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.
Tuesday, June 16, 2020
Sunday, June 7, 2020
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.
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.
Sunday, May 31, 2020
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.
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.
Saturday, May 30, 2020
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.
Tuesday, May 19, 2020
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>
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>
Monday, May 4, 2020
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.
- The Daily Office is awesome. I highly recommend it to all followers of Jesus.
- 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.
- 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.
- Lots of people have died. The church ought to be offering frequent requiem masses on their behalf.
- Lots of people are sick. The church ought to be offering frequent healing masses on their behalf.
- The faithful need the nourishment of the Body and Blood of Christ, ESPECIALLY in a time of disruption and crisis.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
Friday, February 28, 2020
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.
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