel reading today, that we go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Jesus teaches us that, like the exiles of Judah in Babylon, we must resist the false gods of the culture that surrounds us. We ourselves must turn, and call others to turn away from the false gods that dehumanize and exploit and kill God's beloved, and embrace the Holy, Blessed, and undivided Trinity of perfect love.

How do we resist the demonic forces that say that some human lives don't matter and turn to the God who created and loves all people? The Gospel today tells us the answer: Step one is Baptism. Step two is to teach and practice the faith. And step three, when we get discouraged, is to remember that Jesus is with us always, even to the end of the age.

With God’s help, we renounce Satan and all the spiritual forces of wickedness that rebel against God, the evil powers of this world which corrupt and destroy the creatures of God, and all sinful desires that draw us from the love of God.
With God’s help, we turn to Jesus Christ and accept him as our Savior, put our whole trust in his grace and love, and promise to follow and obey him as our Lord.
With God’s help, we believe in the Most Holy, Glorious, and Undivided Trinity, One God.
With God’s help, we continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers.
With God’s help, we persevere in resisting evil, and, whenever we fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord.
With God’s help, we proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ.
With God’s help, we seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbor as ourself.
With God’s help, we strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being.

This is what we promise in baptism. This is our faith. Every human being is created in God's image, and deserves justice and dignity. If the worshippers of false gods claim that only the rich, only the powerful, only the white are important, we who worship the Holy Trinity must object. This is why, as long as anyone’s actions leave any doubt, we must proclaim again and again and again that Black Lives Matter, and work to make it true. Amen.

The Holy Spirit descended upon the apostles as tongues of fire.

The Holy Spirit descended upon the apostles as tongues of fire.

These twelve young men – likely all in their teens and twenties – had followed their controversial teacher throughout the Roman provinces of Galilee and Judea.
They had been present for his sermons,
present for his miracles,
present for his clashes with the religious and secular authorities of the land.
They were with him when he walked into the temple,
the center of the worship of the Most High God
– but also the center of collaboration
between the ruling class of Judea
and the occupying Roman Empire,
and turned over the tables and drove out the money changers
– the ones who changed Roman money for local,
the ones who enabled the Roman extraction of wealth,
the ones who extended the oppression of empire into the house of God.

The apostles were present when Jesus was arrested,
and watched from afar when he was given a sham trial,
and then publicly tortured to death,
unable to breathe upon the cross.
They watched their leader die, and they were afraid, going into hiding,
that the evil against which Jesus bore witness,
the evil that had him arrested and killed
– that evil would likely come after them too if they spoke out publicly.
So they stayed quiet.

And in their quiet, they heard the Good News:
Jesus is risen from the dead.
The evil forces of human cruelty and greed and lust for power that brought about his death had no power over him;
the power of sin is death
and death has been swallowed up in victory.
And still they stayed quiet.

They touched his hands and side
and heard and knew the Good News,
and yet they dared not venture out
to proclaim in public the Good News of God's liberation
for it had led to their master's death.

And then Jesus ascended into heaven,
and these scared youngsters once again found themselves in the safety of the upper room.
They prayed, to be sure, but they dared not preach in public;
they dared not confront the forces that killed Jesus.
Surely it would lead to their own deaths if they did.
So they stayed quiet.

And the Holy Spirit descended upon the apostles as tongues of fire.

The fire of God is nothing to trifle with.
The fire of God is the light of God's glory.
When the Israelites were in the wilderness,
fleeing from slavery under Pharaoh in the Land of Egypt,
the Psalmist reminds us that God led them with a cloud by day,
and all the night through with a glow of fire.

The fire of God can also be a purifying fire:
the words of the Lord are pure words,
like silver refined from ore and purified seven times in the fire.

And finally the Psalmist reminds us that the fire of God can be utter destruction:
Upon the wicked he shall rain coals of fire and burning sulphur;
a scorching wind shall be their lot.

And the Holy Spirit descended upon the apostles as tongues of fire.

This fire of God is not three separate blazes:
a fire of glory,
and fire of purification,
and a fire of wrath.

This fire of God, with which God shall judge the world is all at once
the light of heaven by which we see,
the refiner's flame, consuming all our impurities,
and the fire of hell that destroys all wickedness.
This Holy Spirit is all of these fires at the same time,
for they are all the same holy fire.

This is no trivial thing to receive the Holy Spirit, the Sanctifier of the Faithful.
This is no light matter to be set ablaze with the fire of God.
The fire of heaven can enlighten,
and can purify,
and can utterly destroy.

The light of heaven and the fire of hell are the same flame,
the same Spirit of God, renewing the world.
Brimstone and burning bush are one.

The apostles were afraid in the upper room.
And the Holy Spirit descended upon the apostles as tongues of fire.

They were not wrong in their fears.
Going out and proclaiming the Good News got every single one of the apostles arrested and convicted.
Going out and proclaiming the Good News led to the execution of all but one of them: John, the beloved disciple, died imprisoned on the isle Patmos.
All the others were killed for proclaiming the Good News.
They hid because they were afraid
that proclaiming the Good News would lead to their death,
as indeed it did.

And the Holy Spirit descended upon the apostles as tongues of fire.

And they were no longer quiet.
And they were no longer afraid.
Now they were aflame.
Now the fire of God burned within them.
Now they could not keep themselves from going forth into the public places
and proclaiming the Kingdom of God.

They were sent,
compelled to go forth and spread the fire that burned within each of them.

And no sooner did they go forth but they started to run into trouble with the authorities:
drunk and disorderly, they were called.
Peter, likely the oldest among them, tried to calm the authorities about his compatriots' enthusiasm:
surely they are not drunk, for it is only nine o'clock in the morning.
But the pattern was set:
the fire that set them ablaze gave them the courage of their convictions,
and each was indeed convicted
of proclaiming the Kingdom of God
in defiance of the Kingdom of Caesar,
and each was punished for spreading the Good News.
The fire that was lit on Pentecost cost them their lives.

That's the story the world would tell.
That's the story the empire would tell.
If you catch the spark of this Gospel of Christ's liberation, your life is ruined.
You'll never amount to anything in this world.
You'll be condemned as an enemy of the state
and you will die, poor and in pain.
That's where the fire of the Gospel will lead you.

And all of that is true.

That is indeed where the Gospel leads us.
If we are set ablaze with the flame of the Holy Spirit this Pentecost, our respectability is ruined.
If we are set ablaze with the flame of the Holy Spirit this Pentecost, our prosperity is ruined.
If we are set ablaze with the flame of the Holy Spirit this Pentecost, our place in the Empire is ruined.

The followers of the Caesars of the world aren't wrong about any of this.
And yet they are *so* wrong, because there is so so much more to the story.

The apostles who were set ablaze with the fire of the Spirit indeed went forth to die for proclaiming the Good News.
 But they had eternal life; what could death do to them?

The Great Litany calls God the Holy Ghost, the "Sanctifier of the faithful."
Jesus, God the Son, is the Redeemer of the world.
Jesus died on the cross for the forgiveness of our sins.
At that moment, we were indeed redeemed:
the guilt of our sin was washed away, once for all.

We no longer stand condemned for our manifold sins and wickedness,
neither individual nor social,
neither what we have done, nor what we have failed to do.

And yet we are still enslaved to sin.
The action of Jesus on the cross justified us.
We are welcome into the Kingdom of Heaven because the charges against us have been dropped:
we no longer stand convicted of our sins.

But that alone does not make us *fit* for the Kingdom of Heaven.
As long as we are captive to the power of sin, we may be welcome in the Kingdom of Heaven but we cannot yet enter in.
The disciples learned of Jesus' resurrection
and victory over sin and death,
but they were still afraid.
They still were afraid to live in the fullness of life that Jesus' victory won for them.
They were still held captive to fear and doubt and selfishness.
They still feared to defy the powers and principalities of the world and proclaim the Good News of the resurrection.
Without being set ablaze with the Holy Spirit, they were not yet sanctified,
not yet fit to live in God's Kingdom.

And then…

The Holy Spirit descended upon the apostles as tongues of fire.

And that fire burned.
That fire consumed their fear.
That fire consumed their respectability.
That fire consumed their social standing.
That fire consumed their careers and their wealth and their freedom and their bodies.
They were ablaze with the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit sanctified them.
And when they died,
confessing the Good News even with their dying breath,
bearing witness that none other than Jesus Christ is Lord,
they died as saints:
the Holy Spirit's blaze, the refiner's fire
had burned up in their lifetime all the sin that remained in them,
and all that was left was holy.
Like the burning bush, like the column of fire in the wilderness,
they shine to this day with God's holy light
and the fire does not consume them.
The saints have been completely sanctified by the Holy Spirit,
and shine in God's presence,
lighting the way on our path to God.

We too need to be lit ablaze with the Holy Spirit.
We cannot enter into the Kingdom of Heaven without being sanctified by the Holy Spirit.
It can set us ablaze in this lifetime,
a terrifying fire that sweeps through our lives
and destroys so much that we think is treasure
– only for us to realize afterward
that it was no treasure at all.
We can let the Holy Spirit light us ablaze and burn up all that is sinful,
all that serves the mighty at the expense of the poor,
all that oppresses God's beloved downtrodden.

If the process of sanctification is not complete in our lifetime,
we have to wait until God sets us ablaze with the refiner's fire in the world to come.
God longs to welcome us to the heavenly banquet,
but first we must be transformed by this terrifying fire of the Holy Spirit.
First the Holy Spirit must descend upon us as tongues of fire.

Let us pray.

Come, Holy Spirit!
Fill the hearts of your faithful,
kindle within us the fire of love,
that by its cleansing flame we may be purged of all our sins.
Let your purifying fire blaze,
and renew the face of the earth.
Wipe away all oppression,
all exploitation,
all trace of sin.
Tear down every power and principality rooted in fear and death.
And bring forth your heavenly kingdom,
that new Jerusalem of peace rooted in justice and mercy,
where you eagerly long for your sanctified people to join in the heavenly banquet for all eternity.
Amen.

A vision for ministry: A small intentional residential community (the Companions of the Magnificat?) gathers in a place to live and pray together according to a simple rule of common life, and support one another in their lives, ministries, and creative endeavors, NOT taking formal monastic vows. 

The Architecture: Private rooms for each of the members of the community to live in (perhaps some condominiums on site also for family units who want more privacy and space but also want to participate in the life of the community). A kitchen and refectory. The necessary bathrooms.  Rooms for shorter or longer term guests and retreatants to stay. Some parlors for the activities of our common life.  Bonus points if there were a cloister at the center!  All this attached to a church, in which we sing morning and evening prayer together each day, and periodically also celebrate conventual Eucharists.  The church might be a parish in parallel development as the Sunday morning home of a congregation as well as the spiritual center of this community.  

During the day on weekdays, the members of the community work at various jobs.  In the hours outside work, prayer, and sleep, we engage individually or corporately, in various work for justice and acts of service to those in need,  creative projects for the glory of God, walks in our surrounding community, and educational undertakings as both teachers and ongoing learners,  both for the residential community and also for others who wish to participate.

If some members of the community were so called, various forms of gardening and food production on site could help feed both the community and our neighbors in need.

On Sunday mornings, the members of our community are active according to their gifts and orders of ministry at assorted local parishes  (including the one hosting the community, should this be a case of parallel development).  It would be a wonderful thing if we could someday as a community teach a well-developed curriculum for formation in discipleship  for those who might be able to study with us and perhaps even offer some sort of accredited degree program.

A manifesto of sorts, I guess

I am frustrated with both those who identify themselves as conservative and those who identify themselves as progressive who seem to insist on identifying the liturgical and theological events (and, for that matter, some of the geopolitical and cultural events also) of the 1960s and 70s (and their continuation toward this day) as a rupture with the previous tradition of the Church rather than its development. I struggle with those who think that commandments of the law, prophets, writings, and Gospel can be conserved without making progress toward the reign of God just I struggle with those who think progress toward a better world is possible without being firmly rooted in the traditions of the law, prophets, writings, and Gospel we have received.

I cherish the music of St. Gregory the Great and the St. Louis Jesuits; Marty Haugan and David Haas and SS. John and Charles Wesley; Rory Cooney and J.S. Bach; Gregory Norbet and Michael Joncas and St. Ambrose and St. Francis.

I reject any vision of progress that is not firmly rooted in the tradition we have received and I reject any vision of our tradition that does not demand progress toward a world of inclusion, justice, mercy, humility, peace, and love. Any effort to drive a wedge between "tradition" and "progress" as if either were possible without the other seems to me to be doomed to dystopian failure.</rant>

Thoughts about the right practice of liturgy amidst this plague

Thoughts about the right practice of liturgy amidst this plague I'm no Martin Luther; I only have twelve theses, and they are, for the most part, decidedly unprotestant.

1. The Daily Office is awesome. I highly recommend it to all followers of Jesus.
2. The Daily Office is not and was never meant to be a substitute for the Eucharist and isn't and shouldn't be the principal celebration on Sundays. Insomuch as the church practiced that in years past, the church erred, failing to continue in the apostles' teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of the bread and the prayers.
3. The Holy Eucharist makes the one sacrifice of Christ offered once for all on the cross present here and now, interposing the passion, death, and resurrection of Christ between us and all the powers of darkness we face, both in our present time and at the hour of our death.
4. Lots of people have died. The church ought to be offering frequent requiem masses on their behalf.
5. Lots of people are sick. The church ought to be offering frequent healing masses on their behalf.
6. The faithful need the nourishment of the Body and Blood of Christ, ESPECIALLY in a time of disruption and crisis.
7. To be good stewards of the gift of life that God has given us, we must not spread deadly disease as we celebrate Eucharist and nourish people with Holy Communion.
8. Thus therefore the church must find a way both to safely celebrate Eucharist, now more than ever, and to safely nourish the faithful with Christ's Body and Blood, now more than ever. Eucharist is the gift the church has to offer to the world, both the living and the dead, and now is when we most need that gift.
9. The Anglican branch of the Church has always taught that if a person desires to receive communion but because of sickness is unable to eat and drink the Bread and Wine, the Celebrant is to assure that person that all the benefits of Communion are received, even though the Sacrament is not received with the mouth. Earlier Prayer Books said that such a person "doth eat and drink the Body and Blood of our Saviour Christ profitably to his soul's health, although he do not receive the Sacrament with his mouth." The church has always taught that this form of reception of the Body and Blood of Christ is real, and procures unto us the same innumerable benefits of Christ's passion, death, resurrection, and ascension as physically eating and drinking the bread and wine that become the Body and Blood of Christ.
10. I personally suspect that eating bread and drinking wine while prayerfully focusing on the spiritual reception of the Body and Blood of Christ would be a distraction from the spiritual reception of communion, but some might find physically receiving the accidents of bread and wine which have not been consecrated a helpful physical reminder of the accidents of the Body and Blood of Christ that they are accustomed to receiving. While this bread and wine is not itself the Body and Blood of Christ, if spiritual communion is real (and it is), and the sensory experience of bread and wine excite the memory in such a way as to help the believer focus on the reality of spiritual communion, I cannot see how this can be anything but a good thing so long as accompanied by appropriate catechesis.
11. While many dismiss "remote consecration," whereby a priest attempts to consecrate bread and wine physically present in the homes of the faithful as "not a thing," I am slow to share that conclusion. I do not see it as necessary, as I believe that the steps outlined in 9 and 10 above should sufficiently, safely, and truly distribute communion to the faithful in this time of crisis. I also believe that "remote consecration" falls outside the tradition through which we have been promised that communion is a sure and certain means of grace. However I believe that every celebration of the Holy Eucharist is a miracle that God chooses to effect, as God has promised to do. Could God make the Body and Blood of Christ present under other circumstances than those within the Eucharistic tradition in response to our prayers? Of course God can, and I fail to see why it would be bad for people to ask God if God were willing to do so. Furthermore, I am more inclined to believe that God would answer such prayers than to believe that God would deny them. So while I believe that "remote consecration" is unnecessary and beyond what God has promised, I don't believe it is inappropriate to pray to request it, and I would not be astonished were God to answer such prayers in the affirmative. I do think ministers would err should they proclaim that such an action is remote consecration, but would need to teach that it is beyond what God has promised and yet we pray that it might be remote consecration, a miracle God might choose to undertake in extraordinary times to feed God's faithful people. That said, given that eating and drinking the Body and Blood of our Saviour Christ profitably to the soul's health, although one doth not receive the Sacrament with the mouth is both within what God has promised to do and also entirely feasible under present circumstances, it seems far preferable to rely on the promised miracle rather than to pray for another beyond the promises.
12. I propose that what each of our congregations ought to be doing on each Sunday and feast day and on the various occasions when the Church is compelled to offer her greatest prayer for particular intentions (most notably for the sick and for the dead), the faithful ought to gather by videoconference call or whatever other communication technology allows them to pray together while being safely physically apart. The presider leads the appropriate opening prayers and invitations to prayer, the people make their prayers and responses, the lectors read the lessons and psalm, the deacon (or priest) proclaims the Gospel, the preacher delivers the sermon, the people recite the creed, the intercessor leads the prayers of the people, the people offer their prayers, the deacon (or priest) invites the people to confess their sins, the people recite the confession, the priest declares absolution, the peace is shared, and the presider leads the people in the Eucharistic Prayer. The elements are physically present with the presider. The people pray as the presider leads and make their great Amen at the conclusion of the prayer, then, after the Lord's Prayer and the fraction and whatever devotions are appropriate to the rite, the presider invites the people to communion. Because great illness prevents us from physically distributing communion, the presider reads the people the rubric at the bottom of page 457 of the prayer book that if a person desires to receive communion but because of sickness is unable to eat and drink the Bread and Wine, the Celebrant is to assure that person that all the benefits of Communion are received, even though the Sacrament is not received with the mouth. Then the words of administration are said and the elements displayed. The people receive the Body and Blood of Christ profitably to their souls' health, although any who are not quarantined with the presider do not receive the Sacrament with their mouths. Then the people pray the post communion prayer and are blessed and dismissed.

I understand that not everyone agrees with me on all these points, but I wish that every member of the church universal did agree with me in this case. Those who know me know how rarely I am apt to assert that I am right and those who disagree with me are wrong, especially on matters of religion (thus the name of this blog!). Having listened to and read many arguments about how the church ought to be at prayer right now, I have never been more strongly moved to believe that these points with the possible exceptions of numbers ten and eleven, I am not wrong, and those who disagree with me are.

Death

So I have to admit I’m confused. I thought that the point of our faith in the resurrection is that we no longer fear death. We celebrate the martyrs because by dying rather than denying their faith, they bear witness to the truth that death has been conquered.

Now let me be the first to admit that I’m terrified of death, but that is because my faith is still weak. But I aspire to a faith that lets me affirm with all my heart “Death has been swallowed up in victory. Where, O death, is your victory Where, O death, is your sting?”

And more importantly than my personal meager faith, I thought that was the faith of the church: we need not fear death, because we have been baptized into Christ’s death and resurrection. I don’t have the fullness of faith that I pray for (Lord I believe; help me in my unbelief!), but I thought the faith we aspire teaches that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

So I don’t understand what I’ve been hearing from the Church this month. I don’t understand churches contemplating cancelling sacramental events to prevent the spread of viruses. I don’t understand the security plans in place at our bishop’s ordination last month in case of violence at the event. I don’t understand the Church acting as if she were afraid of death, because I thought she taught something else, and that faith of the Church was my hope. I thought it was a weakness of my faith that I am afraid to die, but that the church taught, and acted that the way we protect people from things that might kill them is to offer Baptism, Eucharist, reconciliation of a penitent, anointing of the sick, and burial of the dead. Of course we care for the sick, but that we aren’t especially concerned about preventing people from dying. That we just celebrated a liturgy on Wednesday with a central message that we are dust, and that we’re going to return to dust. That we don’t fear death; we prepare to participate in the resurrection. That all of us go down to the dust, but even at the grave we make our song, even during Lent: Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia!

I thought it was the weakness of my faith that made me fear death, so I don’t understand how the Church could act as if it too were afraid of death. 

---

Update May 19: Revisiting these thoughts a few months later, more of this makes sense than it did then. If we act out of fear of death, that is a weakness of faith. My fear of death is a weakness of my faith. AND life is a gift from God. Acting to be good stewards of the gift of life does not imply a fear of death.

I have been projecting my lack of faith and fear of death onto actions to steward life. That is indeed one motivation for such actions, but not the only one.

I can't believe I'm planning not one but two sermon series

I don't generally think of my sermons as having titles. Certainly not beforehand. But conversation on Facebook got me praying, and that frustratingly persistent Holy Spirit started re-arranging things (as the Spirit does), and suddenly I've got a whole agenda set out from now until Trinity Sunday. The themes are somewhat externally imposed, although they look like they will connect with the lectionary for the day also. Lent will take us on a journey through the baptismal covenant and the different ways how God transforms us in the process of sanctification. I am particularly excited about how the triumphal entry passion Gospel overlaps with the final portion of the baptismal covenant. Easter Sunday will stand on its own, and the Quasimodo Sunday following will set the stage for the ways Jesus leads us out of doubt and helps us grow into salvation like newborn infants longing for the pure, spiritual milk. That sets the stage for a dose of that pure spiritual milk: as we walk through the Easter season, we will dive into the Catechism, refreshing ourselves alongside the newly baptized with the basic beliefs of our faith (that so many of us really can benefit from revisiting). All of this leads to my favorite feast day of the year, the feast of the Holy Trinity, when we celebrate that the image in which we are made is not of a solitary figure alone on a throne judging the world, but rather a loving community whose love for one another overflowed and created the heavens and the earth.

And then it's back to the lectionary, because we've only done Track 1 of the Revised Common Lectionary, and this year, we are taking on Track 2.

So my plan for sermons from now until June looks like this:

• 2/2/20 These eyes of mine have seen the Savior, whom you have prepared for all the world to see
• 2/9/20 What does it mean to be the Episcopal Church? (Hint: we just celebrated the ordination of a bishop yesterday)
• 2/17/20 This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?
• 2/23/20 From the Mount of the Transfiguration to the Hill of Calvary
• 3/1/20 Keeping a holy Lent
• 3/8/20 Our baptismal journey: The Apostles' teaching and fellowship, the breaking of bread and the prayers
• 3/15/20 Our baptismal journey: Resisting evil and repenting and returning to the Lord
• 3/22/20 Our baptismal journey: Proclaiming the Good News
• 3/29/20 Our baptismal journey: Seeking and serving Christ in all others
• 4/5/20 Our baptismal journey: Striving for justice and peace
• 4/12/20 Alleluia! Christ is risen!
• 4/19/20 Lord I believe; help me in my unbelief.
• 4/26/20 The Catechism: Human Nature, God the Father, and The Old Covenant
• 5/3/20 The Catechism: The Ten Commandments, Sin and Redemption, and God the Son
• 5/10/20 The Catechism: The New Covenant, The Creeds, and The Holy Spirit
• 5/17/20 The Catechism: The Holy Scriptures, The Church, and The Ministry
• 5/24/20 The Catechism: Prayer and Worship, The Sacraments, and Holy Baptism
• 5/31/20 The Holy Eucharist, Other Sacramental Rites, and The Christian Hope
• 6/7/20 The Holy Trinity: A Community of Perfect Love

Some thoughts on rising health care costs and the difficulty of a solution

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2020/01/21/middle-class-income-growth-is-lagging-the-rich-and-the-poor-how-much-is-due-to-healthcare-subsidies/

Hat tip to Steve Benner who posted this link to Facebook and engaged me in a very helpful discussion on this topic.

It is no secret that health insurance policies get more expensive year after year after year. The link American system of linking health insurance to employment was designed from the beginning to reduce labor mobility and to this day is a major factor discouraging entrepreneurism and self-employment. Rising insurance costs have limited wage growth and the growth of full-time positions with benefits, encouraging firms to employ workers part-time to reduce benefit costs whilst forcing more and more workers to string together multiple part-time jobs to make a living. The labor economist in me wants me to footnote all these trends, but as this is a blog post in a blog whose title admits a lack of strong epistemological claims, I'm going to focus on getting my main thoughts down and readable, and leave the supporting research as an exercise for the reader; if any of the facts I cite turn out to be wrong, I welcome your corrections.

Whilst insurance company profiteering from market power must not be discounted, it is undeniable that health insurance policies are expensive and keep becoming more expensive in at least part because health care itself, that which the policies exist to pay for, is very expensive and becoming more so. Some of this is circular: rising health care costs raise the price of benefits in labor-intensive industries relative to industries less reliant on labor — except health care itself is labor intensive, so rising health insurance costs raises the benefit bill for the labor-intensive health-care industry. But rising health care costs are due in part to the fact that what we mean by "health care" is an ever-expanding set of possible treatments. Advancing the frontiers of medicine means an increased capacity to save lives and to improve the quality of life for people who suffer from a wide array of once-untreatable conditions. It also means that the limits of our capacity no longer shield us from the most serious moral dilemma with regard to health care: the problem of rationing.

Rationing is how society determines who gets to use scare goods and services. If there's more interest in something than that which is available, everyone can't get everything they want, and somehow society has to determine who should get the thing and who should not. In the case of concert tickets or artwork, being on the "not getting it" side might be disappointing, but when it comes to health care, this is a life-or-death question: the question of rationing health care is literally a question of who lives and who dies.

The present system is an odd hybrid, but a lot of it comes down to price rationing, which is the way our society rations the bulk of scarce goods and services. When there is a shortage of a good, the price rises, both motivating producers to supply more of the item in question, while making fewer consumers able to afford it, until the number of willing buyers match the number of willing sellers at the market price. Under the best of circumstances, it means that the people who value a good most are the ones who get it. Under less noble circumstances, it means that when something is scarce, the rich get it and the poor go without, regardless of relative need.

It may at some point have been a reasonable stance to say that "health care should be a right" – that is, everyone should have access to health care up to the point where “the doctors have done all they can do.” Limits to the capabilities of medicine in the past might have made the provision of literally "all the health care we can provide" to everyone a goal within the universe of possibilities, making a clear moral position affirming the sacredness of life: we should do what doctors say is necessary and possible for whomever needs it, and to worry about the resources would be to value money over life.

If this were ever the case, it is not now. The theoretical capabilities of medicine are expanding to the point where if everyone was entitled to “the doctors doing ALL that they can do,” providing such care could approach using the entirety of resources at society’s disposal. Technological limits no longer shield us from the difficult moral choices about how much health care we should provide to whom. But wow that’s a loaded and difficult moral question. The current system is a terrible approach, but the question of how we ration health care is becoming unavoidable, and there are few comfortable answers.

 I worry that we don’t have a shared moral framework as a society to tackle the problem of how to ration health care. The current system sucks. But any proposal to change necessarily involves changing who decides literally who lives and who dies. The cries about “death panels” with regard to "Obamacare" were misplaced, but the underlying fear is very real and, I would argue, unavoidable. If technological limits mean there’s not much health care we can really provide, we can say "do all we can for everyone." I believe we’re past that point. Currently, price rationing determines who lives and who dies. That’s a terrible system. But any change would necessarily mean putting someone besides the market in a position to make these determinations, and people privileged in the current system will use their power to fight it tooth and nail because a different decision-making process might, literally, kill them. Reforming the health care system is so essential, and yet even if it saves many lives, it will also cause people who live longer under the current system to die sooner. It is in no small way a version of the infamous trolley problem.

This is just about the perfect intersection between my two jobs or economist and priest, and it’s a terrifying question. If not via market pricing, how should society ration who has access to what health care? We literally can’t do everything medically possible for every sick person. So how do we decide who gets what treatment? Which steps are considered ordinary and which extraordinary? Who should have access to what care? The current system is terrible. Any different system will make some people who are winners in the current system losers in the new system, which will kill them. This has to happen, but wow this will NOT be easy. And all the harder in a culture that is terrified or in denial of death.

(The dismal science has spoken. The Christian answer, I suspect, lies in 1 Cor 15:55, and focusing on medicine to help people thrive whilst they are alive rather than maximal delay of death, but that won’t fly with many people today unless we can pull off massive conversion.)

Sorry to unload on you all here (well, that's assuming anyone is reading this blog, probably a big assumption), but I’ve put a lot of thought into this over the years. The “death panels” scare latched on to the wrong particulars, but the underlying fear is real. There ARE currently death panels and there will be under most systems we can generate. But no one seems to want the debate to be “who should properly be on the death panels and what standards should they use” or “what would a society look like in which death panels weren’t a necessary component of a health care system.”

Health care has been, is being, and will continue to be rationed for the foreseeable future, the possibility of a post-scarcity economy notwithstanding (the subject of another post). Our current rationing system is a bad one, but changing it requires replacing it with something. It is one thing to say that the standards for determining who should have access to what health care should be "not what we're doing now," but another thing entirely to come to any sort of public consensus who should be making such decisions and on what basis.