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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on making Disciples and Reaching out to the World

Posted on January 25, 2012 by admin

You ask about making disciples and having an impact on society. Consider that when Christ charges his followers to go out and make disciples of all nations, he tells them how: baptize. He is neither establishing a sacrament nor endorsing a ritual. He is opening a door to understanding our relationship with God, a relationship immersed in a change of heart, a change of mind, a change of vision, a change of living.  And as can be said for every relationship, our relationship with God must be open to grow and mature through communication and in community.

Where do we start? We start, we always start, where God starts. First, we love—we openly accept our neighbour where and as they are. We do not judge. We do not charge with bible and creed. We merely, in Christ, respond to them. We stand open and vulnerable so they may experience, begin to experience, the God who stands open and vulnerable for all, the God in Christ whose arms are open wide. And we so stand knowing that God alone, not flesh and blood, causes one to say “Thou art the Christ”.

Second, when the time is ripe, when we are asked, we share our heritage of faith. We share it as our heritage. We do not argue it. We present it as the vision whereon we stand, whereby we are informed. We do not make of it a weapon or a threat.

Third, we must be prepared for that which this sharing may involve, catechesis. We must be prepared to answer questions, and answer them in the language in which they are given. We cannot retreat into doctrinal idioms or antique ideas if they will not speak to them who would hear and understand. We must not fear a challenge. We must not approach with dismally low expectations. Discipleship, like every other personal relationship, must with commitment be worked at and worked for. It must be a personal relationship, not the submission of a person to a program.

Fourth, we must be prepared that as the relationship develops it will need to be enfolded in mystagogy, an interiorizing of the basic truths and values, in living, in prayer. We cannot hide our sound and truthful tradition of the contemplation of and meditation upon the mysteries of our faith. Here, indeed, is the portal through which God confronts and communicates heart to heart. In a time when many are turning to spurious practices, to hide our own spiritual wealth is wickedness. We must teach that the heart of prayer and the true dignity of being human are to give thanks to God for what we have. All else will flow from that in its due time.

Fifth, we must keep in mind that we are not in the business of preserving any given culture, language, or set of theological or philosophical terms. If parts of our cultural heritage fail the proclamation of the gospel or obscure the love of God for this world, we must know ourselves to be free to put them aside. We cannot for the comfort of our own tastes hide the light of the world under a bushel, a book, a translation, or a tradition.

Sixth, we must keep in mind that the liturgy, the public rites of celebrating God’s word, the ritual enactments of the good news of God in Jesus Christ, cannot be an act in and for itself. Liturgy exists for humanity—to open us up to God and to the world, to strengthen us in faith and service. It is our public spiritual exercise not an object to be gazed upon.

You speak of making an impact. Consider this. If we take seriously that God lives and dwells within us and that through prayer of body, mind, and heart we are in communion (in communication) with God for the sake of the world, then we know that through us Christ still acts to redeem and heal humanity in our every move, transaction, breath, and step.

There are some who are want to argue that media coverage does not matter today any more than it did two thousand years ago when Jesus took a band of disciples to the edge of wilderness near Caesarea Philippi to ask them what the world was saying about him, that church is always a creature invisible to the public eye, apart from the wisdom and opinions of the world. There is some merit to this position. But at Caesarea Jesus is making inquiry about the world, the impact of his work in the world. The truth has, as does discipleship, many facets. The existence of Christ incarnate means we, like Christ, need to be in the world, in the media in which the world operates. We can, however, only truly, realistically, effectively be in the world in a way comprehensible to that world. That world does not speak or any longer understand the cultic terms of the church, it does not comprehend talk about divine humans, miracles, trinities, transcendent deities, efficacious sacraments. If we intend to reach out to the world and be understood, we must speak a language that can be understood and not our own, our beloved, our cultic tongue. 

In our being in the world we cannot exist as an enclave unto ourselves. We must work together with whomsoever is willing, be they another church, another faith, a government or a business. We need to put our money, time and energy where we say we have put our heart. We must be strong in advocacy to engage and en-courage government and business alike to move toward the radical changes for which the people around the world ache. We need to do this wisely. We need to be flexible in our efforts. Do we expand them, change them, eliminate them? What would serve, not us, not our committee, but the gospel best?  We must be willing to supply bandages and patches. But we must remember that not a few, but thousands around us are impoverished and broken, and that poverty of spirit vies with hunger and homelessness.

Lastly, we must be prepared to support, especially spiritually, those devoted few who are always at the forefront of all our labours. It is often easy for the most zealous and dedicated to suffer burn-out, or to develop a Mary vs. Martha state of mind. We need to keep in mind the biblical accounts of Israel and Judah and how often their downfall was their trust not in God but in their own abilities. Thomas Merton once mused that all the world might well be held in existence by the devoted prayers of a handful of souls. It is a hypothesis worthy of consideration.

 

 

 

 

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on Priesthood

Posted on January 25, 2012 by admin

There are some who seemingly believe that a priest is a “sacred person” rather than one to whom is given a sacred charge. If the priest is a sacred person, all the priest need to do is keep some sense of piety about himself or herself, and perform the prescribed rites. The sacred person does not need to actively lead, guide, direct, facilitate, nurture, foster, heal, or anything else. The sacred person, having been made the very vessel of God, brings God’s presence to others simply by being there. There are some who may well find this idea of priest comforting, for here, in a person, as for some in a book, is the “the answer”, here another’s being resolves the problem of having to do something.

I grant you the idea of priest does traditionally carry with it the idea of sacred person. In scripture the title of priest is applied only to Christ himself. Unlike the terms deacon, presbyter, elder, and bishop it is not a term used for an officer of the church in the Christian scriptures, and was accordingly dropped by most reformers precisely because of this and its overtones of exclusivity and ritual sacrifice. I grant you also, Christian theologians, usually being priests, have had a lot to say about priesthood’s special character, graces, and status, but what they have said is merely variation on what is properly said about the character, grace, and status of being a baptized person, of belonging to a priestly people, a people called to minister, to serve and enfold the world to God. I am not about to create a dissertation on the topic. Suffice it to say the notion of priest as a sacred person bifurcates the community of the baptized, exalting the cleric, discounting the laity. It obscures the church (wherein all, by baptism, are called to be the good news according to the gifts given) by creating professional Christians opposed to part-time, Sunday Christians. It prevents the manifestation of the church as a communion of saints by reducing it to a pious body politic. If anyone ought to be treated distinctly, it is not by virtue of the office given but because of the use made of such office. There are some who in the sweeping of floors have consecrated nations to God, while others wearing miters have profaned altars in the mere reading of prayers.

Look at the practical ramifications of considering a priest a sacred person. If a priest is sacred, what is accomplished here and now in the world or the church is, at best, of secondary importance. God’s presence is already provided. If some by the hardness of their hearts and the dimness of their minds cannot see it, the problem is theirs. If the priest is sacred, the church or any of its subset organizations can be left to dysfunction forever. Despite the pain, injustice, and spiritual peril inflicted on others, all that ill is only something accidental to the situation. The history of western civilization is filled with, littered with, examples of such “blessings” of hopelessness and oppression. The sacred person cannot error, cannot be held to be in error. The Roman claim of infallibility is merely a doctrinal manifestation of the attitude.

Today, when churches are in decline, the managers and executives of the churches are not held to blame as they would be with the failure of any other organization or operation. When people turn away from religion, the clergy ask not what they have failed to do, but a more amorphously phrased question: “what have we failed to do?” Only in failure and defeat does collegiality appear, as it must, for the sacred person is spared of error. It is an attitude more general than acknowledged, and attitudes, because they pass without examination, are dangerous. The rules of discernment have always held that anything that claims—as opposed to manifests—a link with the divine is suspect.

The charge to do the work of God renders no one anything but charged to do a job. The doing of God’s work renders one, at best, worthy of recognition as a faithful servant. There is no mystery to it. A priest is merely a member of the community of the baptized who is called and ordered to attend to the spiritual welfare and well-being of others.  It is not in the person that any special dignity or honour resides; it is in the work that the sacred is to be glanced, and that work is to bring the people to the fullness of human potential, a potential that cannot easily be delineated into compartments of body, mind, spirit, soul. Only to the degree that a priest is free from self-delusions of sacredness and otherness is the priest free to be truly servant, friend, mentor, companion, free to be at once activist and contemplative, one whose soul is no stranger to resting in silence in God that in his or her labours justice, peace, and understanding might ever more dispel the reign of political posturing, compromise by force, and blind obedience.

Wheresoever and whensoever such faithfulness is found, there ought to be, indeed, reverence.

 

 

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on Throwing Stones, letters to an unworthy cleric and his publisher

Posted on January 25, 2012 by admin

I read your work twice because at first I thought I was misunderstanding some rhetorical trick. Most unhappily, I realized I was gazing upon an act of grossest ignorance.

I am certain that you had to spend several years in some sort of academic institution to qualify for ordination. Why have you chosen to renounce your education, your supposedly acquired skills in logic and research, and flare out with such rash judgments based on the remarks of a sportscaster  and a “groupie” interviewed on a television show? Why do you parade your ignorance of the nature of HIV and AIDS and the statistics regarding those infected when accurate data is available from any number of organizations?  Why do you dare to attempt to cloak your feelings, your anger, and your fears with pious references to the Holy Scriptures? Obviously, you do this because you choose to, and that choice is wasteful, sinful and sacrilegious. If you want to be afraid and angry and confused, at least, as a minister, you ought not stuff your mouth with God’s words and turn them into the bile of hell.

If you want to talk about choice, then review your school texts on cause and effect. If AIDS is a matter of choice, then so are all the cancers, tuberculoses, birth defects, insanities, etc., for we as nations and individuals choose, will, select, and support (too often by sins of omission) the life-styles that create the pollutants, the chemical toxicants, the holes in the ozone, the desires and allures that deteriorate and destroy life, global and individual. By your logic everything in life is a matter of direct human choice, including your own hideous lack of understanding.

If you feel AIDS is a punishment for sin, be prepared to acknowledge every illness, every accident, every natural disaster a punishment for sin. If you feel you are compelled to wrestle with such a question, I must ask whereto has all your theological training vanished. If humanity had any ability to effectively deal with its destructive sinfulness, it would have no need for so great a Saviour. It is not given us to debate our sinfulness, it is given us to be thankful for our forgiveness. If the deliberations of the judge belong to anyone, they belong to the Almighty, not the cleric, for the mission given the church is to gather the world to God, to proclaim the love of God, to apply the forgiveness, the healing, the peace of God to a fallen and broken humanity, to a disrupted and disoriented creation.

If you a serious in your questioning, go off and meditate on the story of Simon, the Pharisee, and the woman who came into his house to wash Jesus’ feet with her tears. Simon and company were compelled to think only of the woman’s sinful reputation. Jesus was free to embrace her humanity undissected.

If you are serious about ministry, go off and learn to discern between your own feelings and the demands of discipleship. If you are tired of the dying being treated like martyrs, go off and contemplate death, at least, go off and consider the trails of the dying. Put aside your feelings and discover that humanity is something more than you. I do not doubt your good intentions, but the road to hell is paved with such intentions.

To the cleric’s publisher:

I presume you have chosen to solve our garbage problems by taking up the publication of rubbish. Your mindlessness is a matter of public shame.

I realize the church is not an organization like any other in the world. But, how long is the church, both as an institution and as a body of recovering sinners, going to tolerate ignorance, professional incompetence, and the dire absence of pastoral concern from its clergy and other leaders? How long shall the people suffer leaders who will not minister the gospel? How long shall the people have to be pastors to whimpering and self-absorbed clerics? I am tired of seeing and hearing people being beaten to near death with pronouncements of sinfulness and immorality before they are coldly dismissed with “but God loves you”.

The churches grow empty, and all the black-robed and weeping madonnas run in circles asking why. Do they ever see the cause to be their own bible-thumping, grand-inquisitor ravings? Yes, there are many people today who seek salvation from the burdens of life in sex and drugs, in over-achieving and over-acquiring and over-drinking, and why not? Where are they to go? Where shall they find a God? Where shall they see Jesus Christ?–certainly not in the distortions and self-righteous piety of unworthy clerics. How long will the people allow such incompetence and dysfunction? How long are schools of theology going to pass out degrees without need of either orthodoxy or discipleship? How long are examining chaplains going to recommend for ordination men and women not prepared to minister? And where is the bishop to demand obedience, to command responsibility for the mis-care of souls?

I can name at least two people who ought to be out looking for a new job and a grasp on reality. Enough is enough!

 

 

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on Human Sexuality

Posted on January 25, 2012 by admin

Allow me to make a few notes regarding your paper.

In your opening argument I deeply felt the absence of a statement that the Scriptures present a culturally conditioned presentation of sexuality, one conditioned toward a patriarchal society wherein sexuality is equivalent to the sex act, and the sex act reserved to the extension of the species. I am aware you made those points in other places, but sometimes ideas need to stand melded together.

Contrary to your claim and contrary to the view expressed by the bishops of the English Church, heterosexual love is not the foundation! To go on to claim that the divine will for humanity is fulfilled by heterosexual procreative actions is utterly absurd. In chapter two of Genesis, before God reveals the woman in man, God brings all the animals to the man, for man, in the divine judgment, needs a companion, a helpmate. One might argue that woman is just one possible resolve to man’s aloneness, one humanly accepted divine experiment. One might question other strains in the creation story, such as why man was not content with God as a companion. And, of course, if one wants to be literal about such things, one might well ask what happened to the male and female created in chapter one. Let us not dwell in fragments; Scripture, like God, is un-dissectible. I am not about to write a dissertation on the tribal codes consecrated in the great Genesis myths, but the question remains: does sex exist for procreation, or does sex exist for the person. Human sexuality is about communication, communion, trust, giving, caring, loving, and out of that, and within that consecrated state of being, about the procreation and nurturing of children. Not every heterosexual couple is capable of producing children, not every heterosexual act is capable of producing children. Heterosexual acts are about the two people involved in a communion. Homosexual acts are likewise and equally about the two people involved in a communion. To say that homosexual acts are not as complete within the terms of the created order is to confuse gestation with creation, to elevate egg and sperm over personhood and humanity.

You speak of heterosexual relationships as the norm, and grant homosexuality status as an aspect of humanity’s broken nature. If you call the heterosexual the norm, do you not imply everything else the ab-normal? And how can you speak of homosexuality as a result of our broken nature without noting that everything we are, everything we know, including our concepts of God, our religions and churches, our beliefs, and our hopes, is the result of our nature. The argument from “humanity’s broken nature” is an empty argument; we know no other nature, we have no other nature. But, having made the argument, how can you go on to speak of research that gives evidence for the biological foundations for the distinctions in sexual preferences. I am afraid that words like BROKEN and NORM are value judgments in themselves, and all the qualifications you make after them are just excuses to which no one can in honesty subscribe.

You discuss marriage. You do not distinguish between the term marriage used to designate a legal contract and the term marriage used to designate the blessing of the estate created by the contract. The ministers of the church have in some places and at some times acted as officers of the state and officiated over the contract, but as many canon lawyers would gleefully argue, that does not create in the church or for the church any authority over or in the contract itself. The church is merely allowed to act as an agent of state. The church is free to bless whatsoever it will, be it a contract, a car, or a canary. It baffles many that the church is willing to say that God is not an ancient mariner floating in the sky above the ozone and its holes, seated on chubby cherubs and equipped with all the rules for all the world for all time, but that the church is not so willing to admit that God is incarnate in the world, unfolding and evolving toward a day of compassion and justice for all. But is that not what sex is all about? Is not sex about finding God incarnate, growing toward a consummation in compassion, evolving into one who understands the weight, the glory, of justice, of the righteous due of all, a due given by God, a due fore-given by  God in the eternal Christ, a due that is, by divine appointment, acceptance and love?

I am sorely tired of sex being relegated to organs and orifices, of morality being chained to rules and regulations; when will we stop confusing the alphabet for literature, the road signs for the road? When will we stop adorning our genitals with doctrines and devotions and begin to adore one another? When will the church lead the way rather than be dragged along screaming? When will the church discover the Jesus who came to liberate us from legalism and literalism? When will the church find a new Pentecost and (as in Acts) go about seemingly drunk at nine a.m.? When will the church allow itself to stop worrying about what people will say, what people will do, and allow itself to manifest that intoxicating, that self-liberating spirit of compassion and joy? Our eschatology is our mask, our shield, our lie; the Day of the Lord is now. Our petty fears, our fragile egos, our Nicodemus-style discipleship keeps it veiled, keeps it from transforming ourselves and the cosmos. When will we realize the law is dead, that it lost its identity in Mary’s womb when the Holy One overshadowed it, that it radically mutated in order that the living word, the enduring presence, the unfolding revelation of God might dwell among us? In this season of the Coming, is that not a proper reading of the mythos of the virgin, a proper vision of the mysteries of incarnation?

I think the universe is infinitely more simple than we imagine; I think our fears are infinitely more complex than we are willing to admit.

 

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on Sexuality

Posted on January 25, 2012 by admin

Some argue we must be faithful to tradition. Are we, however, being faithful to the Spirit? God does not go about creating the past, but the future. God is always making something “new”. We can follow God into that “new”, or we can cling to the dust of his passing us by. We need not argue the how and why these questions of human sexuality have been placed before us. They have. Sometimes the Spirit allows things to break apart so we are forced to examine them and re-fit them together into something new

The question of homosexuality cannot be dealt with except in the wider context of human sexuality, and human sexuality cannot be adequately considered outside the context of humanity, humanity called to community and commitment, reason and respect, thankfulness and caring. These questions I place here reflect those being asked by the church. The teachers of the church must give answer and direction.

Are human sex acts to be judged on the basis of genitals, on the basis of eros, on the basis of person, on the basis of person as dialogical? Are sexuality and sexual orientation to be understood as expressions of human dialogic? Are human sex acts primarily procreative of offspring? Are human sex acts essentially procreative of offspring? Are human sex acts essentially procreative of persons, offspring sometimes being the physical issue of the act?Within the confines of a heterosexual relationship characterized by love, sealed in commitment and established in accord with civil and ecclesiastical law, is it licit to engage in the sexual act of intercourse to the frustration of the possibility of conception by either interruption of the act or by some physical or chemical inhibitor? Within the confines of the relationship given in the last question, is it licit to engage in a sexual act of stimulation to orgasm and/or ejaculation without recourse to sexual intercourse? In what way might extreme age, sickness, impotence or infertility bear upon the situation given above? In what way would such acts as considered in the above questions performed by the heterosexual couple relate to such acts performed by a homosexual couple?

 This is not an exhaustive retelling of the questions I have received, but they represent the scope of inquiry stirring within the church, the scope of teaching that needs be given. We cannot hide behind endless commissions and committees, political antics and pious posturings. It is given teachers to teach.

We can answer all such questions and catalogue them, and as they have been asked, we must do so. We may also, I most ardently propose,  simply, honestly, and maturely aver that human sexuality finds its truth in the fulfillment of human potential created through the caring, compassionate and loving union of two persons freely, mutually, and consensually exploring the boundaries of body and soul toward the continual establishment of a communion (a marriage) acting in itself as the ground fostering a community (a family), the details of which properly belonging to the imaginations and abilities of the connubial coadunators.

The good life need not be—indeed, it is not—a complication, a compilation of rules and regulations. It is the continual and simple act of reverence and respect—virtues that can be fostered and educated, but never, by definition, legislated and enforced.

 

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