Versus Populum

I stole this from somewhere

2009-10-15T07:41:00.000-07:00

I stole this from someone (sorry, copyright holder if any).

Tony Campolo, a Baptist minister came out with a book a couple of years ago called “The kingdom of God is a party” which raised a lot of eyebrows among those who think church and religion should be serious-all work, no fun, no joy just boring. Tony points out that the kingdom is not only a party but it is open for all especially for those on the streets and considered the least in society.

Tony tells one story of a trip to a corner bar and grill where a lonely woman named Agnes would come everyday and she was sad because tomorrow was her birthday and she had no family, no friends to celebrate it with. Tony got the bright idea to get everybody in the bar to throw her a big party and invite everyone. The next day the whole bar and grill was decorated with party favors and happy birthday signs plus there was a big birthday cake for Agnes. The whole place was filled with not only the patrons but the door was wide open to everybody walking through even prostitutes in the area to celebrate with Agnes. Agnes was so overcome with shock and surprise that she did not want to eat her cake but keep it to remind her of this great celebration in her honor. Tony ended the time with prayer, which shocked the bartender who asked you are a preacher in which he responds, yes the kind that celebrates birthdays in bars along with prostitutes.” The bartender replied “I would like to join that church but there is no such thing.”

My reading of Matthew says that the bartender's comment is a heavy conviction of life in the Church. I don't read this, as some of my Lutheran friends might, as theology of glory or as happy-clappy theology. We we start behaving like Tony's type of Christian, we will find crosses aplenty to carry -- the right ones this time.

Just a Note from Tertullian

2009-09-18T13:24:00.000-07:00

From Tertullian's De Corona (ca. 204 AD):

I think we must first inquire whether warfare is proper at all for Christians. ... Do we believe it lawful for a human oath [of military allegiance] to be superadded to one divine, for man to come under promise to another master after Christ, and to abjure father, mopther, and all nearest relatives, whom even the law has commanded us to honor and love next to God Himself? ... Should it be held lawful to make an occupation of the sword when the Lord proclaims that he who uses the sword shall perish by the sword? And shall the son of peace take part in battle when it does not even become him to sue at the law courts? And shall he apply the chain, the prison, and the torture, and the punishment who is not the avenger even of his own wrongs? ... Shall he carry a flag, too, hostile to Christ? ... You may see by a slight survey how many other offences are involved in the performance of military officers which we must hold to involve a transgression of God's law. The very carrying over of the name from the campt of light to the camp of darkness is a violation of it.

-- quoted in Robert W. Brimlow, What About Hitler? Wrestling with Jesus's [sic] Call to Nonviolence in an Evil World (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2006), pp. 22-23.

A Day of Remembering and Repenting

2009-09-11T12:02:00.000-07:00

I know that I said I was going away, but I posted this on my FaceBook today, and I think it has relevance to the reason for this blog, so I repost it here:

Today is the anniversary of a series of horrible events. It marks the eighth anniversary of the deaths (and injuries) of thousands in New York, Pennsylvania, and Washington, DC. The victims of the crashes should be remembered -- and as the Orthodox say, may their memories be eternal.

But those were not the only victims of that horrifying day. Truth was a casualty that day: Need I mention "weapons of mass destruction" or the "connection" between Al-Qaeda and Sadam Hussein or the political manipulation of threat code-colors or the denunciation of non-existent "death panels"? And how about "liberal" commitment: How many supposed liberals and non-violent Christians found themselves shouting for the bombing of Afghanistan, because "they" (who? "they!") bombed us first. (Scott Simon, of NPR fame and infamy, opened my eyes with his threatened-masculinity tirade in the Wall Street Journal, saying, in essence, "What? We should just take it? Of course not. We have to kill in return -- and it doesn't matter whom.")

And democracy in this country may have suffered a mortal wound: As Ben Franklin wisely noted, "The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either." Nevertheless, in our USAmerican eagerness to forget the past, we stifled dissent -- calling it "treason" and "anti-American" -- even as we institutionalized racial profiling, denied basic human rights with policies of rendition and Guantanamoization, suspended basic First Amendment guarantees (for citizens, mind you) with the notorious and ironically titled "Patriot Act."

Decades ago, Soviet Premier Nikitia Khruschev uttered his (mistranslated) "We will bury you" judgment on the USAmerican future. Of course, the non-critical listeners and thinkers took that to be a military threat, even though it was obvious that he meant that they would survive while we rotted from within. Well, the USSR didn't fare very well in its authoritarianism (although arguably the Russian Soviet Republic is back and holding out). But is seems clear that there was a prophet's wisdom in his pronouncement. We find ourselves in an environment of decivilization (at many levels from Abu Graiib to booing the President in a session of Congress and calling him out as liar to shouting down opponents at "town meetings).

It's easy to say that we lost something precious that day eight years ago -- some have stupidly said that it was our "innocence" we lost. But no, we lost something deeper: We lost lots of dear lives -- but we continue to lose hundreds and thousands of dear lives, only now we don't wear our hearts on our sleeves because they're soldiers and "collateral damage." We lost our heart. Supposedly, we woke up to realize that we could be "hit" on our home ground -- though of course, Timothy McVey had taught us that in Oklahoma City, and we didn't rush wholesale against the fundamentalist-Christian-m

ilitarist-libertarian-racist crowd. We lost our sense -- or reality and of fair play. Did we lose our sense of security? No, we lost our conviction that a democratic structure for truth, liberty, equality, and fair-play can perdure even in the face of threats from those who, in the service of whatever agenda, seek to subvert that structure. We lost our integrity.

And perhaps most sadly of all, the Christian Church in this country lost its faith. We did not and do not pray for our enemies; we did not and do not stand up for the thousands of innocent victims who are massacred (much as were the Twin Towers victims massacred) in the name of American interest or self-preservation. We did not and do not affirm HOPE -- not "wishes and dreams" kind of hoping, but the the firm conviction that just a God raised Jesus from the dead after his Son's life of faithfulness and dedication to his truth, so He will sustain us and, if death it be, raise us up. We have once again committed ourselves to the worship of Molokh, even as we entertain ourselves for an hour on Sundays with bread and circuses.

I wish it were some of this that would cause sadness among USAmericans today and make of this a Yom Kippur instead of a day of licking festering (and in many cases, self-inflicted) wounds.

Hiatus

2009-09-08T09:05:00.000-07:00

I have decided that I need officially to note what has become increasingly clear on this blog: I'm going on sabbatical because I find that I have less and less to say. When I have posted recently, I have felt pressure to put something out there. (What hubris!) I have found it useful to think things through in print here -- and I'm grateful for the feedback, correction, affirmation that I have received.

But the press of too many responsibilities has sent me in too many ways to make is reasonable for me to think seriously about any one thing. I need to regain some focus in my study (which is all over the place right now -- you'd see that if you saw the stacks of unread or just-begun books stacked on my night table, on my desk, by my reading chair, and at my work station). Besides that, I've been asked to assume some additional responsibilities with my congregation. And besides that, I am becoming discouraged by developments in my denomination, in my state, and in the United States. I hope to avoid printing out diatribes against and and all of them -- no matter how much they deserve to be rebuked.

Since I've been sort of babbling lately, anyway, I think it best I just babble face-to-face with the people around me, and not semi-anonymously here.

I will keep the blog open, because I expect that I'll continue to post some interesting and well-framed or -phrased thoughts from the reading I am doing. But beyond that, who knows? Friends have returned to blogging after stopping. Perhaps I'll get the urge again. (My grandmother would often commend me for my "gift of gab" -- hardly an Icelandic thing to say, I imagine, but she was 100% Icelander and knew me pretty well.)

More On Marriage

2009-09-08T08:55:00.000-07:00

People who know me know that I consider Wendell Berry one of the finest theologians in print. (I should probably tone that down: He is my favorite non-theologian theologian.) He rarely, if ever, has written a "theological" piece. But in the writing he has done, he has guided the world in the ways we should go. He professes to be a Christian, and while he doesn't go all "sermony" most of the time, the vision he draws of how the world is, according to the intentions of God, and of where we have screwed it up and continue to screw it up, and of how we might repent of our actions and failure to act is so far as I can see wholly consistent with the Law and the prophets -- and as those have been fulfilled in Jesus.

Here is a little something on marriage that is better than most church's formal statements on the sacrament. If I were a pastor, I would make reading it and discussing it the centerpiece of any pre-marital counseling that I was called on to do.

Lovers must not, like usurers, live for themselves alone. They must finally turn from their gaze at one another back toward the community. If they had only themselves to consider, lovers would not need to marry, but they must think of others and of other things. They say their vows to the community as much as to one another, and the community gathers around them to hear and to wish them sell, on their behalf and on its own. It gathers around them because it understands how necessary, how joyful, and how fearful this joining is. These lovers, pledging themselves to one another ‘until death,’ are giving themselves away, and they are joined by this as no law or contract could every join them. Lovers, then, ‘die’ into their union with one another as a soul ‘dies’ into its union with God. And so here, at the very heart of community life, we find not something to sell as in the public market but this momentous giving. If the community cannot protect this giving, it can protect nothing – and our time is proving that this is so.

-- Wendell Berry, Sex, Economy, Freedom and Community: Eight Essays (New York: Pantheon, 1993), pp. 137-38.

More on Michael Root's Thesis

2009-09-04T12:47:00.001-07:00

In a post, below, I commended a recent paper by Michael Root. In it, he analyzes a kind of development of doctrine in Lutheran theology. Lee commented, and I find that I can't fit my reply into a comment box, so I raise it again, here.

Brother Lee,

You assert that Michael Root misses "the main point: is homosexuality immoral?" Well, obviously, I think, that is not the focus of his paper. His point is to question how we go about answering that question, and he finds our modus problematic, to say the least. I don't know how he would answer your question: Ask him, on his blog. I suspect, however, that two arguments compete: First, if we can't agree on a "Lutheran" approach to answering questions, then we're just sharing opinions. And second, that suggests the need for a more formalized magisterium -- whatever you might want to call it.

No one denies the all-too-human failings of any tradition's magisterium. I don't think that any of my catholic-evangelical colleagues has delusions about that. To use an analogy: Trained as a lawyer and committed to respecting judicial authority, as my entry into the bar requires that I be, I nevertheless look with utter disdain on numerous of the decisions that have come out, even recently, of the United States Supreme Court. That disdain, however, by no means frees me from respect for the institution of the Court or from advising clients in light of its decisions.

The issue is one of authority. Authority need not be read as tight-fisted authoritarianism. In fact, the authority of Christ and of the so-called "office of the keys" should never be exercised in that way. But there is a need (in this the Church shares with all institutions) for someone to guide, commend, and correct the Church. American Lutheranism (at least, the ELCA variety) has never faced the question of how to structure our life in such a way as to vest someone (meaning, too, perhaps some group) with the responsibility of answering to no other source than God -- freed of public pressure, political correctness, mass hysteria in delineating the "boundaries" of God's word.

Do we want the proclamation of the word of God to depend on majority rule? I mean, do we really? It is such majority "feeling" that has resulted in the churches' adopting as their model of operation that of large corporations -- with the consequent concern for numbers and budgets and retirement plans and the yet consequent denial of the hard counsels of the Sermon on the Mount. It was such pandering to the majority that the US Supreme Court issued that debacle of an opinion in the Dred Scott case.

I think Michael is correct in implying that what the ELCA has now is a magisterium of how ever many members are in the ELCA -- everyone is his or her own deacon, presbyter, and bishop. That is part, I think, of what led to the Lutheran allergy to ethics, as you aptly term it. (And I read Michael to support me in that assertion.) For example, it's simply more comfortable to over-stress Gospel freedom than it is to try to maintain the existential and scholastic tension that the "simul" should carry.

I think the problem that Michael analyzes in his paper is especially concerning to Lutherans because of our self-proclaimed seriousness about the importance of the tradition (whatever we mean by that) in guiding our contemporary theology. Lutherans are not the only ones to suffer from a radical refocus in the way they do theology and the sources to which they point. But Lutherans live among the rare breeds of Protestants who claim such guidance from confessions and confessors -- serious Calvinists' being another example. How we make decisions about what to teach and preach and about how to live maters.

Besides, in following of our Lutheran bliss, we have allowed for quasi-magisteria, anyway. When we allow teachers to pick up relatively marginal ideas and thematize them into key points, then we provide each seminary prof a mitre and permission to play around with the Gospel. When we puts points of doctrine up to a vote at a denominational convention, then then we abandon the tradition of bishop, presbyter, and deacon.

The modern word is "accountability" and -- so as not to hang Michael with this analysis I stress that this is my reading -- the current ELCA lacks that accountability. A crowd of delegates, who don't even have to work for re-election to the next CWA, can't be held accountable for the decisions they make by 50%-plus-1. And the people of the Church cannot be held accountable when Church teaching -- and, yes, the teaching of 2000 years -- is overturned or determined by votes of that kind.

I think that the ELCA's way of handling the evolution -- if such it be -- of its teaching on homosexuality has been most unfortunate by both sides. The "left" spoke of "rights" and "justice" and such nonsense. (Reminder: "Self-evident unalienable rights" is not a Christian concept.) The "right" never did make a particularly compelling case on the balancing of Scripture and modern understandings. And a pox on both sides for being so cocksure.

Frankly, I lose much more sleep over the rabid capitalists I know -- especially those who wear clerical collars -- than I would think of losing for gay people. I think they much more obviously transgress and traduce the expressed will of God than do monogamous gay couples. Where's the outrage on the "right" over that? And why are so many gays eager for their own "rights" but ignorant of the needs of the poor and the other powerless?

But do you see how Michael's argument is spot on? You can complain about how a concern for the Great Tradition intersects with the obvious need for a magisterium (or a ministerium or something) when it gores your ox. But watch how it works to gore someone else's, and the objections must be tempered.

I regret that this sounds pompous, glib, and not very clear. But I think that it is fundamental to the Church to be ultra-senstive to its "use" of scripture and its appeals to authority. And that is what I hear Michael saying.

Keep faith,
D

The Gospel Power of Music

2009-09-04T11:37:00.000-07:00

Thanks to the locally produced public radio program, Performance Today, I was introduced to Karl Paulnack, who is a fine pianist and the director of the music division at the Boston Conservatory. (He played today with Jorja Fleezanis, who until recently was concertmistress of the Minnesota Orchestra.) The host brought attention to a welcoming talk the Mr. Paulnack gave to the parents of incoming freshmen at the Conservatory. It has gained wide circulation on the Internet, and I reproduce it here, hoping either that this is now officially in the public domain or that this constitutes fair use.

I will say two things. First, my appreciation for this talk has little to do with the fact that Mr. Paulnack claims that the most important concert he has given in his life was in Fargo, ND. That's not surprising. Second, it was a similar kind of talk given by Prof. Paul J. Christiansen, the legendary conductor of the Concordia Choir in Moorhead, MN (across the river from Fargo), in which he urged those of us at a choir festival to come to Concordia, not to study the things that the world gives money for -- economics or science or pre-law -- but to study music. It was that talk that convinced me to attend Concordia -- not because I wanted to be a music major, but because somewhere deep down, I knew that I wanted to go to a place where such sentiments were given such prominent expression. (I have never regretted that decision.)

Herewith, Mr. Paulnack's talk:

Welcome Address, by Karl Paulnack

“One of my parents’ deepest fears, I suspect, is that society would not properly value me as a musician, that I wouldn’t be appreciated. I had very good grades in high school, I was good in science and math, and they imagined that as a doctor or a research chemist or an engineer, I might be more appreciated than I would be as a musician. I still remember my mother’s remark when I announced my decision to apply to music school—she said, “you’re WASTING your SAT scores.” On some level, I think, my parents were not sure themselves what the value of music was, what its purpose was. And they LOVED music, they listened to classical music all the time. They just weren’t really clear about its function. So let me talk about that a little bit, because we live in a society that puts music in the “arts and entertainment” section of the newspaper, and serious music, the kind your kids are about to engage in, has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with entertainment, in fact it’s the opposite of entertainment. Let me talk a little bit about music, and how it works.

The first people to understand how music really works were the ancient Greeks. And this is going to fascinate you; the Greeks said that music and astronomy were two sides of the same coin. Astronomy was seen as the study of relationships between observable, permanent, external objects, and music was seen as the study of relationships between invisible, internal, hidden objects. Music has a way of finding the big, invisible moving pieces inside our hearts and souls and helping us figure out the position of things inside us. Let me give you some examples of how this works.

One of the most profound musical compositions of all time is the Quartet for the End of Time written by French composer Olivier Messiaen in 1940. Messiaen was 31 years old when France entered the war against Nazi Germany. He was captured by the Germans in June of 1940, sent across Germany in a cattle car and imprisoned in a concentration camp.

He was fortunate to find a sympathetic prison guard who gave him paper and a place to compose. There were three other musicians in the camp, a cellist, a violinist, and a clarinetist, and Messiaen wrote his quartet with these specific players in mind. It was performed in January 1941 for four thousand prisoners and guards in the prison camp. Today it is one of the most famous masterworks in the repertoire.

Given what we have since learned about life in the concentration camps, why would anyone in his right mind waste time and energy writing or playing music? There was barely enough energy on a good day to find food and water, to avoid a beating, to stay warm, to escape torture—why would anyone bother with music? And yet—from the camps, we have poetry, we have music, we have visual art; it wasn’t just this one fanatic Messiaen; many, many people created art. Why? Well, in a place where people are only focused on survival, on the bare necessities, the obvious conclusion is that art must be, somehow, essential for life. The camps were without money, without hope, without commerce, without rec reation, without basic respect, but they were not without art. Art is part of survival; art is part of the human spirit, an unquenchable expression of who we are. Art is one of the ways in which we say, “I am alive, and my life has meaning.”

On September 12, 2001 I was a resident of Manhattan. That morning I reached a new understanding of my art and its relationship to the world. I sat down at the piano that morning at 10 AM to practice as was my daily routine; I did it by force of habit, without thinking about it. I lifted the cover on the keyboard, and opened my music, and put my hands on the keys and took my hands off the keys. And I sat there and thought, does this even matter? Isn’t this completely irrelevant? Playing the piano right now, given what happened in this city yesterday, seems silly, absurd, irreverent, pointless. Why am I here? What place has a musician in this moment in time? Who needs a piano player right now? I was completely lost.

And then I, along with the rest of New York, went through the journey of getting through that week. I did not play the piano that day, and in fact I contemplated briefly whether I would ever want to play the piano again. And then I observed how we got through the day.

At least in my neighborhood, we didn’t shoot hoops or play Scrabble. We didn’t play cards to pass the time, we didn’t watch TV, we didn’t shop, we most certainly did not go to the mall. The first organized activity that I saw in New York, that same day, was singing. People sang. People sang around fire houses, people sang “We Shall Overcome”. Lots of people sang America the Beautiful. The first organized public event that I remember was the Brahms Requiem, later that week, at Lincoln Center, with the New York Philharmonic. The first organized public expression of grief, our first communal response to that historic event, was a concert. That was the beginning of a sense that life might go on. The US Military secured the airspace, but recovery was led by the arts, and by music in particular, that very night.

From these two experiences, I have come to understand that music is not part of “arts and entertainment” as the newspaper section would have us believe. It’s not a luxury, a lavish thing that we fund from leftovers of our budgets, not a plaything or an amusement or a pass time. Music is a basic need of human survival. Music is one of the ways we make sense of our lives, one of the ways in which we express feelings when we have no words, a way for us to understand things with our hearts when we cannot with our minds.

Some of you may know Samuel Barber’s heartwrenchingly beautiful piece Adagio for Strings. If you don’t know it by that name, then some of you may know it as the background music which accompanied the Oliver Stone movie Platoon, a film about the Vietnam War. If you know that piece of music either way, you know it has the ability to crack your heart open like a walnut; it can make you cry over sadness you didn’t know you had. Music can slip beneath our conscious reality to get at what’s really going on inside us the way a good therapist does.

I bet that you have never been to a wedding where there was absolutely no music. There might have been only a little music, there might have been some really bad music, but I bet you there was some music. And something very predictable happens at weddings—people get all pent up with all kinds of emotions, and then there’s some musical moment where the action of the wedding stops and someone sings or plays the flute or something. And even if the music is lame, even if the quality isn’t good, predictably 30 or 40 percent of the people who are going to cry at a wedding cry a couple of moments after the music starts. Why? The Greeks. Music allows us to move around those big invisible pieces of ourselves and rearrange our insides so that we can express what we feel even when we can’t talk about it. Can you imagine watching Indiana Jones or Superman or Star Wars with the dialogue but no music? What is it about the music swelling up at just the right moment in ET so that all the softies in the audience start crying at exactly the same moment? I guarantee you if you showed the movie with the music stripped out, it wouldn’t happen that way. The Greeks: Music is the understanding of the relationship between invisible internal objects.

I’ll give you one more example, the story of the most important concert of my life. I must tell you I have played a little less than a thousand concerts in my life so far. I have played in places that I thought were important. I like playing in Carnegie Hall; I enjoyed playing in Paris; it made me very happy to please the critics in St. Petersburg. I have played for people I thought were important; music critics of major newspapers, foreign heads of state. The most important concert of my entire life took place in a nursing home in Fargo, ND, about 4 years ago.

I was playing with a very dear friend of mine who is a violinist. We began, as we often do, with Aaron Copland’s Sonata, which was written during World War II and dedicated to a young friend of Copland’s, a young pilot who was shot down during the war. Now we often talk to our audiences about the pieces we are going to play rather than providing them with written program notes. But in this case, because we began the concert with this piece, we decided to talk about the piece later in the program and to just come out and play the music without explanation.

Midway through the piece, an elderly man seated in a wheelchair near the front of the concert hall began to weep. This man, whom I later met, was clearly a soldier—even in his 70’s, it was clear from his buzz-cut hair, square jaw and general demeanor that he had spent a good deal of his life in the military. I thought it a little bit odd that someone would be moved to tears by that particular movement of that particular piece, but it wasn’t the first time I’ve heard crying in a concert and we went on with the concert and finished the piece.

When we came out to play the next piece on the program, we decided to talk about both the first and second pieces, and we described the circumstances in which the Copland was written and mentioned its dedication to a downed pilot. The man in the front of the audience became so disturbed that he had to leave the auditorium. I honestly figured that we would not see him again, but he did come backstage afterwards, tears and all, to explain himself.

What he told us was this: “During World War II, I was a pilot, and I was in an aerial combat situation where one of my team’s planes was hit. I watched my friend bail out, and watched his parachute open, but the Japanese planes which had engaged us returned and machine gunned across the parachute chords so as to separate the parachute from the pilot, and I watched my friend drop away into the ocean, realizing that he was lost. I have not thought about this for many years, but during that first piece of music you played, this memory returned to me so vividly that it was as though I was reliving it. I didn’t understand why this was happening, why now, but then when you came out to explain that this piece of music was written to commemorate a lost pilot, it was a little more than I could handle. How does the music do that? How did it find those feelings and those memories in me?”

Remember the Greeks: music is the study of invisible relationships between internal objects. This concert in Fargo was the most important work I have ever done. For me to play for this old soldier and help him connect, somehow, with Aaron Copland, and to connect their memories of their lost friends, to help him remember and mourn his friend, this is my work. This is why music matters.

What follows is part of the talk I will give to this year’s freshman class when I welcome them a few days from now. The responsibility I will charge your sons and daughters with is this:

“If we were a medical school, and you were here as a med student practicing appendectomies, you’d take your work very seriously because you would imagine that some night at two AM someone is going to waltz into your emergency room and you’re going to have to save their life. Well, my friends, someday at 8 PM someone is going to walk into your concert hall and bring you a mind that is confused, a heart that is overwhelmed, a soul that is weary. Whether they go out whole again will depend partly on how well you do your craft.

You’re not here to become an entertainer, and you don’t have to sell yourself. The truth is you don’t have anything to sell; being a musician isn’t about dispensing a product, like selling used Chevies. I’m not an entertainer; I’m a lot closer to a paramedic, a firefighter, a rescue worker. You’re here to become a sort of therapist for the human soul, a spiritual version of a chiropractor, physical therapist, someone who works with our insides to see if they get things to line up, to see if we can come into harmony with ourselves and be healthy and happy and well.

Frankly, ladies and gentlemen, I expect you not only to master music; I expect you to save the planet. If there is a future wave of wellness on this planet, of harmony, of peace, of an end to war, of mutual understanding, of equality, of fairness, I don’t expect it will come from a government, a military force or a corporation. I no longer even expect it to come from the religions of the world, which together seem to have brought us as much war as they have peace. If there is a future of peace for humankind, if there is to be an understanding of how these invisible, internal things should fit together, I expect it will come from the artists, because that’s what we do. As in the concentration camp and the evening of 9/11, the artists are the ones who might be able to help us with our internal, invisible lives.”

Must Reading

2009-09-01T13:03:00.000-07:00

Michael Root, the out-going dean of Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary -- who is also the Executive Director of the Center for Catholic and Evangelical Theology, an ecumenist of great distinction, a terrific theology professor, and my friend -- has just begun a new blog, and I commend it to you. Michael is astute, incisive, plain-spoken, and eloquent, so I expect good things from it.

Be warned, fellow progressives, his blog was inspired by the decisions made at the ELCA's Churchwide Assembly (a foolish title by any measure -- e.g., how can the assembly be churchwide, when it only includes ELCA Lutherans?) regarding issues of homosexuality in the life and practice of the denomination. For those seeking a hard-nosed theological understanding of why even I, as leftist and progressive as I am, opposed the decision, that's the place to look.

Tradition

2009-08-04T06:20:00.000-07:00

We all know Tevye's meditation on "tradition" in Fiddler on the Roof. And I hope you know Jaroslav Pelikan's distinction of "tradition" from "traditionalism" -- viz., that tradition is the living faith of the dead and traditionalism is the dead faith of the living. Well, there is also this from G.K. Chesterton, from Orthodoxy:

“Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about. All democrats object to men being disqualified by the accident of their birth; tradition objects to their being disqualified by the accident of death. Democracy tells us not to neglect a good man’s opinion, even if he is our groom; tradition tells us not to neglect a good man’s opinion, even if he is our father.”

More than anything, this has helped me to get a handle on why I think the ELCA is so misguided on the issues of a statement on sexuality and on proposed revisions to the standards of conduct (especially in the realm of sexual relations) expected of clergy (which are really the same expectations we have -- or ought to have -- for members, but that's another story): It disenfranchises the millions of generations that have preceded us in the faith. The martyrdom of the foreparents has been that homosexual conduct is, at the very least, problematic if not execrable. I don't happen to agree with the assessment; I think there is every reason to re-think the Church's teaching, just as we have faithfully done with respect to slavery, the ministry of and by women, the shape of liturgy. But in the past, as painful as the process was, we worked and prayed and studied together to discern whether and how to change the traditional teaching. When change came, say in the decision to ordain women in some branches of American Lutheranism, it came after it was clear that the traditional teaching could no longer be promoted. Oh, there wasn't unanimity in the decision, but it was impossible to say (as does the proposed social statement on sexuality) that we had no consensus (and implied: no overwhelming tide of opinion) on whether to ordain women and so it was OK for some and it was OK for others to resist.

Michael Root says something similar to this, only more elegantly and scholarly, in a comment at the online Lutheran Journal of Ethics. It is well worth reading.

For now, I hope and wish that the ELCA Churchwide Assembly (what an awful title for the synod) would heed the words of Chesterton and other wise teachers.

Cribbing

2009-08-03T13:24:00.000-07:00

I have swiped some tidbits from Wendell Berry's poem, "Sabbaths 2005." I have yet to find anything he writes other than excellent.

I.
I know that I have life
only insofar as I have love.

I have no love
except it come from Thee.

Help me, please, to carry
this candle against the wind.

III.
"Are you back to normal?" asks
my old friend, ill himself, after I,
who have been ill, am well. "Yes,
the gradient of normality now being downward." ...

VII.
I know I am getting old and I say so,
but I don't think of myself as an old man.
I think of myself as a young man
with unforeseen debilities. ...

VIII.
I tremble with gratitude
for my children and their children
who take pleasure in one another.

At our dinners together, the dead
enter and pass among us
in living love and in memory.

And so the young are taught.

XIII.
Eternity is not infinity.
It is not a long time.
It does not begin at the end of time.
It does not run parallel to time.
In its entirety it always was.
In its entirety it will always be.
It is entirely present always.

XIX.
Born by our birth
Here on the earth
Our flesh to wear
Our death to bear

Nothing in Particular

2009-07-20T07:44:00.001-07:00

Kathy and I attended mass with the Sisters of the Order of Saint Benedict in St. Joseph, MN, yesterday. (It's the sister monastery to St. John's Abbey, about which I will speak at great length if you but ask.) We were there for the Jubilee (50th anniversary of solemn profession of vows) of the sister of the husband of one of Kathy's second cousins. (It's a long story -- short version: Kathy's relatives are delighted about our interest in "things Catholic," which sparked an introduction to Sr. Cecelia, who was delighted to have at her celebration a couple of Protestants who shared her passion for ordered ministry.)

It was, by most standards, a pretty unremarkable event. It was a straightforward mass, although it was pretty much "run" (as Kathy said) by women, and not by men: The prioress preached the homily, only one man aside from the presiding priest served communion (and I guess he was a former president of the College of St. Benedict, which was established by this community), the prioress presided over the nuns' reaffirmation of their vows, and so on. The Sacred Heart Chapel has been brightened and modernized along Vatican II lines, with a centered chancel, very white walls, an utter impressive dome that now (what with the remodeling) sits over the altar as a kind of glorified baldachin. The music was familiar, with pipe organ supplemented with brass, violin, and for some numbers guitar (which was wonderful with the psalm and a canticle).

But despite the every-day appearance, it was a moving and inspiring event. Sister Prioress gave a precis of each "Jubilant"'s service over 50 years. And one -- well, I -- couldn't help wondering how the Roman Catholic Church could possible function without its nuns/sister and monks/brothers. Of course, I'm partial to Benedictines: When they remember their heritage/mission of hospitality, I can only shout "Amen," because I have been the recipient of that hospitality time and again. When they speak of praying the Psalms, I am humbled. When the schola sang the verses to the Psalm at mass, there was a sense of the familiarity of the texts that I never hear elsewhere. And I realize how important it is that they meet "three times daily" to speak, sing, recite, pray, praise the Psalms. When the sisters speak together or arrange for a luncheon for guests or (as Sr. Dorothy had to do) come fetch guests from the community cemetery in order to be included in a picture, there is something rooted and sound that is often missed by even the most evangelically driven pastor or lay person in my world.

There was an aura of sanctity that attached to the place -- to and through the individual sisters that I met, but also to and through the mere existence of the community (now over 150 years old). Even the chapel looked more modern than my church (and I love the English Gothic building we have!), I felt wrapped up in something big and old and durable. It was Church, with a capital "C".

More Fr Taft

2009-07-14T11:03:00.000-07:00

Here are two more quotations from Robert Taft, this time from "'Eastern Presuppositions' and Western Liturgical Renewal":

Nothing is so foreign to the western mentality as the ancient prayers of the Assyro-Chaldean tradition which simply to God without asking him for anything, as in the beautiful Collect of the Lakumara Hymn: "For all your benefits and graces to us past recompense, Lord, we confess and glorify you without ceasing in your triumphant church full of all helps and all blessings: for you are the Lord and creator of all, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, forever."

And shortly thereafter Taft comments

Like the reply of George Leigh Mallory when asked why he climbed Mount Everest -- "Because it is there," he answered -- the Christian east prays to God simply because he is. One constantly hears in the west that people do not go to church because "they don't get anything out of it anymore." What one "gets out of it," let me repeat what I have said on other occasions, is the inestimably privilege of glorifying almighty God.

Res ipsa loquitur, in legal jargon: The thing speaks for itself.

And the people said, "Amen!"

So That Explains It

2009-07-13T12:07:00.000-07:00

By Robert Taft's terms, I must be a Byzantine Christian. In an article on "The Spirit of Eastern Christian Worship," the Byzantine rite Catholic scholar of Eastern liturgy notes,

Latin Catholics often visit church to be alone with God; they have a feeling of emptiness in a Protestant church where the sacrament is not reserved. Not so the Byzantine Christians. On entering church they do not proceed to their private prayers without first going round to visit the icons, kissing them and lighting a candle before them, thus saluting the saints and joining in their communion.

That's my experience in church, too, although most of my "special" icons are alive and kicking. This past Sunday, I got to church early (not unusual for me because I enjoy what will happen next), and there were the greeters to greet and hug and share a joke with. (They had time for this, because the great last-minute Lutheran rush was some time off yet.) Then in to "my pew" (sorry, Kate: fourth pew, pulpit side), with a bow to the altar, sign of the cross, and a brief prayer. But across the aisle were Ro and Elaine, so it was out to hug and shake hands and share some excitement about the beautiful day -- and pets. (And then they scooted me up to adjust one of flower vases at the altar so that it was properly oriented. I'm not on altar guild, but I can handle turning a flower urn, I guess.) Then on to deliver an article I had saved for someone and to joke with another friend about the Cathars, for whom we both harbor some affection (if mostly as the source of humorous barbs). Back to the pew and hugs and kisses for the pewmates (among our closest friends) and the people behind us -- who usually sit farther back. And then "devotion" began in earnest -- or is that wrong?

My devotions don't begin when I cut out all the distractions of the people around me to be alone with God. (I have one friend who puts it almost exactly that way, and I can't begin to understand him.) I go to church to be with these very brothers and sisters, the Church. I can't imagine a liturgy without them. (At Mount Olive, we're a two-service church, except in summer. So some of these people I don't always see during the winter except at coffee hour. And so summer is special because I'm able to be with both "service" crowds.) To celebrate the liturgy, to receive the presence of the Lord, is for me entirely wrapped up the hopes and sadnesses of these folks. And not just them. There's the columbarium, where a few brothers share in our "mass" and await God's own good time to reunite them with us in bodily form. And then that great cloud of witnesses of which Paul speaks -- that's not just theoretical: Some of them are pictured in the windows; others we remember in prayers.

I felt that perhaps I wasn't being serious enough at church, even though we're a far-from-dour crowd. But now I get it: It's my Byzantine heart. With them, I take the "communion of saints" with utter seriousness. I'd like to see a more serious attempt to include the saints who have gone before in our prayer life at Mount Olive; it's better than it used to be. But for that to take hold, it seems to me, the kind of communing that occurs among the visible living forms the model for our including those whom we can't see.

And to think of worshiping without them is simply not something I can -- or want to -- get my mind around.

Loving Truth in "Caritas in Veritate"

2009-07-10T09:39:00.001-07:00

Pope Benedict's newest encyclical is Caritas in Veritate and is meant to inform "all people of good will on integral human development in charity and truth" (caption). At the beginning of the letter he writes of the importance of holding truth and charity/love together. For while charity "is the synthesis of the entire Law ..." (par. 2), "[w]ithout truth, charity degenerates into sentimentality. ... Truth, in fact, is the logos which creates dia-logos, and hence communication and communion. Truth, by enabling men and women to let go of their subjective opinions and impressions, allows them to move beyond cultural and historical limitations and to come together in the assessment of the value and substance of things" (pars. 3,4).

That's gorgeous, isn't it? Charity, unhampered by truth, easily degenerates into subjectivism and sentimentality. [God is love] does not equate with [Love is god]. Love must have content, form, telos. Absent concern for that, which the Holy Father claims must be grounded in the dynamic of truth in the Gospel, we can't agree on whether something is loving or not. The current lack of consensus on what constitutes love results from "a social and cultural context which relativizes truth, often paying little heed to it and showing increasing reluctance to acknowledge its existence" (par. 2).

Yesterday, I was reading Miroslav Volf where he reflected on receiving his first adopted son from the hands of the boy's birth mother. That experience changed the way he looked at love (and specifically his views of birth mothers who give up their children for adoption, whom he didn't consider very loving), for the mother whispered to her newborn, just before giving him into the hands of the Volfs, that she was doing it for him, since she couldn't care for him. (I wish I had the book here, because the passage is just beautiful.) He says that he changed his view of mothers who give up their children for adoption, realizing now that those mothers' motives might be more loving, given the good things it makes possible for the child that otherwise might not be possible, than holding on to the child in satisfaction of some motherly instinct or whatever. In this case, it was not that the mother didn't love the child or didn't want to be encumbered or didn't want to have to change; it was that the mother didn't have the resources to care for the child and, consequently, arranged for the child to be placed in a loving home where he would have the kind of care that would allow him to flourish. Note: This is not just a consideration of who has more money or similar resources; it is about the ability to provide holistic --holy -- care for the child. Who could buy the neatest toys for the kid was not a consideration.

I think the two readings are related -- and I'm not sure I can articulate it. But there is a deep truth at work in the intersection of these two thoughts. My thinking looks something like this: Without "truth's" informing our views and actions of "love," it is easy to overlook that love is not just an emotion (e.g., all mothers must naturally love their children), but something of a policy (that the welfare of the other is the primary concern I have).The truth is in that parenthetical policy statement. And how do we know? By checking motives, feelings, actions against the witness of the Bible -- a kind of "what did [not: would] Jesus do" analysis -- and allowing our instincts, predispositions, ethics and ethos, principles, et. al. to flow from there.

Now I have to go back to reading the encyclical. Because the language to say all of this must be in there -- and I have a lot of pages to go. And I will read the Volf book (Free of Charge: Living and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace), too, in tandem with the Pontiff's encyclical. This is good stuff.

God and Guns

2009-07-09T08:34:00.000-07:00

You maybe can imagine my wanting to scream and rant about the pastor in Kentucky (home of Jack Daniels, for crying out loud) who invited people to bring guns to his church service in order to celebrate the Second Amendment and the propriety of guns in the hands of Christians. I hope that you appreciate my discretion in not entitling such a potential post "Too Stupid for Words." But along comes this post from the Marty Center's Sightings. It puts the matter in an interesting frame. And while I'm not sure that I am comfortable with Laycock's neutrality, he raises some interesting issues. (Incidentally, as I think I have noted before, you can subscribe to the twice-a-week email posts from the Marty Center -- one always by Martin Marty, the other by scholars and students in fields relating to theology and the body politic -- by connecting to the Marty Center's website.)

Sightings 7/9/09

Understanding the “Open Carry Celebration”

-- Joseph Laycock

On June 27th––one week before the 4th of July––New Bethel Church in Louisville, Kentucky held an “Open Carry Celebration” in which visitors and parishioners were invited to bring their firearms to church. Firearms could not be loaded, but celebrants licensed to carry concealed weapons would not be searched. This celebration of the Second Amendment also included a handgun raffle, patriotic music, and information on firearm safety. The event seemed poorly timed after the assassination of Dr. George Tiller in a Wichita church and James von Brunn’s assault on the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. However, the church’s pastor, former marine and handgun trainer Ken Pagano, had been planning the event prior to these high profile shootings.

The celebration has received wide media coverage. Many find the juxtaposition of firearms and religion perplexing. Even other gun owners have questioned the logic of inviting strangers to bring guns to church. Many articles have linked Pagano to gun lobby fears that the Obama administration is planning sweeping anti-gun legislation. However, Pagano’s sermons on Christian self-defense contain no references to current legislation or the reputation of president Barack Obama and Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor as being “gun-grabbers.” Instead, material on the New Bethel Church website indicates two factors behind the Open Carry Celebration. The first was the March 8th shooting of Pastor Fred Winters in First Baptist Church in Maryville, Illinois. In one of his sermons, Pagano read a statement by the Christian Anti-Defamation Commission that attributed Winters’ death to “anti-Christian hostility and a lack of guns in church.” Pagano thought the statement was “over the top” but said he supported the idea that Christianity is compatible with self-defense.

The second factor is a brand of muscular Christianity supported by a theology that seeks a “synthesis” of the Jesus of the Gospels with the divine wrath found in the Old Testament as well as the Book of Revelations. In his sermons Pagano criticizes the axiom What would Jesus do? as “crass commercialism.” He argues that the WWJD approach to life contributes to an overemphasis on the sayings of Jesus found in the Gospels, and undermines the doctrine that Jesus is one with the Father and the Holy Spirit. Pagano states in one of his sermons, “Many of the people who are raising the stink [about the Open Carry Celebration] are people who believe in a maudlin, sentimental view of Jesus Christ that really has nothing to do with the sacred texts of scripture.” He cites Luke 22:36, “He that hath no sword, let him sell his garment and buy one” and points out that at least two of Jesus’ disciples carried weapons. In one sermon he states that Jesus is, “not coming back as a limp-wristed, stamp-collecting preacher. He’s coming back as a navy seal, a force recon marine, or a green beret.”

At first blush, the Open Carry Celebration would seem to confirm the gaffe made by Obama during the primaries that a weak economy drives “bitter” working class voters to “cling to guns and religion.” However, it would be dismissive to read the event simply as a conservative church supporting a conservative political cause. Within Pagano’s theological framework, the Open Carry Celebration is not simply an affirmation of Second Amendment Rights. The idea that America’s gun culture is compatible with Christianity has become tied to a specific Christology. This is no longer a conflict over gun culture but over what scripture says about Christ. Pagano is not struggling with anti-gun legislation but with an image of Christ that many conservative Evangelicals see as feminized, commercialized, and inauthentic. Pastors seeking to “restore” a manly image of Christ have already brought us events like Mark Driscoll’s “Fighting with God” where Jesus is discussed by athletes from the Ultimate Fighting Championship. Within this culture, is a church celebration of firearms really so surprising?

References:

A New York Times article on the Open Carry Celebration can be found here: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/26/us/26guns.html.

Audio clips of Ken Pagano’s sermons can be downloaded here: http://www.newbethelchurchky.org/.

Joseph Laycock is a PhD student studying religion and society at Boston University, and the author of Vampires Today: The Truth About Modern Vampires (Praeger Publishers, 2009).

Attribution

Columns may be quoted or republished in full, with attribution to the author of the column, Sightings, and the Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago Divinity School.

Gerson Gets it Right

2009-06-29T10:34:00.000-07:00

I don't happen to agree with Michael Gerson in The Washington Post very often. But last week he got it quite right.

We have a white Havanese ourselves, and I can testify that everything he says about his Latte is true of our Krissie (we didn't name here: She had been given that name by the rescue society from whom we adopted her). I have long called her my anti-depressant (the same designation Gerson gives Latte) and Kathy, my wife, claims that she sees my blood pressure visibly go down when I get on the floor to play with the white fluff ball.

Havanese (or Bichon havanais: see here) owners are notoriously chauvinistic -- there is really no other breed for us. And we will talk your ear off about how precious our little beasts are. Gerson is relatively succinct in his praise of the breed. But he does highlight some of the breed's remarkable history.

I've been reading N.T. Wright on resurrection (Surprised by Hope) and he draws a picture of a post-resurrection New Heaven and New Earth that is very earthy. Included, it seems, is a future that will include all that has been precious to us humans -- which would include our pets. Frankly, it's hard to imagine a New Earth that does not include those animals that have provided so much love, joy, challenge to my life. And I take heart in Wright's assertion that I do not need to worry about that.

Even the precious Havanese, which have been bred for no earthly purpose than to provide companionship to their pets (read: owners) will be there. There is likely a sermon in that.

Reading

2009-06-22T11:55:00.000-07:00

I thank God regularly for the number of good conversation partners with whom He has seen fit to graced me. (I saw recently and somewhere that a Spanish-speaker had translated his own reply to someone, "Muchas gracias!" as "many graces." It's a literal translation I suppose, but just look at how much more charming and eucharistic that translation is than the "thank you" he could have used.) And you see evidence of that here all the time. (If I've ever had an original thought -- for good or ill -- it likely has grown out of the convergence of talks I've had with others, in which I paste or mutilate thoughts onto one another for my own purposes.)

Well, one of those partners is Cha, whose blog, Transposzing, I link to. The other day in a wide-ranging coffee break chat, we were lamenting the absence of a good sense of The Great Tradition from much of Christianity: There is a rude arrogance in Christianity that encourages "me" to be the judge of all that is. (Leithart, in Solomon among the Postmoderns, helps to explain how this has come to be as a kind of natural response to the Enlightenment, with its consequent Modernist hard-headedness and suspicion of authority, in Postmodernism's value of plurality and suspicion of metanarrative [which is really, I think, what the Enlightenment was: an effort to write a metanarrative in which God was not a character].) And I was talking about my Matthew group and how we have had to learn how to read the Gospel properly -- about how wrong is the supposed Reformation ideal that every Christian can just pick up a Bible and read it on his/her own and achieve full revelation of God. We need guides -- and not just the historical critics, either. (Carl Braaten and I recently discussed his view that all the on-going "historical Jesus" investigation -- whether it's Jesus Seminar or N.T. Wright -- is wrong-headed because it posits that there's something behind the Bible which we have to somehow discern in order for the Bible to be true. I'm not sure I agree with him yet, but I am still mulling over his insistence that even to undertake to "prove" this or that of the Bible is to grant legitimacy to a hermeneutic of suspicion -- my term, not his -- that is at the heart of the decline of the Faith.)

I said that it reminds me of the bumper sticker (which I'd put on my car, if I had such a bumper sticker), "If you can read this/thank a teacher." In the faith, before we can read the Scriptures, we, too, need teachers. We need someone -- actually several -- to lead us in the art of Scripture reading that will allow the "meaning" to come forth. The creeds and councils, the Fathers, the great preachers through the ages, our own mentors in the faith -- these all are Spirit-placed teachers who instruct us in how to read the Bible faithfully.

Frankly, this is not limited to the life of faith: We must be taught to read in whatever discipline we probe. I had to be taught to read poetry with the help of John Ciardi's surprisingly titled "How Does a Poem Mean." (How, not "What" does a poem mean? Talk about a perspective changer.) Later I had to be taught how appropriately to read social science reports (actually, I'm not sure that most of that stuff is written in any human language, but that's for another time). Then, I had to learn how properly to read legal precedents and statutes. It is probably impossible to pick up the laws of Minnesota or a volume of Supreme Court decisions and read it without training in how to read that kind of material. (I admit that it's not rocket science; but it is different from reading the newspaper or James Joyce.)

Lamentably, the underlying issue is well-known to almost all Christians, but the greater issue is not: Christians seem to know that they need help in reading and understanding the Bible. But they look to the wrong teachers. The various "quests for the historical Jesus" (whose critics Carl is but the latest in a noble line); Bultmann, Vermes, Borg, Crossan (grr); social scientists (remember Karl Menninger's classic diatribe against preachers' recasting sin as disease, "Whatever Became of Sin?"?), critics and theorists of various sorts (ah, the glories of post-modern pluralism), The Fundamentals, and all the rest -- these become the teachers who displace those who are the Church's true teachers and in the process teach people to read improperly.

I confess, in my typical sky-is-falling over-reaction, that I am tempted to despair when I look at Seminary reading lists. Foucault, Derrida, and people whom I don't know appear, but there is no requirement that students of the Bible read Basil or Chrysostum or Augustine (well, you can go light on him, for my money) or Origen. I also confess that I am caught in the days of my youth: What I learned made sense, and I'd rather things not change. I got into battles with my daughter because she expected me to help her with her math, but I was taught to get an exact result from multiplication and she is taught to get an approximation! (OK, that's maybe simplistic, but I really didn't and don't get it!) But I think there are some things that are still true and haven't changed: There is a difference between who and whom; 4 + 3 does not equal "between 6 and 8; "Father, Son, and Holy Spirit" is not adequately represented in or substituted by "Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer" any more than is "Holy Trinity." How do I know? Because I was taught to read and to read properly. (I make no claims that a teacher can teach you to be bright, but she can teach you to discern. Similarly, no teacher on her own can make one believe, but she can put on in a position to hear the true Gospel and be converted.)

Despite my despair, I continue in my hope and confidence that the Spirit will continue to whisper, shout, sing, and chant, as She did to Augustine, "Take up and read!" But her command, invitation, and enticement is now probably, "Take up and read correctly."

Saint Paul Cathedral is now a Shrine

2009-06-17T08:01:00.001-07:00

The Vatican has approved the designation of the Cathedral of Saint Paul (located in Saint Paul, Minnesota -- and yes, the official name of the City spells out "Saint") as a national shrine: It will be the first national shrine to St. Paul in the country. The designation seems, to my wishful-thinking mind, to be most apt. For years, the Archdiocese of Saint Paul-Minneapolis has enjoyed warm ecumenical relationships with Protestants (relations that seemed to have cooled from lack of attention under the current archbishop) -- especially the Lutherans. It seems more than appropriate to have a shrine to the mutually respected St. Paul set by Roman Catholics smack in the heart of Lutheran-land, with our almost hawkish (I want to say "marianist-like") devotion to the missionary-teacher-preacher (or at least to its interpretation of the guy).

The Cathedral is an impressive building and the history of its placement and construction is fascinating. For example, it sits high on a hill overlooking the City of Saint Paul (and naturally a rather ritzy neighborhood grew up around it); it sits higher than the nearby (and also beautiful) State Capitol building and boasts a dome larger than the Capitol's. Dating to 1917, I think, the Cathedral is on the National Register. It is also a popular place for concerts.

Apparently, the point of a shrine is to provide a destination for pilgrims on a journey with "a pious purpose." Perhaps such a purpose should be the reunification of the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church. In this Jubilee Year of Paul, I hope that this designation will encourage Lutherans (especially) and other separated brethren to make their pilgrimage to the shrine to pray for the fulfillment of Saint Paul's (the man's) urging that there is one Body of Christ and, if that body is fractured, sin is to blame and the members better attend to business, to listen to the Spirit's counsel for unity, and to get over their bitter differences f0r the sake of the Gospel.

Curiously or coincidentally (or perhaps so only in my mind), I have just returned from the annual conference of the Center for Catholic and Evangelical Theology (which met just off the grounds of Catholic University in DC, home to the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception), where we explored the continuing relevance and questions of Vatican II for the life of the churches and of the ecumenical movement. The keynote presenter, Dr. George Lindbeck (who may be the only living official observer of the entire Vatican II Council in the States), quoted from a colleague that "In a divided Church, the Eucharist tastes bitter." It's a phenomenally powerful statement of truth and mission.

Congratulations to the people of the Archdiocese of Saint Paul-Minneapolis (it may be "of Saint Paul and Minneapolis"). As a Lutheran (which I think by definition makes me an evangelical catholic Christian), I now claim an interest in the Archbishop's home church, if not in yet in his cathedra.

What Would Jesus Have Us Do?

2009-05-28T10:30:00.000-07:00

An intersection of concerns from two aspects of my life has caused me to reflect on “Christian activism” (for lack of a better term) in the world. This blog is all about the intersection of faith and our lives a public beings, so it’s only natural to think about this. But I confess that this hits me where I am most vulnerable in my theology (I don’t mean in an emotional sense):In the issue of how Christians play out their salvation in the world, I often find my intellectual theology in tension with my gut-level politics (evidence, I would argue that I am simul justus et peccator). And I seem to run in circles trying to cut the Gordian knot.

Background, the first event, I’m involved in a little email experiment. Some of us are carrying on an online discussion of N.T. Wright’s recent book, Surprised by Hope. It is a study (and lengthy sermon, I would argue – which what a good theology ought to be) in the meaning of resurrection: What does it mean that Jesus is raised? What does the Bible actually say about resurrection and about the implications for life now and in the future of Jesus’ being raised? It’s splendidly written (I think I’ve remarked before how lucky British Anglicans are to have some scholarly bishops – pastors who are terrifically well-taught in theology and who can articulate orthodox theology in clear and eloquent ways: witness Wright and Archbishop Rowan Williams, as only two examples.)

Anyway, in our discussion, we have been invited to comment on this paragraph from the book:

Despite a thousand Easter hymns and a million Easter sermons, the resurrection narratives in the gospels never, ever say anything like, 'Jesus is raised, therefore there is life after death,' let alone, 'Jesus is raised, therefore we will go to heaven when we die.' Nor even, in a more authentic first-century Christian way, do they say, 'Jesus is raised, therefore we shall be raised from the dead after the sleep ofdeath.' No. Insofar as the event is interpreted, Easter has a very this-worldly present-age meaning: Jesus is raised, so he is the Messiah, so God's new creation has begun--and we, his followers, have a job to do! Jesus is raised, so we must act as heralds, announcing his lordship to the entire world, and making his kingdom come on earth as in heaven!

-- N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope, p. 96

The moderator (a Lutheran pastor who always impresses me with his insight, his felicity of expression, and his graciousness) of the group has posed this challenge:

So let's stop here for the moment and ponder particularly that last claim, and perhaps note that it touches a particular Lutheran neuralgia: however can we MAKE Christ's kingdom come? (and Wright will get at this in detail later in the book, so for now we need not get bogged down in politics (as significant as that might be) but only in the claim of our work of MAKING).

Background, the second event: As you know, in my congregation I have been leading or facilitating (a more apt description) a close-reading and discussion of the Gospel of Matthew (for going on two years now, and we’re still not done). We have just looked at the Lord’s counsels in Matthew 18 about how to deal with a “brother” (= member of the church) who sins (some manuscripts stop there and some add “against you”): It’s the familiar command first to confront the sinner, then to take witnesses, and finally, all other attempts’ having failed, to take it to the church.

Well, after Sunday’s discussion, which I think I pushed to consider that the process that Jesus commands is meant to apply to the Church, the congregation, and is not counsel for how to deal with things in the world, I was challenged by a friend to deal with the wider picture. Others and I had admitted that there are implications for our lives in the world. We are to follow that process in our civic dealings, for example, although it may be difficult to call an assailant to convert while dealing with him face-to-face. But the question remained open: Is this a model for how to structure the society? Are we to refuse police forces and armies? Say more about the “worldly” implications of this teaching, my friend said. And thus this post. What follows is an edited version of what I wrote for my online discussion.

The issue of "kingdom come" is particularly relevant to me personally as I lead discussion of the Gospel of Matthew. I have never been a biblical scholar, but I have undertaken seriously to work with the Greek text, some commentaries, and Stanley Hauerwas' quite wonderful "theological commentary" on the Gospel. And I have had to refine a lot of my theology as a result of this endeavor.

Having preached on Matthew very little, I previously have not understood that Matthew writes to a congregation of (probably mainly, if not exclusively) Jewish Christians who struggle to continue in the faith despite the charges by their Jewish neighbors that they are apostates to Judaism. (That's my set-up of the Gospel for the discussion group, in any event.) Matthew describes how Jesus first teaches his disciples and then mandates that they teach the Church how to live the "kingdom of heaven" which has drawn hear in Jesus himself. The counsel of Mt. 18 illustrates: Whether the sinner in question sins against the one addressed or simply sins (sort of in general), the sinner is a "brother" -- a fellow member of the Body of Christ. And the command to talk with the sinner, then take 2 or 3, then address the Church is counsel on how to live as a community. That flashes one back to the Beatitudes, then, to show them not as individual counsels of perfection, but as the "parameters" (sorry, mathematicians) of communal life in the reign of God. As Hauerwas repeatedly stresses, it takes a community to support, direct, and correct individual Christians in living the Christian life. A Christian life is one organized around the Gospel and its sure proclamation that Jesus is the Lord of all of life: The Holy Spirit has called us into community around this Lord in order by our community to manifest and proclaim that Lordship to the world.

Now the implication for that is, I admit, archetypally Hauerwasian: The Church manifests the "kingdom that has come" in its life together -- toward one another and toward those whom it meets outside the assembly. The mission of the Church is not to remake the world, any more than that is what Jesus did. But her mission is to follow her Lord in establishing a community of love, peace, mutuality -- all centered in the reconciliation between God and humanity effected and manifest in Jesus. There is little in the Gospel (or in the rest of the NT, as I see it) to justify (or denounce, I suppose) the kind of civic activism that is possible in our world, but was all but unimaginable in the Roman Empire. The prayer, "thy kingdom come ... ," has as its primary referent "in thy church," so that we may be whom you have made us to be by your Son and the Spirit.

But equally true is that there is no possible way that the world can't be changed if Christians behave as Christians, the people of God. By their modeling of godly life in their own lives, in their lives together, and in their dealings with "outsiders" (i.e., non-fellow-Christians), Christians bring the kingdom -- i.e., the reign -- of God into the world. And by the power of the Spirit (probably dealt with at length in another Wright tome) that seeding of the kingdom can only come to fruition. But that does not involve taking control of governments (a tough admission for this liberal progressive to make -- but one equally binding on so-called conservatives) or anything of the sort.

I have cited as an example that of Minnesota’s political mess: Because of a looming budget deficit and the inability of the governor to work with the legislature to reach reasonable accommodations in each party’s rhetorical stances, the state faces a situation in which the budget deficit will be made up by using accounting shifts (a dishonest, though apparently legal way to deal with things) and by the governor’s exercising what he calls his “unallotment” powers – i.e., his ability (also apparently legal) unilaterally and according to his own discretion to cut program funds wherever he wants. He has announced that most of his cutting will be to health and well-being programs (such as money for hospitals, nursing homes, and services for disabled people) and to GAMC, which is the state’s program of health insurance for the poorest people in Minnesota. In short, he is going to protect rich people from tax increases and balance the budget on the backs of poor and sick people.

Now the governor touts himself (he is quite open about) as a Christian. So I claim that by the counsels of Matthew 18, every Christian in Minnesota should be at his door or in his email in-box to rebuke him for a particularly cruel approach to public policy that ignores the warnings of Matthew 25. After that, we should go in two’s and three’s. Then we should address him through our bishops. If he fails to see the light, we should treat him as a “gentile and a tax collector” – most ironic, given his stance.But note that this doesn’t mean that we join the Democratic Party (heaven forfend, in my opinion) or pray for the success of a candidate who runs against him. Using the political-party system “as Christians” to work our will is not the way to go, any more than that it was Jesus’ way to become a Zealot in order to effect and manifest the reign of his Father. (In fact, I suspect that the current governor’s policy has nothing to do with Minnesota and everything to do with his running for President of the US. So any entreaties are likely to be met with resounding silence – which only further justifies treating him as anathema. I’m not sure, of course, whether that means that we quit praying for him: I just read that Werner Elert, the great German Lutheran theologian who was vocal supporter of the Nazi government, later re-thought Christian responsibility to support the state ala Romans and 1 Peter, was it?, after realizing the error of his ways.)

Similarly, we don’t vet or run candidates as “Christian candidates,” but neither do we withhold our Christian witness to presidents, congresses, and legislatures. While I disagreed with most of what he said in later years, I think Richard John Neuhaus was absolutely right that in this society, the “public square” should not be “naked” of the Christian-qua-Christian witness. So, contrary to the views of many of those who have taught me, I don’t feel particularly annoyed when the Presiding Bishop of the ELCA writes or speaks on behalf of some political issue or bill. It is our “brief” as the Church to feed, clothe, house, reconcile, and all the rest – and given the nature of modern economies, that often means trying to bend the will of the State to the will of God.

In personal dealings, we Christians are similarly encouraged to treat others as brothers or sisters in Christ, whether they are “members” of the Church or not. That’s at least one implication of the Good Samaritan story. So we try to avoid litigation; in our dealings with those who do us dirt, we seek reconciliation, not retribution; in our economics, we seek to share rather than to hoard. And we bring those same approaches to life to the organizations of which we are members, seeking to influence the directions the organizations go.

The resurrection of Jesus, thus, has very much of a this-worldly character: It is proclaimed and -- what is often overlooked -- made visible in the lives of those who live in its power today. Jesus is Lord! The resurrection validates the claims of disciples and evangelists. The world needs to know that any attempt it makes to fight off that Lordship will be defeated -- as was death in its attempt to finish Jesus off. We counsel leaders that violence ultimately fails as a violation of the will of God. And so the Church both models and advocates peaceful living, non-violence, reconciliation. We remind corporate leaders that the amassing of wealth, whether in their own pockets or those of their stockholders, ultimately puts them under the judgment of Christ that "it is easier for a camel to pass through a needle's eye than for a rich man to enter heaven." And so we share with each other in the Church (Acts says that the early Christians “held all things in common.” And at the least we give offerings to assist those of company who are in need.) Do we outlaw profits? Well, as a socialist, I could answer that. But until we can get that under control in our congregations, I think we have little basis for trying to institute changes economy-wide.

The upshot is that we in our time have as part of our identities involvement with the civic structures unparalleled in the lives of those who have come before. That may require a re-examination of the Lutheran "two kingdoms." At least, it requires what we lawyers call a "restatement" of the teaching so that it is clear what it means.

New Vatican Ambassador

2009-05-28T06:40:00.000-07:00

President Obama seems to have made a pretty interesting choice for the next Ambassador to the Vatican, theology professor Migues Diaz. He teaches up the road here in Minnesota at the College of St. Benedict and St. John's University. Apparently one of his specialties is the Trinity!

He is a lay theologian, married with four children. Born in Cuba, he was raised in Spain and then trained in Minnesota at the University of St. Thomas and in Indiana at Notre Dame (master's and doctor's degrees). He was an Obama adviser during the campaign (I wear a wry smile at the thought of a theological adviser to a presidential candidate -- talk about a court theologian!), and has apparently been rewarded for his advice.

By the accounts at the schools, he is a fine man, a good teacher, a faithful Catholic -- so he should do a good job (despite a lack of diplomatic experience -- assuming that we don't count walking through the minefields of modern academic Catholic theology an experience in diplomacy!). He stands in start contrast to the outgoing ambassador, law professor Mary Ann Glendon, who has demonstrated an uncanny ability to identify Roman Catholic teachings with the Republican Party (witness her recent lamentable display of poor judgment and poor theology in her refusal of an honorary doctorate from Notre Dame -- because President Obama was speaking to the graduates).

This issue cuts about as closely to the raison d'etre for this blog as any -- viz., the intersection of faith and public life. I'm sorry to say that I don't know Prof. Dr. Diaz, but I think we should all wish him well and offer prayers for his service to the United States in the Vatican city-state.

"He is Risen, Indeed!"

2009-04-28T11:36:00.000-07:00

In my ever-increasing impatience with simple tomfoolery and growing gnosticism in liturgical practices within the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (and plenty others, lest anyone think that I single out one denomination for special blame), I have been extremely aggravated by a practice/usage in my own congregation. At the vigil, the pastor proclaimed (3 times), "Christ is risen! Alleluia!" and the people were instructed (per the bulletin) to respond, "Christ is risen, indeed! Alleluia!. Now, at the end of mass, the same dialog between assisting minister and congregation is printed in the bulletin.

I don't know whom to blame -- whether our pastor, with his concern for political correctness, or the ELW (Evangelical Lutheran Worship, the "new" worship "resource" in our denomination), with its disdain for any masculinity in any reference to God (whether the Son or not). What is clear is that the dialog runs close to heresy: Without the masculine personal pronoun in the response (and so: "HE is risen, indeed!") we run close to saying that it was not the man Jesus who was raised from death and out of the tomb, but rather some force, spirit, or entity other than the fully-masculine Jesus of Nazareth who went abroad after the Ressurection . And that, to my mind at least, is utter faithlessness. You simply cannot be a Christian and raise any doubt, concern, upset, political objection, sexist claim, doubt, or anything else about the identity, form of being, gender, physical status, or psychic awareness of the one who was raised: It was either the man Jesus or our faith is in vain.

This political correctness surrounding whether we can say "he" extends from such mucking around with language, to the nonsense of bowing at the non-gloria-patri that doesn't name the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, but instead references one or more of them by a function, a title, or an understood pronoun. ("God, and Son, and Holy Spirit" is one of the stupid of the formulations: Exactly how are Jesus and Holy Spirit not "God"?) It is possible to worship according to the ELW's alternatives without once naming God as Father-Son-and-Holy-Spirit. I think that's wrong. But it is avoidable among people of faith. And we need to educate others around us as to the facts and the implications of our acts so as precisely to avoid falling into these ancient quick-sand traps toward heresy.

But this is fundamental: When we disdain the masculinity of the risen Lord, we deny that it is Jesus who was raised and who is Christ. .

And that brothers and sisters is the opposite of our faith.

"Christ is risen! Alleluia!"
and let the people say:
"He is risen, indeed! Alleluia"

Gordon Lell, R.I.P.

2009-04-28T08:59:00.001-07:00

Another dear professor of mine has died: Gordon Lell taught Shakespeare with an earnestness, wit, sincerity, and friendliness that continue to inspire me to pick the Bard's plays up for evening reading. (I worked like a dog for his class in the English Department at Concordia College, Moorhead -- both because I'm not a natural Shakespearean and because I wanted to do well for him.) Dr. Lell came to Concordia while I was there and only retired late last year when he was diagnosed with a brain tumor (which turned out to be incredibly fast, virulent, and deadly). There are two generations (at least) of his students who will mourn him, and they will be joined by many alumni who joined him for lunch and discussion around a Guthrie production of a Shakespeare play.

Professor Lell was one of those inspired and inspiring teachers whom one carries with himself long after commencement has sealed the end of his halcyon days of undergraduate life. His model of scholarly engagement coupled with a complete lack of hostility toward the hardheads in his classes rates him a place in the heavenly seminar room. (I've told you, I think, that my vision of the New Jerusalem is that it is a city with many rooms and spaces -- some of which are devoted to the singing of J.S. Bach, some to the reliving of great NASCAR events, and some to the discussion of things literary and theological. Those discussions will feature unself-conscious and non-judgmental face-to-face time with Barth, Luther, and now Lell, inter alia. And what makes it heaven is that even such dunderheads as I will be able to understand and participate!)

May his memory be eternal.

Coincidentally, I have just read and seen a televised production of Margaret Edson's Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Wit. It came highly recommended in N.T. Wright's book, Surprised by Hope, which I'm reading for an online discussion group. It is a powerful work, and I recommend it.

The play concerns a very respected scholar of the Holy Sonnets of John Donne, Vivian Bearing, who finds herself diagnosed with stage-four ovarian cancer -- "there is no stage 5," she says. And it follows her through her treatment in a respected research hospital. (Not too surprising that only staff person who really comes off as meritorious is Vivian's nurse, Susie.) It is at turns humorous, insightful, educational, and painful. That the play involves some reading and interpretation of "Death, be not proud," which is my regular Easter posting, made it even better.

It was a sad irony in my life that the day that Professor Lell died, I was watching this play. It has given my study of Wright's book greater urgency. (On that, more later, perhaps.)

For Eastertide

2009-04-15T13:15:00.000-07:00

Oops, I almost forgot to post what may be my favorite Eastertide poem. But it's not that late, so here it is:

Death Be Not Proud
by John Donne
(1572-1631)

DEATH be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadfull, for, thou art not so,
For, those, whom thou think'st, thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poore death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleepe, which but thy pictures bee,
Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee doe goe,
Rest of their bones, and soules deliverie.
Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poyson, warre, and sicknesse dwell,
And poppie, or charmes can make us sleepe as well,
And better then thy stroake; why swell'st thou then;
One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.

Prayer for the Unconverted

2009-04-03T07:31:00.000-07:00

As part of my Lenten discipline, I have undertaken to read Richard John Neuhaus' Death on a Friday Afternoon: Meditations on the Last Words of Jesus from the Cross. I do so in part to justify having had the book on my shelf for years and in part to repent of my antipathy toward the dude. I can (and do) lament loudly the direction his thought and spiritual development led him, but I doubt anyone can deny that he could be a powerful writer -- an estimate that is confirmed in this book.

In his meditation on "today you will be with me in paradise," Father Richard dwells at length on the notions of hell and whether anyone will be there, on universal salvation, and on a proper distinction between "hope" and "knowledge" on the matter. And in the middle of the meditation, in a phrasing of utterly disarming simplicity, he says this (with reference to the widow who persistently nags a judge for justice until the judge grants it): "The importunate widow pleaded against her adversary. How much more persistently ought we to pray for others, especially those who are our adversaries, and God's. The elect are elected not to be against others but for others."

What a worthy reminder as we prepare for the Triduum prayers -- and especially the Reproaches.

The "Real" Atheists

2009-04-02T12:36:00.000-07:00

Check out this column, "Where to Find the Real Atheists," from Christianity Today's email newsletter. I think it provides some very helpful, down-to-earth, plain-spoken guidance on how to avoid falderol about atheism and how to see in the mirror.

The Gospel in Fiction

2009-04-01T07:26:00.001-07:00

Check out this passage from Wendell Berry's novel, A World Lost. It in the narrator reflects his conversations with this grandmother after the death of her son and his namesake, Andrew. The passage is the adult narrator's recollection of numerous conversations he had with this grandmother while he lived summers with her when he was about 10 and 11. As with all his novels (Wendell Berry competes with Robertson Davies as my favorite novelist), Berry speaks with a grace and depth that can't be appreciated properly with a quick read.

Uncle Andrew and Uncle Will and Uncle Peach [Uncle Andrew's ne'er-do-well best friends and regular partners in shenanigans] passed and returned in her thoughts and her talk like orbiting planets. They divided her mind; they troubled her without end. She could see plainly what a relief it would have been if she could have talked some sense into their heads and straightened them out. It would have been a relief too if she could have waved them away and forgotten them. In fact, she could do neither. They were incorrigible, and they were her own. In their various ways and styles, they had worried and vexed and grieved her "nearly into the grave," as she would sometimes say. And they also charmed and amused and moved her. They were not correctable because of the way they were; they were not dismissible because of the way she was. She loved them not even in spite of the way they were, but just because she did. With them she enacted, as many mothers have done, and many fathers too, the parable of the lost sheep, who is to be sought and brought back without end, brought back into mind and into love without end, death no deterrent, futility no bar.

Thus, Wendell Berry, A World Lost (Washington, DC: Counterpoint, 1996), p. 93.

Now my question is this: Has a theologian offered a better metanarrative for what God was doing in Christ, a better "back story" to the Incarnation? I would take some convincing, for it's all here: overwhelming love that roots not in the lovability of the loved one but in the the loving of the lover; prevenient grace that neither earned nor really explainable, except as mystery; the inability or refusal of Love to let go, regardless of the barrier.

While I find the entire passage almost painfully beautiful (a not-uncommon experience when one reads Berry), my favorit line may be this: She loved them not even in spite of the way they were, but just because she did. I think I'd find a way to fit this into a three-hour Good Friday service in reflecting on "Father, forgive them for they know not what they do." Father, forgive them -- not despite what they are doing, for they don't know what they are doing. Forgive them in trueness to yourself and ourselves.

And let the people say "Amen."

My own "J'accuse"

2009-03-24T07:19:00.000-07:00

Recently, I received another diatribe about the sorry state of the ELCA, lamenting its turmoil over homosexuality. While the group that produced the book was a little unusual in that it included one or two politically conservative non-Lutherans and a couple non-USAmerican Lutherans among the denouncers, there was little new in the formulations or the analysis: The ELCA has sunk to allowing every person to decide for himself (never herself) matters of faith and life. In so doing it has set itself on a path of departure from orthodox Christianity and centuries of uniform teaching. How can the feckless leaders of the ELCA (along with such unworthy communion partners as the Episcopal Church and the UCC) ignore the clear witness of Scripture and the unanimous teaching of the Church since then? Where is the authoritative voice in the Church proclaiming the clear will of God as expressed in Holy Scripture?

As I said: Nothing new, no new insights, no suggestions for resolving the matter, except to announce and enforce policies in keeping with the politico-theological views of the speakers. But what seems clearer and clearer to me as I read these things is that those who lament the state of ethical thinking and commitment in the ELCA and elsewhere with respect to issues of sexuality are reaping the very whirlwind whose winds they themselves have sown. They are in the train of seventeen hundred years of preachers and teachers who have effectively denied the clear meaning of Scripture in order more peacefully to fit into society, and now they have the ironic audacity to be upset because people have learned the lesson.

To illustrate my point: Nothing seems clearer from the whole of Scripture – from Genesis through Revelation – than that the One True God is seriously concerned for the physical welfare of all people. That concern is expressed in explicit commands to care for one another – most especially to see that no one goes hungry or lives in want – and to exploit and oppress no one. Oh, I suppose you could proof-text me a couple of examples to the contrary, but I think I’m on solid ground. Look at the prophets, look at the words of Jesus: When sexual immorality is the subject of teaching, it is usually a metaphor, not something intended to be taken literally. “This wicked and adulterous generation,” Jesus said, but he didn’t mean that everyone was sleeping with anyone who came by. Rather, he, in harmony with the prophets (Jeremiah, Amos, Hosea) used sexual immorality as a metaphor for the propensity of God’s people to stray into mistreating others, for failing to live according to the clearly revealed will of God, for storing up treasures on earth, for practicing violence in order to defend one’s excess against those who have nothing. Similarly, Paul, whose stereotype is that of a sex-oppressed Puritan, much more regularly upbraids his congregations for forgetting the fundamental issue of church – viz., that of mutual care and support.

And yet despite that clear witness, the majority voice in the Church – at least since the day Constantine had his vision of how useful it would be for the Empire to co-opt the Church by “recognizing” it as an official religion – has been to deny that teaching – either actively by “correcting it” or passively by ignoring it. And so the Church has remained remarkably comfortable with political systems in every age that sanction the gross misappropriation of wealth by the upper classes from the lower classes. Capitalism, whose heretical dogma of scarcity is in direct contradiction of the Gospel’s theology of abundance, has been all but baptized by the Church. Even in most recent times, you will look almost in vain for a sermon denouncing unchecked capitalism, or the on-going redistribution of wealth from the poorer classes to the better off, or the growing gap between wealthy and poor, or the concentration of power and money in the hands of a few non-national corporations through globalization.

In Lutheranism this has been aided and abetted by the supposedly lofty two-kingdoms theology. To those not deeply invested in the Lutheran system, that teaching says simply that Jesus didn’t mean what he said. When Jesus said to share the necessities of life, he didn’t mean socialism (and, my, how willingly we have allowed that word to be co-opted by the Soviets). When Jesus said “don’t perpetrate violence,” he certainly didn’t mean not to kill in self-defense or in defense of honor (personal or national) or in retaliation for an attack on us. When Jesus said to turn the other cheek, he certainly didn’t mean anything about retaliating against someone – anyone, whether the attacker or not – if one is attacked.

The more common-person interpretation of this, which I hear all the time in our congregation’s discussion of the Gospel of Matthew, is that we have to be “realistic.” I mean, Jesus didn’t know much about the real world; what he said is a nice vision of what heaven will be like, but it would be disastrous to try to form a society that exhibited the qualities that he promotes in the Sermon on the Mount, for example.

I would argue that my fellow members of the Body of Christ have learned well from their teachers and preachers: If Lutheranism (and any other tradition one can name) has a crisis of authority, that crisis is longer-standing than the discovery of homosexuality (and keep in mind that the concept of homosexuality is a modern one). And if that crisis relates to sexuality, the causes of that crisis are more pervasive. For once you tell people that the clear witness of Scripture is not clear when it appears to be very clear, and cite centuries of witness to that effect, how can you expect unanimity on those issues of faith and life that are not nearly as clearly addressed? And even many who sound the trumpet on sexuality issues admit that the Scripture’s witness on issues of economic injustice and violence are much more numerous and clearer than those on homosexuality. Who, then, can be surprised when people follow their hearts, experience, science, and whatnot in an effort to be “realistic” about sexuality?

The cries for repentance and for the reformation of ELCA are loud and legion. And I shout some of them myself. I am deeply conservative in my theology and politics (although I probably understand “conservative” differently from the way many do) and find much to complain about. But when I do, I feel that I must be fair: I – as those who vent on the issue of homosexuality – must recognize the roots of the conflict. This is about much more than who-sleeps-with-whom and to what effect, and the forces of retrenchment lost the high ground on this argument long ago.

That charge is not to disqualify their speaking – although if pushed, I might be inclined to ask them to just shut up. But it is to urge that those who would hold the Church to a so-called conservative tradition on homosexuality must demonstrate that their concern is for the witness of scripture and no for some other variable. And up to this point, very few of them can do so.

J'accuse.

Place as a Living Reality

2009-03-10T08:40:00.000-07:00

To tell what we remember, and to keep on telling it, is to keep the past alive in the present. Should we not do so, we could not know, in the deepest sense, how to inhabit a place. To inhabit a place means literally to have made it a habit, to have made it the custom and ordinary practice of our lives, to have learned how to wear a place like a familiar garment, like the garments of sanctity that nuns wore. The word habit, in its now dim original form, meant to own. We own places not because we possess the deeds to them, but because they have entered the continuum of our lives. What is strange to us -- unfamiliar [and uninhabited -- can never be home.

-- Paul Gruchow, Grass Roots: The Universe of Home, p. 6

Bill Holm, R.I.P.

2009-02-27T13:09:00.000-08:00

Another of my heroes and favorite writers (and perhaps also a cousin) has died and the world is poorer for his passing, but infinitely richer for his having passed through this world. Bill Holm was a giant of a Viking -- bearish in size, red-haired and -bearded -- who integrated his Icelandic heritage into this love of life, literature, music, and other people. If you don't know him, you should get to; if you have read him, I expect that you, too, will mourn his passing.

He stood for things I appreciate -- good leftist politics, catholicity of taste, classical forms of knowledge -- and for things that kind of hurt me -- e.g., he was a Lutheran, but not of the very-good sort, and he enjoyed finding the Achilles heel in Lutheranism. I only met him once, but we established a quick Icelandic bond -- stop by for coffee, he said in his breathy-smoker-high-on-the-palate voice; we'll find out who our common relatives are; stop by any time. And those who knew him well confirm that the invitation was sincere (and of course, with my well-Minneota-will-always-be-there approach to anything, I lost the chance -- to my disappointment and grief).

He was, of course, not what most people would consider a saint. He had something of a mouth, I'm told. He smoked and ate too much. He could be irrascible, I suppose -- as only children can tend to be. And he didn't seem to tolerate fools well. But what can I say? That sounds like the perfect friend.

His little book Music of Failure is, I think, my favorite. And I'll try to get it down tonight and find a little passage to post. For now, I'll link to Garrison Keillor's touching reflection on this good man.

Storing up Treasures

2009-02-27T07:12:00.000-08:00

I think no issue is given greater attention in the Bible than is wealth, and specifically the accumulation of wealth. The prophets (Amos among the most caustic) saw in the accumulation of wealth and in the refusal to share that wealth the clearest statement possible of Israel's religion: It wasn't fear and love and trust in and of God; it was fear, love, and trust of riches. And how many times does Jesus warn of the dangers of money and its accumulation?

Keeping in mind that I think the economic challenges of the world (including consumerism, greed, graft, hording, mean giving -- to name but a few) are of far greater theological significance in the Bible than with the gender of a person one sleeps with in a committed and "faithful" relationship, you might find this commentary, which appeared on The Forward's weekly newsletter, to be interesting. I think the (note: conservative) author's call for foundations to expend themselves within 50 years to be intriguing and in the Biblical spirit!

Interesting "Read" on the Pope's Appointments

2009-02-23T07:13:00.000-08:00

John Allen writes an interesting column for the National Catholic Reporter. Today he has a really interesting interpretation of Pope Benedict's appointment of bishops in America. Allen seems to have a good take on this matter, and I'm heartened by his analysis. If what he is saying is true, I think the Pope is doing the right thing -- OK, perhaps I'd like more center-left bishops than center-right. But these choices tend to confirm my hopes for this Papacy. I am, however, sorry about the successor to Archbishop Harry Flynn in St. Paul-Minneapolis: He seemed to be gracefully open to conversation, to respectful dissent within the Church, to ecumenical cooperation in the cause of justice and peace. His successor seems more ham-fisted, but perhaps the Spirit will move him in the direction of his predecessor.

In any event, it will be interesting to see whether the problematic episcopacy of confrontation will be less in evidence with respect to the Church's relations with the Obama administration than was suggested by the tone in the election. The issue of abortion is rightly of primary concern to the Catholic Bishops. But by the Church's own teaching (reiterated by both the prior and current popes) recognizes that in a two-kingdom world (to borrow a non-Catholic phrase), principles of proportionality must be accounted along with a concern for purity.

From a practical standpoint, the far-right conservatives have had control of the government in the recent past -- arguably all three branches. And efforts toward restricting or reducing abortions were all but absent. Perhaps the college of bishops in America will come to some consensus that if they cooperate with efforts to establish justice and community, in contrast to the recent efforts to baptize unfettered supposed market capitalism, they can turn the tide on abortion -- at least dramatically reducing the numbers of abortions. That seems to be something the center-right segment of the bishops' conference can understand.

Finally, I'll be interested to see the degree to which Allen's kind of analysis will play out in the CCET's conference (being held in cooperation with the Pope John Paul II Cultural Center) on the continuing relevance -- or not -- of Vatican II. The sorts of issues that Allen raises, along with recent liturgical reforms and various reports of the current Pope's dissatisfaction with the ripples started by the Council, should underscore the importance of considering just that question during the fiftieth anniversary of the summoning of the Council. In short, the relevance of our conference on the relevance of the Council seems to increase every week. Hope to see you there. (OK, that's a shameless plug, I suppose; but that's one function I can serve for the Center.)

In a Land Called "Holy"

2009-02-17T12:43:00.001-08:00

"[T]here is no denying that the ethnic cleansing of [indigenous Palestinians by Zionists in} 1948 has been eradicated almost totally from the collective global memory and erased from the world's conscience. Imagine that not so long ago, in any given country you are familiar with, half of the entire population had been forcibly expelled within a year, half of its villages and towns wiped out, leaving behind only rubble and stones. Imagine now the possibility that somehow this act will never make it into the history books and that all diplomatic efforts to solve the conflict that erupted in that country will totally sideline, if not ignore, this catastrophic event. I, for one, have searched in vain through the history of the world as we know it in the aftermath of the Second World War for a case of this nature and a fate of this kind. There are others, earlier, cases that have fared similarly, such as the ethnic cleansing of non-Hungarians at the end of the nineteenth century, the genocide of the Armenians, and the holocaust perpetrated by the Nazi occupation against travelling people (the Roma, also known as Sinti) in the 1940s. I hope in the future that Palestine will no longer be included in this list.

This is from Ilan Pappe's book The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (Oxford: Oneworld, 2006) at p. 9. It is a summary and raison d'etre for his wrting thte book. Pappe is an Israeli-born historian who teaches history in Britain. His website is here. This book is an effort to correct the "narrative" surrounding the beginnings of the modern state of Israel by means of the displacement of its Arab population. I know that the book is controversial, but so far I have only read negative reviews by those inclined to the Zionist or pro-Israel side of the story; others have been much more positive.

I think that we USAmerican Christians must come to grips with the facts in the Middle East. And chief among those facts are that we have betrayed the cause of justice and peace by our (often intentionally ignorant) support for the modern state of Israel at all costs. As Christians and as USAmericans, we should get the history straight and work for a revision of American foreign policy that will allow for a just resolution to the Israel-Palestine conflict.

This book is saddening me, sickening me, angering me, and judging me. I think we should all read it.

Coincidences

2009-02-12T09:42:00.000-08:00

I'm intrigued by intersections and coincidences, and today has a doozy: Today is the 200th natal anniversary (read: birthday) of both Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin. Most people can say nothing bad about Lincoln and an enormous number of Christians seem to be able to say nothing good about Darwin.

I'm a fan of Lincoln's: I'm not a groupie or anything like that -- although I have a good number of books that collect his writings, that analyze his rhetoric (e.g., Gary Wills' wonderful, Lincoln at Gettysburg), that look at his leadership. I think it undeniable that he is much more sophisticated that we are often led to believe and that he stands as one of the supreme American rhetoriticians. As convoluted as my thinking about the Civil War is, I have no doubt that the Gettysburg Address is dang near a perfect work of art.

I know less of Darwin, although the theological journal, Word and World, published by Luther Sem, has a nice set of essays on the significance and/or problems Darwin has for the Church's teaching. I personally have not been able to perceive any conflict between at least a humble form of natural selection and the teachings of Genesis 1. In fact, Leon Kass, I think it is, has a really nice essay in The Beginning of Wisdom, on the congruity of the Genesis accounts of the creation of the animal world and the finds of evolution scientists.

Both men had a hand in re-shaping the world, though obviously in different ways and on different stages. I wonder whether there are any lessons to be drawn or proposed on the coincidences of their birth: issues of faith, or of making one's way though uncharted waters with wide-open eyes and awe before God, or ... .

In any event, it's worth raising a glass to the two of them.

Of Marginal Theological Import ...

2009-02-11T07:15:00.000-08:00

I suppose, but if one is an Incarnational Christian, then all of creation is included in salvation (contrary to what we may have discussed in the Jenson seminar on anthropology back in the '70s). So it is not only good news to me, but worthy of others' note that an old (10-year-old) Sussex Spaniel, Stump, won Best in Show at the Westminster Kennel Club. (I don't have cable TV, but in February, I always regret that, because I love the WKC show and I can't see it without cable.)

As I said elsewhere re: Stump's win: Old dogs don't need to learn new tricks; they can win with and teach the old ones.

I love Spaniels -- in fact, I've never met a Spaniel I didn't love. So how about a festival Te Deum for Stump?

Do you suppose ...

2009-02-06T13:06:00.000-08:00

that I'm naive to hope that all those dogmatic-theologian-ethicists who have been obsessed with the issues of homosexuality might, with news that 600,000 people lost work in the last month alone (resulting in an under-reported unemployment rate of 7.6%) might pay some attention to the issues of run-away capitalism, idolatrous consumerism, need for contributions to food pantries, importance of seeing congregations as communities of support for the members who are less well-off than others, and pastors who can more readily (and enthusiastically) discuss the details of their retirement plans than of the Holy Trinity?

Just wondering.

R.I.P., John Updike -- more

2009-02-04T07:16:00.001-08:00

This is a good an obituary of and paean to John Updike as I have seen. I commend it to you.

The New Russian Patriarch

2009-02-04T06:44:00.000-08:00

Blessings on and prayers for His Holiness Patriarch Kyrill of Moscow and All Russia. He was enthroned on 1 February. There is information and some nifty pictures here.

Following is an excerpt from his enthronement address to those gathered (including the Russian President and his string-puller, Vladimir Putin

To combine Orthodox faith and the moral of the Gospel with the everyday thoughts and hopes of people means to help them answer the most difficult philosophical and ethical questions of our time. Faith will be understandable and in real demand, irrespective of the variety and discrepancy of views and convictions in society, only when people realize and feel deeply the unquestionable rightness and power of the message which God Himself is sending to people in His revelation. Human thoughts and human words cannot be stronger than the Word of God. If this obvious truth is not evident to many people, this means that the beauty and persuasiveness of the Divine Word is obscured by that what we today call the ‘human factor.’

The witness of the Church to the world presupposes not only the sermon in church, but also an open, friendly and interested dialogue, in which both sides are both speaking and listening. The truths of faith become at least understandable through this dialogue, as they come into creative and living contact with the thoughts and convictions of people. The Church enriches herself through this dialogue with the knowledge of what contemporary people are with their way of thinking and their questions to the Church.

This kind of dialogue facilitates a greater understanding among people of different views and convictions, including their religious beliefs, and promotes the consolidation of peace and accord in our societies and states. The relations between the Church and the State should develop in the framework of a friendly dialogue and cooperation on the basis of the Constitution to serve the good of the Church and the state and the good of people.

The Primates of all Local Churches are called to care for the unity of Universal Orthodoxy together with their brothers from other Churches. I thank the first hierarchs and representatives of the Holy Orthodox Churches present here for our common prayers, and I state that I shall always be open to dialogue with the sister Churches and to common efforts which would help us strengthen and improve all-Orthodox cooperation and to attain more coordination of our pastoral and missionary efforts.

For the most part, not bad, I think. (I recognize that I may overly optimistic in my interprestation of the Patriarch's reference to the "sister Churches." Does he mean only those Churches gathered around the Eastern patriarchs, or does he implicitly acknowledge an ecclesial reality in the other traditions, too?) It's reminiscent of some of the sentiments of Vatican II's readiness to engage in conversation with the "separated brethren," with the Church's cultured despisers, and with those who just don't get what the Church stands for. Principled and respectful dialogue is the way to go (also in secular foreign affairs, if I may inject a political note -- but then Patriarch specifically addresses his nation's political leaders, so I can't be too far inappropriate).

As the World Intersects

2009-02-04T06:35:00.000-08:00

Does anyone share my suspicion that, with his recent move to de-ban the Lefevrites and his problems with cabinet nominees' choices of really bad tax accountants, the Pope and President Obama may soon be meeting for mutual consolation (and perhaps a glass or two of Limoncello)?

Anti-War Films

2009-02-02T07:29:00.000-08:00

I'm interested in developing a list of high-quality films that deal with themes of opposing war and/or violence, peacemaking, and the like. After my wife and I saw Joyeux Noel (which bowled us over), I began to look around -- sort of haphazardly, I admit. Now we have seen the 1956 (!) Japanese film, The Burmese Harp, and I'm urged on in my mission.

Harp is set at the end of World War II -- in Burma, as one might expect from the title (although most of the filming was done in Japan). It "chronicles a Japanese soldier's transformation after coming face to face with the human cost of war" (to quote the Netflix jacket). Corporal Mizushima is sent to persuade a hold-out company of Japanese soldiers that they should surrender, since Japan herself has surrendered. But when they refuse, he ends up the sole survivor of a British rocket attack on the soldier's fortress. On his lonely trip back to his regiment, which have been interned in a POW camp to await their return to Japan, he is overwhelmed by the carnage he sees. And he changes his path in order to serve a higher purpose.

In addition to the touching story line, there is amazing black-and-white photography (the director has clearly studied Kurosawa), lovely character development -- and music (also perhaps not surprising, given the title). Mizushima plays a Burmese-styled harp with grace and beauty with the encouragement of his company commander, who is himself a trained musician who turns the troupe into a choir. So there is gorgeous male-chorale singing (involving both Japanese and British/Indian troops). And the score includes a most effective use of what came to be Bach's "O Sacred Head Now Wounded."

Kathy cried through much of the last half hour of the movie -- with good reason, I admit. And I heartily recommend it.

Next, I'm planning to revisit All Quiet on the Western Front. I read the novel way before I could make sense of it, but was moved by it to think about the immorality of war even in middle school. So I need to see the movie again.

But I'm wondering what you think should go on the list. I've seen lots of pro-war movies that have made me understand the insanity of war, and I suppose they could go on the list. And I know of movies that accurately portray the horrors of war, and those are valuable, too. But at this point, I'm especially interested in pictures that are or seem to be explicit in their criticism of war as a solution to anything or that promote a self-conscious (or maybe I mean self-aware) pacifism.

Here's your chance to help me out.

John Updike has died

2009-01-27T12:35:00.001-08:00

John Updike, whom Christopher Lehmann-Haupt of the NYT dubbed (here) a "kaleidoscopically gifted writer," has died of lung cancer at the young age of 76.

This one is hard for me to take, for Updike has seen me through all the various stages of my life from college through the current time. We read Updike in every religion-and-literature course I ever took. And I personally enjoyed reading him very much: Especially his "Rabbit" novels were theological treatises on the human condition. But even his less worthy ones (IMHO) were similarly illuminating and challenging. (I have to laugh, however, when I think that he earned a lifetime achievement award from Britain's Worst Sex Writing in Fiction awards committee. I never learned how he felt about that!)

Raised as a Lutheran, he was, I think, a pretty serious Christian all his life, ending his days as a Congregationalist, I understand. (Given where he lived most of his years, that's not too surprising, I suppose.) His roots were enough (so the story goes) that a Lutheran seminary in this country invited him to be the commencement speaker one year. Apparently, Updike suffered some from a stammer or stutter. In any event, he replied with a terse telegram: Thank you, but no. I am a writer not a speaker.

His writing spoke to me and to countless others through his illustrious career. And we should all mourn the passing of a serious and talented writer. (Feel free to comment on your favorite or least favorite Updike classic.)

May his memory be eternal. And may the Lord grant him eternal rest and let perpetual light shine upon him.

Gran Torino

2009-01-23T06:31:00.000-08:00

Gloating is most certainly not a Christian virtue, but I take the risk of sinning boldly here (before you jump on me, I know that's not what Luther meant!). We saw the movie Gran Torino last night, and it proved finally that Clint Eastwood can't do everything: For his latest few movies, he has acted, directed, produced, written the music, and for all I know designed the costumes (and he was a mayor, too, or a while). But in Gran Torino he proves that he CAN'T SING. Glory Hallelujah. (He's sung in three of his movies, but in this one, it barely even qualifies as croaking!)

The actor I first knew as Randy Yates in Rawhide, is a fantastically talented guy! And while this may not be the greatest movie ever made -- or even the best he's made -- it is eminently worth seeing. OK, so it's predictable and formulaic: He's able to pull it together.

This is a Minnesota picture, and I don't know why it wasn't set in Minnesota. I suppose my good old state was too cheap in the tax credits, but c'mon guys! This story was written in Minneapolis, set in the Twin Cities (there's a stronger Hmong presence in Saint Paul than on this side of the River), using language and images out of Minnesota life (if you know what to listen for). And I'm told that Bee Vang, the kid around whom the story revolves, is a non-actor from The Cities. Good grief. Even the final scene, driving along the Lake, could have been filmed here!

There are some amazingly funny lines in this movie, even though it is violent (Dirty Harry lives) in word and deed, and it is just plain ugly in some senses. I won't give away the funniest line that make me guffaw, but there is one scene in which Walt asks Sue how the Hmong happened to be in an area of the country "covered with snow six months out of the year." She notes that the Lutherans brought them in. His response is, "Everybody always blames something on the Lutherans." (And don't we know it.)

On a final note, to make this post fit the general theme of this blog, Brad (my movie partner) and I discussed the portrayal of the priest in the movie. It's an interesting handling, above average among movies which have priests as supporting characters. The guy who plays the priest, Christopher Carley, looks the part -- fresh faced, red haired and freckled, young, very innocent. And at the beginning we're led to believe that he's a real light-weight. But through the course of the movie either he changes or our (through Walt's eyes) perspective on him changes. Because he ends up being kind of sophisticated: He is persistent to the extreme about getting Walt to confession, enduring some really crunching insults. He has insight into some aspects of Walt's personality -- although he can't quite get down what he should call him, whether Mr. Kowalski or Walt (and his maturity is reflected in the way he ultimately resolves that). And he has commitment to the Church, not just a religiosity-in-Catholic garb.

I take issue with one thing in the movies' handling of the priest: Father Janovich serves an aging, apparently conservative congregation (although we don't see much of the place except for funerals). Yet he makes many of his visits to Walt in a sport jacket and shirt with no tie. Now I don't know even one Roman Catholic priest who goes about daily work without his collar; I can't believe that any of them would go on missions without their collar (and to that extent they are most certainly trained to look different from Protestant pastors). So I'm not sure what the deal was with that.

I wouldn't give the Oscar to this movie (my vote goes to Slumdog Millionaire), but this is worth seeing -- and on the big screen, if only to get a great view of the eponymous 1972 Gran Torino.

Who are you?

2009-01-22T06:36:00.000-08:00

Check out this dandy, very short diagnosis of your similarity to one or another of the early Witnesses:

http://www.fathersofthechurch.com/quiz/

It would be fun to hear how you do.

For my part, I "am" Melito of Sardis -- about whom I apparently share "a great love of history and liturgy. You’re attached to the traditions of the ancients, yet you recognize that the old world — great as it was — is passing away. You are loyal to the customs of your family, though you do not hesitate to call family members to account for their sins." (My daughter would certainly nod in agreement on that last point.)

Are there other know-thyself "tests" that are of note? (Don't give me any of those puzzles that require you to subscribe to something in order to get the results. They are fundamentally dishonest and I want no part of them.)

Peace and self-knowledge be yours.

MLK "Not Serious" Today

2009-01-21T08:33:00.000-08:00

Here's a thought-provoking call to repentance from Matthew Yglesias:

It's nicely reasoned and said -- if all too brief.

The 2009 CCET Conference

2009-01-21T07:40:00.000-08:00

It's never too early to reserve time for the conferences of the Center for Catholic and Evangelical Theology -- and this year is no exception. (As many of you know, I'm on the Board of the Center and subscribe its mission wholeheartedly. I do what I can to encourage people to attend the conferences (which are always more than wonderful both for the content and for the conversation with some of the Church's most interesting people) and to subscribe to the Center's journal, Pro Ecclesia (which is one of the finest theological journals on the market -- and often for much less money than the other good comparable ones).

This year's conference is scheduled for Washington, DC. It will be located at the John Paul II Cultural Center there (the John Paul II Center is cooperating with us on this conference) -- fittingly enough, since the theme of the conference is "Vatican II: Its Continuing Challenge to All Churches." The conference speakers, drawn from a variety of traditions, will address such questions as whether the promises of Vatican II remain unfulfilled; what paths have proven to be dead ends; what possibilities remain to be explored. And those speakers include George Lindbeck, professor emeritus at Yale, who served at all four sessions of the Council as the Lutheran World Federation's official "observer."

It promises to be a splendid conference, and I hope to see you there.

Check out more details (and go ahead and register online) at the CCET website: www.e-ccet.org.

The conference page says to contact Michael Root, the Center's Executive Director, with any questions. But feel free to contact me, too, with any questions or concerns you have.

A Practical Request

2009-01-13T14:16:00.000-08:00

How many deaths of other people's children by bombing or starvation are we willing to accept in order that we may be free, affluent, and (supposedly) at peace? To that question I answer pretty quickly: None. And I know that I am not the only one who would give that answer: Please. No children. Don't kill any children for my benefit.
-- Wendell Berry, "The Failure of War," 29

Epiphany Hymn

2009-01-09T08:29:00.000-08:00

My daughter's "other" church choir (she is an active member of 2 Lutheran congregatioins) sang a beautiful and affecting setting of this Healy Willan (fabulous church-music composer) carol in their Christmas "concert." While Ray Brown (of blessed memory) may have determined that the Three Kings is a Christmas story (and he's probably right, as we he was on most things), I offer it in Epiphany:

The Three Kings
Healey Willan

“Who knocks tonight so late, so late?” the weary porter said.
Three Kings stood at the gate, each with a crown on head.
The serving man bowed down; the inn was full he knew.
Said he, “In all this town is no fit place for you."

A light the manger lit; there lay the Mother meek.
Said they, “This place is fit; here is the rest we seek!"
They loosed their latchet strings so stood they all unshod.
Come in, come in, ye Kings, ye Kings, ye Kings!

And kiss the Feet of God.

R.I.P., Richard John Neuhaus

2009-01-09T07:36:00.000-08:00

I can hardly claim any credibility if I fail to note the death of one of the foremost, eloquent, biting, brilliant, and irritating persons to address the faith/world interface: Richard John Neuhaus. A quite decent obituary appeared in the Times here.

I have been reluctant to post the notice because of my feelings about Fr. Richard. I have followed him, read him, admired him, and torn hair out because of him for decades -- back to his days as a Lutheran and the sharp-tongued editor of the (Lutheran) Forum Newsletter (I think it was still called that in the old days). And I have been puzzled by his progression from parish pastor (well, never quite just that, I guess) to sycophant to the neo-conservative political-theological synthesis. I wish someone had ever called him publicly to account for many of his positions, but he was simply too powerful. But now it is too late, and I was enjoined by my mother decades ago from speaking ill (or even critically) of the dead.

I must give him credit as a faithful servant of God as his own lights guided him. Certainly, he was brilliant, sometimes eloquent (and usually readable), passionate, and influential -- a powerful example of simul justus et peccator. I understand he could be charming and witty: In the couple of occasions I met him, he was not so, but then the witness of others is likely more reliable in that regard. He was one of a kind, I think, and one wonders about the direction of First Things without its guiding principal.

Eternal rest, grant him, O Lord;
and let perpetual light shine upon him.

And if there be such a thing as purgatory (and I'm not sure about his position on this matter), may it work! (That's a joke for those of you who would model your wit and humor on RJN's.)

And may his memory be eternal.

We must wake up with respect to the Middle East

2009-01-09T06:44:00.001-08:00

I don't know that placing blame is particularly helpful in thinking and praying about the current outrages against Gaza by the Israeli armed forces. I'm sure there is plenty of blame to go around -- and I would lay a substantial portion of that blame at the feet of the government of this country. But one thing I think the Church should be especially concerned about is telling the truth. The adage is true (is that the meaning of "adage"?): Truth is the first casualty of war. And that seems eminently demonstrable in the current assault.

This article is worth reading both for the research it reports and for the questions it implies about the reliability of the mainstream media, the veracity of politicians (gasp! what a revelation.), accountability for any of the atrocities that have taken or are taking place, and the complicity of Christians (and by extension, the Church catholic) in the entire mess. The Church's failure to give voice to the revelation of God has contributed to the horror.

Unfortunately, the article fails to nuance the difference between a Katusha rocket and Israeli arms. The Katusha are fairly unsophisticated, ineffective, often home-brewed "missiles". (See the number of casualties they have wrought, and compare that to the Palestinian deaths.) To highlight them as somehow the equivalent of or justification for Israeli responses is to fail in any effort toward proportionality. Even by the loosest just-war standards, the war against the Palestinians fails.

It is written that those who live by the sword will die by the sword. Lamentably, it is also the case that those who live under the control of those who live by sword also die by the sword. The numbers of genuinely innocent civilian deaths is sickening; the apparently intentional targeting of schools, hospitals, and UN humanitarian workers only brings additional bile.

The Church must speak out -- and by speak out I mean "speak" in the sacramental sense: We must speak, write, scream, demonstrate, go to Palestine to sit in witness to peace. Until Christians put their lives on the line (in many cases, in support of our Palestinian fellow Christians), we can only hang our heads in shame.

The Christmas Nail

2008-12-31T06:47:00.000-08:00

This is pretty cool, from the blog by Sister-in-Christ Cha. It's a healthy reminder that this Christmastide is no escape from the harsh realities of life.

I remember a Christmas card that showed a nicely drawn (roof-less) stable scene, but it was drawn in such a way that the bright moon caused the rafters of the stable to form a cross lying right across the baby in the manger. And the recent observance of the Slaughter of the Innocents reminds all with eyes to see and ears to hear of the lengths to which the world will go to deny Christ a place.

Perhaps we ought all get nails/spikes to hang on our trees!

Another Good Man Dies

2008-12-29T12:47:00.000-08:00

I have learned that Fr. Dietrich Reinhart, OSB, the President of St. John's University in Collegeville, MN, died of lung and brain cancer a very few months after being diagnosed with the stuff. Fr. Dietrich (he chose this as his name to honor Dietrich Bonhoeffer!) was kind and very upbeat man. A historian by training, he was well aware of the importance of linking the history of the past to the history-in-the-making. And he seemed to be very effective with potential donors.

You may read a short obituary here.

May his memory be eternal.

And may the Lord grant him eternal rest andlet perpetual light to shine on him.

The Communion of Saints

2008-12-18T07:57:00.000-08:00

Consider this a reflection in line with my self-designation as a Lutheran-rite Orthodox (since so many of you find this an oxymoron!).

The Newsletter for the Center for Catholic and Evangelical Theology is out, and if features the banquet speech from the Center's last conference. (At our conferences, you get wonderful and inspiring scholarship not just in the talks, but over food, too!) This year's speaker was the Center Board's Chair, Robert Wilken, the highly respected and esteemed patristics and early Church history prof at the University of Virginia. He spoke on the communion of saints -- "Communion cum Santis," he entitled it.

It is Robert's contention (I never ever believed that I'd be in a position to call Robert Wilken by his first name!) that the "communio sanctorum" of the Creed ought to be more accurately translated as "communion with the saints" than as "communion of saints." He says:

That seems to have been the original sense. In the Passion of Perpetua and Felicity, the author, possibly Tertullian, says that he has written an account of their martyrdom so that those who were not eyewitness can learn of them and "have fellowship with the holy martyrs (cum sanctis martyribus) and through them with the Lord Jesus Christ."

For Tertullian the martyrs were the saints -- extraordinary witnesses to Christ. The oiriginal sense of the phrase in the creed is not the fellowship of the living but the company of the departed. The saints are the honored dead in Christ.

If you listen with half an ear, you can hear Robert's complaint against the common Lutheran reading of the creed, which puts "holy catholic Church" is apposition to "the communion of saints." One grammar-noting professor of mine once pointed out that, in the Apostles' Creed, there should be semi-colons separating most of the items on the list in the Third Article, but that those two phrases ought be connected by a comma so that their identity is graphically displayed. But if Robert's reading is correct, and I find that he usually is (except when, in The Spirit of Early Christianity, he overlooked Ephrem to name Prudentius as the first Christian poet to be self-consciously a poet), then serial commas can separate/connect all phrases in the Apostles' Creed.

Here's Robert again:

We affirm with all Christians the close bond that exists between the Church of the present and the holy men and women of past generations, a bond that link[s] us to the apostles. The continuity of the Church over time is sustained not so much by theology [oh dear, say good Lutherans] as by persons [is he going sub rosa for apostolic succession of persons?] as the Church is built, according to St. Paul in Ephesians, not on the apostles' doctrine but on the "foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone. . ." (Eph. 2.20).

There's lots more that I won't quote, and I encourage you to get on the Center's mailing list to get your own copy. (I can probably dig up a precious few if someone wants one, but why not sign up for all our mailings? We won't tax your patience or mailbox with scads of paper.) It was a really lovely talk, meditation, lecture, and homily all in one.

And it highlights one aspect of the Faith that calls for a reformation in the Reformation tradition. Lamentably two of the most prominent Lutheran promoters of such reasonable and faithful respect for those-who-have-confessed-before did not remain Lutheran: Jaroslav Pelikan (of blessed memory, who put Robert onto this) went to the OCA and Robert is a serious and devout Roman Catholic. It is important for us Lutherans and Protestants to re-learn and re-claim what we have lost. The one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church is not just universal in the sense of "synchronic" unity; it is also universal in the sense of "diachronic" unity -- that is, communion through time.

This Advent is a time to reflect seriously on what "coming" we await: It is the final, for-all return of him whose birth we shortly hymn. But it is also the final coming of that which has also already appeared -- viz., the communion with all the saints of God; the reunion face-to-face that we celebrate in spirit and in fact now. Just as Christ will come in bodily form to fulfill the promise of his 1st Century body, so the Body of Christ will be granted its fullness.

Thank you Robert for helping to make that clear.

R.I.P. Avery Cardinal Dulles

2008-12-12T11:33:00.000-08:00

The American Roman Catholic Church -- well, just say the Church catholic -- has lost a great scholar and advocate. Avery Cardinal Dulles has died at the age of 90. Here is an obituary.

May his memory be eternal. And may the Lord grant him eternal rest and let perpetual light shine upon him.

In Remembrance of Alexander Schmemann

2008-12-09T12:06:00.000-08:00

Fr. Alexander Schmemann (may his memory be eternal) died on 13 December 1983. His writings and example, more than any other I venture, are responsible for my attraction to Orthodoxy, and I honor him and his memory. He coined the term "winter pascha" for the winter fast preceding Theophany, as is recounted in Thomas Hopko's book about the fast, The Winter Pascha. It is meet, right, and salutary that we remember this man by re-reading some of his words -- words that helpfully move all Christians to a proper celebration of the Nativity and Epiphany of the Son of God and to a proper sense of what it means to be the Church:

The purpose of Christianity is not to help people by reconciling them with death, but to reveal the Truth about life and death in order that people may be saved by this Truth. . . . If the purpose of Christianity were to take away from man the fear of death, to reconcile him with death, there would be no need for Christianity, for other religions have done this, indeed better than Christianity.

The Church is the entrance into the risen life of Christ; it is communion in life eternal, "joy and peace in the Holy Spirit." And it is the expectation of the "day without evening" of the Kingdom; not of any "other world," but of the fulfillment of all things and all life in Christ. In Him death itself has become an act of life, for He has filled it with Himself, with His love and light. In Him "all things are yours; whether ... the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come; all are yours; and you are Christ's; and Christ is God's" (1 Cor 3:21-23). And if I make this new life mine, mine this hunger and thirst for the Kingdom, Christ is Life, then my very death will be an act of communion with Life. For neither life nor death can separate us from the love of Christ. I do not know when and how the fulfillment will come. I do not know when all things will be consummated in Christ. I know nothing about the "whens" and "hows." But I know that in Christ this great Passage, the Pascha of the world has begun, that the light of the world to come:" comes to us in the joy and peace of the Holy Spirit, for Christ is risen and Life reigneth.

Finally I know that it is this faith and this certitude that fill with joyful meaning the worlds of St. Paul which we read each time we celebrate the "passage" of a brother, his falling asleep in Christ:

"For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the archangel's call, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first; then we who are alive, who are left, shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air; and so we shall always be with the Lord" (1 Thess 4:16-17).

Thus, Fr. Alexander Schmemann in For the Life of the World, pp. 99, 106.

Amen. Amen. Amen.

Another Take on Church and State

2008-11-26T07:40:00.000-08:00

Nicholas Cafardi has written a really nice summary of the problems that accompany the increasingly partisan, one-issue stand by many Roman Catholic bishops with respect to the American political scene. Since I have seen written and heard said the same sort of nonsense from Lutherans as I have seen and heard from RC bishops, I think this analysis is worth reading.

So I commend it to you.

Holiday "Gifting"

2008-11-19T07:15:00.000-08:00

As "the holidays" (defined in cultural/secular terms) approach, our thoughts naturally turn to gift-giving. It's a respectable turn, even if we tend thereby to get sucked into the vortex of consumerism and excess. Giving is at the heart of the Christian life, and if it takes secular seasons to bring that to mind, well -- it's too bad, but "what is not against me is for me," I guess.

This year, consumer purchases will likely be down (except perhaps in my extended family), and I fear that donations to charitably organizations will be, too. So I urge you to resist Satan's temptation to be "mean" (as the older English would put it). And to that end I draw your attention to a few of my favorite opportunities to give which can result in the multiplying of your generosity.

First: At secular Thanksgiving, it is our congregation's practice to collect canned goods (and other non-perishables) for food shelves. A better idea is to give money to the food shelves. They are being tapped as never before, and many of them have remarkably (and troubling) bare shelves. Giving them food to stock is one idea, and I don't oppose it especially. But the food shelf managers can take a $20 contribution and (because they can buy wholesale, I suppose) turn it into about a $100 worth of food, I am told. Consider a sizable contribution of money to food shelves.

Second: It is possible to give in ways that don't cost money. One discipline I am developing is to go to the Hunger-Site related websites and clicking so that organizations give food to food shelves, mammograms to poor women, food to pet shelters, books to poor kids, and space for tree growth. Simply go here, and you'll be able to click to give a donation (it's free to you: sponsors pay "per hit") for mammograms. Then hit each of the tabs toward the top of the page and give to the other causes. It takes a minute and it really does accomplish some good.

Third: Give to the social-service agencies of your church (Lutheran World Relief, for example). They accomplish a lot of good with a minimum of overhead expense.

Fourth: Give to the United Nations directly. Go here for instructions on how you can donate directly to the Emergency Relief Fund. We have all seen news and heard stories of the extent to which the UN is strapped for cash to ameliorate the ills of humanitarian and natural disasters. Lamentably, nations (including our own) do not fulfill the promise and charter of their membership in the UN.

Finally: We have taken to giving contributions in the names of our friends in lieu of giving "stuff" to people who already have everything they need. Our favorite means to do so is the Heifer Project. Talk about gifts that keep on giving.

Of course, you may have your own pet projects (Habitat for Humanity, the Carter Center -- you get a very nice card from Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter every year if you do, your own congregation's efforts for helping others). The point is to recognize that difficult economic times (and usually even robust economic times) are one way Satan has of turning us from our duty and privilege to live lives of self-giving on the model of our Lord.

Thanksgiving may be a civic holiday and Christmas may have been hijacked by the Grinch of Consumerism, but we Christians can reclaim eucharist (= thanksgiving in Greek) and the mystery of the Incarnation by celebrating in proper ways. Spend time in Church and spend money on gifts of assistance to those who share with us the imago dei.

A Glimmer of an Idea

2008-11-18T07:39:00.000-08:00

My reading over a long time, recent conversations (and contests) over theological issues, some critical reflection on the liturgical practices of my own tradition in comparison to those of other traditions, and my general misfitedness have led me to this question (with overtones of schism, which I don't intend):

Might there be reason in a Lutheran-rite Orthodoxy? I'm not quite sure what that means: I think that the Lutherans (until the recent ELW) showed the most sense in structuring liturgy in a way that properly allowed for the inbreaking of the majesty of God (and, hence, set the proper tone of reverence and awe) while doing so in the mind- and culture-set of the West, which I find such problems in leaving behind. (Yes, I know that that means that I'm setting myself in the center and not being properly eccentric. But at least I'm honest about it.)

I think my chief complaint with my current status is that most of Lutheranism is so stuck in controversy and then without an awareness that polemic is not a good basis for systematic theological reflection that some of us Lutherans feel a need for something more stable. (That's a pretty ironic statement given the vast, sollid, and almost impenetrable Systematic Theologies that have issued from Lutheran theologians.) I am frankly more taken with the Eastern Orthodox orientation in theology than I am with the West's. But I experience such a culture shock when I worship with the Orthodox and I feel so out of place, that I realize that any crossing over would be extremely difficult. (And that doesn't even deal with cost of losing communion with my family and closest friends: Yes, Cha, I have put that too globally; there are various levels of communion, and oneness in Christ is possible even in the unacceptable experience of divisions in the Body of Christ.)

The Finnish Lutheran scholars have brought me to this point, I think. I don't want to swim -- the Tiber, the Bosporus, the Thames (and certainly not Lake Geneva!). But the discontent I feel might best be expressed by the phrase I have (I think) invented.

So like the kid who experiments with different nicknames, haircuts, and attitudes, I'm trying on the new moniker -- Lutheran-rite Orthodox. Nothing earth-shaking will happen, but perhaps I can feel more comfortable in the nest into which I was born and re-born if I change the nomenclature.

You Saw It First Here!

2008-11-18T07:10:00.000-08:00

OK, so maybe you've seen or heard the Official Announcement of the next conference sponsored by the Center for Catholic and Evangelical Theology -- but I bet you won't get as enthusiastic a recommendation as you get here!

Reserve June 8 through June 10, 2009, for Vatican II: Its continuing Challenge to All Churches. This is a conference -- commemorating the 50th anniversary of the summoning of the Council by Pope John XXIII (may his memory be eternal) -- sponsored by CCET in cooperation with the Pope John Paul II Cultural Center and it will be held at the Center, close to Catholic University in Washington, DC.

Among the speakers with be keynoter George Lindbeck, who was an official observer for the Lutheran World Federation for all four sessions of the Vatican Council. (He tells of how remarkable it was -- and impossible now under today's academic rules -- that he was given a continuing leave of absence from his duties at Yale to allow him to participate for the duration of the Council. I can't say with any authority, but I'd bet that he put in more time at the Council than many of the Bishops!) Dr. Lindbeck has remarkable insight into the importance and meaning of the Council, and it will be great to hear him. (One of the most valuable experiences of serving on the CCET Board, and there have been many, has been the frequent opportunity to dine with Dr. Lindbeck alone and with company. The man is a giant -- and he may know everything! In fact, several of the other presenters, I think, did their PhDs under him, too.) For research: I'm not sure how many participants in that Council are still alive! This is a precious opportunity.

About the rest of the conference: Speakers will discuss the continuing significance of the Council for such issues in Church life as ethics, worship, ecclesiology (I can't wait!), ecumenism, and others. Presenters include Amy Laura Hall from Duke, Paul Gavrilyuk from St. Thomas (in St. Paul), Nicholas Healy from the New York St. John's, Matthew Levering from Ave Maria, Karen Tucker from Boston U, and the Center's own Michael Root from Southern Seminary.

The information will soon be available on the CCET website (www.e-ccet.org). But trust me: You'll want to be at this. You can stay on the CU campus, get an early-registration discount (or a student or retired-clergy discount), a lovely banquest "experience," and a chance to rub shoulders with fantastic people. We always get the most interesting folks -- and I think, given the subject, the era, and the location, that we're going to have a good-sized crowd. Who knows, you may lunch with a bishop or cardinal (no promises, of course -- though our conference at St. Thomas welcomed Cardinal Cassidy from the Vatican and the one at Duke featured Cardinal-Archbishop George from Chicago) or the theologian you've been dying to read or a student from Norway who happens to be in the area and is interested in the topic. And, no, I am not holding out the chance that His Holiness will attend -- though wouldn't that be a hoot? Maybe we could ask him to deliver the banquet speech? It's not as though he doesn't have feelings about the Council and its aftermath!

If you come, we should arrange a luncheon for a face-to-face. You can always find me: I'm usually given bookselling duties for the Center, so check out the displays. (And that's another nice thing: In the past, Brazos has offered a really sweet discount on all their publications for conference attendees!)

I sincerely urge you to reserve the dates now and to watch the CCET website for registration opportunities.

The Ecumenical Movement ...

2008-11-10T08:16:00.000-08:00

apparently has a long way to go.

Check this out here.

This isn't anything exactly new, but it's lamentable nonetheless.

Post-Election

2008-11-05T06:20:00.000-08:00

Y-E-S: President Barak Obama.

Politics from the Pulpit

2008-10-17T07:15:00.000-07:00

This issue has been festering for a while, so I am likely to express myself rather hotly. On this issue, I'm going to bare my soul a little more daringly than I have in the past. As you read what follows, keep in mind my disclosures: I am a progressive, but I am not a Democrat; I have a campaign poster for Obama on my computer desktop (and one on my lawn), but he was not my first choice for a candidate; I belong to a very politically progressive (sometimes, I think, mindlessly so) Lutheran congregation (with a very traditional liturgical life) from which I would bolt were the pastor to make any pronouncement that smacked of a partisan political endorsement or denunciation (even though his politics are similar to mine); I take the First Amendment (both halves) with utter seriousness. Now, on with the rant.

The Gospel is fundamentally political. That is to say that the Gospel has implications for the ways that people structure their individual lives and the societies of which they are members. Whether one's thinking runs to Niebuhrian "realism" (whose "reality"?) or Hauerwasian Church-as-polis, she recognizes that the Gospel's message has direct impacts on the ways one builds a world -- and that includes the way that she votes.

But it's a majorly big step to go from that assertion to the claim that one can thereby justify the religious endorsement of political parties or candidates or (perhaps, I'm not too sure about this yet) particular pieces of legislation. The Constitution provides for the voice of the religious (I'm not going to say "church" at this point, because I believe that the Constitution is dynamic enough to encompass Muslims, even though the original drafters had virtually no experience or thought of them) in the "public square." But it is also clear that that provision does not extend to the official endorsement of any particular religious point of view. And one aspect of that balance has been written into the tax code.

Religious properties and enterprises enjoy an amazing exemption from the levy of taxes (property, income, and the like) and even from numerous laws that otherwise would apply to the kinds of work, service, and projects that congregations undertake. But that tax exemption (as with other tax-exempt organizations) requires that the judicatory, parish, or preacher refrain from partisan activities. Thus, if a mosque or emerging group wishes to avail itself of the tax exemption on its income, the leader must refrain from political endorsements, the congregation itself must not actively participate as an entity or under formal santion of the entity in any activities that promote one candidate over another. (Similarly, the tax-exempt status of Bob Jones University was revoked because of its racial-segregation policies. The place wasn't shut down, of course; it was just denied the advantages that inhere in being tax-exempt: For example, gifts from donors are not deductible on the donors' tax returns.)

In the past, "the government" has done little nosing into religious activity (except sub rosa surveillance and the like). But you may remember that in the last election an Episcopal congregation in California (I think it was) got blasted by the IRS because an interim priest had the audacity to compare Bush and Kerry's stands on the Iraq war and included some criticism of the Bush's stand. (What would God say? What would Jesus want ... ?) But the same diligence has never appeared to apply to the right-wing worlds of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson and the like.

Recently a group of fools (they see themselves as "fools for Christ," but I don't think they're operating "for Christ") has determined to test the limits of the government's authority. Their practice was to endorse, from the pulpits in their official capacity as pastors, John McCain as the Christ-approved candidate for president. Their argument was that the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States granted them the freedom to do so and that under the First Amendment, their tax status could not be touched.

Well, it doesn't take a law-school genius to see the foolishness of the argument, and it doesn't take a theologian with a PhD from Yale to recognize the stupidity of their claim. Nothing in the First Amendment guarantees them a tax exemption. It would be perfectly within the purview othe protections afforded by the First to levy a tax on relgious enterprises. That the policy of this country is to exempt religious organizations engaged in non-partisan activities results in a privilege, not a right. I think that these goons will be brought up short and their true motives will be made clear. (Although, under the Justice Department as it has developed over the last eight years -- see the Inspector General's report -- since the endorsements were of the Republican, it would surprise me if there were discernable action.)

On a larger and more troubling scale is the Roman Catholic problem. (How's that for framing in the worst possible way?) Several Roman Catholic bishops have recently gotten away with partisan pronouncements, and Lisa Sowle Cahill notes in her commentary here. Because(apparently) by their lights the only political issue that God cares about is abortion -- despite the almost innumerable letters, statements, encyclicals, and pronouncements to the contrary from the National Conference of Catholic Bishops -- a few bishops have issued decrees that Catholic voters must vote Republican, that the Democratic party (despite its having the strongest anti-war group, the healthiest social safety-net policies, and the like) is the "party of death," and the like.

I'm curious about this program for two reasons. First, it seems to demonstrate the foolishness of calling the Roman Catholic Church "one church" (any more than one denomination) if its hierarchy are so polarized, so partisan, so unwilling to look to the range of the Bishops' teachings as to allow some of the bishops to go off half-cocked with nary a peninsula to stand on. Second, will the partisan statements result in any serious governmental inquiry. Is the Roman Catholic Church in the United States just too big to allow to fail? Is it too big to take on? Is the project too risky, given the power of the core conservative-and-Catholic constituency on the Supreme Court?

Cahill's rather bland analysis highlights the complexity of Catholic teaching on the way that Catholics should be involved in the civic life of their country. Her analysis grows out of the teaching of the Church promulgated by the papacy and the conference of bishops in this country. That certain bishops decide that they can go their own way must be really embarrassing to sincere traditional Catholics for whom a "cafeteria approach" to truth is not an option for Catholics.

And on a practical note, despite at least six years recently when the "pro-life" party held control of the government -- legislative, executive, and judiciary -- abortion laws remained virtually unchanged, did they? So much for the practical implications of violating American law, bishops.

From Levinas ...

2008-10-15T12:50:00.000-07:00

OK, let's be clear: I'm no philosopher. (The list of what I am not would fill several blogs, but for today, that simple disclaimer is sufficient.) But I ran across some E. Levinas today, and I cite a few lines in honor of Jeff, who's taken over directing the Phenomenology center at Duquesne. (To be a little less modest: I did study phenomenology for half a semester in grad school, but it was way over my head then -- and likely is now, if I re-set my cap.)

The relation between the Other and me which dawns forth in his expression, issues neither in number nor in concept. The Other remains infinitely transcendent, infinitely foreign; his face in which his epiphany is produced and which appeals to me breaks with the world that is common to us, whose virtualities are inscribed in our nature and developed by our existence.

(From Totality and Infinity, as quoted by Hans Boersmaa in Violence, Hospitality, and the Cross at p. 29)

I can place this is the general context of his thought (I have something less than a Levinas-for-Dummies idea of the trajectory of his thought on alterity, the Other, the Same, Face), and I find it lovely. His notion of hospitality, of the innate required-ness of hospitality for human life, seems very helpful for thiking about the ways we live consistent with the will of God. (Inasmuch as you have done this to the least of my brothers, you have done it to me -- for example.)

Does anyone out there have fondness for Levinas' philosophy? Are my instincts sound: Should I read more of him?

Reading the Bible -- And an Update

2008-10-09T07:39:00.000-07:00

Update:

Today (Tuesday, 14 October) His Holiness has expressed himself in the Synod of Bishops (apparently a rarity in such Synods) on the issue of the interrelationship of exegesis and theological reflection. Here is John Allen's report. As he notes, we may expect the transcript of the remarks soon. And I, for one, am eager to see them.

Theological interpretation of the Bible is, of course, not a new thing; it is the oldest thing in the Church's life. But there is a renewed interest in the matter: witness that practically every serious Biblical-studies enterprise is launching a series featuring theological commentary on the Scriptures. (I'm fond of the Brazos series, but there are a passel of them coming from other places, too.)

This all cannot be a bad thing, I think. Talk about an evangelical-catholic approach to the Church's intellectual and spiritual life!

The original post:

The Pope has summoned and has now convened a Bishops' Synod on the Bible in the Church. His Holiness apparently intends to join the synod for most of the time (two weeks?) it sits, which tells you something about his investment in the matter, I think.

John Allen, of the National Catholic Reporter, is right now my only source of information on the Synod. But his reports have made me itchin' to be there. Here is his summary of the presentation by the Pope's close adviser, Bp. Fisichella, on the interdependence on the Bible and the Tradition of the Church. We Christians are not, said the Bishop, to see ourselves as a people of the Book, but rather a people of the Word.

My Lutheran heritage boldly trumpets "sola scriptura" and we found our faith more on Luther's disputed dicta, "Unless I am convinced from the sure evidence of scripture that I am wrong, I cannot, I will not recant. Here I stand; I can do no other" than on the Confessions in the Concordia. But close reading and thinking about "sola scriptura" reveals that it cannot be understood to encourage literalism or "fundamentalism"; we must read the Scriptures in the context of the Church. The Tradition and Scripture exist in dialectical tension as authority in the Church's life. The Bishop is right: We are not a "people of the book."

Sidney Griffin made much the same point in his presentation at the CCET conference in Baltimore this summer. Islam is most assuredly a religion of the book: The Quran figures in the life of Islam much the way that Jesus figures in Christian faith. The Bible does not occupy nearly the same place. But I don't intend to unpack that here.

We read our book in the light of and in conversation with those who have read it in the past -- the authors of the various books, the Fathers, the martyrs and scholars through history. I personally resonate to the notion of reading the Bible having developed and "inner eye of faith," as one of the other presenters said.

For now, I simply commend Allen's report to you and encourage you to research it more deeply. This is commensensical stuff, the implications of which deserve exploring.

I Wonder ...

2008-10-01T06:40:00.000-07:00

Here's a theological question of significant weight: I wonder what it means (or perhaps says about me) that the most common repeat (spam) e-mail I get is not for the little blue pill or for the charms of some winsome beauty (male or female) or for the opportunity to open my banking accounts to the infusion of millions of dollar by just providing the routing and account numbers, but for a paw-and-nail care system for my pet (in my case, dog). Now, mind you, I haven't opened the things for fear of what lists that might add me to, so the subject lines may be misleading. But it's really fascinating to me. I don't know whether to be amused, insulted, intimidated for what. For now, bemusement is my attitude, I guess.

Welcome Back to Camassia

2008-09-23T08:42:00.001-07:00

In case you don't read all the Comments, Camassia is back from her sabbatical from the blogosphere.

I'm not a great techy, and I don't put very much stock in "virtual communities" -- I need all the flesh-and-blood community I can get. But Camassia has bridged those worlds for me. She inspired our mutual friend Kate to suggest that I begin blogging; her blog inspired and will inspire me in more ways that I can list. And without the blogging, I never would have met her and another friend whom we met in the 'sphere.

I am delighted to return a link to her blog to my list of links (which I have been neglecting horribly, but will try to clean up over the next millenium).

Why I am not a universalist, even though I want to be

2008-09-23T08:16:00.000-07:00

Why I Am Not a Universalist

(Even though I want to be)

After Reading Matthew 10-11

The people of God need not worry about the “eternal destiny” of others; they/we do not need to speculate or pontificate about whether those who do not confess Jesus will “go to heaven” or end up in “hell.” And it takes most of my energy and tongue-biting to make that assertion. For I am a would-be universalist, in the train of Origen, Ephrem (I think: Edessa and Nisibis were hotbeds of universalism), Barth, von Balthasar, and others. But I find that a theoretical perspective that I cannot justify from Scripture.

Concern for the eternal well-being of those who have never known Jesus, or who have heard only a false gospel, or who reject Jesus has seemed a natural concern from the beginning of Christian consciousness. Preaching about the “harrowing of hell” goes back to almost the very beginning. And already in the mid-third century, Origen had been declared heretical for positing that God’s grace would embrace all universally – perhaps whether all wanted it or not. Logic, furthermore, probably blended with love and compassion, raises the question of the fates of those who lived and died before Jesus. As recently as the Second Vatican Council one theologian concluded that Scripture requires that we accept that Hell exists, but it does not require us to believe that anyone populates it. (Rahner, I think.)

But as he so often does, Hauerwas puts the emphasis where it belongs: As Christians, we are perpetually (despite our growth in grace) childlike before the purposes and works of God. We are dependents who have been lifted up from our lowly states to that of blessedness. It is our task to get on with living out our salvation and to leave salvation to God.

Of course, we don’t just sit back and let it happen. As the Gospel of Matthew sets it up, we join the ranks of the apostles, whose mission (co-mission with Jesus) was to make known that the reign of God has drawn near in Jesus. We are called in order to be sent to proclaim “Repent!” and “Be of good cheer!” We are also authorized to pray for all who do not meet Jesus (in person or through his apostles) and for all who reject him.

The mission to proclaim the Gospel (as Jesus makes crystal clear in his commissioning of The Twelve, this proclamation is by word and good work) is urgent precisely because it is the offer of salvation – the announcement that time to fend off God is past; he’s at the gate, ready to enter. Regardless of one’s “universalism” tendencies, this urgency cannot be denied. It is written through the entire Scriptures. And if we worry for the eternal well-being of others, and we might rightly do so, then the mission is all the more urgent to get the word out. We may not excuse our own reticence, sloth, shyness, languor, or whatever through easy reliance on the specious (specious on Scriptural grounds) belief that preaching doesn’t really matter, that acquaintance with Jesus is nice but not necessary for salvation, that God will pull everyone in to is realm – kicking and screaming, if need be.

So it is a direct denial of the scriptural witness to assume that Jesus is incidental to the salvation of the world – its people and all the rest. It is also nonsensical to make such an assumption. At the root of such a hope is that God will ultimately ignore the wishes, the free will of those whom he draws in to the kingdom. And at root that is the hope that God will work violence on those who reject him.

For it is violence to force one’s will on one who knowingly and voluntarily rejects it, wants nothing to do with it, prefers another. To reference something I recently read: It is violence for a 40-year-old sincere and pious Fundamentalist Latter Day Saint to force himself through “celestial marriage” on a 14-year-old, even believing that to do so is to save her soul. And it is no less violent for God to grab someone by the nape of the neck and force him into the kingdom of heaven. And if it’s one thing God has shown himself to be in regard of his people it is non-violent. Despite all the ill for the world that has resulted, God has not forced himself on his people – Israel, the 1st century Roman state, the Church. Anything undertaken in his name that is violent – one thinks of forced conversions in areas where the Christian Church enjoyed civil control, too – is the exact opposite of what it claims to be. And the perpetrators are no more at peace in heaven than are the 40-year-old and older jackasses who justify molestation and rape with the words of scripture.

Fundamentally, there is no ground on which the Christian may sit in self-satisfaction that the word of God will proceed without her involvement. To be baptized is to be ordained to the mission of the Twelve – ordained, not to preach to the community of faith, but to bring the Good News in language and deeds to all those who need (and in many cases, have been waiting without knowing for) just that message.

Hauerwas contrasts (ala Matthew 11) the followers of Christ, who are infant-like in their dependence on Jesus and the other followers of Christ for their very survival, with the wise and intelligent, who hold power and blinding think they are strong and self-determining. And he says this about universalist concerns:

If followers of Christ … are those who are infants from the perspective of the wise and intelligent, that is, from the perspective of those in power, they will find that they do not need an account of the status of those who are not Christians. Rather, they need only to be a people whose lives are so captured by the Son that others may find that they are also captivated by the joy that animates the lives of those claimed by Jesus.

(Hauerwas, Matthew, p. 117)

As is so typical of Hauerwas, he doesn’t make it easy to feel that one has a grasp on this Christian faithfulness thing. It is tough to keep one’s focus on those one sees and knows, not worrying overly about the hordes elsewhere. But some of that is required. But we must also have the wider perspective and encourage those who know a call, a vocation to proclaim Christ where he is not known. We may rightly argue over the shape that ministry will take: Will it be a matter primarily of demanding that people “accept Jesus” or will it be a more subtle case of setting up schools and hospitals and waiting for them to ask the right questions? But we can no longer, if we ever could, ignore the urgency of calling and sending men and women to represent Jesus Himself in their proclaiming and salving and healing and exorcising and raising the dead. Their and our very lives depend on it.

This is not to say, of course, that our hopes must follow our logic. It is, I think, incumbent on every Christian to hope that what I have set forth above is not complete (which is easy to admit) and suffers from a narrowness of knowledge that will be corrected on the last day. It is my urgent hope that the Mighty ones – Origen, Barth, von Balthasar, perhaps Jenson – are correct in their conclusions that the grace of God is ultimately undefeatable. God has worked bigger surprises in the history of the universe.

And so we must live in the hope that God has it all in hand to save all this creation, with the loss of not even a sparrow. But we must also live as though the future of the world depends on us, the successors to the apostles. For when all is said and done, both perspectives recognize that it is only “in Christ” that salvation – “in this world and the next” – is possible.

"Reality"

2008-09-19T06:53:00.000-07:00

In introducing their book on the Eucharist, Andrea Bieler and Luise Schottroff claim that the book "is about people who juxtapose in odd, sharp, and sometimes painful ways the texts of reality with the living traditions of the Christian faith that embody resurrection hope" (The Eucharist: Bodies, Bread & Resurrection, p. 3, emphasis added). I think they already fail to understand the Eucharist in a fundamental way. The "living traditions of the Christian faith that embody resurrection hope" are the texts of reality for the Eucharistic community. Tales, sagas, philosophies of death and sorrow are not the texts of reality for the Christian family. And it is precisely the point of Eucharist to act that basic assertion.

Now I suppose that the authors may not mean their statement in any ontologically or linguistically significant way. Perhaps they mean "texts of day-to-day experience" instead of "texts of reality." If so, one wishes that theology professors and their editors would practice the kind of precision in their writing and thinking that that they usually require of those who criticize their work! But to the point: It is the easy acceptance of alternative realities as "reality" that makes the Christian witness so ineffective, so incomprehensible to so many, so rejectable today.

My reading of Stringfellow, Bonhoeffer, Hauerwas, Hart, Cavanaugh (and recently Brueggemann) convinces me that we need to be more straightforward about a troubling truth about Christianity: Our theology implies a kind of temporary and incomplete dualism. Hart makes this point explicit in his The Doors of the Sea. And Stringfellow, I think, must assume it with his discussion (which inspired Walter Wink's) of the powers and principalities that battle against the intentions and works of God. There are powers, principalities, thought patterns, ways of living, problems, forces that work to thwart the creating-redeeming-sustaining work of God. They are called minions of Satan; they are "not of God"; they are death-dealing and -inducing. And they make life damned unpleasant. They exist in that they can work effects, but they have no ultimate existence and they have no power to win ultimate struggles. In fact, they have already been defeated. (Talk of "dualism" is not something with which I am very comfortable or very eloquent. But if one is to wrestle with "powers and principalities" language -- which I think is critical for Christians to do, with an eye to the widest possible scope of the topic -- then I think we have no choice but to do so.)

The powers and principalities are only partially real; they are not "reality," and their effects or their stories are not "texts of reality." They exist at all only in the absence of God (that seems to be a kind of Augustinian notion, I think, that I'm amazed I find convincing -- given my general suspicion of the man). They are real only in the effects they produce -- death, destruction, sin, alienation, and the like. And we must not discount that reality! After all, those powers and principalities took Jesus to the cross. And that was real enough, thank you.

But the story of death (which is Stringfellow's general term for those powers and principalities and all their minions) which names them and narrates the execution of Jesus is not the "text[] of reality"; the Gospel is the text of reality. Reality is that "death shall have no dominion"; reality is that Easter trumps Good Friday, Resurrection triumphed over execution, God wins out over not-God. If you want a text of reality, read the liturgy of the Eucharist.

"Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again." That is reality, not the incomplete (albeit at times horrible) minor coups of the contrary.

I would expect women who have been teaching graduate courses in eucharistic liturgy, and who emphasize in their book the eschatological dimensions of the Eucharist, to get that right.

What do you think?

Question

2008-09-16T10:26:00.000-07:00

First a note: I have not been working on this blog much lately. I have any number of excuses -- Matthew class, work, hectic family life. I am also having a bitter time fighting off partisan-political complaints about the current era. (And while I don't apologize for my political decisions, I buy that Jesus doesn't support either candidate. Consequently, I am in tension between my knee-jerk reactions and my feelings of responsibility to be fair -- which usually means being unfair to my candidates.) But the bottom line is that I have been feeling less and less pontifical (I still envy Al Kimel's calling dibs on the title "Pontificator," but he at least has some substantial claim to it); I feel less and less confident that I have anything to say. And I think I'm in a thinking-burn-out zone.

So I'm going to fall back a bit and simply note good things I'm reading, along with any questions that may arise for me. And I'll continue to hope that I get meaty replies from the two or three of you who check in.

Today's tidbit comes thanks to Walt Brueggemann. I think he's a good writer -- and one with a lot to say (and most of which I agree with). I hope he stays healthy and productive for a long time.

In the current issue of Theology Today (a fine journal -- even if not of the quality of Pro Ecclesia), he writes a most timely article, "Prophetic Ministry in the National Security State." It's good reading (his styling is wonderful to read; it must have been honey to hear at the 2007 Festival of Homiletics). But I pick up on one little point.

He cites to Abraham Heschel (who will be in heaven -- that's all there's to that), who has written (in Who Is Man?) that "the loss of embarrassment is the quintessential loss of human capability" (Brueggemann's characterization of Heschel's point). In context, Brueggemann is exegeting Jeremiah 6, where Jeremiah castigates his society which has so perverted language that they hide the effects of their greed behind the claim that "all is well" -- i.e., "shalom." Bruggemann shows that Jeremiah says, as his great indictment -- a kind of coup de grace --, that the society has so deteriorated that "They do not know how to blush." Then he (Brueggemann, not Jeremiah) cites to Heschel.

That observation is ripe with connections for me. I remember that what brought Joe McCarthy down was the attorney's rhetorical question of him, "Have you no shame." And I wonder is this: Does this relate to the Genesis narrative? When the man and woman in the Garden, in Genesis, cover themselves with leaves, they explain to God that they knew they were naked and were ashamed. Does the Genesis author signal that, as depraved as the human condition was as a result of the Fall, the durability of the imago dei remained intact -- so that the ability of humanity to feel shame, embarrassment, acknowledgment of its/their less-than-should-be held out hope for humans?

With all the Bible's talk of pride, arrogance, self-importance -- the very opposites of embarrassment or shame -- are we called to shame, to embarrassment at our sin?

I know that linguists among us will want to make fine and broad distinctions between embarrassment and shame. But do they not root in the same emotional state? So can we not take them together.

Robert Jenson taught me that a quality of being alive is the ability to surprise. Here we have another fundamental human capability -- the ability to feel the need to hide one's face.

Ron Hansen

2008-08-19T08:53:00.000-07:00

I read Ron Hansen's Marietta in Ecstasy and was swept away. It concerns a nun who is gifted with the stigmata -- or is she? -- and the complex psychological and sociological reactions that spawns in the nun and her community. It's a profound and lovely book. And, while I have had him on the back burner, I have intended to read others from his pen (ok: word processor).

I was interested, then, to see this interview with him on Christian Century's website. I knew that he is a Roman Catholic deacon who teaches at Santa Clara, but there's a nice look at his church involvement and the faith that undergirds his writing. (You will note that he promotes both 100 Years of Solitude and Lolita, which titles Virgil correlates with smart people at smart schools -- in short, the top 2 books that make you smarter! I've been trying to tell my reading group at Church that we need to read Lolita, since we've already read Garcia Marquez. So far, no takers. But that's another story.)

A Word for the Faithful on Judging

2008-08-18T13:55:00.000-07:00

In clearing out some files, I found that I had copied this from Dietrich Bonhoeffer. For a variety of reasons, into which I need not go here, it seems a timely find. In fact, this caution about judging is timely at all times, I think.

When we judge, we encounter other people from the distance of observation and reflection. But love does not allot time and space to do that. For those who love, other people can never become an object for spectators to observe. Instead, they are always a living claim on my love and my service. But doesn’t the evil in other people necessarily force me to pass judgment on them, just for their own sake and because of our love for them? We recognize how sharply the boundary is drawn. Love for a sinner, if misunderstood, is frightfully close to love for the sin. But Christ’s love for the sinner is itself the condemnation of sin; it is the sharpest expression of hatred against sin. It is that unconditional love, in which Jesus’ disciples should live in following him, that achieves what their own disunited love, offered according to their own discretion and conditions, could never achieve, namely, the radical condemnation of evil.

If the disciples judge, then they are erecting standards to measure good and evil. But Jesus Christ is not a standard by which I can measure others. It is he who judges me and reveals what according to my own judgment is good to be thoroughly evil.
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Discipleship, pp. 170f.

Feast of the Dormition of the Theotokos

2008-08-15T08:34:00.001-07:00

For the Dormition of the Theotokis:

Apolytikion (First Tone)
In birth, you preserved your virginity; in death, you did not abandon the world, O Theotokos. As mother of life, you departed to the source of life, delivering our souls from death by your intercessions.

Kontakion (Second Tone)
Neither the grave nor death could contain the Theotokos, the unshakable hope, ever vigilant in intercession and protection. As Mother of life, He who dwelt in the ever-virginal womb transposed her to life.

Today is the Feast of the Going to Sleep of the all-holy, ever-virgin, most blessed Theotokos, the Mother of God. An Orthodox friend asks why Lutherans are so skittish about Mary. And she also asks why the Lutheran propers for today are essentially the same in content as those for the Annunciation in March. I don't have a liturgiologist's answer to her questions. But, as you might expect, I do have some ideas that don't treat of the liturgical history.

First of all, contrary to the teaching of Luther, Lutherans have all but cut Mary out of our church's celebration and life. Oh, we have a few "Mary" or "St. Mary" Lutheran Churches (Europe has vastly more, at least in part, I suspect, because they were inherited from pre-Reformation times). But we look in vain for much evidence that she figures as prominently in piety as the Apostles and St. Paul blocks all hint of glow that may attach to her.

Part of it, I'm sure, is an earnest effort to remain Biblical, and there just isn't much to go on in the New Testament if you're trying to build a biography or hagiography for the Virgin. Lots of "traditional lore" has built up -- as a sometimes misguided response, I think, to the promptings of the Spirit to keep her prominent. And so we have holy legends about her parentage, her early life, her post-resurrection doings, and her death. But the Scriptures themselves don't give much of a toe hold for those seeking to integrate her into the life of the Church.

But Scripture does witness to her importance: "Henceforth, all generations shall call me blessed, for He who is Mighty has done to me great things." And that is an evangelical witness. She is, in her own words, blessed and importance because of what God has done (and does)to and through her. The witness of the early centuries of the Church also testifies to her importance. She has been declared the "Theotokos" over some objections -- the "God-bearer" or "Mother of God." So we can't and ought not ignore her.

I also hear a lot of concern raised from good Lutherans that we "don't need" Mary because we have a straight shot to God through Jesus. But I think that's a sign of a very low ecclesiology among most Lutherans. If these folks think that asking Mary for her intervention is a way to approach an essentially unsympathetic Jesus, then they don't know the Gospel of Christ. (But then, they may be projecting their own unacknowledged use of Jesus to approach an unsympathetic God -- just at another step removed.) But come on: We ask fellow Christians to pray for us all the time. And asking the heroes and heroines of the faith to join with our here-in-tangible-form saints to pray for us only makes sense if you have a good sense of the Church.

The Church is the gathering of believers where the Gospel is preached and practiced. As such it is synchronic and diachronic: That is to say, it transcends the one location where I stand to include all Christian gatherings going on in this era AND it comprehends all Christian gatherings through all time. Thus, in St. Paul's language, "we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses" who join with our prayers. That I call on my wife to pray for me makes no more or less sense than asking Mary -- and Matthew, Mark, Stephen, and Dietrich, for that matter -- to join her prayers to ours.

I think the Orthodox have a better handle on this than the Western Church. When I attended vespers for St. Seraphim of Sarov, I was stunned (finally!) by how much the Orthodox take for granted that the saints are with them. Leave it to the West to layer on issues of "merit" and "standing": We don't pray to the saints because they have special merit -- on this the Lutheran Confessions are correct. We pray to them because they are remembered more directly (and probably for good reason) by the Church catholic and are available on a more general basis to the consciousness of a greater number of the faithful gathered in one place. And pray to them we may and should -- and on this the Lutheran Confessions get it wrong when they discourage praying to the saints. (Given their time, there may have been warrant for such advice, but it is advice that doesn't hold up. But once again, the Confessions don't offer much in terms of an ecclesiology.)

The Reformation, the Enlightenment, scientism, and various other influences have given Lutherans problems with saints. It would be a worthwhile endeavor for the Church -- certainly the Lutheran branch -- to reclaim her heritage and integrate saints more completely into her life.

Fasting

2008-08-11T09:06:00.000-07:00

This comes from a mailing from the Ekklesia Project (begin here), specifically Co-ordinator Brent Laytham. It's short and to the point and summons me to join in the practice.

FASTING AGAINST A DIVIDED BODY
by Brent Laytham

One of the great joys of our EP Gatherings is eating together. We break bread with friends old and new, discovering at a common table our common life in Christ. That makes it all the more painful that many of us who endorse The Ekklesia Project cannot come together as one body at the Eucharistic table of our Lord. Several years ago, we spent an entire Gathering exploring that pain.

This year our Gathering explored another division that scars the body of Christ—race. Both visibly and invisibly, race and racism have divided us from sharing together at our Lord’s one table. Confronting that reality for three days has renewed my commitment to the Friday fast that EP endorsers commit themselves to. Heretofore, I have fasted because that’s what Methodist pastors do, and because it was a simple practice of solidarity with my sisters and brothers in The Ekklesia Project. But now, committed to “Crossing the Divide,” I am also fasting as a practice of judgment—judgment against my ongoing racism, judgment against our racially segregated churches, judgment against every failure to receive what Christ has already done—broken down the dividing wall of hostility (Eph. 2:14).

Today I fast, not just to be in solidarity with you all, but especially to hunger for the full unity of Christ’s church.

I am not a faster: I find that working in an office makes the growling of my stomache and the light-headedness that comes quite quickly do not make for good performance. But Brent's brevity and correctness give me pause, and I think I may have to explore this spiritual practice more. (After all, in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus assumes that his disciples will fast.) Divisions within the Body of Christ are an ab0mination, and if anything is worth fasting about, that would be at the top of my list.

More on "The Ministry"

2008-08-04T08:13:00.000-07:00

There's a nice opinion piece over on the Touchstone discussion site that relates directly to issues we've discussed here on ordained ministry. It expresses, inter alia, chagrin over what has become of the office of the pastor in the modern Western Church. I encourage you to read and reflect on it. It's time for a new Reformation in our understandings of the Church and her ministry.

Flexodoxy

2008-07-31T07:44:00.000-07:00

Here's the latest from Marty Center -- this time on spiritual practices. (In Theological Discussion -- a monthly reading and discussion group I facilitate at my church -- we're reading David Augsburger's Dissident Discipleship, an analysis of Anabaptist spirituality. If only for that reason, spirituality is on my mind, and I find that when coupled with the Matthew study, it makes for a rather unsettling examination of conscience with respect to how I live my life.) I quite resonate with the (implied) criticism of "flexodoxy," which I think is the predominate form of Christianity in this country. (Roman Catholics have long called it "cafeteria Christianity" -- take what you like and ignore what doesn't fit your taste.)

Sightings 7/31/08

The Order of Saint Oprah

-- Aaron Curtis

Is there incipient within the modern cult of the self a desire for a more constrictive way of life? Have those of us who live comfortably within the lax constraints of secular humanism discovered that we long for some rigorous "rule of life"? Some means by which to order a welter of consumer choices (including religion) into a more cohesive lifestyle? One might be inclined to pose such questions in light of the recent spate of "rule of life" experiments, such as A.J. Jacobs' year of "living biblically" or Barbara Kingsolver's year lived as a "locavore" (both of which were turned into bestselling books), or, most recently, one Chicago woman's self-imposed challenge to "design her life" in strict accordance with all of Oprah Winfrey's advice. But what this last experiment reveals, surprisingly, is not so much a desire for a more disciplined lifestyle as an inadvertent reaffirmation of a reigning brand of cultural orthodoxy.

At first glance, it would appear that the experiment undertaken by "Lo"—a pseudonym for "Living Oprah"—has, at best, only a tenuous connection to religious practice. This impression is reinforced by the blog she keeps to track her progress and by a July 10 Chicago Reader article on the project, which features an image of Oprah in a pose and garb resembling Chairman Mao, above the title "The Great Commander." Both the article and Lo's blog emphasize the political and socio-economic implications of this particular cult of personality, opting to leave unexplored the suggestion left by one blog visitor that Lo wear a "WWOD" bracelet, as well as Lo's own impression, after attending Oprah's show, that "it was like a church revival."

But there are two crucial respects in which Lo's "practice" bears an interesting resemblance to more traditional devotional practices. First of all, Lo has chosen to relinquish her power of choice entirely (what she eats, watches, reads, et cetera) and is committed to a faithfully neutral obedience (however much her initial intent may have been critically motivated). She asks, "Will I truly find bliss if I commit wholeheartedly to [Oprah's] lifestyle suggestions?" The true value of the experiment has less to do with the effectiveness of Oprah's advice taken piecemeal than with the change effected on the life of so absolute a follower. Secondly, the project's "faith" is invested in the possible results of predominantly physical practices—that is, without need of an attendant belief in their effectiveness. This bears a certain similarity to a strain of ascetic practice that insists on the power of bodily regimentation to bring about a desired change in one's "spiritual" orientation, rather than vice versa.

However weak these similarities may be to what some would deem "authentic" religious practice, they nevertheless serve to reveal the nature of the "religion" of Oprah's followers. Aside from some supportive advice for the struggling neophyte, the most revealing reaction to the "Living Oprah" project has been that of suspicion and even defensive hostility. On the one hand, Lo is violating an unstated but generally assumed norm of the community: Oprah is beloved as a personality at the center of an alluring communal identity and her authority is to be taken on faith; to test it in such a systematic and empirical fashion is to commit a form of sacrilege, or, at least, to miss the point entirely. On the other hand, and far more significantly, Lo's practice is suspect precisely because it diverges from the orthodoxy of this community. One visitor to the blog responded, "Why would you try to take someone that is only trying to do good things on this planet and make a mockery of her? … I watch Oprah. And take what is important to me and what touches my life. Whether it be medical advice, inspirational stories, her own personal actions or experiences, it's up to you to take from it what you need at that particular time." Here we have a perfect articulation of a prevalent form of modern spirituality that some, especially in orthodox and evangelical circles, have labeled "flexodoxy" —what theologian and scholar N.T. Wright describes as "free-for-all, do-it-yourself spirituality."

The prevalence of flexodoxy is not news. But it is surprising that, with Lo's experiment, the culture of flexodoxy should end up asserting its own orthodoxy—deciding for oneself what one needs, when one needs it. Those aspects of Lo's project that do resemble more traditional religious practices are precisely the ones that are most threatening to this particular "faith community", in which membership is based more on belief than on rigorous practice, and absolute obedience violates the norms of flexodoxy. By refusing the right of choice and by failing to see value in a sense of belonging rather than in practical effects, Lo is failing to live by Oprah's "rule of life" in its most fundamental sense.

References:

The Chicago Reader story on Lo's project can be read at: http://www.chicagoreader.com/features/stories/oprah/

Aaron Curtis is a PhD student in Religion and Literature at the University of Chicago Divinity School.

----------

Sightings comes from the Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago Divinity School.

Note for those concerned: My understanding of Marty Center policy on re-publishing is that it's OK with proper credit, which I think I've provided.

The Ministry

2008-07-30T10:26:00.000-07:00

Lutheran Zephyr rightly takes on a situation in which a Lutheran pastor is touted, in the recent issue of The Lutheran, as the tour leader for a pilgrimage to Las Vegas. You can find his comments here.

This issue of Lutheran pastors' remaining on the clergy roster even though they are working at jobs or in positions that have nothing to do with word-and-sacrament ministry seems to need attention. According to the Augsburg Confession -- that quaint little document that doesn't have much to say to the modern church's structure, I guess -- the Lutheran Church ordains pastors to the ministry of and to word and sacrament. That is, the sole distinguishing mark of pastors vis-a-vis "the laity" is that pastors preach the orthodox faith and minister the sacraments in a accord with the orthodox faith. And as I understand matters, this was in response to a theology of ministry that placed those who were ordained on an ontological plane higher that a mere layperson. While we do not hold a merely "functional" understanding of ministry, neither do we subscribe to any notion that work done by a pastor is holier, more professional, or any other -er than the same work performed by a layperson.

I have found that the Confession is observed as much in the breach as in the observance. We all know all kinds of people working in secular positions, who are not serving ministries of word and sacrament in any sense that makes any sense, who are nevertheless carried on the clergy roster of the ELCA as "pastors." (Note: I don't have any problem with various kinds of lay people's being including under pension plan. It's a matter of the doctrine of ordination.) We have editors at publishing houses, teachers in colleges (I guess it's OK if it's a Lutheran school, but not OK if it's a state university?), "counselors" in social service agencies, various kinds of tent-making "ministries" where there is no congregation in the worker's line of service.

So my question is what is up with that?

The Lutheran Church has never had a very clearly defined doctrine of the ministry (even aside from whether ordination is properly confirmed without a bishop's hands). But I have understood that there is, in Lutheran theology, no provision for the "indelible mark" of ordination: Once one is not preaching and presiding, one is not a pastor. (In my own case, I specifically correct anyone who says that I'm a pastor who works as a lawyer or the like. I was a pastor; I am no longer a pastor. On the other hand, I do not believe that my "derostered" status relieves me of the my ordination vows -- and this is contrary to what some say. Thus, I feel that I must be careful not to teach anything that is at odds with the dogmatic heritage of the Church. If I get to the margins, I have to acknowledge where I'm getting on thin ice.) It is no disgrace to be a "former pastor." But, to the contrary, I think there is something unseemly in (whether literally or figuratively) continuing to wear a collar when one is not ministering to a congregation by preaching and presiding (and more than once or twice a year!).

Implicated here are all those synod and Chicago bureaucrats who maintain the title "pastor" but couldn't preach their way out of a simple Gnostic trap and who wouldn't know an anaphora from a spittoon; "youth" or "associate pastors" whose job is scheduling youth events and hosting overnights or programming hook-up events for young marrieds; congregational "administrators" and "visitation pastors" whose call does not involve preaching and presiding full time. All of this causes me to laugh derisively whenever I read old Lutheran attacks on the Roman priesthood: There was nothing in the pre-Reformation Roman Catholic clergy pool that has not been taken up by the post-Reformation Lutheran corps.

Heck, Lutheran pastors' lending their names -- on an occasional basis -- to treks to Las Vegas seems small change compared to all the collars I see running around -- full time -- doing things just as secular.

Still to come: My take on the failure of Lutheran ecclesiology. (I just have to reduce the manuscript from 50 pages!)

Ruth Manz, May her memory be eternal.

2008-07-24T09:07:00.000-07:00

I have been remiss in not expressing my sorrow at the death of Ruth Manz, wife and collaborator of musician-extraordinaire Paul Manz. My friend Cha has posted a most fitting and inspiring tribute to her at her site, here. Be sure to listen to "E'en So, Lord Jesus, Quickly Come," for which Ruth Manz organized the lyrics.

Rest eternal grant her, O Lord;
and let perpetual light shine upon her.

Passivity vs. Participation

2008-07-24T07:09:00.000-07:00

I'm contemplating closing down my blog because I don't pay close enough attention to it. But then along comes something, like Tuesday, and I'm glad to have a place to think things through in black-and-white.

I wrote in the "Acknowledgements" section of my family studies thesis that "an acknowledgements page is an author's place to boast of the quality of his friendships." I think that this blog, too, serves that purpose for me. Let me show you.

Tuesday evening Brother-in-Christ Paul paid a visit. We keep in touch by e-mail, but because of the geographical distance between us, we may see each other about once or twice a year. Returning from a holiday trip, he stayed over in the Twin Cities and spent an evening with my family and me. (The family went to be a lot earlier than Paul and I wrapped up our conversation!)

Paul has been ordained about 4 years now (I was the assisting minister at his ordination, so I feel a special investment in his ministry), and since then he has come to occupy a significant space in my heart and head. We differ, I think, fairly radically on matters of theological expression, but we are kindred spirits in our desire to uphold the classic faith (he's a little less interested in the ecumenical aspects of that faith than am I) and to articulate church's theology in clear, orthodox, serious terms. Paul is a modern-day Gnesio-Lutheran (I think he even styles himself that sometimes, but always with a twinkle in the eye, to which I reply that he sounds more like a Gnesio-Melancthonian than -Lutheran), whereas I am -- what? A dilettante, I suppose. Paul has the makings, and the initial training, to be a first-rate scholar (though I hope he stays in the parish because we need more scholar-pastors); I am a hobbyist. Paul is pastoral, friendly, and diplomatic; I am brash, too-old-to-care-much, and far-from-pastoral.

This time's conversation turned to the issue of grace in the Christian life -- something we both acknowledge is the beginning point for any conversation about the Christian faith. (In fact, I think I caught some Barthian sympathies for a reversal of the law-gospel order into gospel-first-then-law. But I won't press the lad on that quite yet. He did admit, of course, that his great hero and guide, Gerhard Forde, was influenced by and a great admirer of Karl Barth. So there you have it: Jolly good.)

Paul insists on a kind of classic Lutheran, though not an exclusive, emphasis on the forensic aspects of God's grace. I, as I make all too unclear on these "pages," think that an over-played theme. Paul dismisses my fondness for concepts of "participation" in Christ (and consequently, in the Trinity), which I note to him is Biblical-Paul-ine language, and instead urges Apostle Paul's talk of being "conformed" to Christ. On the surface, as I discuss below, that seems to be a wide divide -- and I think there are some pretty serious implications for opting for one or the other (which one, of course, need not do -- by my lights, anyway). But after reflecting for a couple of days, I think I'm beginning to see that Friend Paul and I may be divided by a common language. (Tip of the hat to Mencken.) We use a common Lutheran vocabulary, but we neither use the terms in ways the other person quite understands. And the more we talk, the more I realize that, while we have real differences, the differences are often at different places than I expect.

Of course, that latest insight is precisely the experience of those who engage in theological dialogue -- Episcopalians and American Lutherans; Roman Catholics and Lutherans, Lutherans and the Orthodox traditions. (I'm eager to see reports of the dialogue between Roman Catholics and the Disciples of Christ. That ought to be fascinating.) We need, on the classic debate model, to define terms and concepts carefully; we can't assume that "justification" means "justification" or that "no law" means "antinomianism."

But on to one issue that I'll continue to raise with Paul. I think there is a tendency in "classic" Lutheran theology to make two mistakes, missteps, or something of the sort. (And remember: I'm in this camp, so I speak out of love, not triumphalism.) First, I think the classic expression of Lutheran doctrine (and this is the result, I suppose, of battles in the Lutheran scholastic period) is too static to do justice to the Biblical revelation. And second, I think Lutheranism doesn't really have a theology of the Church (an ecclesiology), and that lack makes it difficult for us to speak of salvation in any but in rather static terms.

First, Lutheran talk is often static: Justification, grace, forensic judgments, and the like conjure up a universe in which human beings just sort of sit there and take it. We are acted upon for the sheer point of being acted upon. And so we are declared justified; we are showered with grace; we are assured of forgiveness. And certainly I have to problem with that kind of language as far as it goes. But "as far as it goes" is precisely my problem: I don't think it goes far enough to capture the biblical witness. This grace business, this justification stuff, this salvific action is not static; it is a dynamic power or process (not in the sense of process theology) that -- according to Jesus and Paul and significant others -- effects (not affects: in this, effects -- i.e., makes happen) what it offers and says.

Often I think of Lutheran "gospel" in these terms: (I didn't get a baptismal certificate; instead, mine is contained in a wonderful little booklet -- very fancy and very classy.) But suppose I got a nicely caligraphed baptismal certificate, such as are common today. I frame it and hang it on the wall. Now I know that I'm grace-filled; the certificate hangs on the wall as a nice reminder and as evidence. It's all done now; I'm free to go about my way, confident of God's love regardless of what I do. It's a sign of status: Dwight is a child of God, and he can prove it. And in this case, the status is permanent and irrevocable (at least, that's the point of most Lutheran preaching I hear). Grace is something done to me -- usually explained in past tense. And it's all very narrowly prescribed, very nailed-down, not very dynamic.

Oh, it's good news, of course. How really amazing -- one might say, big -- of God to reach out to me, a sinner. What wonderful news that he loves me and has taken me to himself (whatever that's supposed to me), contrary to all reason and justice, over the contradindications of my sin. So I will of course worship him every Sunday, firmly announcing my "Amens" to the prayers and singing the hymns with gusto.

But it's still rather one- or maybe two-dimensional. The certificate is a metaphor for my life of faith: It's a photograph, a snapshot, a painting on a wall. It's not a life; it's not a challenge (except to "believe" it so that it's true -- we won't go into the legalism of that kind of talk); it doesn't go very far. Oh, with due respect to my friend, we may be "conformed" to Christ: The Apostle talks of that, yes. But the sense I get from that language puts me in mind of a statue: It's molded to stand eternally on its pedestal; the clay or marble has been conformed to the sculptor's vision or intention. But where does it go?

I counter with what seems to me to be a more dynamic model for/of salvation. I can variously describe it, but an exciting word for me right now is "participation" in Christ -- especially in contrast to "conformed" to Christ. I suppose it roots in my affection for Eastern theology (where sin figures into the picture in different way), my respect for Anabaptist traditions, and my reading for the Matthew class. But this is a major theme in Apostle Paul, too, and I don't know why it doesn't get more play in Lutheranism.

I am drawn to this theological perspective, aside from its coherence with the Biblical narrative, because it excites me, it seems to have a point, it makes sense of all that "growth in grace" talk in the Bible and the liturgy. Instead of God's granting me a status, he inducts me into his life and mission. Instead of my baptismal certificate's hanging on the wall as a status marker, it is rather a draft notice, an induction order. (Of course, it is more invitation than "order" -- but put the best construction on what I'm doing.) This all carries more existential bite than the old preaching.

Following is an excerpt from an evangelical's book on the life of faith (Scot McKnight, A Community Called Atonement). At this point in his analysis, McKnight sets forth his idea that salvation involves being restored to the imago dei of Genesis. He uses the Greek work eikon to substitute for the Latin phrase (and the English equivalent, "image of God"). And here he sets out a description of what being God's eikon means:

To be an Eikon means, first of all, to be in union with God as Eikons; second, it means to be in communion with other Eikons; and third, it means to participation with God in his crating, his ruling, his speaking, his naming, his ordering, his variety and beauty, his location, his partnering, and his resting, and to oblige God in his obligating of us. Thus, an Eikon is God-oriented, self-oriented, other-oriented, and cosmos-oriented. To be an Eikon is to be a missional being -- one designed to love God, self, and others and to represent God by participating in God's rule in this world.

Now I find that really exciting talk. To be so graced by God as to be drawn into this life "in this world and the next" is, to my ear, total Gospel. That this graced-ness has a form also makes perfect sense for continuing to live in the world. It sounds like the Sermon on the Mount, and Bonhoeffer, and Hauerwas. But for that to make sense as Gospel, we must move on to a second practical weakness in Lutheran theology -- that of the lack of (or at least a diminished) ecclesiology. But that is for the next post.

A Summary of the Witness of Jesus

2008-07-22T09:35:00.000-07:00

Everything gets run through the prism of Matthew these days: You can probably imagine how I'm dealing with sermons on the Matthew pericopes. And my reading, too, gets the Matthean hermeutical lens.

Here comes Scot McKnight from North Park University in Chicago, and he nicely summarizes the questions, concerns, and conclusions in my own current thinking:

Christians believe that God really did atone for sins in Jesus Christ and that God really did redemptively create restored relationship with God, with self, with others, and with the world. Christians believe that this all took place in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ and (the silent part of the story) in the gift of the Holy Spirit. The atonement, in other words, is the good news of Christianity – it is our gospel. It explains how the gospel works.

The bad news, the anti-gospel as it were, is that the claim Christians make for the atonement is not making enough difference in the real lives of enough Christians to show up in statistics as compelling proof of what the apostle Paul called the “truth of the gospel.” Does this new relationship with God really transform the individual? Does this work of Christ and the Spirit to forgive sins and empower Christians make them forgiving people or morally empowered people? Does the claim of the gospel extend to what can be observed in the concrete realities of those who claim to be its beneficiaries?

- Scot McKnight, A Community Called Atonement (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2007), p. 1

Are Many Christians Just Plain Dumb?

2008-07-17T07:06:00.000-07:00

Here's a sad little tale, courtesy of the Marty Center and its Sightings newsletter. (Note that the author has a joint appointment in theology and computer science. I don't even want to think what that might mean -- even at St. John's!)

Sightings 7/17/08

Left Behind or Left in Cyberspace?

-- Noreen Herzfeld

As a teenager, when a friend first told me about the rapture, in which Christians will be miraculously transported to heaven while sinners remain on earth to suffer a variety of tribulations, I was quite sure that, sinner that I was, I was destined to be the one member of my family and friends who would surely be "left behind." My psychology teacher later assured me that considering oneself the "chief of sinners," as the apostle Paul did, was a normal response, since we each know our own peccadilloes far more intimately than we know those of others. Apparently, however, not everyone shares this proclivity. For forty dollars a year, those who are relatively assured of their own salvation can now leave a final e-mail to less fortunate loved ones who might be left behind during the rapture. A new web site, Youvebeenleftbehind.com, allows users to compose a final message that will be sent to up to sixty-two recipients, six days after the rapture occurs. These messages might be used to pass on information, such as bank account numbers and passwords, but the site stresses the opportunity to leave a letter begging those who remain to accept Christ, a last chance with one's loved ones to "snatch them from the flames."

This raises a host of questions, both practical and religious. Is it safe to store sensitive financial information on such a website (answer: no)? Would the web still function after the rapture? Why not play it safe, save the forty dollars, and simply leave a stack of letters on your desk? Youvebeenleftbehind.com is one of the latest attempts to market religion in cyberspace. Sites abound hawking a variety of religious books and wares. Beyond the crassly commercial, there are web sites for a wide variety of religious faiths and denominations where one can access religious texts, share experiences and prayer requests, initiate new spiritual friendships, or engage in ecumenical dialogue. As a resource for finding a quick answer to a religious question, the Internet is unbeatable. Web cams let one make a virtual pilgrimage to Mecca, the Wailing Wall, or Chartres Cathedral. Avatars in Second Life build virtual churches and synagogues and participate in religious rituals with one another. Each of these draws on the strength of the Internet as a medium that overcomes distance or physical limitations. The computer enlarges the neighborhood, giving opportunities to connect with or learn from a wide variety of people and traditions.

However, what computer technology gives to religion in terms of speed and broader access, it takes away through lack of physical presence. The sacramentality of the Christian faith, for one, calls us to move away from our keyboards and into the real world. In this world we cannot dismiss those with whom we disagree with the click of a mouse. We are asked to taste and feel and smell the world around us in its elemental richness. We learn what is, not what we wish were. Cyberspace is, in the end, an ambiguous place. We do not know if people in chat rooms are who they say they are. We do not know if an e-mail will really get forwarded on. As philosopher Albert Borgmann points out, "ambiguity is resolved through engagement with an existing reality, with the wilderness we are disagreed about, the urban life we are unsure of, or the people we do not understand." Computer applications may seem like a simpler alternative, but they are rarely as satisfying as the real thing.

So I think I'll save the forty dollars. A sealed envelope in my desk and power of attorney documents will cover my much more likely demise from natural causes. And as for worrying about myself or others being "left behind," Jesus' promise that "I will never leave you nor forsake you" is far more reassuring than any web site.

Noreen Herzfeld is professor of Theology and Computer Science at St. John's University, Collegeville MN.

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Sightings comes from the Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago Divinity School.

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Sightings welcomes submissions of 500 to 750 words in length that seek to illuminate and interpret the forces of faith in a pluralist society. Previous columns give a good indication of the topical range and tone for acceptable essays. The editor also encourages new approaches to issues related to religion and public life.

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Poor Archbishop Rowan ...

2008-07-08T07:22:00.000-07:00

As if he didn't have enough on his plate, now his own gathering of the Anglican Communion, the Church of England in England, has ratified the consecration of women to the episcopacy. Lambeth looms and he must now face threats of an angry schism within English Anglicanism along with all the other rumblings of splits in the worldwide communion. (Thank goodness similar things don't happen in other communions, specifically my own branch of Lutheranism!)

I must confess that, for the life and salvation of me, I cannot penetrate the arguments against a female clergy and episcopacy. I've seen theological, sociological, heretical (especially gnostic), good-faith blathering, et. al., arguments against the ordination (and consecration except to diaconal service) of women. I was told by one prominent Anglican (not episcopalian) theologian (a woman) that she can understand and accept ordination of women to the presbyterate (priesthood or ministry), but that she can discern no similar charism for women to the episcopate. (I know I'm a protestant and can't possibly have a feel for the deep structure of ordination, but her claim completely baffled me!) I've read Alexander Schmemann, may his memory be everlasting; I remember some of the uproar in American Lutheranism over the issue; I've tried to read Benedict on the subject.

And I just don't get it.

Most of it seems to come down to an ontological argument that since Jesus' Twelve were male, then all the ordained must similarly be male. That there were women available apparently makes clear that Jesus did not choose any because he did not want women in positions of the hierarchy (used in the holiest sense, of course, not in any value-laden or power sense). But that doesn't make much sense to me. After all, the early church clearly seems to have had women who presided over their congregations (apparently with an emphasis on much more in keeping with the Lord's intention for this church's operating than did many of the men in similar positions). And besides that, the Apostles were also all Jews. There were Gentiles available, and Matthew ends his Gospel with a mandate for the Apostles to extend the community of salvation to all nations. So the fact that Jesus didn't call any Gentiles to follow him seems to mandate a Jew-male-only clergy, by the reasoning of the "Traditionalists."

I'd welcome any reference to a well-reasoned, non-inflammatory exposition of the theology underlying the extreme reaction to women's ordination. Because I'm just flummoxed!

As a Lutheran, I have done my homework, I think, and I consider this issue to be a classic case of adiaphora and of the genius the Church has to turn an issue of adiaphora into status confessionis. I think that the Church may structure her ministries in any way that serves the Gospel. But I also think the catholic witness has been that a three-fold order best represents Christ's will for the Church. Nevertheless, the lack of same within Lutheranism does not invalidate claims of "legitimacy" for either Lutheran ordination or the Lutheran Church as church. But tell me that the Gospel requires foregoing the three-fold orders (as many Lutherans do) and I go to war.

In this case, I do not believe that the ordination and/or consecration of women is a matter of justice (equal opportunity under the law) or of practical necessity (there aren't enough men willing to serve) or any such misguided nonsense. And so I'm very sympathetic with a traditional stand on the matter. But the minute you tell me that women may not (that's the adiaphorist claim) and cannot (that's the ontological argument) be ordained to the presbyterate and episcopacy, you get my dogmatic juices flowing.

But as ready as my jaws are to sink into a good, meaty argument against women in orders, I bite and find lemon curd. If you've got heartier fare, let me know.

As We Near "The 4th"

2008-07-01T07:08:00.000-07:00

As we approach the 4th of July, listservs are all atwitter with conversation about how appropriately or whether to mark the occasion in church on Sunday. (I am reminded that in the year of my graduation from Seminary and of my ordination, 1976, the 4th of July in the Bicenntenial Year fell on a Sunday. I still don’t know whether that was an act of God’s prophetic power or a sign of his sense of irony.) Those conversations are rather more intense this year, I expect, for various reasons: The debate about whether the “religious right” is in decline, the notoriety of parsons of particularly poor sense lined up with presidential candidates, the fact that it is a presidential election year and that the Democratic candidate seems more comfortable talking about his Christian faith than does the Republican. Nothing like a good dose of caesaropapism to get people stewing: What is the proper balance between our loyalties and commitments as “American citizens” and our baptismal rebirth. (If that doesn’t cause the Lutherans out there to begin salivating over two-kingdoms theories, nothing will.)

I personally accept no second place to anyone when it comes to disdain for formalistic displays of "patriotism" -- and no more so than in church. I totally agree with those who argue that we are citizens of heaven and that our "allegiance" is to the One Lord, not to a flag or a President or a country (which is a social construct, not a "reality," anyway). I don’t “believe” in allegiances to things or to constructs: I invest my allegiance in people. So, in what has become a related issue, I don’t care a whit about “the family”: I am committed to my family members and our relationships; I will do what I can to support our friends in theirs. But my graduate degree in family “ecology” makes me skittish about generalities about the “institution” of marriage, family, or anything else.

At the same time (and here I may betray a subconscious Lutheranism that I am often accused of trying to leave behind), it seems to be most appropriate to pray for all of creation -- in thanksgiving for and for vindication of what is good; for amendment and redemption of what is not. And so I pray for clement weather -- thanking God, e.g., for beautiful days. (I've never done so in a Sunday liturgy for which I’ve composed prayers, but others have and I have not been the slightly offended). Conversely, I pray for the amelioration of "natural disasters" (which is a common issue in Sunday prayers at our place). Just so, and by the same logic, for the blessings of liberty, I think it appropriate to give thanks; for the ability of governments to meld the individual efforts of many into service to a common weal I think it appropriate to ask. And just so, it is appropriate to pray for the repentance of all in positions power so that they use their powers in ways consonant with the will of God.

The key, for me, is to allow the liturgical heritage of the Church to lead us. The secular calendar will most often be put to good use by being ignored: We do not look to the secular calendar to tell us for what to pray; we take our leadership from the Scriptures and the liturgical year. Thus, we don’t celebrate Mother’s Day in May, but in August, when we commemorate Mary, the Theotokos; we have a Father's Day – if at no other time then at Christmas, though the festival of Joseph, Guardian of our Lord, provides similar opportunities to learn about fatherhood; we have a day for prayers for our particular governments which is the Sunday when the Gospel text is "render to Ceasar" (the chief point of which lection seems to be that ultimately NOTHING belongs to Caesar, and that may be just the tone we wish to sound in church-state relations).

And the related issue of how flags relate to this, my thinking is quite clear: They don't belong anywhere near a Christian church building, longstanding traditions notwithstanding (and here I include the most elegant justifications that exist for the cozy church-state relationship that have arisen in and out of Anglicanism). Flags are symbols of division -- of human-designed divisions, at that, which will ultimately be overcome. In Christ there is no American or Briton or Zimbabwean, and neither are there flags.

The so-called “Christian flag” is just as objectionable. The “standard” of the kingdom of God is the cross, not a blaze of fabric that parallels territorial banners. I think the deep structure of the “Christian flag” betrays the real meaning of the animal, too: It can’t be a mistake that the colors of the “Christian flag” are red, white, and blue – with no green, black, brown, orange, purple, or other colors that might underscore the variety of the creation. No, I suspect that the inspiration was the almost-natural human inclination toward triumphalism. Flags by their nature serve that impulse. And if for no other reason, that is reason enough to ban them from the premises.

CCET Conference a Success

2008-06-13T07:06:00.000-07:00

OK, all y'all missed a really fantastic conference this week. I am just back (and really tired and fuzzy brained) from the annual conference (sounds Methodist, doesn't it?) of the Center for Catholic and Evangelical Theology, which was held in beautiful, hot-as-Hades Baltimore, MD, this year. The issue: A Christian response to Islam. Presenters dealt with a general approach to dialogue with Islam (and, actually, to all intra- and inter-faith dialogue!); with the approach of 9th century Christian theologians who wrote maybe-apologetics (Mark Swanson raised a keen question about whether it was in fact apologetics at all!) in the face of the new appeal of Islam; with the practical realities of engaging in dialogue with Islam and Muslims (to be more specific). Such notables as Sidney Griffith (probably the dean of Islamic scholars in the theological world of USAmerica), Mark Swanson (Lutheranism's own terrific contribution to the tribe of specialists in Islamic-Christian studies), Nelly van Doorn-Harder (Valparaiso's expert on how dialogue between Christians and Muslims can actually occur -- based on her experience in Indonesia), and others presented papers and engaged in intra-Christian conversation about those papers with conference attendees and one another.

I was able to dine with each of the scholars, but one, and can testify that they are serious, brilliant, and wonderfully humane people -- not just intellects. They were generous with their time with us average-Joes; they didn't clump together with just the other scholars.

For me, the second greatest challenge (after that of wringing out -- see below) was to get my mind around the historical stuff. I knew absolutely nothing -- and still know virtually absolutely nothing -- about the 9th century and the scholarly interchange between Christian and Muslim thinkers, both of which groups wrote in Arabic. Further, David Burrell finally noted for me the difficulty in Christians' talking with Muslims about the Quran: For Muslims, the Quran "fits" in the scheme of faith in the way that Jesus "fits" for Christians; it is a false relationship to deal with the Quran as though it were the Bible for Muslims. The relationship must be noted (and I'll try to say more when I clear it up in my head a little) if any fruitful conversation is to occur. That is one illustration of the way I experienced a "paradigm shift" (with all due respect for Thomas Kuhn) in my conceptualizing the issue of Christian-Muslim theological relations.

There were, for me, two problems with the conference: First, I think it was a little heavy on the history. (Three scholars dealt with the 9th century theological "interface" between Arab-Christian and Arab-Muslim theologians -- and then Mark Swanson kind of wrapped up with an alternate analysis of the three theologians that the earlier scholars had focussed on.) Second, the Center has no control over weather or mechanical problems. As a result, some of us were in constant pools of sweat (high-90s temperatures, with air condition's not working well in either the conference center or the motel where some of us were staying). I'm back in Minnesota, which once again proves itself God's chosen land by its temperatures in the low-to-mid 70s.

I'm going to try to pull my notes and thoughts together and set out -- for my own satisfaction and illumination -- something of a precis of the conference presentation. (If nothing else, there was sort of a "theme" or "lesson" in each talk, and I'll try to epitomize that. They all had something notable to contribute to our understanding of what may be the second-greatest challenge to Christianity, after modernist-secularism, in history.)

Next year's conference will be on the East Coast again. I expect to see more of you there.

In the meantime, Brian Bennett was at the conference, and it was good to put a handsome face with a keen mind (evident from his blogging and responding). I'd like more of that. And Brian, feel free to kick in here.

One last thing, the Center's chair, Prof. Dr. Robert Wilken, gave the banquet talk. It's always a good experience, but his meditation on the place of the communion of the saints in the life of the Christian was positively lovely! It will appear in the Center's newsletter, and I hope it inspires millions to contribute money to secure the future work of the Center. If you do not receive the newsletter (it's pretty much a once-a-year thing, but it's worth the paper it's printed on), e-mail me (djp4law@aoll.com) with your mailing address, and I'll begrudgingly add you to the elite list!

Lutherans (especially) and the Sermon on the Mount

2008-05-28T09:34:00.000-07:00

I don't mean this to be a question just for Lutherans; I think the discussion will benefit from its not being an intramural contest. But my question arises from my Lutheran perspective: It is rendered acute by the Lutheran emphasis on "justification by grace through faith." And so I guess it is as a Lutheran that I raise the issue. But at the same time, I have benefited in thinking about this question from the on-going conversation at Mount Olive Lutheran Church of the Gospel of Matthew. We continue to meet (and will through the summer) and hope to finish the book -- probably late next year!

As any quick read of the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew's Gospel will reveal (and I'm not going into parallels and other practices of textual criticism), Jesus speaks repeatedly in terms that don't sound very Lutheran. In addition to the entire Sermon's reaffirmation of the Law and the Prophets (5:17), there are numerous threatening logia such as these:

"For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven." (5:20)
"I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment; ... and if you say, 'You fool,' you will be liable to the hell of fire." (5:21f)
"Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven." (6:1)
"[B]ut if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses." (6:15)
"For with the judgment you make you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get." (7:2)

So here's my question: How do all y'all understand these sayings of Our Lord? (That implicates the general question of judgment at the end times, of course, too.) If you are a Lutheran (and also if you're not, but nonetheless don't subscribe an outright works-righteousness theology), how do you square these straightforward logia with the Lutheran "sola gratia" -- i.e., we are saved by grace, not anything we do? What is the reward that the Father will withhold unless we are discrete in our charity? Is there really room for a tit-for-tat in the Gospel?

I rather assume that no one will suggest that the Sermon on the Mount is simply idealistic language that Jesus knows no one can obey: That seems, even from the mouth of Reinhold Niebuhr (who I'm told held to that view) too facile and too unbiblical. But if that's your position, prove me wrong.

We've had some good times in the Matthew class with this, and I'd like to see what happens here.
Happy posting.

Long time no write

2008-05-27T13:41:00.000-07:00

I think I have been in some sort of cave -- if not literally, certainly in terms of my ability to get anything done or anything put on this blog. I reached one of those swirly times (as I call them) when I have forty different themes swirling about in my head, smacking against each other, knocking each other in and out of orbit. And I can't nail anything down. (I feel sort of like a c-string player of quidditch, of Harry Potter origin -- one who can't figure out the game, let alone snare the Snitch!) But before heading off to Baltimore for the (as usual) exciting CCET conference, I set out a short bibliography of books that I'm reading and enjoying or have read and enjoyed -- without saying much about why I like them yet, because I'm trying to figure that out.

By accident, I ran across Karl Barth: Theologian of Christian Witness. I have been looking for a pretty basic, introduction to the thought of Karl Barth. I intend to return to Robert Jenson's Alpha and Omega (which, I am happy to crow, was a gift of the author!), but I ran across this on a list and sent for it. It is written by Joseph Mangina who teaches theology at Wycliffe College and Toronto School of Theology, and that's impressive enough, but -- get this -- he's the incoming editor of Pro Ecclesia, so he's reallllly important. Best of all, he writes with utter clarity and with a good eye to answering questions that we less-than-competents might raise in our minds as we read. I'm by no means well into the book yet, but based on the work, I seem to confirm that I have distinct Barthian sympathies.

On another entirely different tack, I have just finished Tracy Kidder's portrait of an astounding doctor, lobbyist, teacher, researcher, gadfly, humanitarian. It is Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World. Paul Farmer is an infectious disease doctor out of Harvard Med and Brigham and Women's Hospital and a medical anthropologist (PhD) from Harvard, who quite some time ago (and before he was a doctor) got inspired to try to cure people through a visit to Haiti. He began working with a missionary (even before he began medical school) and with his partners there and his companion Ophelia Dahl (the daughter -- for the gossipmongers among you -- of Roald Dahl and Patricia Neal) and with the financial support of Thomas White, a multimillionaire who stated his goal in life was to give away his fortune eventually set up Partners in Health. Farmer himself eventually became, at least according to Kidder, the single most important force in the fight against tuberculosis and advocate for funding for health care in the world. There is some really inspiring stuff in the book, even though I generally eschew hagiography. (You can read about PIH here.)

Dissident Discipleship: A Spirituality of Self-Surrender, Love of God, and Love of Neighbor is David Augsburger's stab at analyzing Anabaptist spirituality. He calls the best of Anabaptist spirituality "tripolar" -- integrating as it does a (very Matthean, if I may say so) call to forget self-interest, to look to God, and to see the impossibility of faithfulness without attention to the well-being of those around us. Aubsburger, too, is an excellent writer. I noted to one of my friends that he amazes me because just as I formulate a "yeah-but" to something he's saying, he raises the same issue in order to rebut or integrate it. Along with my Barthian inclinations, I'm definitely not very Lutheran in my utter respect for the Anabaptists. They can be cerebral and rigorously logical, but it is infused with Spirit and commitment to the life of faith, not just to the life of the mind. This is a good read.

I have also picked up a new -- to me -- novel by E.L. Doctorow, whom I really enjoy. This one, The March: A Novel is placed within Sherman's March to the Sea, and it draws in characters from all walks of life in that horrifying era. Doctorow's fictionalized history always sings, I think, and this is no exception. One of my friends was once (and may still be) absolutely taken with W.T. Sherman, and he as much as the author inspired me to pick up the volume. (It was $3 at the library used-book sale.) I had intended to send it to him when I was finished with it, but I'm not sure, now, when I'll be "finished," since I may want to return to it.

With the Saturday Book Group at my church, I recently read One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. By all accounts, this is a book that every literate person (at least those aspiring to some sort of snobbery) should read, and I'm very happy to have read it. Of course, I'm even happier to be done reading it! But it is a really splendid melange of myth-making (it is a re-imagining of the Bible narrative, I think -- though with different themes), theologizing, satire, poetry, absurdism, fantasy -- and what else? I read online that of the "Books that Make you Smart," this is the second most important, so now I'm duty-bound to read number one -- Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov.

OK, enough. This is a sampling from the last couple of months. (And it doesn't indicate the important journals -- pre-eminently Pro Ecclesia, but also Lutheran Forum, Word and World, Theology Today, National Geographic, and The Atlantic Times.) Now it's your turn to suggest good stuff -- what you've liked recently.

And I'll try to make some sense of the buzzing in my head in the future! That old Snitch can't get away every time, can it?

Not To Be Missed

2008-04-14T06:42:00.000-07:00

You must plan to attend this conference this summer:

"Christian Theology and Islam: A Conference for Clergy and Laity" will be held at Loyola College in Baltimore from June 9 (evening) through noon on June 11. It is sponsored -- ta-da -- by the eminent theology think-tank, the Center for Catholic and Evangelical Theology (CCET). Of course, you know that I sit on the Board of that august institute, but that in no way influences my recommendation. You may view the conference brochure (and, of course, arrange to register) at the Center's website. The presenters are first rate (and I know some of them personally, so I am confident in that assertion), and the topic couldn't be more relevant.

Here's a teaser from the brochure:

How should our reflection on Jesus, on the Trinity, on truth and tolerance proceed against the background of a greater presence of Islam in North America and the more intense global interaction between Christianity and Islam?

This year's [CCET] conference will ask how does a theology committed to the classical traditions of the Church think about the issues raised in the discussion with Islam. The conference is not an exercise in Christian-Muslim dialogue, but an intra-Christian conversation about the Christian faith against the background of Islam. ...

I will be there, d.v. And I look forward to meeting anyone who reads this blog. Dust off your 3-ounce liquid containers (no: I mean shampoo; you can buy the other stuff in Baltimore). Maybe we can have our own reception? (And then we can follow that up with a colloquy on this site! I hereby issue an invitation to anyone attending the CCET conference to post as a guest. Maybe then, some of the multitude of all y'all who read and never comment will be inspired to become an author! But enough foolishness -- except for the invitation to post.)

Is Rowan Williams Wrong?

2008-04-10T08:38:00.000-07:00

I have just started Rowan Williams’ charming little book, Tokens of Trust: An Introduction to Christian Belief (Westminster John Knox Press, 2007). It presents edited-for-publication “talks” that the Archbishop of Canterbury gave during Holy Week in 2005. In the talks, Abp. Williams summarizes the fundamentals of Christian faith to an era in which the long catechumenate of early Church history (which would have filled the current void in basic pre-Baptismal instruction) has been long abandoned.

Now an excursus: I would give money to have available to me such a series of homiletical lectures by a scholarly (or even remotely theologically astute) bishop. Such an experience seems to me to be what bishops and Lent and Holy Week are for. It is, to my eye, a measure of the degradation of the Church that we (and here I include most “denominations”) have allowed the office so to deteriorate that bishops are more comfortable discussing terms of 401k plans (or whatever they are in the non-profic sphere) than Christological controversies.

But back to Abp. Rowan.

In his first talk, the Archbishop sets the fundamental theme of his talks – viz., that Christian faith is trust in God. The title of the essay is “Who Can We Trust?” (OK, a complaint: Abp. Rowan is a good thinker and pretty felicitous writer, but he has some nasty habits resulting in errors of grammar and punctuation. These should have been corrected by his editors. I mean, I know that we are always to treat God as “subject” and not as “object,” but I don’t think the rule extends to our grammar. "WhoM can we trust?" – that’s what it ought to have said. And there are several other misuses of the objective case already in only the first chapter.)

At page 12, he says this:

A word of caution here: some modern thinkers have been very tempted by language that seems to suggest that God is in some way in need of having something else around in order to become more fully himself. … But I think we have to face a challenge here; we must get to grips with the idea that we don’t ‘contribute’ anything to God, that God would have been the same God if we had never been created. (Italics added.)

And it’s that last phrase, “God would have been the same God if we had never been created,” that brought me up short. My initial reaction was, “Wrong!” And the more I thought about it, the more convinced I became in my original reaction.

I readily admit at the outset that I am no philosophical theologian (I can’t even play one in Sunday School). And I am not particularly facile in the arguments surrounding the Theopaschite controversy. And I figure that with the heft of his tome on Arius, the Archbishop is fluent in the controversies of Christian polemics. But I can’t figure out how one -- i.e., he -- squares the claim that Jesus was God and that he died with the claim that God would have been the same had that not happened. Here’s my reasoning.

God is what happens among the Father and the Son and Holy Spirit. The Father is not God without the either the Son or the Spirit – and the same holds for the others. (And I think this stands up whether the Spirit proceeds from the Father or from the Father and the Son.) God is dynamic, relational -- an event, even. He is not static or reified in the way a statue or a photograph is.

God created humanity (as a part of the creation of all that we know) ex nihilo. There was something new brought into being and, thus, already something must have changed in the nature of the relationship among Father and Son and Spirit -- which is to say, in God --, because the love that binds them in their eternal perichoresis was in some sense adjusted or opened to include what had not been there before. Doesn’t that mark a difference already in God – not exactly an evolution (I’m not that daft!), but certainly a change (as in a change in the dynamic)? Admittedly, I suppose, it represents no fundamental change in the essential nature of God (if one wants to go all Aristotelian). But it does change God. Does it complete God in some way? No, but it does complicate his existence.

Take it to the next step: Only because God created humanity did Jesus become human. (Obviously, that is speculation, but it does seem naturally to follow from the Christian reading of the "Fall" which followed from the creation.) The Son took on flesh and lived, suffered, died, and was buried in both his human and divine “natures.” Now look: If Jesus was both fully human and divine, then when he died, the Son died, didn’t he? And if the Son died, God died – because God is what happens among the Father and Son and Holy Spirit. If there is no Son, there is no longer God -- at least in the sense that there was God when the Son was alive. Because of the contingent nature of the Christian narrative, are we not compelled to say that had humanity never been created, God may never have died. But since God did die, was God not different from what he would have been had he not died never created humanity?

Did God not weep over Jerusalem? Did God not mourn Lazarus’ death? Did God not revel in the wedding banquet at Cana (OK: that’s an embellishment on the pericope)? Did God not feel the scourging done to him? Did God not suffer on his cross? If any and all of these are true of Jesus, and they are, are they not true of God by nature of the infinite perichoresis among Father and Son and Holy Spirit? And were not all of these contingent on the creation of humanity?

My reading of Heilsgeschichte is that God regularly changes his mind, alters his course. These changes are perfectly consistent with his fundamental identity, which is love. But are we so to isolate God away from human experience that we can – or that we want – to say that God was affected by none of this?

Fundamentally, we I don’t see how we can continue to hold that God did not change, did not experience different things differently, did not suffer as a result of the contingent event of his creating humankind – that is, unless we want to put everything on the level of pagan myth. It seems to me, without knowing what I’m talking about, that I must be a heretic of the Theopaschite variety. The immutability of God may have served an importance at one point in history. Now it seems to be to be something better ignored.

In my defense, I think that I can find support for my position in a number of big-wig theological thinkers who are not talking through their hats: Barth, Bonhoeffer, Moltmann, and others (don't I remember something from Jenson's Systematic raising this point?) seem to be on board with a new reading of that old problem.

I suppose, from the Archbishop’s perspective in his lectures, it makes sense to stress the unchangeability of God to underscore God’s reliability (although that's not what the context suggests). But I think his assertion goes too far and ultimately undercuts the theme he pursues.

My Belated Easter Proclamation

2008-04-01T12:30:00.000-07:00

This is overdue. I only recently realized that I had filed this in "draft" and had not posted it. But as I am an observer of the Great 50 days, it is not too late to resurrect it.

John Donne, for all his complexity, magisterially got one of the great points of Easter in his sonnet (called "Sonnet X" or "Death, Be Not Proud") which follows.

All blessings be to the Lamb who, though he died, yet lives! "And what does this mean?" Read on:

Death, Be Not Proud
-- John Donne

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.
Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell;
And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.

Amen!

Among the Signs of Hope

2008-04-01T07:21:00.001-07:00

Eastertide, it seems to me, is a time to be especially awake to the signs which encourage our hope. An empty tomb, a mistaken identity set straight, a broken loaf and shared cup that set misunderstandings straight -- why not look for these in our own day?

Through the graces of my friend Bjoern (I haven't mastered umlauts on this site) comes this news report. The Israeli Knesset (parliament) changed the law to allow a foreign head of state to address the Knesset, and it did so to accommodate Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany. That the first-in-history should be granted to the leader of Germany is, I think, just exactly one of those empty-tomb signs that ought to lift us up.

Now, if we could get Abu Mazzan up there ... !

From the Land of the First Easter

2008-03-23T07:08:00.000-07:00

Easter Message March 2008, The Living God, Bishop Munib Younan, The Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land

"...People ask me if I am optimistic about peace. I tell them I am not optimistic about the political atmosphere. And really, whether I am optimistic, pessimistic, realistic or idealistic doesn't really matter. What matters it that the church has not survived 2000 years since the First Pentecost because we were optimistic, pessimistic, realistic or idealistic but because we are witnesses to the resurrection. We have experienced the Light and we try to walk as people of the Light, understanding that God uses us to be witnesses for life in this blessed but often battered land. We say not, I am realistic or pessimistic or idealistic or optimistic but I have hope...Everyday here - even in the midst of the fear and the suffering - small bursts of community, hope and reconciliation are happening through extraordinary people, Israelis, Palestinians, Jews, Muslims and Christians. In our schools, programs and churches, we try to plant hope and the resurrection through our children, our people and all those whom we serve - regardless of creed, belief or political belief. In all of our ministries, we seek to express the hope of the resurrection. In interfaith dialogue, we revive the hope that religion promotes life and life abundantly for all..."

Judgment of Love

2008-03-20T10:04:00.000-07:00

When Christ comes to judge us, what will be the criterion of his judgment? The parable [of the Last Judgment -- Mt 25:31-46] answers: love -- not a mere humanitarian concern for abstract justice and the anonymous "poor," but concrete and personal love for the human person, any human person, that God makes me encounter in my life. This distinction is important because today more and more Christians tend to identify Christian love with political, economic, and social concern; in other words, they shift from the unique person and it unique personal destiny, to anonymous entities such as "class," "race," etc. Not that these concerns are wrong. It is obvious that in their respective walks of life, in their responsibilities as citizens, professional[s], etc., Christian are called to care, to the best of their possibilities and understanding, for a just, equal, and in general more humane society. All this, to be sure, stems from Christianity and may be inspired by Christian love. But Christian love as such is something different, and this difference is to be understood and maintained if the Church is to preserve her unique mission and not become a mere "social agency," which definitely she is not.

Christian love is the "possible impossibility" to see Christ in another ... , whoever he is, and whom God, in His eternal and mysterious plan, has decided to introduce into my life, be it only for a few moments, not as an occasion for a "good deed" or an exercise in philanthropy, but as the beginning of an eternal companionship in God Himself. For indeed, what is love if not that mysterious power which transcends the accidental and the external in the "other" -- his physical appearance, social rank, ethnic origin, intellectual capacity -- and reaches the soul, the unique and uniquely personal "root" of a human being, truly the part of God in him? ...

-- Alexander Schmemann, Great Lent: Journey to Pascha, pp. 24f.

Repentance per Schmemann

2008-03-17T09:50:00.000-07:00

The prodigal son, we are told, went to a far country and there spent all that he had. A far country! It is this unique definition of our human condition that we must assume and make ours as we begin our approach to God. [One] who has never had that experience, be it only briefly, who has never felt ... exiled from God and from real life, will never understand what Christianity is about. And the one who is perfectly "at home" in this world and its life, who has never been wounded by the nostalgic desire for another Reality, will not understand what is repentance.

Repentance is often simply identified as a cool and "objective" enumeration of sins and transgressions, as the act of "pleading guilty" to a legal indictment. Confession and absolution are seen as being of a juridical nature. But something very essential is overlooked -- without which neither confession nor absolution [has] any real meaning or power. This "something" is precisely the feeling of alienation from God, from the joy of communion with Him, from the real life as created and given by God. It is very easy indeed to confess that I have not fasted on prescribed days, or missed my prayers, or become angry. It is quite a different thing, however, to realize suddenly that I have defiled and lost my spiritual beauty, that I am far away from my real home, my real life, and that something precious and pure and beautiful has been hopelessly broken in the very texture of my existence. Yet this, and only this, is repentance, and therefore it is also a deep desire to return, to go back, to recover that lost home. ...

-- Alexander Schmemann, Great Lent: Journey to Pascha, pp. 21-22

Humility -- a Matthean "Virtue" and More

2008-03-17T07:53:00.000-07:00

... If there is a moral quality almost completely disregarded and even denied today, it is indeed humility. The culture in which we live constantly instills in us the sense of pride, of self-glorification, and of self-righteousness. It is built on the assumption that man can achieve anything by himself and it even pictures God as the One who all the time "gives credit" for man's achievements and good deeds. Humility -- be it individual or corporation, ethnic or national -- is viewed as a sign of weakness, as something unbecoming a real man. Even our churches -- are they not imbued with that same spirit of the Pharisee? Do we not want our every contribution, every "good deed," all that we do "for the Church" to be acknowledged, praised, publicized?

But what is humility? The answer to this question may seem a paradoxical one for it is rooted in a strange affirmation: God Himself is humble! Yet to anyone who knows God, who contemplates Him in His creation and in His saving acts, it is evident that humility is truly a divine quality, the very content and the radiance of that glory which, as we sing during the Divine Liturgy, fills heaven and earth. ...

How does one become humble? The answer, for a Christian, is simple: by contemplating Christ, the divine humility incarnate, the One in whom God has revealed once and for all His glory as humility and His humility as glory. "Today," Christ said on the night of His ultimate self-humiliation, "the Son of Man is glorified and God is glorified in Him." Humility is learned by contemplating Christ who said: "Learn from Me for I am meek and humble in heart." Finally, it is learned by measuring everything by Him, by referring everything to Him. For without Christ, true humility is impossible, while with the Pharisee, even religion becomes pride in human achievements, another form of pharisaic self-glorification.

The lenten season begins, then, by a quest, a prayer for humility which is the beginning of true repentance.

-- Alexander Schmemann, Great Lent: Journey to Pascha, pp. 19-20.

Schmemann on Lent

2008-03-14T13:18:00.000-07:00

We manage to forget even death and then, all of a sudden, in the midst of our "enjoying life" it comes to us: horrible, inescapable, senseless. We may from time to time acknowledge and confess our various "sins," yet we cease to refer our life to that new life which Christ revealed and gave to us. Indeed, we live as if He never came. This is the only real sin, the sin of all sins, the bottomless sadness and tragedy of our nominal Christianity.

If we realize this, then we may understand what Easter is and why it needs and presupposes Lent. For we may then understand that the liturgical traditions of the Church, all its cycles and services, exist, first of all, in order to help us recover the vision and the taste of that new life which we so easily lose and betray, so that we may repent and return to it.

-- Alexander Schmemann, Great Lent: A Journey to Pascha (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 2001), pp. 12f.

Bonhoeffer Blog Conference

2008-03-13T08:52:00.000-07:00

With gasoline threatening to go to $4 per gallon (yes, even though a certain major politician had not heard such rumblings until very recently, it is true), here's a neat way to enjoy a theological conference without airfare, driving, hotels, and the like. It's Halden's Dietrich Bonhoeffer Blog Conference. Details are at his site, here. For all of you would-be-scholars, now is your time to wax eloquently about DB's Ethics.

I look forward to reading the papers. I hope yours is/are among them.

A Good Sermon on the Mount Analysis

2008-03-07T07:36:00.000-08:00

I usually tout my Icelandic heritage, but today I'm proud to be Danish too (only smidge, but hey ...). I came across this little excerpt from the Journals of Soeren Kierkegaard, and I think it nicely captures the kind of questioning and challenging (and draws the conclusion) that I shoot for in the study of Matthew that I'm "leading." See what you think:

Is God's meaning, in Christianity, simply to humble us through the model (putting before us the ideal) and to console us with "Grace," but between God and humanity there is no relationship, that we must express our thankfulness like a dog to a man, so that the adoration becomes more and more true and more pleasing to God as it becomes less and less possible for us that we could be like the model? Is that the meaning of Christianity? Or is it the very reverse, that God's will is to express that he desires to be in relations with us and therefore desires the thanks and the adoration which is in Spirit and in truth: imitation. The latter is certainly the meaning of Christianity. But the former is a cunning invention of us men in order to escape from real relation to God.

Once again, the Great Dane (or is that Hamlet?) has put his finger on the tenderest of spots -- a tenderness that continues to this day.

I spent some frustrating hours last week in convocations at Augsburg College in Minneapolis. Robin Lovin, the renowned ethicist at SMU, spent three lectures (and I don't know how many class periods and conversations) trying to convince his auditors of the continuing relevance ("now more than ever, perhaps") of the theological perspective of Reinhold Niebuhr (RN). I mean no ad hominem insult when I note that I was caught a little off-guard by the depth of his conviction that RN was dead on and that "Christian realism" is the path to follow in our crazy world. "Christian" comes from an "anthropology" that derives from the biblical account that, while humanity is most wonderfully created for communion with God and goodwill in its structure, that same humanity is most depravedly fallen and has trouble getting up. The "realism" that is urged on the faithful with that anthropology is the description of the world gained from the social sciences (and, he failed to mention, the ideologies) of the secular world.

In a short personal conversation, I asked Dr. Lovin how it was possible to accept the world's ways and perspectives in light of the very clear words of Jesus, for example in the Sermon on the Mount. Dr. Lovin very blithely dismissed that with "Well, Niebuhr would say that when you're faced with an impossible ideal ... ." At which point I cut him off and noted that that is a pretty big assumption. His only reply was, "Yes, well, but if it is ... ." Apparently for Christian realism it's obvious on its face that the Gospels are meant for some other reason than to to be taken seriously.

Give me Kierkegaard (and, I might add, Bonhoeffer and Hauerwas), then, over Niebuhr any day.

"Imitation" is the nature of discipleship and true worship -- this is a theme discussed in David Augsburger's book, Dissident Discipleship: A Spirituality of Self-Surrender, Love of God, and Love of Neighbor. I, as you might imagine, appreciate this take on the subject -- and especially that a "spirituality" that ignores the hard work of embodying one's relationship to God in relationships with others is a false (or certainly, inadequate) spirituality.

St. Pat's Update

2008-03-04T06:24:00.000-08:00

In his worldly wisdom Hizzoner, Richard Daley, Mayor of the Great City of Chicago has decreed that St. Patrick's day will be observed in the City on March 15. The river will turn green early this year. It is a reasonable accommodation for this city (where I once lived and so I know) that really knows how to celebrate its favorite sons' days. (Want to to talk Pulaski?) You'll notice that the official reason (no silly caesaropapism here) is that a Saturday celebration better allows entire families to participate without sacrificing time in school.

The Means of Grace?

2008-03-03T06:35:00.001-08:00

Check out Steve Tibbetts' blog post on disposable communion cups.

I have seen waste baskets in churches filled with (sometimes half-filled) plastic shot glasses of wine used in communion. Aside from the environmental issue of all that plastic, what about the reverent disposal of our Lord's blood following the communion. I mean, you don't have to be an advocate of reservation to feel that this is downright impiety, do you?

St. Patrick's Day Moved!

2008-03-01T13:24:00.000-08:00

OK, you have simply got to check this out: St. Patrick's Day is my birthday, so I'm partial to the good saint, even though I only have about 16 Irish platelets in my blood (and that thanks to my Icelandic forebears, from whom I claim my Lutheran heritage, having been baptized by a pastor of the Icelandic Church). And since I abhor snakes, his feast is even more significant for me.

And I have been troubled that I must forgo celebration of the day this year because it falls on Monday of Holy Week. (There's something a wee bit inappropriate about whooping it up during that week! But that's not to say that I won't treat it as a movable feast. There's more partying appropriate to Easter.)

But leave it to me Irish-Catholic very-distant-relatives to have different priorities. For the details, check out this link.

Notice, please, that this fits the general scope of this blog in that it involves the intersection of the liturgical life of faith and life in the world.

And may God have mercy on us all.

Sure and ...

"Atonement Metaphor" Contest

2008-02-29T08:08:00.000-08:00

Now here's an interesting thing: Emergent Village is sponsoring an Atonement Metaphor contest. Here's your opportunity to exercise your imaginative spirit and talent to develop a visual, verbal, or other image, symbol, representation, or whatever for what happened in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ that has been dubbed "atonement."

Go to the site and learn the details. Participate. Then be sure to share your efforts here, too. After all, I don't get paid to refer you to other blogs!

Making Peace

2008-02-13T11:21:00.000-08:00

When I was in seminary, the movement for liturgical renewal was in high gear -- and breathtaking, daring, frustrating, and liberating was that trip. I remember that, as would-be good Lutherans, my schoolmates and I debated the "logistics" of confession and absolution and that passing of the peace. These things were now up for grabs and seriousness demanded that we think seriously and reasonably about them. (Lutherans, for the most part, were not used to thinking about liturgy in anything but serious and rational terms -- something that has changed somewhat since the 70s, I think.)

Working on verses 21-26 of Matthew 5, that whole experience is running fresh in my mind. For one of the issues we tried to work through was the "placement" within the plan of the liturgy of the passing of the peace. Now, remember, we first had to get used to the idea of making peace with others in the pews! Reconciliation, to the extent that it figured in liturgy, was all "God-to-me." But once we exploded that misunderstanding and came to affirm the making of peace before partaking of the Lord's body and blood, the question -- of both theological and sociological sense -- was where to place it: Ought it to follow the general confession and absolution, which we held to belong at the beginning of the service -- really as prologue to the service? (We at Gettysburg were very well-informed, and our practice was set into print in the Lutheran Book of Worship that was published a few years after we graduated.) Or ought it to come later, closer to the actual communion itself, when it would reinforce the unity of the worshiping community? (We didn't arrive at consensus on that issue, but LBW placed it in the later position, after the sermon and before the communion.)

Reading patristic commentary on Matthew has suggested that it is proper to share or make peace as close to the actual time of communion as possible -- so the LBW and it's ragtag child, Evangelical Lutheran Worship, actually place it too early. Chrysostum, in commenting on verses 23 and 24, paraphrases Jesus and goes on to explain this way:

"Interrupt the service you are offering me," he says, "so that your love may continue. To be reconciled to your brother is to offer sacrifice to me." Yes, this is the reason Jesus did not say "after the offering" or "before the offering." Rather, precisely while the very gift is lying there, when the sacrifice is already beginning, he sends you at that precise time to be reconciled to your brother. Neither after removing nor before presenting the gift, but precisely while it lies before you, you are to run to your brother.

So those traditions that share the peace after the "consecration" and before the actual communing are on to something, eh?

The point of this is to be receptive to the teaching of Jesus: Liturgy done while one is at odds with a brother or sister is blasphemous. Hostility is the root problem that is addressed with the commandment to do no murder -- at least according to Jesus in this logion. To overcome that hostility is a reflection of the humility which is commended to His followers.

Alas, another reason to be discontent with the Lutheran worship resource! (That's an inside joke for my Lutheran fellows.)

On a related note, I have often criticized the passing of peace as a meaningless gesture, shared as it is usually with those sitting or stationed around one -- who are probably not the ones with whom we are fighting. But it has recently entered my thick skull, that the practice may not be so bad. I usually sit with my wife and daughter (except when any of us is serving the liturgy). We also sit in the same place every week (yes, Kate! I know how wrong that is.) with pretty much the same people around us. (So I'm not the only one who claims "my pew.")

And for me, anyway, the ones I find it easiest not to be reconciled to are precisely those who are closest to me. I am a critical and self-important lout, so no one who loves me can escape. For example, my wife and daughter and I find Sunday morning scheduling very stressful -- something that often results in harsh words. (I'll save the guilty party embarrassment by allowing him/her to remain anonymous.) It is powerfully important not to let that harsh word, that disappointment, that irritation to fester during the sacrifice of the mass. So, much as I hate to admit that I didn't "get it" before, I'll now share peace with people I love, knowing that I need them to signal their forgiveness of me in response to my act of repentance toward them.

Now sometimes the reconciliation doesn't hold: Animosity rears up again all too often in hotheads. But for the time of communion, it has been laid to rest. And that is an important fact.

Now to work on the bigger hatreds, too.

And Death Shall Have No Dominion ...

2008-02-06T07:47:00.000-08:00

And we as Christians live by that assurance, as phrased by Dylan Thomas. But there are days that one is tempted to question it. And today is another of those days. My brother in Christ, Howard Royce, died yesterday afternoon while undergoing heart surgery.

Harold was another of those utter fine and upstanding Christian men that have graced life for my family and me at Mount Olive. He was of advanced age, but he never flagged in displaying a commitment to Christ and to His Body in Minneapolis that is commendable in every sense of the term. He is one of those stalwarts -- generous with his time and attention, regular in his attendance (regardless of weather), humble and gentle in his manner -- that all us parents who raise children in the Church want them at least to see around them at liturgy. And it didn't hurt that he was a North Dakota native --a bond we shared; something he and I both crowed about quite enthusiastically.

Please, together with the rest of Mount Olive's people and me, pray for the repose of his spirit and for comfort for his wife of decades, Evelyn, and his family.

For music appropriate to end this post and to honor Howard, I refer you to the blog of my sister in Christ, where she "embeds" a Ukrainian choir singing the Kedrov setting of the Our Father (Otche Nash) in Church Slavonic. Check it out here.

Eternal rest grant, our and my brother Howard, O Lord,
And let perpetual light shine upon him.

May his memory be eternal.