Yet Another Requien

I have just learned that Madeleine L'Engle died yesterday. She was well into her 80s and she died of natural causes, so there is reason to not to be too crestfallen. Still, another marvelous artist has left our immediate midst to join the heavenly liturgy, and that's reason to mourn.

I have been a fan of Ms. L'Engle's for decades, but not primarily through her famous so-called "children's books," Wrinkle and the Austen books, but through her journals and her adult novels. Her journals, sometimes purportedly written in the dead of night when she couldn't sleep and missed her last husband, made me want to be a memoirist. But that requires a certain degree of insight, so I couldn't follow her example. Still, if I can't sleep, I follow her advice to enjoy the wakefulness (especially in the midst of winter) and drink a cup of warmed chicken broth.

There is a very touching obituary here. (No one does obits the way The New York Times does.)

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

And the people of God are heard to say, Amen.

A Church on the Move

For those who worry that the Church may be stuck in the mud and unable to move out to meet new challenges, I offer this (courtesy of my Sister in Christ, Kate):

http://www.glumbert.com/media/church

It's pretty cool, and it reminds me so much of my roots on the prairies of North Dakota.

Enjoy.

Peace.

R.I.P., Luciano Pavarotti

I don't like saying good-bye to fantastic opera singers: Even though there is a plethora of new talent waiting to assume the roles, there is something seriously aging about watching one's heroes leave the stage. So far this year, two big operatic names and talents have added their voices to the heavenly choruses (although my singer friends note that soloists make poor choristers): Beverly Sills and Luciano Pavarotti, the latter of whom died yesterday.

Here is a touching and fair obit:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/06/arts/music/06pavarotti.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

I can't say that I was a great fan of Pavarotti's: He was too "tenor-ish" for me -- which I say even though, at one time, I was a tenor and I continue to adore the tenor voice. But my taste runs to the deeper qualities of a Placido Domingo (who, I think, is a genius; who began as a baritone, and who continues to sing beautifully). His voice was and is unmistakable, but it was always too shrill for me. (I also absolutely loathe "Irish tenors.")

Still, when I attended his recitals, as I was privileged to do two or three times, I couldn't deny the charisma of the man. He was a superstar, a commercial success, and an attractive ambassador for opera and lieder to those not-yet-acquainted with it. And I can't hear "Nessun Dorma" sung by anyone else without thinking, "If they can retire a baseball jersey, why can't they do so with an opera aria?" Pavarotti would get "Nessun" hands down. (I know: Callas could claim anything from Norma, Price gets "O, Patria Mia," and the like -- and the opera halls would fall silent.)

He wasn't the greatest human being, it seems. I was living in Chicago when Ardis Krainik announced the Pavarotti would no longer be scheduled for performances with the Lyric Opera in Chicago because of his unreliability. (I think I was to hear him in two operas while I had seasons there, and he failed to show for either -- and while I didn't much care, the seat-buying public was mostly incensed.) He also seems to have treated his (first) wife and family shabbily -- taking up late in life with something of a trophy wife.

So, Pavarotti was fun to make fun of and pretty good to listen to.

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

Matthew's Gospel as Legalistic?

As I've noted, I'm preparing to lead a prolonged Bible Study on the Gospel According to Matthew. (We're going to meet as long as it takes to complete reading and discussing the entire Gospel; no three- or four-part series, this. When I originally planned it, I did not know that the ELCA's bureaucrats were proposing programs to encourage Bible study in the congregations. I was apparently prescient: I saw the evidence that our congregation was becoming Biblically illiterate long before the bureaucrats realized that -- in large measure of their failure to attend to the real business of the Church -- that was happening in spades throughout the ELCA. But that's another post.)

As I've been reading, thinking, and talking about the study, I've been frankly amazed by the number of people who say that Matthew is their least favorite gospel. It's too legalistic; it doesn't present the Gospel as unconditional grace; it tells us what to do and links what we do to our ultimate disposition in eternity. Well, I'm frankly (and, yes, naively) surprised.

Now I am certainly no biblical scholar (my Greek has rusted nearly to the point of being immobile and my Hebrew is, I think, beyond redemption; my serious study of critical material took place in the[latter] days of Jeremias -- whom no one in seminary reads now, I'm told -- and his generation; my finger-tip access to Bible verses and stories is nil). The Matthew prep has been exciting and fulfilling in no small part because it has led me deeper into the Bible, into biblical theology, into Lutheranism. It has required me to put my "systematic" theology (such as it is) into the proper context -- i.e., to set it face-to-face with scripture, as it ought always to be.

But it has always seemed to me that if there is anything to Lutheranism, then we can't write off scripture passages and books as "legalistic" without calling into question the entire raison d'etre for the Reformation. On that point, Luther was clearly daft to refer to James' epistle as "straw" and the book of Apocalypse as of no relevance to faith. (Likely, he just didn't get them.) We are supposed to bend our theological musings to the teachings of scripture (carefully discerned, not just on our own, but in company with the Church of every time and place), not the other way around.

So why the great mistrust of or dislike for the Gospel of Matthew? Is it because it lays out a very clear connection between the in-breaking of the reign of God in Jesus and the shape of life (in community) that is meant to issue from that? I can't accept that. Oh, I expect it from the ultra-scholastic Lutherans who could at any point even consider as possibly orthodox the premise that not only are "good works" not required for salvation, but they are detrimental to it? (I still like the joke about the old Lutheran Herr Pastor who on his death bed proudly declared that he could not remember committing even one good work.) And I am old enough to know that pastors preach sermons on the Sermon on the Mount in which they pretty much say that Jesus was setting out ideals, not actual ways to live the life of faith.

But I am thrown that thinking, even liberal, Christians don't see -- on its face -- the grace-founded proclamation that Matthew reveals was embodied in Jesus. Of course, I try to follow in the footsteps of Stanley Hauerwas (who has just issued a new "theological commentary" on Matthew), when I can understand him, and that makes me prone to lean in a particular direction. But what I have always appreciated about Hauerwas (and Bonhoeffer, for that matter, because he's on the same team) is that he always sounds to me as though he's paraphrasing Matthew's Gospel.

As I go along, I'll have to continue to wrestle with this. I'm not very far into my research on Matthew. (Unfortunately, I'll probably end up being just slightly ahead of the class I'm leading -- something that isn't good.) But so far, I have found nothing that contradicts a quite conservative reading of the Lutheran confessions. Grace is all. But to hear the Good News is already to be changed, and so it's quite natural to ask "How, then, shall we live?". After all God has done, isn't it the witness of scripture to explore the "so what?" of the new state of affairs?

That's what Matthew does, I think. And I think he is neither moralistic nor legalistic (if there's a difference) in doing so. And I'm loving the book. And I love the idea that all the good grace-oriented pastors will be confronted with Matthew's witness as sermon fodder for the next liturgical year. Trust that I'll be listening carefully!

God bless Harper Lee

The "Saturday book group" at our church spent this week discussing Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird. I haven't read it in a number of years, even though it has been among my favorite novels for (literally, alas) decades. I first read it, over the disapproval of my mother, when I was about 10 or 11 (not that young, as things go), and I have re-read it a few times since then. (Unlike my 14-year-old daughter, I was never required to read it for a school class.) But in recent years, I've harbored a cynical fear that it wouldn't live up to my memories of its charm, quiet eloquence, depth, and humanity. Have I grown more sophisticated so that what once thrilled, charmed, inspired, and daunted me would no prove "nice" but not much more?

I was wrong to fear: It does so live up to my memories, and I think no one in our group disagrees with that assessment. The lady wrote a daggone great book, and one can understand what must be her reluctance to risk writing a second that does not (for it cannot) measure up to the first.

One scene stands out for me (and I'll re-watch the movie to see how -- indeed, if -- it is portrayed in the movie, for the movie remains my number-one favorite film), from all the many touching, humorous, and scary scenes. In it, Atticus (who in the movies is played -- no, incarnated -- by the demi-god Gregory Peck) has gone to sit outside the town's jail, because Tom Robinson (a black man accused of raping a white woman) has been brought to town for trial and is spending the night in that jail. In his typical unflappable style, Atticus sits outside the jail door in an office chair, reading a paper, prepared to stay all night to defuse any nonsense that might try to develop. And nonsense does develop.

When Scout (his daughter), Jem (his son), and Dill (their friend) traipse downtown to look for him, they soon discover that a handful of seethingly mad men (otherwise known as a mob) has assembled and demanded that Atticus stand aside. Their unstated, but obvious, intention is to break Tom out of jail and to lynch him (or so I gather). The children stand in fear and incomprehension for a moment, and then Jem runs to his father's side. (It's just like a kid to try to help -- and in the process make matters worse, eh?) And the tension builds, because it seems that the mob will have little more concern about knocking the boy aside than they do knocking Atticus away.

But then there's the magical moment: Scout spots the father of one of her classmates, a Mr. Cunningham, among the rabblerousers. And she addresses him by name, babbling on to him directly about how she knows his son and about some of the Cunningham legal difficulties that Atticus has clearly discussed with her. (The lawyer in me cringed at Atticus' obvious violation of his duties of confidentiality, but one can't hold even such turpitude against such a mensch as Atticus!) Toward the end of the scene, she asks Mr. Cunningham to say "hey" for her to his son, Walter. And Mr. Cunningham bends down, looks her directly in the eye, tells her he surely will, stands up, and calls for the mob to leave.

It is something straight out of Hauerwas. (Why hasn't he written that scene up in some of his writing about peacemaking?) Scout has responded to the violence and threat of force against her and her family in the only way open to a Christian: She has addressed the threatener by name and established common humanity with him. She refused to pigeonhole her opponent as "enemy" (although to say that is to deny neither the fact that he was nor the fact that she was frightened of him as such). Rather, she addressed the co-child of God in him -- as did our Lord those who came to arrest him or those who hung him on high.

Now Harper Lee did not intentionally or self-consciously write a tract or a parable about living the nonviolent life, although her focal character, Atticus, treats all but a (literal) rabid dog with nonviolent forebearance, if not respect. (And in a sense that comes back to threaten, less him than, his children -- in the person of Bob Ewell.) But that doesn't deny its lessons to those of us who see in artists -- at least some of them -- the wafting of the Spirit's breath.

It is eminently clear that had Atticus -- even Atticus and a few colleagues, armed to the teeth -- tried to hold the mob off with violence (guns, bats, or the like -- you've seen that in movies, too), all that would have resulted would have been bashed heads, even more hostility, and (in all likelihood) a hanged Tom Robinson. To treat the "other" as "enemy" usually results in that, an escalation of violence. Check out the Bible: Israel lived like that and ended up in exile -- more than once -- at the hands and by the will of the Lord whose honor she was upholding. (Most lamentably, the current nation-state that bears her name has learned nothing from her namesake.) The scribes and Pharisees conspired with the Romans to eliminate their enemy Jesus, and we see how successful they were. There was a little matter of Resurrection that rather puts to shame the success of the Caesars (oh, that's right; they're gone -- replaced by Sylvio Berlusconi and his ilk!) and even the scribes and Pharisees (who, though they may have heirs in this day, are no more either).

One wishes that there were, in preaching and teaching, more encouragement and instruction in how to live as Christ without fear. Oh, we hear lots about living without anxiety, encouragement for loving ourselves just the way we are, sweet platitudes about seeing Jesus in the one we offer a (charity-riddled) cup of water. But then we complement that with talk of the just war theory, with conceal-and-carry laws (which allow one to carry a gun for the justifiable purpose of self-defense). And it all just washes over us.

Jesus' teaching and parables are so familiar that it is easy to place them in the context of all the conditions and limitations we have heard attached to them. Thus, to cite an example from my obsessive-compulsive study of Matthew for a Bible study I'll be leading, Jesus intended the Sermon on the Mount, not to be taken literally, but to show us how we can't fulfill the Law of God and so we ought to just give up all attempts and throw ourselves on the mercy of the Lord. The Sermon is there to drive us to justification by grace through faith. For heaven's sake, don't think that we are to respect poverty or to pluck out eyes or to go extra miles; that's hyperbole.

Well, Scout remains for me an exemplar of the Christian -- the "little Christ" -- who hears in Our Lord's words direction and empowerment to live the new life he lived -- and died -- to bring. She was fearful, of course; "Have no fear little flock" may not have been the hymn on her mind at that point. (Check out Jesus' prayer in Gethsemane if you're inclined to blame her.) But the important thing is that she didn't allow fear to hold, guide, or control her. She gave herself over to humanizing action (i.e., to living as she was created to live with others) -- engaging the other at the level of common humanity. And in so doing, she embodied the mind of Christ.

Bravo to you, Miss Nell Harper Lee, for your magnum opus.

And so we move on to Frankenstein.

Pastoral "Vocations"

Lurking on a couple of listservs, I've learned a couple of things about pastors and pastors-to-be in the ELCA (my hometown denomination). It seems that of the youngish people going into parish ministry, only about 5% will retire from that vocation. It seems, too, that increasing numbers of seminarians are unwilling to be assigned to small-town and small-state parishes. They prefer to be assigned to the Coasts, where salaries and property values are higher. They, according to commentators, are looking forward to their retirement, which depends on the salaries and investments they are able to pull down during their years of ministry. In what I say that follows, I think that I have the facts straight, but I would welcome correction -- along with citations to where to confirm the facts.

None of this surprises me, understand, but it provokes me to anger and frustration. And there's one issue that, as a born-and-bred small-town North Dakotan, I take special interest in. That is the issue of retirement benefits paid to pastors after their terms of faithful service. (I'm going to leave for now the issue of housing benefits -- tax-free housing benefits, something no other profession or career can allow. That's a thorny one for me, too. So, too, is disparity in salaries paid to pastors: I don't know the range now, but I remember that about 20 years ago, the salary range for pastors ran from about $10,000 a year to $125,000 -- exclusive of benefits. I haven't dared look since then.)

Under the defined contribution plan that the ELCA in its corporation-model-mentality has seen fit to develop, what one earns at retirement from one's "pension plan" (I think that's a misnomer, but I'll use it anyway) depends on what one has contributed during his employment period. (It's somewhat akin to Social Security, but that's another issue, too.) Thus, if one is paid a relatively small salary during one's ministry, one's pension income is relatively small. If one was lucky to pull down $100,000+ a year at some point, retirement income will be better.

It is, I think, simply a fact that salaries and benefits paid to pastors in small one-, two-, and three-point rural parishes are substantially lower than the same paid to pastors of large (usually urban) congregations (which are usually single-point charges). Some of that reflects local economy (as a rule, all salaries and wages are higher in cities than in small towns); some of it reflects differences in memberships in the congregations (more members in a congregation can -- but needn't -- translate into more giving units and more income from which to pay salaries and benefits). But the bottom line for older pastors and their spouses is that their incomes in retirement will be smaller than their peers who served larger parishes.

This is a gross injustice. And it's one I can't fathom the Church can't fix. I do not think that faithful servants should be punished for their willingness to forgo fancier settings, staff relationships, easier healthcare availability, less traveling around, more life amenities (of certain kinds, anyway). And the difficulty is compounded if the pastors who serve in small town ministries live all or most of their careers in parsonages: They reach retirement with no real estate within which to live in their so-called golden years.

Certainly, the current arrangement cannot be justified by a line of argument that these small-town pastors work less hard than their urban and large-congregation brethren and sisters. (It is often the opposite: I know of urban parishes were staff pastors alternate "night duty" by carrying a pager; their residential telephone numbers are unlisted to preserve their privacy and time off. I do not know of any small town pastors in multi-point parishes who have that luxury; all calls come to the parsonage.) Neither can it be argued that their needs in retirement are less than their peers: Indeed, I rather expect that, for example, their healthcare needs could be greater than their peers, given the likelihood that their preventive care was not as good in the "netherlands." And since many of them did actually always live in parsonages, their requirements for housing will be greater.

My question is a simple one: Why cannot the ELCA dedicate itself to care for its pastors? Cannot the retirement pay scale be adjusted to compensate faithful workers for their less-than-adequately compensated work? And if, as I doubt is the case, a retirement plan can't be developed to address the inequities, then why cannot the ELCA supplement contributions to the retirement plans of the lower-compensated clergy to ensure that there is more equity in the situations of pastors who retire? (NOTE: I am concerned here only for pastors who serve parishes. All the non-pastor clergy who work at secular while maintaining some legal fiction of being pastors win no sympathy from me.)

We learn in the Book of Acts that the earliest Christians "held all things in common." I think the reference is to more than the "things of faith." They looked out for one another -- the way our Lord commanded and demonstrated. Aside from the socialist implications that will drive capitalists crazy on merely ideological grounds (but with which I think no Christian should have a problem), there is no valid reason for treating people who have served the Church in this way.

Such a reformation in the structure for supporting pastors won't solve the serious problems I identified at the beginning of this post. If money is the issue determining for pastors where they are willing to serve, then they simply ought not to be pastors. Ministry is service -- and assignment and openness to going where one is sent is part of the game; getting paid properly ought not to be a part of the calculation. (Still, those who submit to the needs and wishes of the Church ought not to be penalized for the submission we expect of them out of misuse or misinterpretation of my thesis. As it is, however, we reward the gluttons and take for granted the sacrifices of the genuine servants.) On the other hand, I doubt that compensation is the major reason that pastors leave pastoral ministry. (The stories I could tell.) I think very few of those who are ordained have a reasonable and confessionally supportable view of what the "role" of ministry is in the world; thus, leaving out of a sense of dissatisfaction or of being unappreciated is not surprising.

And finally, I don't know what to do about the fates of small congregations within the ELCA. I was baptized into a small, rural congregation of the Icelandic Lutheran Synod, in northeastern North Dakota. It was a part of a three-, and eventually five-, point parish. The congregation eventually voted to close and merge into another of the congregations -- facing reality that all the congregations couldn't continue to exist, and being flexible enough not to model the resistance to consolidation that other congregations in the charge displayed. But that area of North Dakota is losing population all the time. Farms are growing because people are aging out of farming and leaving the area. A few congregations are absorbing many of the retirees. But many stubborn congregations insist on remaining open: You've seen the films of congregations with 10 people showing up on Sunday. All of this calls for some sort of conversation about how to deal with church structure and a host of other issues. If nothing else, the ecumenical movement may help us face a dire sociological reality. (Unfortunately, the ELCA seems to be dealing with the sociology without a serious theology of ordained ministry, and that's not going to help with the problem.)

As long as their are congregations that are allowed to remain open and to call pastors, the ELCA has a responsibility to require that the pastors who serve those congregations be treated fairly. It is not doing so currently. How can this change?

The Lord's Name in Vain

In anticipation of leading an extended adult ed study of the Gospel of Matthew, I'm reading the new "theological commentary" on the Gospel by Stanley Hauerwas. Now it's clear to everyone who knows me that I am in thrall to this curmudgeonly codger and will defer to his judgments on almost all matters. (And this volume is really enjoyable and helpful!) But there is one path down which I will not follow him, and it drives me crazy to see him tread it.

Throughout the commentary (and I have never noticed this before in his other writing; he must not refer much to Jesus by name), he insists on making the possessive of "Jesus" to be "Jesus's." How can this be? By tradition and rule, the possessive of "Jesus" sounds exactly the same as "Jesus" and appears in print as "Jesus'." On this I thought there was very little dispute; on this I think there should be very little dispute. The Chicago Manual of Style, my arbiter of grammatical and typographical orthodoxy, makes it very clear that while the possessive of other names and objects ending in "s" is formed with "s", it is nevertheless traditional and preferred with the Biblical names "Moses" and "Jesus" to form the possessive with a lone apostrophe (that is, to skip the additional "s").

Now, I violate CMS by making all possessives of words ending in either one or two "s"es with a lone apostroph. (Because I cite it doesn't mean that I follow it rigorously.) But when I stray, I know that I'm doing so -- and usually, I think I serve the value of euphony when I do. I have a problem enunciating sibilants without hissing: It's much easier for me to say and for my auditors to listen to me when I forego additional "s"es as much as possible. But in the case of Jesus and Moses, it is simply wrong not to follow tradition and CMS. When Hauerwas speaks of the temptations of Jesus (notice the circumlocution by which the problem can be avoided), he makes the name of Jesus sound like the hissing of the very serpent with which the devil is identified in Genesis in the original temptation. That seems wrong on so many grounds.

So I say to any of you who (oh, oh: I've fallen into the trap Jenson so hates: the you-hoo construction) preach or teach: Please mend your ways if you follow Hauerwas on this.

Flags in Church

On one of the listservs I read, there has been a discussion of how -- and eventually whether -- flags should be carried in liturgical processions. Now I know that such things occur, although I give thanks that we don't do that at Mount Olive.

I have about a dozen reasons for not displaying the American OR the misnamed "Christian" flag in the Church building -- and I mean anywhere in the Church building. But I accidentally ran across an Orthodox priest's explanation of why he doesn't allow flag-draped coffins to be processed in for funerals, and I think it is subtly rich and profound. He says,

As I once explained to a military honor guard accompanying a flag-draped casket, "At the church door we remove the flag of state and cover the casket with the pall of the Church. You are about to enter a foreign embassy representing Jesus Christ, who is King over all kings and Lord over all lords, at whose Name every knee will one day bow. As you know, no flag of another state is ever displayed inside a foreign embassy." They understood perfectly.

It seems positively Hauerwasian in its ecclesiology: The Church is the Kingdom of God; we brook no pretenders to the throne, and neither do we tolerate the banners or flag of any such pretender. It will be a sign that the Church is regaining some of her sense of dignity and gravitas when saying such a thing -- either in the priest's words or in mine -- requires no elucidation. Better: when such sentiments are greeted with "well, duh."

You may read the entire post here.

Internet Charity

I'm a sucker for easy charity: If I can give something to make a difference without getting terrifically involved, I'm all for it. That's why for years I've been "clicking" to various sites that promote assistance to various parts of God's creation. It began with the Breast Cancer Site. Because there is a lot of breast cancer on my wife's side of the family, we are deeply committed to doing what we can to fund research and prevention programs. Well the Breast Cancer Site is set up to help fund mammograms for women who can't otherwise afford to have them done. And all it takes is a couple of minutes and a few mouse clicks on the internet.

Maybe anyone looking at this blog knows about it, but for the odd person who may not, here's how it works: Go to this site. Click on the rectangle that says "Fund Free Mammograms. Click here daily. It's Free." You'll be taken to a page where you can do so online shopping if you like. But you don't have to shop and you'll have made a contribution to a worthy project. How it works is that sponsors (among them, the merchants and programs with clickable boxes on page 2) pay for each hit to the main site. If you scroll down on page 2, you'll find information about how many mammograms were provided the previous day. (There's also a button that you can click to see recent history of hits and accomplishments.)

The site is wonderful because you spend others' money on a worthy project. But wait, there's more.

On page 2, you'll find similar sites designed to aid different projects -- from free books for kids to food for rescued animals and protection of rain forest lands. You can click of them in turn, following the same procedure and by spending five minutes at your computer, you'll have done a whole lot of good. Do it every day when you boot up, and you'll do a whole lot of a whole lot of good. (I don't always remember to do so, so I've subscribed to an e-mail reminder service so that I remember at least twice or three times a week.)

I've tried to find out whether there is any scam associated with these sites, and I've turned up no information. So I proceed happily on the Gospel's claim that not everything that seems to good to be true is so.

Short Sojourn among the Orthodox

I’ve been trying to say something about my recent trip to an Orthodox church for vespers and liturgy. It’s proven really hard to get a bead on my experience. I’m not sure why that is, but I seem unable to put my finger on what made the whole deal so moving for me.

Here’s a little background. My friend, C-, who has recently been received into the Orthodox Church (OCA), where she joins her husband and children, invited me to worship with her in her new home. And because of my interest in almost all things East, I took her up on the offer. I was invited to sing with the choir – something which for this Lutheran boy who loves to sing made the whole deal much more complete and probably contributed to my sense of fulfillment.

The church building of Holy Trinity Orthodox Church is gorgeous. It’s a small building, seemingly converted to Eastern use from some Western tradition. It is the church that has recently installed an enormous icon of Our Lord across the ceiling – to which you’ll find links below. In addition to that, the iconostasis and great doors are very “porous” – i.e., not solid, so that one can see through them. And gazing across the altar and over the top of the iconostasis is another huge icon of the Theotokos. There are, in addition, numerous other icons on stands, on wall space, and in stained glass. Of course, there are no pews, except along the outside of the worship space, along the walls and a couple of portable short pews which can be set up for the infirm). Here's another link to some pictures of the worship space (posted by the iconographer).

As I have said ad nauseum, I’m used to a pretty high style of liturgical performance – lots of pomp and ceremony, sobriety, a hint of stiff-neckedness and almost pretension. I say that out of affection for that kind of atmosphere. But much of that was absent from Holy Trinity. Oh, the liturgy requires a certain amount of moving around, censing, intoning from various stations, processions. And here it was all carried out with an appropriate sense of sobriety and seriousness.

But one thing that struck me was that there seemed to be a naturalness to people and priest’s participation in the ceremonial. Everything was done with a sense that “this is important” but also that “this is natural, the way things go.” There were kids running around (no pews to corral them); people stood and then sat for a while and then stood again; many people sat on the floor (on lovely and soft Oriental carpets) for the sermon; people crossed themselves at different times, sometimes a simple cross, sometimes with a swoop to the floor (I have to find out about that). It’s not that things were sloppy; that would, I think, be anathema to Orthodox (noisy and busy perhaps, but not sloppy). So when it came time for communing, I felt sad (not irritated, the way I usually feel when I am not “included” in the communion) that I could not join with these people in sharing the Lord’s body and blood. But it also felt remarkably right to receive a blessing and to be allowed to kiss the base of the chalice during the communion – and then to share in the antidoron. (I’m still very Western oriented when it comes to so much of this: I really love the music – I this case, Russian, the kind of choral music I’ve been singing since I was 10. But communing with a spoon, the antidoron, the repetition – hmmm. It’s not in me, yet.)

I guess I came away with a fresh appreciation for how liturgy done unapologetically in the old style (whether it makes modern “sense” or not, whether it runs more than an hour or not) carries a deep and moving sense of propriety, of greatness. I was very aware that what was happening here was holy – i.e., bigger than any of its pieces and connected to the very source of life. Watching young people – children and teens and young adults – grooving on what was happening was impressive.

I told my friend that this was the first time I had felt welcome at an Orthodox service. Part of that was her working me into the choir so that I felt more involved (although Holy Trinity does have the liturgy bound into booklets so that people who don’t know it can follow). Part of it was the Senior Priest’s making an effort to greet me and welcome me. So that felt good.

I also felt more “touched” than I usually do at western masses, including those at my own congregation. Now part of that may be that familiarity breeds contempt, and when one knows something about the ideals of western liturgy, one finds more to criticize in others’ performance thereof. But part of it, too, was that I felt less “in charge” in the Orthodox liturgy: All the while I was singing, which was most of the service (it’s exhausting), I never felt that this is my time to say something to God or to sing my own little solo (even if others are singing along at the same time). I felt less intellectually engaged and more wholistically involved. And I know that that makes little sense.

Now, that’s not to say that I didn’t miss some things. I’m talking with C-, who’s a musician, now about differences East and West on the place of or the understanding of congregational song. At Holy Trinity, many of the people who did not constitute the choir sang right along with the choir, especially on some of the longer pieces. And I recognize that liturgical music is or should be considered congregational song. But I missed, though I now realize that I didn’t miss it as much as I thought I did, the congregation’s breaking into something more modern or Western or something – or a soloist singing something as lovely as a soloist sang at Mount Olive yesterday.

But I think the most global impression I took away from my extensive two services in the East was that I felt a part of something much bigger than what I normally experience in even a high mass in the Western Rite. The sense of awe and wonder and grace seemed easier for this congregation to live in and express than is true in my tradition. I only half-jokingly mention to my friend that one practice that symbolizes the difference between East and West for me was this: Following the dismissal at Holy Trinity, the people lined up to venerate the cross (kissing it, or crossing themselves, or whatever). In the West, we line up to venerate the pastor.

This was an eye and ear opener for me. I’ll have to go back. Maybe then I can both figure out and express what these reactions I have are.

Farewell to The Diva

One of my favorite singers has died, and I invite your prayers for the repose of her soul and the durability of her legacy. Beverly Sills defined "diva-hood." She was a woman of fantastic skill, enormous and gregarious personality (and lately, body), brilliant smile, and open-hearted generosity. She had been a world-renowned opera soprano, an arts administrator, a devoted wife, a mother, and probably the opera world's most successful representative to the ordinary "joes" who, like me, warm to the art through the artists.

I am an opera buff because of "Bubbles" -- so named, not because of her bubbly spirit (which she undeniably had), but because she was born with a large spit bubble on her lips. For years, I resisted opera: I couldn't understand what all the hullabaloo was about. Even though I had studied singing and was deeply appreciative of art songs, for some reason opera evaded me. (Oh, I didn't "hate" it, but I just couldn't make a connection.) But I had a good friend who lived and died opera and so, in respect for him, I one day sat down, with coffee cup nearby (I was prepared), to listen to and to attend to "Lucia de Lammermoor." While the records spun, I followed the libretto. Beverly Sills was Lucia, in what is an utterly famous recording. And I have to tell you, I was swept away. Suddenly it all made sense: fantastic singing, drama, literature (if somewhat -- ! -- melodramatic); it was all there. And from that point on, I was hooked: Next came the "Queens," again with Beverly. And from there I was launched into a life of penury, in part because of the cost of opera recordings.

Along the way, Bubbles, with her champagne-like coloratura soprano, was eclipsed in my taste by the more spinto-voiced singers and roles. Ultimately, Schwarzkopf assumed the throne in my heart. But I could never shake the earliest influence -- much the way, I suppose, that one never forgets his or her first love. The Sills vinyl records are duplicated on my CD racks now -- notice: duplicated, not replaced by. (I still think vinyl gives a warmer and deeper sound than CD, especially in those old recordings that have been transferred to disk.) And when I'm feeling the need for some plain old emotional sentimentality, on goes "Maria Stuarda" or "Lucia" or the album on which Sills sings the Adam variations on "Twinkle, Twinkle." And I am repaired.

I heard the slanders that were offered against Sills, often from people who ought to have known better. I never understood the antipathy that Sutherland and Bonynge displayed toward her, but I always suggested that it was jealousy -- that Bubbles got such rapturous adoration for herself and not just for her voice. (I confess to disliking virtually everything I've heard Sutherland sing and she, unlike Sills, always required one to suspend disbelief to make somewhat real the beauty she was supposed to be portraying. See: I can be as dissing as any old opera queen!) Difference of voice does not translate into better or worse, though it did for many, I guess.

My respect and affection for the Diva were validated when, following her good-sense decision to retire from opera at the top of her career, she went into arts administration. I know there were problems, but the public face she gave Lincoln Center, the City Opera, and, more ironically, the Metropolitan Opera must have been wonderfully helpful to those organization. And certainly, her interviews with artists during intermissions of the broadcasts from Lincoln Center on public TV helped root those experiences in middle-brow culture. For my money, that is a devotion to art and to the well-being of society. Note, too, her involvement with the March of Dimes. (She ranks up there with Jimmy Carter, who continues to work for peace and well-being, when he might have followed the example of many of his predecessors and simply rested and gotten rich.)

When the choir at the throne of God begins their anthems, I am certain, Beverly Sills will one of the grandest Dames to sing a featured aria. May God accept her into his loving embrace, and may our grief be softened by the recollection (in memory and ear) of her contribution to the beauty of the creation and of her hearty, throaty laugh.

More, yet ...

When Christ calls us,” Bonhoeffer famously wrote in his book Discipleship, “he bids us come and die.” What an ironic statement of the Gospel: Is not the Gospel a call to life? Is it not a word of joy and hope? Isn’t it the story of the triumph over death? What’s with this “come and die,” anyway?

In that pithy, eminently quotable little clause is the sum of what I am trying to say about “submission.” To believe the Gospel – and that, in other words, is the summons of the Gospel – is to change, to “repent,” to become a new creation. (No, Brother Paul, not by one’s own efforts by the in-dwelling of the holy-ing Spirit – a phrase I have picked up from Prof. Mary Solberg – who is given free, gratis, on good faith from God the Father.) I think this is a not-so-well articulated fundament in all the various expressions of Christian faith. “To be in Christ is to be/come a new creation.”

To see Christ is to see God; that much we can agree on. To hear the summons of the Gospel is to hear the call to be in Christ, to become as Christ, to become one with Christ. And what is the distinctive thing about Christ in the pictures we have of him? It is his willingness to go even to death in order to remain faithful to God. Beneath the radical critic of society and the Judaism of his day, behind the welcomer of lepers and tax collectors and ladies of the night, between the crushes of crowds and the moments of retreat, at the heart of the miracle-worker and signs-giver was the man Jesus who gave all of himself over to the correct worship of his Father – i.e., of God. Infusing all Christology and soteriology must be the clear vision of this 1st-century Jewish man and the life he lived. His being and his doing or living may not and cannot be separated; the “two natures” doctrine is more than a theological nicety.

What we see if we bother to look is The Faithful Servant at work (and play) abroad in the world. The Second Member of the Trinity did not count equality with God a thing to be “grasped” or savored or held over others’ heads, but emptied himself of whatever glory and worship he was dui to appear in the form of a servant. And to quote Luther: What does this mean?

It means that to be faithful to Christ and through him to the Father who graciously sent him is to submit to his ministry and to his example. We who claim his name are called to follow the path he trod in submission to the will of his Father. That path eventually led to his death, a not uncomplicated and non-controversial fact that has irritated theological thinkers for two thousand years. But even that death must be seen as faithful yielding to the will of the father, even though he clearly would have preferred to have been spared the suffering (“If it be your will, let this cup pass from me. Nevertheless, not my will but yours be done.”).

Now it can hardly be said that Jesus was a wallflower or a milquetoast or a shrinking violet – and I’ve run out of clichés. His submission was a discerning submission; it required him to decide in every situation whether a given course of action would be faithful to his Father or betrayal. And so he stood up to the “lawyers” – who I gather were the theologians of his day! – and to the uptights; he violated commonly accepted prescriptions on Sabbath activity and hung out with many who were considered unclean (although, in formulating our ethics, let’s not forget that he dined at many houses of apparently well-to-do types as well); as one friend put it, “he upset the hoity-toity by his hanging around with the hoi poloi.”

In all of this, he didn’t assert his own, deserved privilege. We read of no instance where he said anything like “I’m the Son of God; I can’t be expected to do that.” Instead, he read his Bible, he said his prayers, and as he met situations on the road, he dealt with them in the way fitting to the nature of the God about whom he read and to whom he prayed.

As I said, he bad mouthed the Pharisees and rebuked those who claimed to be holier-than-thou. But he didn’t push back for his own self-interest. He openly invited and welcomed many whom the religious establishment of his day warned against as unclean. But he also rejected any claims by even his closest friends to “seats of power” or to positions of influence. And when he was confronted with the final demand, that of his life, he responded the same way: He didn’t resist; he didn’t rebel; he didn’t take up arms; he didn’t seek the protection of his friends. Nor did he march forthrightly forward in the model of noble hero. Despite the slap to the faith of his followers, even though he brought down mockery and derision on all that he had stood for, he walked the Via Dolorosa to the cross in order to meet the final enemy on his own turf and there defeat him – not with swords or wits or ransom, but with the integrity and full force of godliness.

If we keep this model before us – and I think it important to accept Jesus as a model, whatever else we may develop in our Christologies – then our complaints against or concerns about submission can be placed in context. As I said, the Gospel is a summons to death. But it is a death of our old self, not a physical death (at least not initially; it may become such). We are called to “repent” – which is a call to reorient our thinking, our “knowing” (as the philosophers are trying to teach me to say), our sensitive spots, our lives. To die to self, which is the summons, is a call to remove oneself from the judgment seat and to allow God to sit there. It is to take one’s marching orders from him – not from one’s own previous sense of self, not from one’s political or ideological cronies, not from the wider culture within which one resides. It is to abandon claims to “count” in favor of a willingness to serve others. It is to stand up to a culture that says “You should come first” by saying “No; God must come first.”

To be even more personal than I have been up to now: It has taken me most of a normal lifetime finally to discover the desert Fathers and Mothers – those amazing and often bizarre creatures who sought solitude in the deserts in order battle the evils of this world and win a victory for Christ. Even though I have had wonderful experiences in monasteries and can claim to have been trained by one of the greatest of monks (Fr. Godfrey Diekmann at St. John’s Abbey), I am by nature distrustful of monasticism, mainly because I think it posits a kind of duality to Christian life – the hard life for monks, who get tempted to spiritual pride, and the “ordinary” and less-than-demanding life for the rest of us, who get tempted to spiritual ennui. And so I have resisted getting too friendly with the desert people in our Church’s history.

I am now, however, growing to appreciate more Anthony and Moses and Mary of the Desert and Mary Magdalene (who wasn’t technically one of the earliest hesychasts, but is treated in somewhat that fashion within the tradition – cf. Harlots of the Desert by Benedicta Ward). In part it is the guidance of such scholars as Ward and my friend John Chryssavgis, who lay out a kind of hermeutical lens for reading the sayings and stories. But part has also been, I think, the intervention of the Holy Spirit who has helped me to hear in their voices the crystalline call to set aside concerns and submit to God (however imperfectly I – or anyone, I suppose – might succeed). I see beyond the retreat from the world, which also bothered me a lot, to an alternative engagement with the world.

One of the things that I am learning – to my discomfort still – is that “activism” in the name of the Gospel is a dangerous thing. While I do not feel called to be quiescent, I find that my activism – whether broadly political or ecclesiastical – often devolves into my playing the world’s power games, and I lose touch with the proper ends and means of such activism. To cite a lowly example: I’m a liturgical perfectionist and it drives me crazy that my congregation, which holds itself out as something of a model of careful and reverential liturgical practices, does stupid things in sloppy ways – certainly not all the time, but often enough to make me bite my nails. For years, I have been a pain in the neck of the parish’s Worship Committee and pastor and cantor, by drawing shortcomings to their attention. But it dawns on me slowly that even though my motives may have been pure (and who among us can know), I was serving God less than my own standards and preferences. I was losing the ability to worship, to focus on what God was doing on Sunday and on how I was responding, because of my “critical” eye and ear. And so, in an effort to bring my soul back to the altar, I have resigned from the Worship Committee and resolved to focus on what’s happening more than what’s not.

I acknowledge that that is a minor thing – except for those who will be happy to know that I’ve left the committee, for whom it will be a reason to rejoice. But it is one illustration I can offer of what it means to submit, that is: by the power of God to set one’s own interests aside in favor of more serious attention to the work of God on-going in the world.

I’ll try to say more about the “activist” side of the story in my next post.

NOTE: Thanks for sticking with me in my process of thinking through a new idea about the Christian life. This is new stuff for me, in a sense. I am coming to terms with some new vocabulary as a result of my reading and talking with more Eastern Orthodox people. My friend C, as I have indicated, gave me this new word – and I do love new words. Another friend, Fr. John Chryssavgis has inspired me by the warmth and steadiness of his life and by the erudition and reverence of his books. At this time, Vigen Gouroian, an Armenian Orthodox theologian, is providing some guidance on the ethics component. And I find myself being drawn to Meyendorf and some others through the tricky marketing ploys of Light and Life Publishing – a local publishing and supply company which parks its stock on steel shelves by title, thus forcing one to browse to find something.

Of course, I perceive all this stuff through Western eyes and ears. I do not have Eastern liturgies in which to immerse myself while thinking and praying this through. And I’m not sure that I want that right now; I’ll settle for my recordings of Russian, Armenian, and Greek liturgical music.

But please know that while I write most of this is the indicative mood, I intend it to be considered in the interrogative. I do not claim final insights. What all y’all are helping me with here is to think through the nature of faith from a tack that I’ve not taken before. It’s a little less German, I think.

A little more on "Submission"

These reflections are going to be piecemeal; I'm not able to get a systematic handle on how to treat the issue I raised earlier -- that of "submission." Here, I comment on some of the "back text" to the discussion.

I think modern people -- including Christians -- have trouble with any notion of submission, because the very idea of subordinating one's own will or thinking or action to that of an authority outside oneself is anathema to the modern mind. Now, I'm no philosopher; certainly you know that if you've read even one of my previous posts. And I'm not a theoretical theologian -- or even much of a theologian according to some of my friends. But this idea makes sense to me.

By "modern people" I mean those people who live in the "West" (I don't know how much influence modernity has in the so-called "East") who have been influenced by the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment, broadly construed, was an intellectual movement (originating about the 18th Century, I think), influenced by and influencing the development of scientific methods, that sought to subject all aspects of life to scrutiny -- and to scrutiny carried on in a particular way. It was a project to subject all truth claims to some kind of so-called objective or scientific verification. (You see the connection to science.) It was, at root, a negative reaction to all forms of tyranny -- whether over minds or bodies -- and so argued, in its fundamentals, that at base, the only judge of truth is observation.

In a crude form (because I am not a philosopher, remember), the Enlightenment said this: "I will not rely on anything that cannot be demonstrated. Unless I can confirm something with my own eyes and according to the rational terms of my own mind, I will not buy it. Since external authority is the antithesis of this approach to knowledge, I reject that external authority insofar as it denies me the ultimate authority to make my own decisions."

Now, much good came from the Enlightenment break-through: Science was able to assert the kind of independence that it needed to advance knowledge. (Yeah, I know: That thesis begs all kinds of questions about the ethics of scientific research and its results.) And without the Enlightenment, it is unlikely that we Lutherans would have come into being, for Luther benefited from the advances in humanities research and in academic freedom that were facilitated by the new attitude. The "great republics," including the US, have sprung from Enlightenment-enlightened political thinkers and activists.

But foundationally the Enlightenment is built on a self-contradiction. If we reify the Enlightenment, we have her saying to people: "Bow to no principle that arises from an authority outside yourself." But of course, that statement is itself a command coming from an authority outside the auditor. (I owe that insight to Stanley Hauerwas, who is frequently able to crystallize an idea with lucidity and a great Texan accent.) So the Enlightenment is an ideological position, built on an assertion of external authority, as strong as the Pope's or whoever's. (Thomas Kuhn makes that point in spades with respect to science in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions -- on of the most significant books for shaping how I think.)

Furthermore, the Enlightenment places the individual at the center of his or her own universe. In essence, the Enlightenment makes everyone his or her own god. If I am the master of all I consider, the judge of relevance and truth, then I am god, and no amount of revelation will change that. I must "think for myself"; "I'll be the judge of that."


We who read these words have all benefited from the Enlightenment, and we have all been warped by it. We are inclined to distrust external authority; we are inclined to resist pressure or influence (especially when we feel that it is being applied); we want to be self-determinative; we glory in activism and decry passivity; we hope to and appreciate "thinking for ourselves." I admit that I appreciate it, if somewhat grudgingly, when my fourteen-year-old daughter asserts herself to challenge my statement of fact or "questions authority" or decides to think for herself and not go along with the crowd. Thus for the benefits of the Enlightenment. If, as I contend, it has been a mixed blessing, it has contributed to the evolution of the human person.


There are, however, problems that inexorably arise -- especially in the context of Christian faith: To Enlightenment minds and hearts, talk of "submission" sounds like reversion to the Dark Ages of credulity, fideism, meekness, and Rover-like rolling over. We attach to the word overtones of self-denial (which properly understood, it is), dehumanization, powerlessness. (It need be neither of those, of course, as I intend to argue.)

I think such an attitude is especially evident in an essay in the Trelstad collection I mentioned earlier by Rosemary Carbine, "Contextualizing the Cross for the Sake of Subjectivity." She analyzes the cross from the standpoint of women's "resistance" to suffering. Carbine argues that such resistance, in various forms, is a requisite of women's becoming fully human. Liberation is living free from the imposition by others of suffering (which she doesn't really define, as far as I can see). Agency -- i.e., being active and not being passive or accepting -- is key to her understanding of what it means to be human.

And that seems to be common thinking in our time. We value taking independent stands with respect to church teachings and practices. We want to vindicate our "rights" in such things as sexual ethics, same-sex marriage and ordination, fetal research, and abortion -- to name only a few. We must be "true to ourselves" -- as though that identity is something we develop on our own or with others whom we select.

But absent from such thinking is an appreciation of the "place" of community -- because the individual is the subject of Enlightenment thinking -- and of legitimate authority -- because no external authority is legitimate if it frustrates my self-actualization. Absent, in other words, is knowledge of the Church.

The Church depends on a doctrine of revelation, on an understanding of truth that comes from outside ourselves: We do not discover the Gospel on our own, we do not understand Jesus outside the Church, we cannot interpret the Scriptures outside the community of faith. The Church is the repository of the Church's revelation, and to be Christian involves bending one's will and mind to that revelation. Now, it's not as severe as it sounds -- especially in these days when the Church and her "teachers" have had to learn how to deal with the Enlightenment context. But it is a harsh reality that Jesus is not whoever we want him to be. And the Good News has factual and specific content; it is not just any word that makes us feel better or less anxious or stronger. And properly to hear that word and be able to speak it to others, we must "submit" to that revelation.

As Christians, we are called to "obey" God, to submit to his ways and will. We are not encouraged to make our own way, to make our own decisions on the basis of our own principles, to live how we want. The second chapter of Genesis makes that abundantly clear, it seems to me. And the Sermon on the Mount speaks the same insight into the Christian context. And therein lies the key to "submission."

At its root, submission is nothing more than to respond to the Gospel. Philip Watson once characterized Luther's theology as "Let God be God." And to do so requires submission. To hear the Gospel, we must submit to its harsh word -- viz., that our attempts to live, to love, to worship are inadequate, wrong, and sinful. Only by letting God be God will we know the salvation that has been made for us. It is free for the taking, but it is expensive to us, because it costs us our Enlightenment-bolstered self-assertion -- as Bonhoeffer so brilliantly described in Discipleship.

But so to hear the Gospel is already to hear a counter-cultural message. For the culture is Enlightenment-formed, and it encourages the exact opposition of self-sacrifice. In the culture of the Enlightenment, self-assertion trumps -sacrifice, autodidacticism is superior to being taught, acting is more human than listening, asserting makes more sense than discerning.

And that's why it's so hard to read or hear talk about "submission." It seems somehow unnatural; it seems to encourage weakness (although read the writings of the Desert Fathers and Mothers and see just how much weakness was involved!). It sounds like what the tyrants always want: sheep who follow meekly lowing. Oh, we describe it in various ways. But fundamental to all of our objections is the pattern of thinking planted in our souls by the Enlightenment.

So having laid the blame where I want it to lie, I intend to say some things about what submission is NOT. Then, I hope to draw you out in some conversation about what differences this discussion will have for our lives of faith.

The Disappeareds

Click here for a fascinating, horrifying, and touching word-and-visual slide show, on Slate.com, that deals with how to memorialize those who have been "disappeared."

The crimes of those who are snatched by government or paragovernment units and imprisoned or killed are stunningly difficult to address: How do you prove the crime when, by definition, the victim has disappeared. It's a legal horror, but it's an even greater assault on humanity. Professor Bill Cavanaugh dealt with that profoundly in his doctoral dissertation at Duke, later published as Torture and Eucharist.

Christians must learn about this tactic, its history and practice through the world. And American Christians must reflect seriously on the phenomenon because it is practiced by our government. The whole "enemy combatant" designation, along with the ultra-secrecy of homeland-security law, is premised on making some people simply disappear, never to be heard from again. If we deny any knowledge of someone we hold in detention, if we arrest and deny contact with outside counsel, if we ...

It is no longer necessary to say "if" because our government does it. And we USAmerican Christians should speak up to stop this -- when practiced by our government and when supported or not opposed by our government. We must speak the Truth to caesar.

I was struck, during the recent debate among Republicans running for President, by this: John McCain spoke against torture. Now, even I (who distrust him in the extreme) acknowledge that on this, he has moral and personal authority to speak. He aptly characterized the arguments over whether to torture as "not about them" but "as about us -- who and what we are as a culture." His comments were met with utter, and I mean complete, silence by the crowd assembled. On the other hand, when Mitt Romney began calling for even more torture, he was wildly cheered in the middle of his remark. That was a chilling and frightening moment for me.

I confess to a guilty pleasure: I watch the TV serial, 24. Now, this is a show that I ought to hate -- and I actually just burn with anger during the show. It is produced by an ultra-right-winger (profiled in a long recent article in The New Yorker) who wants the very things the show toys with -- pre-emptive nuclear strikes against Arab countries, racial profiling of (and indeed outright racism against) Arabs, torture at the whim of covert operatives, suspension of civil liberties for the sake of protecting our liberty (you figure that one out). And all of that gets acted out in fascinating, psychological, and gory detail.

Curiously, the show demonstrates the futility and wrongness of the very things its producer wants to promote. Torture, so far as I have seen, has produced no good results: The one being tortured gives the torturer what he thinks the torturer wants to know, not the truth. The "good guys" end up being deluded; many of the Arabs are shown to be patriots.

Maybe the producer was spoofing in the TNY article; perhaps he's really a liberal radical in camoflage clothes. But I find it fascinating that the pattern to this cultural icon is so clear.

Is this perhaps an illustration of the Christian assertion that Truth Will Out?

With respect to torture and disappeareds, the Truth Will Out. That which is hidden will be revealed; those who are lost will be found and reclaimed. We know that because there was One who was tortured and killed (apparently legally within the constraints of the law of his day), but who was not abandoned to death by the One who sent him. Biology is not destiny, and neither is any of the tricks we try to pull to secure our position in this world.

Another sign of the End?

My wife is fond of saying, when something outrageous crosses our path, "Well, that clinches it. The End is near." Well, with respect to recent news out of Britain, I think she may be right.

A British company is marketing a pregnancy test that will tell you, even before the sixth week of pregnancy, the sex of the fetus. Now, I ask you, what can be the possible point of this? Oh, I know the usual answers: The company's is the lamest. They say that this will help the potential parent/s get a jump on shopping for gender-appropriate clothes, wall coverings, and the like. (And if you buy that, well, have I got a deal for you.) I've not heard anyone yet raise a more reasoned argument: There are certain genetically transmitted diseases and disabilities that are gender-linked, and early detection of the gender of the child may help with early intervention to deal with the potential issue. (I'm really dumb about genetics and medicine, so I don't know whether there can be any such intervention before six weeks.)

But let's be honest: The primary reason for this test is to allow people to learn early on the gender of their coming child so that they decide whether they want to keep a child of that gender. Even though the company is not marketing their kit in -- say -- China or India, where boy babies are much preferred, I cannot help but see that area of the world as a real cash cow for them. And in the more "developed" areas of the world, this will be yet another manifestation of the culture of choice.

We are rapidly moving in the direction of designer babies: Choose the hair color, the height, the body structure. Why not the gender? Learn early enough and rejecting a bad roll of the dice is much easier than later.

Call me paranoid -- you wouldn't be the first! -- but can't see any good's coming from this development.

And on a related note, has any of you engaged in conversation about this or other biomedical ethics issues with your faith families? We're not doing it at my church, and I think it may be time.

Mea culpa -- now edited to reverse a mistake

Thank you to those of you good friends who check back for my ramblings. I have not been loyal to the blog, even though I have about 60 posts running in my head. The fact is that I have been busy: I have taken a short-term second job as a contract lawyer, and my time is filled with that work (not to mention the interminable demands for chauffering raised by my 14-year-old daugher!). In addition, my laptop died (again?) so that my time to ruminate online is restricted by the need to share the two remaining laptops in our home. (I'm hoping against hope that mine can be revived -- especially since we're now a wireless household and I can take the thing into the backyard and putz on it while enjoying nature's splendor.)

I'm in process of reading Cross Examinations: Readings on the Meaning of the Cross Today, edited by Marit Trelstad (who teaches at PLU). Much of the first section of the book deals with feminist/womanist critiques of "the cross". Now I'm not sure what they mean by "the cross" -- keeping in mind Juergen Moltmann's observation, "At the beginning of Christianity there are two crosses: One is a real cross, the other a symbol." The feminist/womanist scholars (and I'm only slowly getting a handle on the term "womanist") object that the cross has been used to justify a kind of passivity in the face of suffering that has led women to accept abuse, marginalization, low self-esteem, and the rest of the gamut of well-known issues.

Reading some of the essays raises for me the age-old (and utterly contemporary) question of the place of experience in theology. I have raised the ire of many of my friends who are women by suggesting -- no, insisting -- that God's name "Father" is non-negotiable. Despite the bad things that "fathers" have done, that experience in no way changes the biblical witness (a) that Jesus said to call on God as "Father," thus establishing "Father" as a name and not as a metaphor, and (b) that fathers are to be evaluated by the standards of love and benevolence of the Heavenly Father and not the other way around. Most of the feminists I read in the Trelstad book operate from a rather standard epistemology that posits experience first and doctrine second. That means that I develop doctrine -- and I argue, twist the biblical narrative -- to fit my experience. (Please be aware that I don't claim that approach is unique to feminists of any age: It has been a rather stock approach to the treatment of theology throughout the life of the Church. On a less significant level, Constantine finally gives the church legitimacy in the Empire and so the leaders of the Church -- which has a more concrete structure than it had before -- start dressing like leaders of the Empire. Of course, they also began to adopt more and more of the "leadership" mentality -- a development not unproblematic in our own time!)

In response, I want briefly to sound one tone, which I hope to meditate on more systematically over time. I was brought to this insight by my friend, C, who has flown the Lutheran coop -- something she thought she'd never do. (We'd discussed this in the past: Her husband and children are Orthodox, but she couldn't leave "Bach" behind. Well, she discovered that her misgivings were promptings of the Spirit. So after an appopriate period of discernment, she was christmated and is NOW -- a previous oversight had this read: "not" and that is most certainly not the case; she is as happy as clam there -- happily ensconced in the congregation that is the proud guardian of the icon I reference in my previous post.)

C has helped to see that "submission" is of the essence of Christian faith. Before anything else, the call of the Gospel is "Submit to God." From what I can tell, all of Lutheran theology has been aptly summarized by the phrase, "Let God be God!" (Thank you, Watson.) In fact, all of theology gets at that call. What got Adam and Eve in trouble? It was the failure to live securely in life given them by God. They felt the need for self-assertion; it overruled the very clear mandate from the Creator to submit to his rule and avoid the one -- only one -- tree. "Repent and believe the Gospel" is a call to submit to the judgment of God. It happens to be a gracious, forgiving, reconciling judgment. But the only way to appropriate that judgment is to submit to the jurisdiction of the Heavenly Judge. (See how I work my legal and theological training together.)

What does it mean to submit or to be submissive? I think that's an important question. I've raised it here in one or another context -- e.g., arguing that gay people must submit their own senses of justice and vocation to the discernment of the Church, which functions by virtue of the Holy Spirit, while praying for a more acute perception by the Church on the issue of same-sex relationships. But it is more than a question; it is a fundamental approach to the life of faith.

I hope to continue to talk things over with C because she has given me the "watchword" by which I can summarize my view of faith: submission. We will discover, I think, that to be submissive is not necessarily to be meek, passive, wallflower-ish, "non-agential" (to quote the nasty neologism formulated by the womanist scholars). But it is to acknowledge that one's will or one's experience or one's desires or one's "agency" is not the determining factor around which Christian faith revolves. The priority of the will of God is the sine qua non of Christian faith. Fortunately for us, that will is a benevolent, saving, reconciling, strengthening, upholding will. That's what makes the Gospel "good news."

In a future post, I intend to deal with Paul Althaus' The Divine Command (from 1966 -- a classic!) in which he distinguishes between God's command and "law" (in what he argues is the Lutheran sense of the term). Thus, the Ten Commandments are not "law" in the Lutheran sense (in fact, I have also learned from another source that Luther never once referred to the Commandments as "law"); instead they are the expression of God's intent for the Creation to which all creatures are called and from which no creatures are released. By my reading (and as I have claimed in talks I've given on the Ten Commandments -- delivered before I read Althaus), the Ten Commandments are a distillation of the will of God according to which we are summoned to live in freedom. In other words, they are indications of how to live the saved life we are offered. The life of faith is submission, inter alia, to life according to the commandments. But more on the Althaus later.

For now, I shall try to pay closer attention to this enterprise and to respond to any comments you make. I'll offer more on the meaning of submission (and on both the Trelstad collection and the Althaus monograph). Give me feedback.

Peace to you.

____________________________
I SHALL NOT DIE, for I am within the Life. I have the whole of life springing up as a fountain within me. -- St. Symeon the New Theologian.

A new super icon

My friend Cha has been boasting (in a very refined, humble way) about the new icon that her Russian Orthodox congregation have been installing on the ceiling of their church building. Well, a mutual friend of ours, Dash, has posted some amazing pictures that she took during the installation of the icon. (As she explains, the icon was written on canvas; the canvas was cut up so that it would fit the barrel-vault of the ceiling; it was plastered in place; then the iconographer filled in the spaces created by installing flat canvas on a vaulted space.) Please view the pictures here. I expect that you'll be inspired.

Say again!?

I suppose if I worked on it, I could tease out of one corner of my mind some sense of this news. But I think the following item is bizarre. It's drawn from page 2 of the Winter 2007 issue of the Spectrum, the apparently aptly named alumni magazine of the Yale Divinity School (YDS):

One of the most dynamic new student groups at YDS draws from a long
unrepresented constituency at the divinity school: nonbelievers. They are the
Left Behind, a group of agnostics and atheists who aim to provide a "caring and
inclusive atmosphere to those who already subscribe to our beliefs," ion the
words of Matt Riley '08 M.A.R., who helps lead the group.

I don't quite get why an atheist would want a graduate degree in religion -- and especially why he or she would go to a divinity school to get it (even Yale's). How does one proceed to earn a degree when one denies the very premise upon which the education is built -- viz., the reality, in some, way, shape, or form of a "divine"? I understand that the (presumably) young man is in an academic program, not in the M.Div. sequence. But still ... .

I don't know whether to be happy or not that when "Riley approached the dean of students about organizing likeminded students," he "received an encouraging response." Come on now, folks, isn't that leaning a little heavy on the inclusivity staff?

Wednesday of Holy Week

In preparation for the Triduum, I invite your visit to this site, a kind of virtual Stations. Some of the works of art are quite moving.

And I offer blessings for memorable Pascha.

R.I.P., Brother Herman

The Rev. Dr. Herman G. Stuempfle who served Gettysburg Seminary as professor, chaplain, dean, and president has died.

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

I was privileged to study preaching with Dr. Stuempfle -- along with a January course on Bernard of Clairvaux and a course on literature and theology. The integration of the fine arts into the task of preaching was of particular skill to Dr. Stuempfle, and he was always generous, clear, and committed in promoting his approach.

For those who want to read on, here is the entire communication from the synod in which Dr. Stuempfle served:

Lutheran Educator, Seminary President, and Prolific Hymn Author Herman G. Stuempfle Dies (Gettysburg, PA)

The Rev. Dr. Herman G. Stuempfle Jr., a Lutheran church leader known for his outstanding contributions as a preacher, professor, president and poet died Tuesday, March 13, 2007, following a long illness. StuempfleÂ’s life and work will be remembered in a memorial service to be held at the Church of the Abiding Presence, the chapel of the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg, Saturday, March 17, 2007, at 2pm.

Stuempfle, born April 2nd 1923 in Clarion, Pennsylvania, was a resident of Gettysburg for more than five decades and best known as the President of the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg, serving as professor, dean and president for a total of 27 years. Beginning in 1962, he served the seminary as the John and Susannah Ulrich Professor of the Art of Preaching, teaching seminarians as late as the spring semester of 2003.

The Rev. Michael Cooper-White, President of the Gettysburg Seminary, said "During the latter half of the 20th century, no other individual left a larger imprint on the life of Gettysburg Seminary than Dr. Herman Stuempfle." "On his watch as dean and president the Seminary fortified its reputation for academic excellence," Cooper-White continued, "doubled housing capacity for students, launched the widely renowned Music Gettysburg! Concert series, welcomed the local YWCA to our campus, and navigated the turbulent times as the newly formed Evangelical Lutheran Church in America struggled to solidify its system of theological education. But it was in the classroom and chapel where Dr. Stuempfle's most enduring legacy was forged. As professor of homiletics, and author of the widely acclaimed Preaching Law and Gospel, he sounded a defining tone for a whole generation of us who were blessed to be his students."

Stuempfle, a product of the public schools of Hughesville, PA, was a graduate of Susquehanna University and the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg. He received additional advanced degrees from Union Theological Seminary in New York and the doctoral degree (Th.D.) at Southern California School of Theology at Claremont. Before coming to Gettysburg Seminary in 1962 as professor of preaching, he served congregations in York and Gettysburg, PA and in Baltimore, MD. For four years he was associate director of the Board of Social Ministry of the United Lutheran Church in America. In addition to his teaching, he served as seminary chaplain for a brief time and in 1971 he became dean of Gettysburg Seminary.

Following his inauguration in 1976 as the 10th president of the Gettysburg Seminary, the oldest Lutheran graduate and professional school in North America, he spent thirteen years of service as its president. He retired in 1989, remaining a rostered pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA).Stuempfle is the author of several books and numerous articles and lectures on preaching, history and theology.

The Rev. Donald McCoid, Bishop of the ELCA's Southwestern Pennsylvania Synod and chairman of the Seminary Board of Directors, said "Herman Stuempfle will long be remembered for his preaching, his hymnody and his personal graciousness. Years after he preached them, we can still remember some of his sermons."

His most widely read theology text, Preaching Law and Gospel, was published by Fortress Press in 1978. He also wrote Preaching in the Witnessing Community (1973) and Theological and Biblical Perspectives on the Laity (1973), and Images for Ministry: Reflections of a Seminary President (1995). He contributed to preaching resources such as Proclamation: Lent. In addition, he wrote scholarly and popular articles for journals, the Lutheran Magazine, and adult Christian education curriculum. Stuempfle and his wife of 50 years, Gretchen S. Parkinson, are the parents of two sons, Stephen and David, and one daughter, Kristin.

Presidency

In the years of Stuempfle's presidency, the seminary faculty continued to evolve with more than ten appointments. The presence of women in the student body increased from 13% to more than a third of seminarians. The Seminary initiated its Washington, D.C. based program of study and established its House of Studies there during Stuempfle's tenure. At the same time, Stuempfle helped develop the Town and Country Church Institute, created a permanent chaplaincy for students, and initiated a support program for the seminary's overseas students. A major chapel renovation resulted in the installation of the Andover tracker organ and the beginnings of the Music, Gettysburg! concert series. Also under his leadership, the Seminary entered into a long term agreement with the YWCA permitting its facility on the seminary campus. The Seminary also expanded the A. R. Wentz library. Annual support for the seminary grew 400% during his 14 year presidency and a successful capital campaign added significant resources to the seminary's assets.

The Hymn Writer

Stuempfle is among the most honored and respected of hymn writers of the 20th and 21st Centuries. His four volumes of hymn texts, published by GIA Publications, include songs of devotion and reflection; dancing and jubilation; sorrow, wonder, and delight. The collections are entitled: The Word goes Forth : hymns, songs, and carols (1993), Redeeming the time : a cycle of song for the Christian year (1997), Awake our hearts to praise : hymns, songs, and carols (2000), Wondrous Love Has Called Us (2006). His texts have graced Lutheran congregational anniversaries, consecrations of Roman Catholic bishops, and English hymnal supplements.

It was in retirement that he became an active hymn writer. He has written an estimated 550 texts, more than half of them already published. Stuempfle is among the most published hymn writers in Evangelical Lutheran Worship, published in 2006, which features eight of his hymn texts. Stuempfle has always been mindful of the link between preaching and hymn writing, saying "Hymns are the sung testimony to God's mighty acts of grace and judgment," and creating hymns always remained for him a part of his "fundamental vocation to communicate the Gospel." Dr. Mark Oldenburg, the Seminary's Steck-Miller Professor of the Art of Worship, and fellow hymn writer said his "language is simple, glorious, and deep, whether he's preaching or writing."

Community Leader

Dr. Stuempfle was known throughout the Central Pennsylvania area, and Gettysburg in particular, for leadership in community and civic projects. Always taking an active stance in social issues, he participated in the creation of day care centers, served on the Gettysburg area Inter church social action committee, and the community wide observance of the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday. He helped create and support prison ministries and a local homeless shelter. He tutored young people in the after school program of Christ Lutheran Church of Gettysburg, where he was a member, and where and chaired the congregation's most recent building expansion and renovation efforts. He was a trustee of both Susquehanna University and Gettysburg College.

Honors

Stuempfle has been honored everywhere he has served, spoken and contributed. Symbolic of the esteem with which he was held in many communities over decades, Susquehanna University, Gettysburg College and Thiel College, Greenville, PA. presented him with a honorary degrees. He became the first recipient of the Gettysburg Seminary Distinguished Alumni Award in 1989. The Seminary named a student apartment facility for him and recently began a major project to fund the Herman G. Stuempfle Chair of the Proclamation of the Word in his honor. That endowment project1 milliony crossed the $1million mark on its way to full funding at $1.5 million.

The Gettysburg Rotary organization presented Stuempfle with its fourth 2006 Eisenhower Humanitarian Award, the first going to Eisenhower himself and Bob Hope. He was granted the "Peacemaker Award" from the Gettysburg area based Interfaith Center for Peace and Justice. He was admitted to the Academic Hall of Fame of Hughesville High School in 2003. The Hymn Society of the United States and Canada awarded Stuempfle the elite status of "Fellow of the Hymn Society" in 2004, demonstrating the deep and abiding appreciation for his dynamic creativity in the pulpit, at the lectern, and at the writing desk.

The Rev. Carol Hendrix, Bishop of the Lower Susquehanna Synod, ELCA, gave thanks "to God for the gift of the Rev. Dr. Herman G. Stuempfle Jr., pastor of the church, whose pastoral presence and words have impacted the lives of people throughout the world. A consummate churchman, Dr. Stuempfle used his many God-given gifts in service to Christ's church and as a faithful disciple of the lord Jesus Christ. Through his books, his teaching and preaching, and the hymns he wrote he helped to keep the church faithful. He was a gracious, gentle man whose life we celebrate."