on Faith 1–symbols, visions, and the search for meaning

Posted on February 11, 2012 by admin

Having once been one and sometime accused of being one still, I do not believe in atheists. That thought or idea which for you denotes the absolute, the idea unsurpassable by any other, is the divine—be it absolute chaos, absolute determined order, or a system wherein individual input is part of the process. That is the rational and logical and philosophical vision of the absolute, sheer being or power to be. How one relates to that is the field of religion. No one can relate or literally get their head around the absolute foundationality of being, but we all want to find a sense of meaning about our existence. The job of religion is to place a mask over the inexpressibility of life that interprets it within a system of values. There are the primitive versions of the tribal overlord, and there are more global or cosmic versions. The masks of god are the cult and cultural foundations of a society’s value system. As long as they are understood to be masks for expressing the inexpressible, we remain in the field of healthful psycho-social or spiritual development. Whenever the masks become concretized items, idols, we are in the realm of delusion and institutional obscurement of the divine.

I think we can reach no higher than the poet Whittier’s vision “the silence of eternity interpreted by love”.  Jesus’ great contribution to the effort of valuation and meaning in life was to understand himself not as a part of a deterministic system but as an intimate part of absolute creativity, not as creature but as child of creator, a part of a family business of fostering and nurturing life and wellbeing. The title Christ itself means divine delegate. To be a Christian means to “put on the heart and mind of Christ”, to understand oneself as an incarnation in one’s own time and space of absolute and caring creativity. The early followers expressed that in terms of their day—rituals of Jerusalem’s temple, ideas of Greco-Roman mythology and philosophy. But those ideas are all culturally and socially specific. It is unfortunate that they have become institutionalized and to many today little more than surds, relics of a past unrelatable and unretrievable.

But the silence of eternity, the sheer power of life persists. It cannot be ignored or denied, because I, you, we all, live it and in some way value it and respond to it and in it, and that system of value, that understanding of life and its meaning is the veil we place over the ultimate inexpressibility of being, our mask for the Font of Life Everflowing. It is not an idol, because I am a part of the everflowing of life that seeks to comprehend it even in its incomprehensibility, and to the extent that I believe it is incarnate in me, I can legitimately place over it the mask of personality and call it Father, Mother, or Lord God.

St. John’s letter gives us that great image “God is love”. What is love but the power to stand by and with another, to nurture and foster, to be wise enough and strong enough to know what to remember and cherish, what to forget and forgive. Religion exists to celebrate that. Religion becomes empty religiosity when it fails that. I cannot say there is no god as long as my life is in some sense a reality understood as more extensive than me, and that creative impulse is what is ultimately, in religion’s word, God.

 

 

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on Ecumenism

Posted on February 1, 2012 by admin

Ecumenism is a counterproductive circumvallation of diversity, an ataxia of an atavistically distorted concept of catholicity. It is a gross miscomprehension of unity as uniformity. In its present form it is a monstrous waste of time for all except a coffle of clerics intent on creating a minutia of dots and tittles. Is that put succinctly enough?

Indulge me some reflections on scripture.

Genesis 11   Long before the towers fell in New York in an act of would-be divine judgment, another tower fell. The city was Babel. The felling was a divine judgment. The result was the diversification of human society. Language was diversified that day. All that which language encompasses was diversified. We tend to think that all humans are alike. We are not. There is a commonality at the root of us, but our geographies, our histories, and all they entail have made us very different and distinctive vessels of seeing, hearing, understanding, wanting, valuing. Language holds all those distinctivities together and transmits them from generation to generation. Language is the idiom, the medium of a society. Take away the language of a people, and you shrive them of their history, their culture, their vision, and valuation as a people. The Word of God is called the image of God, and so too it is with the words of men. Babel made us a world not just of languages, but a world of distinctive visions and expressions of the capacities of our singular humanity.

Exodus 12  In many ancient societies, as still it is today, it was the practice to celebrate the seasons and the activities of the seasons.  In some places the early spring was a time of planting, a busy time of renewing depleted resources. The ancestors of the Jews had a feast of the hastily made spring bread, an unleavened cake. As with most societies, over the course of ages, this feast was overlaid with new understandings, new dimensions reflecting the evolution of the society and its history. The feast of unleavened bread became overlaid with a communal celebration of a deliverance from bondage in a foreign land. It became a feast around the slaughtering of a lamb and eating it with the hastily made bread of old now made a sign of immanent freedom. The lamb was the totem, the animal slaughtered not as offering to God but by God’s command as societal substitute. Its blood smeared over the doors of the homes of the chosen was a sign to Death to pass-over. When on the fateful night Death struck chaos upon the city, the chosen ate their totem and the bread of haste.  Deliverance, exodus was at hand. Many centuries later, some of these chosen overlaid another aspect to this feast. The lamb was now a more profound substitute, the doorway was a cross, the power that passed-over something greater than death, and the deliverance was not into a promised land, but into Paradise. The first Passover generated political freedom and Judaism; this Passover generated spiritual freedom and Christianity.

Leviticus 23  There was another feast kept by the Jews. In the late spring or early summer, about seven weeks after Passover, there was kept a feast to celebrate the first fruits, the first harvest. In time it was overlaid with a celebration of another type of harvest, the gathering of the chosen at the foot of God’s mountain, the giving of the law and the making of the covenant twixt God and his people. When God came down upon his mountain to speak to his people, the earth shook, and thunder and lightning crowned the heights. So fearsome was his presence that only Moses could ascend to receive the divine word. But the word was received, and after much dalliance and delay, the chosen acquiesced to the Lord and were bonded to him in sacred oath. Many centuries later, the disciples of Jesus were sequestered in prayer in Jerusalem as this feast day approached.  As is customary in most societies, many pilgrims were gathered in the holy city for the festival. There were there Jews from all over the ancient world. Suddenly in the upper room where the disciples were praying, a great wind shook the place and fire spread out over the heads of the gathered. God, who had in the Genesis narrative breathed wind into man, was re-creating men here. Fire that had topped Sinai now topped the disciples and they spoke the word of God. We are not told in which language they spoke. They spoke God’s word. And Parthians, Medes, Elamites, et al, all heard, each in his own language. There was one word, but each received it in his own medium, and they all praised God. The first day of being-church, and it was a church of sundry men and idioms.

Matthew 16  One day Jesus took his disciples off to a secluded place. He quizzed them. What are people saying about me?  It was a trick question. We all know that when your leader asks you this you are most likely to rehearse the opinion with which you yourself identify. There followed the litany of ideas, some more impressive than others. Jesus does not refute any of them. Then Simon speaks: You are the Messiah. Jesus blesses Simon for allowing himself to be inspired not by the world, but by God himself. Jesus then lives up to the title. He does something divine, something only God does, he changes Simon’s name. Adam was told to name the animals. But God alone has power over men, God alone can name someone. Simon becomes Rock, Peter. He is not persistent in his openness to divine inspiration, for shortly thereafter he advises Jesus against his chosen course of action and has to be reprimanded.  But Jesus marches on followed by his rag-tag of disciples, some following a great teacher, some a prophet, some the great prophet, some a wonder-worker, some a would-be king, some a political revolutionary, and, at least one, the messiah (howsoever he may have understood that).

Acts 1  Sometime after the death of Jesus, the disciples were summoned by Jesus to attend him on a mountain top. Suddenly the heavens open, clouds descend and engulf Jesus, angels appear. God has obviously descended and is enveloping Jesus. We have a theophany and Jesus is at the heart of it. But rather than fall down and worship, some of the disciples ask Jesus if this is the moment he is going to oust the Romans and restore the Davidic line to the throne of Israel.  They have been schooled at his feet for years. They have witnessed his death and experienced his risen presence. They are literally being shadowed by the glory of God Himself. And they are still so far from being on the same page as to be in another book, in another library.  Nevertheless, Jesus gives them a commission: go saturate the world with my message until it is enfolded into the very community of God’s innermost being.

Humanity is diverse. As individuals, as societies, we are complex organisms. In each of us, individually and collectively, there are competing and at times contradictory aspects. That coaptation of centrifugal and centripetal forces is the heart of being human, being a person. That complexity of being which God denied not to himself in the incarnation is denied neither to the church. To attempt to reformulate that is to revisit the tribulations of monophysitism, monothelitism and the like, anew.

We cannot read Acts, the letters of Paul, of John, without noting the absence of homogeneity in the early church. We cannot read about the church in any time or place and find an homogenous entity. There have been movements and quests to unify doctrines, practices, and structures, but those undertakings have all, at root, been political in nature, and their efforts encoded in the culture of the day. East and West have never seen eye to eye because they do not think in the same language, they do not speak in the same idioms, they do not live and breathe the same culture. Every culture and every language will see and understand and translate and celebrate within the parameters of its unique incarnate existence.

Not only has the church never been homogenous in doctrine or worship, it never will be. That which it beholds, that which beholds it, is too great to ever be enrobed in one text, in one act, in one vision. When so ever there tottered an effort to unify all word, action and vision, there, indeed, Spirit shattered the efforts to bits and pieces. Thanks be to God!

Ecumenism is not about agreement on doctrine, structure, worship. It is the gracious acknowledgement that my neighbour, my brother, my sister, each and all, have as much grace as do I to envision the incomprehensible vision, and to accordingly graciously and thankfully celebrate it. We may talk to one another about such things. We may share our meditations. We may grace one another with the fruit of our contemplation. But we cannot, must not, think that we can or ought to make another in our own likeness. Ecumenism is about loving one another, about seeing the good, the absolute worth of the other, the givenness and the vocation of other, and honouring that distinctness and distinction as from God for the glory of God. It must be an act of humbling ourselves before the Holy. We are told to love one another, to care for and sustain one another. We are told to baptize all into the triune divine, to plunge ourselves and all into the image of that most sacred community. The Trinity is a community of persons, each distinct, each interconnected in love, each with his own mission, each supporting the others in unity of vocation and care.  Community is not uniformity; it is the mutual treasuring and gracious celebration of distinctions.

Catholicity means universality. And a universe in which all is alike, is not a universe, it is a singularity. Universality means a holding together of diversity, and what holds things together is vista and light, the gravity of acceptance. There is one Lord. How impoverished of spirit is it to will him only one time and place, one incarnation. The Lord bids: love one another. How impoverished of spirit to will you be like me rather than accept you as you are.

Credo in unam sanctam catholicam. We ignore the creedal confession if we think church unity is something we need create.  Church unity is something we are called to believe, to acknowledge. When we stop quizzing one another about dots and tittles, when we begin celebrating that we hear, each of us in our own tongue, the wonders of God, then we shall hear also the world observe our brotherliness and be drawn into this family of Our Father.

 

 

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on Talking about God

Posted on January 26, 2012 by admin

There is a modern proclivity to take intellect as the epitome of being, and because of that inclination many think it profitable to frame the idea of the divine in terms of intellect. The divine becomes the all-knowing as well as the answer to all we do not know.

The divine term, whatever it may be, cannot be used as an answer for the inexplicable or the unexplained. If the divine is tied to the idea of that which we do not know or understand, sooner or later, the divine will become irrelevant, since knowledge progresses. The divine can never be used as a Deus ex machina without becoming discounted.

I suggest it is better to think of the divine in terms of the “in-expressible”. We are intellectually able to use ideas such as life, love, hope, beauty, truth, contradiction of opposites, etc., but the depth of that to which they refer is in-com-prehensible (because they enfold us, not we them), non-under-standable (because we stand on them), in-expressible (because their scope transcends us and our intellectual categories).

The Prophet Isaiah speaks of the divine as dwelling in light inaccessible, as completely transcendent, and Apostle Paul speaks of the divine as that power working in us that can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine, the divine as completely immanent. These ideas are contradictory, but they express two aspects of the divine that every theology has struggled with: God as the wholly other and beyond, and in that sense, irrelevant, and God the totally immersed in the fabric of being, and in that sense indistinguishable from it. That the divine is both may be is logically a contradictory statement, but instinctively, this inexpressibility carries weight.

Too often talk about the divine forgets that the great theologians have consistently taught that we talk of the divine by way of some form of analogy. We have no direct empirical experience of the divine. But we do know something about ourselves and the world we live in. We have the ability to organize matter and information, and the ability to project ourselves (in trust in others and ideas, in hope, in love). We can extrapolate or infer that the order of science, the will to be and to live, the impulse to put ourselves forward in search of knowledge, possibilities, others, are qualities that have an origin or basis in the source of all things, the very life-force of (or beyond) the universe. There is, in this sense, a basis to speak of the divine as the source of all knowledge, hope, love, even as a person, since for us “person” is the concept that expresses all those things in one independent sustained package. But, we cannot allow ourselves to rationally erase the words “by analogy”. We cannot jump from saying these things are reflective of life, to saying these things are the nature of Life-Itself, the definition of Life-Itself.

And there is a wee problem in the use of analogy based on human nature: we are not perfect. We may have the capacity to live and love and hope and trust and learn, but we also have a capacity to vegetate and turn to dust, and to hate and destroy. We can scarcely exalt the good things about us to the highest degree and ignore the bad. If the divine is the source of life as we know it, and we feel justified in talking about the divine as the source of all that is good and orderly in the universe, we cannot turn a blind eye to the existence of chaos and evil.

There is a wonderfully insightful line in the story of Adam and Eve in Genesis. When humanity tastes the forbidden, God decries that they shall now be like the divine knowing good and evil. Keep in mind it is one thing to know something, another to comprehend it, another to understand it. Knowledge indicates a working experience of something. Comprehension is a broader term indicating an ability to encompass the experience, and understanding indicates an ability to grasp the root of the reality. We neither comprehend nor understand evil, physical or moral. That is why it is perennially referred to as the “problem of evil”.

But, sanctimoniousness aside, we cannot deny these powers to the divine, and we instinctively know that, and manifest that in talk about gods of destruction, judgment to hell, divine wrath, etc. I suggest it is our own dislike for the darkness within us and the ills that plague us that cause us to delete these qualities form inclusion in the divine. We experience them as negative experiences, and want life to be a positive experience. This is a point for hope. But if the Life-force, the divine, is the font, the foundation, the fabric of all that is, in some in-expressible way that frothing, gushing, ever flowing creativity is at once and in the ultimate degree the bedrock of good and evil, the Father not only of Jesus, but Satan, not only of Gandhi, but Hitler. Our logic demands contradictions cannot exist. Our questing for the ultimate leads us to, if only in the most contorted of ways, acknowledge that opposites can be reconciled, if only within the scope of the eternal, the all-encompassing, the in-expressible source and end of all that is. But the “problem” cannot be erased except by hope or better said, “in hope”.

The great myths, the holy scripts and creeds, the great theologians and spiritual teachers have all, in the words and ideas of the day, tried to convey the mystery that enfolds us, that we flow out of, that we flow into. Their words are not the words of science, but the sighs of love and hope, the poetry of the human spirit soaring out into the vastness of being, the song of the soul closing its eyes in upon itself. These things yield no science, speak no knowledge, but they raise the heart and mind to a level where hope dares, trust takes a step out into the vast future, and man can bless himself and his world saying “yes, life is good” and be thankful for it, for it all.

 

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on God and believing in God

Posted on January 26, 2012 by admin

I do have beliefs. We all do. You either know something is true or false, or you believe it to be either true or false. You have certain evidence of something, or you trust your instincts and inclinations regarding the truth or falsity of something. That is simply what the words mean. But, keep in mind that even science is based on beliefs, presumptions held to be true unless consistently proven not true.

I realize everything about the operation of the universe, including every human action, can probably be proven to work in a determined manner. That means somewhere in that system we need admit that human freedom is an illusion. But, “probably be proven” means it is not either proven or disproven. We cannot prove a god anymore than disprove a god. That is why it is a matter of faith, trust, belief.

I trust there is meaning to the universe, to e, and you, and everything else above and beyond whatsoever we can empirically prove. That is a matter of trust in the universe; a trust that all that is is not just by some urge or force to become, a will to live, a will to power, but that that force, or whatever you wish to call it, is reflected in what I am: a creature with not only the will to live, but to care about others, to be with others, to love, to strive to know and understand myself and my world.

Religions have always presented pictures of that in a very anthropomorphic way, and the accusations of atheists that God is just a projection of humanity’s vision of itself carries real weight. It is, however, not a dis-proof, because as noted above, we are in an area where we cannot prove anything.

I believe the beginning and end of all that is, is and always will be a mystery wrapped in a mystery. No mind or heart shall ever penetrate that veil. Yet the world is full of god-talk. When I speak of God, the Divine, The Absolute Good and True and Perfect, etc. I am referring to that which is somehow the foundation on which or from out of which all that is is, and by which, in which, and to and for which everything is. God is not merely another name for the universe (pantheism), God is not a container in which the universe exists (panentheism), but God somehow is the above and below, and the outermost bound and the inner most core of each and every thing.

Western theology usually speaks of knowing about god in a negative way (what god is not) or in an analogical way (god compared to human). That is how we end up talking about an almighty and perfect person. But any good theology admits “might” and “perfection” and “personality” are here merely handles to describe something beyond description, something beyond power, something beyond values, something beyond being a person. These categories are our own highest categories for ourselves. We do not have any words or tools to indicate something that makes those categories pale. Oriental religions often try and speak of the Void, Nirvana, Nothingness, but those are not empty words, words meant to indicate nothing, but words meant to indicate “No-thing”; they are just more attempts to say something about that for which we can really say no-thing definitive.

I worship God the “font of life”, “in light inaccessible”, “in which we live and breathe and have our being”, “whose power working in us can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine” when I live my moments and days as nurturing of life as possible, when I am ever thankful for all the good, for all the opportunities and vistas that are given me, when I can joyfully look at all that makes up my life, when I say YES to me, my life, my world, despite all the pitfalls and detritus, YES. And I can address that as God because it is that God that address me as the ultimate basis from which I spring, in which I am, and into which I will dissolve.

St. Paul said that a Christian is one who puts on the identity of being God’s delegate to the world (in Greek that word is “christ”), one who understands oneself to be not just a creature, but a Child of God, sharing in the creativity of the Divine, revealing and caring and nurturing of the Divine, one who allows oneself to be a “life giving spirit” for others, for all.

As for what comes after this life, what, if anything exists beyond the few dimensions that we can sense or understand, I do not know. Does it matter? I think that as we are evolving beings, we all, some more than others, have awareness, an instinct, that there are dimensions the body cannot sense, the mind cannot comprehend; yet there is a sense of them. Illusion?  Delusion? Test the belief. Does it make you more trusting, does it give you hope, does it move you out of self-centeredness to being caring and loving? If the answer is yes, then treat it as a gift to be cherished, but realize that it is for your use, not for your understanding. Does the painter understand the ability to paint? Does the musician understand the capacity to make music? Gifts are for using, for celebrating. Test, and if it rings true, cherish.

 

 

 

 

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on The Use of Scripture

Posted on January 26, 2012 by admin

In the many recent discussions and diatribes regarding points of faith and morals I have repeatedly heard the Bible presented as the unfailing bulwark, the very Word of God filled with the Spirit of truth. Having, in vain, waited for a corrective, I write to supply it.                    

Someone must say it; sound theology—dogmatic and liturgical—demands it: the Bible is not the Word of God. The Word of God is a living person, second person of the Trinity, Son of the Father incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth. The Word of God is not a book.

The Bible when proclaimed and preached, like the bread and the wine set apart in the communion service, becomes, through the Spirit, the form whereby the worshiping community perceives the presence of the living person of God’s Christ. To make this book in itself the Word is idolatry. There are many in the reformed tradition that will not countenance the worship of the bread, but seem content to worship a book.

The Bible is a primitive witness to the presence of Christ in the church. It is actually a sacred assembly of witnesses. But Paul’s views are not sympathetic in all things with those of Peter. James and Paul also disagree on points. Paul is himself not always consistent. The evangelists are not of one voice or mind. The same is true of the Jewish scriptures. They all speak to different conditions and times, but they all bear witness to God present for us in history, God the font of that which history in itself cannot provide: hope, God the source of that which self-centered man cannot rise to: faith, God the singularity and plurality of personhood man craves: love.

The Bible is a part of the believing community’s witness and worship, but it is not the only witness, and it cannot be the object of worship. It contains no black and white answers written up for all time. If that were the case, there would be a united voice in every detail of scripture, and more to the point, there would be no need for the Holy Spirit to descend, no need for Christ to promise to be with us until the end of time, and indeed, there would be no need for the Resurrection.

To be a Christian is not to obey the Bible; it is to carry on the life and presence of God’s Christ in my own time and place. We are not called to be a people of the book, by the book, for the book, we are called to be—with all mind and heart, body and soul—the bearers of Christ’s work in the world for the world.

Theological ideas and religious ideals come to life, become real and accessible, in practice, and in practice it is dialogue, nuance and evolution of interconnectedness, variation of rapport that characterize a relationship with a person. The relationship with an idol is one of either rejection or blind adhesion, and with the latter comes a belligerence to either eliminate all them not of like mind or force them into submission and conformity with oneself.

 

 

 

 

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on Liturgy

Posted on January 25, 2012 by admin

I do not have a problem with the Book of Alternative Services, the Vatican II revisions, or any other such work.  The Book of Common Prayer is in some ways, I believe, a more mature work; it is structured in such a manner to move a congregation from point A to B to C etc. It does this through a singular focus of services and readings. I have discussed this in my enchiridion. The newer books provide a treasure trove of texts for use, but they do not provide a unified plan; it falls to the minister to take the texts and make them alive, relevant, and directive. And there is the problem.

In times past there was less room for variation, there was more sensitivity concerning the mystery and majesty of why we were gathered. Dignity and decorum were the rule on both sides of the sanctuary rail. There was room for variance, but it was minimalized by the directions and expectations of the rites. That is not to say there was a time of unfailing perfection. In my day I witnessed priests who rushed through the service, priests who were not as delicate or precise about the sacred choreography. And there were some who perhaps took it too far. I once served at mass in a private chapel for a bishop of some celebrity. At the end of mass I wanted to applaud and ask for an encore—benediction perhaps. He moved with astonishing fluidity throughout the service. Every step, every move was meticulously performed to flow into the next. I think even the fringes on the maniple had been rehearsed into this sacred dance. It was an act of beauty, and perhaps in a great church and seen from a distance it might well have contributed to a sense of awe and majesty. Up close and in private it all made for the rapture and envy of a balletomane.

Today we have amassed a clergy without a sense of dignity or decorum. They try to be relevant by being folksy. They forget that they are ministers of sacred mysteries, servants of things holy and a people called to be holy. They forget bodily movement and rhythm are elements of communication. I have encountered more than a few who were not at all conversant or familiar with the instructions for the rites or the full body of rites authorized, more than a few who had not bothered to read canon law, and even one who wanted to “put together something” for an occasion when Rome had already provided a rite for exactly that occasion. I do not know the cliff off which clerical education has veered. Expertise in matters dogmatic, liturgical, and spiritual seems no longer to be the goal. Now that the cassock has become a thing of times past, what distinguishes cleric from the good intentioned church lady or usher?

In matters of liturgy, thought, study and discipline are mandatory. The minister of the word and sacrament must prepare to use the texts and the actions to convey his charges into a sense of the holy, guide and direct them to grow into the holy. This can happen only with persistence and dedication of all involved. But, it can happen. Again, I have been witness to more disasters at the altar than one might think humanly possible. There have been occasions when I thought there would be more style and grace were we at a country fair. There have been times when I doubted anyone else present had ever been to a mass before. And there have been times when the same book, the same rite was in the hands of someone who understood them, the people, and the vocation to be holy. I had occasion to assist Aidan Kavanagh at the altar, and his works on liturgy, as wonderful as they are, pale before what he could convey in the course of celebrating the sacred mysteries. He was a gifted teacher, writer, and priest, but his craftsmanship was also one that did not fall out of the sky upon him, it was honed by years of dedicated reflection and practice. One who would minister the sacred mysteries in the sanctuary and in the privacy of spiritual direction must undertake to learn, to reflect, to practice, to dedicate oneself to the holy and the translation of the holy to others. One does not need to pursue a degree in parochial administration, social work or psychology; one needs to ground oneself in the spirituality of the confession of faith, its celebration and its transmittal.

In short, I have no issue with a book. A book is a thing, a tool. My issue rests with those who would acclaim themselves professionals and have no idea, no proficiency, and seemingly no self-understanding that their job is to be able to use the tools of their trade with precision, skill, grace, and gratitude. One can relate and transmit things of deepest mystery and awe to the most common of men without being condescending, silly, frivolous, or folksy. We all have an open-end to the un-answerable questions of life, and none of us come seeking to deal with such in a manner trite.

 

 

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on Being-church

Posted on January 25, 2012 by admin

 

I made a promise to myself many years ago that I would never again go to church on Epiphany; I could not hear one more sermon on the proof of the star or the perils of travel the Magi must have endured. No other text of Scripture seems to inspire such need for historical proof. But, if this story is history, and few biblical scholars would say so, its historicity is not the point; it is something told to make a point, a “gospel”. Preacher, preach that, and not the science of stellar movements or desert uncertainties. One may well see Luther pacing the narthex, waiting for the preacher to produce the wisp of manger straw or the coin minted by a Magi to prove once and for all this is historical fact: The Truth.  The Truth, however, is not history; dogma asserts the Truth is disclosed within history, something very, very different.

So why do preachers think, in a day and age when people are conversant in so many fields that religion and its heartland, Scripture, must be mashed up and feed to them like pabulum? I once heard a preacher in a most august church tell the congregation that he had no idea as to the meaning of the text. It was not some rhetorical trick, for he proceeded to talk about something trivial that had no relation to the text. Had he the most modest ability to do his work and consult some learned books, he would have surely found material for a hundred sermons. Barth’s Church Dogmatics alone would have kept him well occupied for days.

Now I understand clergy can be busy, but preaching is a radical, fundamental charge. I also understand that a theological education and degree do not guarantee any knowledge of Scripture. In my own case my theological training was mostly weighted on ritual and dogma. Scripture entered the picture mostly in terms of “Proof Texts” for various dogmatic arguments. (Snippets of scripture were quoted as verification of a position, and although other snippets might work for the contrary, they were dismissed as either irrelevant or misinterpreted.)  And as a result of such practice many, I have no doubt, have acquired academic credentials and ecclesiastical approbation, without knowing scripture, or for that matter, its reason for being, prayer.

Allow me to explain what I mean about prayer. In my student days I was immersed in prayer: the ritual prayers, the reading of prayers, the recitation of prayers, the formulas for prayer. The day was structured around periods of prayer. And it was talk, talk, talk: babbling to God, babbling before God. But that is not praying, it is saying prayers. Yes, there is room to place before the Almighty the needs and desires of self and others, to praise and thank. But, praying is first, foremost, and fundamentally being before God and listening to God. To listen you first need to shut up, to become quiet and pay attention. Some would call this meditation and contemplation. And this kind of prayer is the first of two requisites for one who would preach.

This first requisite is the subjective element; mental prayer with the mind turned on (meditation) or with the mind turned off (contemplation).   In meditation scripture must be entered into with body and soul (Incarnation stands the central dogma of Christendom). The story must be entered into with the imagination turned on, and one must observe what happens. One must feel, see, touch, smell, taste the experience. In the power of imagination (the power of making images) one must behold (grasp with and in every sense) that which is revealed on the and to the most personal basis of self. The Jesuits call this the “application of the senses”. This is self-analysis before the divine, the experience of self as that which flows up out of the depths when one rests before the Holy as one experiences and understands it. If in meditation all systems are turned on, in contemplation, all are turned off, as best as is humanly possible. The mind is at rest, passive. It is not a simple task. There will come times, sometimes painfully long times, when one must wait in absolute silence, stripped of thought, of feeling, of expectation, times of waiting for God, times of simply being allowed by God until one learns to allow God to be God.  Only out of such experience of the Revealed Word will the Scriptures truly be the Living Word.

The second requisite is the objective element. This is neither personal nor spiritual; it is intellectual; it is knowledge. The preacher must know not only the whole of Scripture, but what it means. Now this is not knowledge about proof texts for arguments dogmatic and moral. This is knowledge that allows one to penetrate to what is being said.

It is interesting that we expect some background explanation to understand Shakespeare, Milton, Virgil. They lived in worlds with customs, practices, world-views sometimes exceedingly different from ours. Yet we do not approach Scripture with the same cautions, despite the fact that Scripture is older and from an even more foreign culture.

The words, stories, poems, songs, histories that make up Scripture are wrapped up in idioms, world-views, expectations, customs, prejudices, passions, social structures that pre-date us by thousands of years. We scarcely can put on the mind frame of the Victorians, but we somehow think we can read a sacred text and overcome the distance of ages with the blink of an eye. In this we are deceived and in error. And even if we were not in error, the world in which we live and to which we are charged to preach is not the world of Jesus, or the world of Moses, or the world of Abraham. Our world does not think in terms of covenants in the same way the ancient Jews did. Our world does not think in terms of temple rituals, blood sacrifice and expiation so central to the way Jews spoke of their relationship with the Holy, so central to the way the early Jewish converts to Christ expressed their encounter with God in Christ.

Familiarity with certain words and terms does not mean we necessarily understand their original meanings. It is all too easy for people who are immersed in “church” to think in words they consider “everyday” terminology, but which are very “cult-specific” and not at all words of the people in the everyday world. If we are serious about Scripture, if we truly belief in God Incarnate, then it is time to learn the mind-set of the peoples who produced these works that we can proclaim their message, their meaning, to the world in which we live.

We need to stop “sermons” and teach this that people can once again have a sacred text understood. Sermon once had the connotation of a conversation. When is the last time a preacher took questions from the floor? Some will say I am advocating Bible Studies instead of a sermon. Fine, I am. Stop teaching a few, and teach the many. Do not hide the opportunity to educate and enlighten behind some closed door on a Wednesday afternoon, open it on every public occasion available: Morning Prayers, Evening Prayers, Eucharist, Sundays and weekdays.

I know there are some who this very moment are saying the Word of God is the Everlasting Word. It does not change. True. But if you mean by the Word of God that book set upon a brass lectern and ensconced in a grand temple of stone, you are wrong. That book is an idol. The Word of God is Living. It Exists in the proclaiming of the gospel. You can read the book. Scripture is proclaimed, lived, tasted, loved. This is core Christian doctrine: the Living Word is a Person, not a text. The Living Word is encountered through the text proclaimed to and in the world.

One may treasure words and phrases from a sacred text; one may feel their life is set by ideas garnered from that text, but woe to those who would sheath the Living Word in a dash of ink or a fleeting bit of sound. Do we adore an idol or do we take up the challenge of living life constantly anew following the Spirit where so ever it wills to blow?

All this talk about preaching has meaning only in the context of being-church. And I think a good deal of our problem with good preaching has to do with our self-image as church, so allow me to digress on church and church as the body liturgical.

The church in the mind of most people–in the world, the pew, the academy, the church office—is an institution with a precisely defined constitution and programs of operation. It is the mother, the magisterium (teacher), and the magistrate of the right way of believing, living, worshipping.  This institution is a dominatrix for it has the final and absolute word on and in all things, and the power to enforce that word—in heaven if not on earth. But nowhere is such a creature understood in the early history of the Christian community.

Paul has vision of the body of believers as the very incarnate presence of God’s Word on earth, The Body of Christ. It is not a comatose being sustained on some cerebral input machine called the Church Office. It is a community of individuals with their component personalities and abilities.

The very earthliness of this community is also embodied in another great idiom of Paul, Bride of Christ. A bride implies a marriage contract and a consummation. An institution operating from top down is not a commune, and it is certainly not something that conjures up the attitude that begets a marriage. In institution where are the caresses, gentle and passionate? Where are the touching, holding, fondling, the penetrating, the filling, the giving in to the pain of labour, the bringing forth of something other than oneself? Where is the living flesh of the creature, the bride of the Incarnate One? There is no wedding without bedding.

Our culture has trivialized sex because we are, I believe, afraid of sex, and perhaps rightly so, for it is a fearsome and primal power, a power of life, of communication, of expression and release. But powers are for use within reason and not for cloaking within fear. In our being the Christian community there is neither logic nor life in the denial of the sexuality of our being. We cannot turn our backs on the fact that the holy is born only when one allows oneself to be ravished by the divine. This is the real stuff of religion, of faith, hope, love. It is messy, uncertain, always on the move. It is vital and vitalizing, passionate and impassioned. It is everyday life with a twist, and the twist is the divine, the holy, like some eternal gyration opening one up so the spirit inside can be free, can breathe, can exult, can passionately cry out “yes” to God. No doctrine, no biblical text, no prescribed ritual can stimulate that “yes”; it is the result of contact with another—the Holy One found incarnate here and now.

A church run from head office is not church. A church formulated in the halls of the university is not church. A church open on Sunday to grind out a program of reading texts and hearing the “same old” week after week is not church. Look at the great cathedrals and basilicas. Central to each of them is a table, indeed, “The Table” where it all began—that ritual meal among friends. But while that is central, there is a universe of space and places in those buildings and they say something very real about the church as a community. There is a preaching box, and a reading stand, and a presidential chair, and within the walls and without  as well are nooks and crannies, vistas filled with light and art, spaces for music and noise, places to move about and some to be quiet. In these “churches” we find concretized in brick and mortar what it implies to be “church” in flesh and blood. They are not class rooms for reading and being taught. They are not concert halls or art galleries to lift up the spirit. They are not bastions of retreat from a hostile world. They are microcosms of people coming together in sundry ways and times to celebrate the fact that they are together, and in that to discover and treasure that they are—at the heart of it—called together, summoned—and summoned for a purpose: to be a light. That light flows as much within as without, and it reveals self as much as world. Just as the light created on the first day set the parameters of creation, this light is the font of the ever new beginning of a new creation. (Pace Fr. Kavanagh)

The earliest Christian celebrations were extended events of the whole community enfolding the day in song, prayer, reading, teaching, moving about, sharing a meal, and consecrating dawn and dusk. They were not mandatory in whole or in part. They were celebrations, and as participants in any celebration know, one cannot and does not get involved in every moment or movement. Forgive the pun, but feasts are always moveable; they have an internal fluidity that allows the participants to move in and out according to their abilities.

The rise of universities gave us theological scholars who set upon creating a systematic set of explanations to every possible question about God and divine activity in the heart of man and the world. The printing press made the Bible—a series of witness texts compiled in and by the church for the church—something everyone could handle and read line by line. Indeed, thanks to the printing press every line even got a number so one could map the co-ordinates! The out of control inventiveness and artistry of the medieval mind was countered by reformer zeal to educate. Reformer zeal was countered by Roman zeal to control and systematize. Some communities shrank into being clusters of book-readers, others shrank into chaplets of sacrament watchers. They all lost the vital and human impulse to celebrate. The Feast became a lecture or a performance. The Festival is now about hearing something, or watching something, or sitting in lines and reading line by line. Is there a party here anyone is interested in?

So how do we fix this? Should we re-arrange the way we do things? Should we turn our format upside down and start off with a “coffee hour”? If we do, then let it be a real time for sharing together. Hold it in a respectable setting, even in the church proper if that can work. Musty basements and drab halls do not say feast. Neither do insipid coffee and stale cookies. This aspect is liturgical no less than the offering up of bread and wine at the high table. Do not denigrate it.

The same ought to be said for a time of teaching. Do not feel every charactery of scripture need be read. Talk about things pertinently. Make a sound teaching of the scriptures, of church understanding of scripture (dogma, morals), of our shared history, vision, quest. Allow time for questions and discussion. In prayer, let the words not be “sound bites”; let there be some weight and scope. Consider the general intentions and thanksgivings in the Book of Common Prayer. Keep ritual action brief and reverent. A good ritual act ought to convey an enormous amount of inform-ation succinctly. A thousand words are not necessary. Give the words of institution: this is my body, my life, given, take it, share it. Break, pour, share. Let the actions speak for themselves. Explanations are best left to a teaching part. But do not fear allowing ritual actions to be interrupted by song, movement, etc. All this needs to be alive and flowing out of the sacred assembly and not the dictates of a text, a presiding minister or the choir. This is celebration not performance. Worship flows out of celebration not out of observation. And throughout all this allow each to enter this time in his/her own way, and take his/her own leave. Allow each a space for whatever response he/she is called to: mental prayer, further study, socializing.

Or, do we look to our first ancestors and do all this all feast-day long?  Open the doors in the morning and have a series of celebratory events on going—some social, some vocal, some instructional, some meditative, some roving about, some ritualizing sharing a meal, some ritualizing the rise of day, some ritualizing the end of day. Provide a festival that lasts the day and into which each enters and leaves according to ability and/or inclination. It makes the work of the various ministers considerably more demanding than the schedule of 8, 9, and 11, but, as noted above, being church is messy and the First Minister of this community had demanded of him something considerably more taxing.

Let me return again to the subject of  preaching. It is not the clergy but the whole community of believers charged to preach the gospel, the “good news” that the Power is alive and present and healing in the world in the church in Christ Jesus. The charge is not to create an aura of beauty, although beauty has a place.  It is not a matter of what we like or want. It is a matter of doing the job we are given. We can comfortably ensconce ourselves in words and music and actions and architecture that cause us to gaze upward, but in doing that do we shut out, alienate, disenfranchise a host of others who would celebrate, who are looking for a festivity? I confess I am academically inclined and anglo-saxon up-tight to the core, so a service of well writ prayers, well read texts, sound preaching, good music and sensible ritual is cheery-good. But I also realize my tastes and modes of expression are foreign to the greater majority. So called “liturgical dance”, clowns doing a panto of a reading, strumming guitars, polka-vespers, and the like make me cringe with horror. But I must acknowledge that if we are to provide a feast for the world to be entered into, we need to provide a venue each can hear, see, taste, experience in their own language, his/her own medium of expression.

We cannot claim this format or text is the only way any more than we can claim heaven as our own. We cannot tell others their prayers are wrong, their church structure is wrong, their gender is wrong, their image of God is wrong, because they are not enough like us—who know with such perfect clarity that God has granted to us to be the sole and perfect keepers of the Truth. We are not given to define God. We are given to celebrate the presence of God.

We cannot make ourselves so busy with so much that does not eternally matter that eternity vanishes behind the flashes of self-importance and righteous indignation, behind the scribbles of synods and secretariats. We can be a network of institutions marching through to the end of history proclaiming the historical fact of the death of our founder. We can be a people with a vision: a vision that the source of life is love, that the end of life is love, love being about community, community founded in fore-giving one another, in understanding one another, in accepting one another, acknowledging that our vision of God as triune and holy and incarnate tries, ever so feebly, to give words to that vision. We can welcome all. We can sit comfortably row by row and read line by line. We can go to service. We can throw open a festival. We can spew doctrine. We can live a life together.

Our inheritance is a reality that God is and shall evermore be all in all. Let us be embraced, transformed, invigorated and inspired by that and allow the Creator, Redeemer and True Spirit—not ourselves–to be the founding, bounding and dynamic creator, redeemer and true spirit of who and what we are. In that the light of the nations is and ever shall be made manifest. And so we come full circle, for is this not the meaning of Epiphany: to risk ourselves to behold the Eternal shining through the fleetingness of flesh, to come and to adore the divine disclosed within the human?

 

 

 

 

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