Monthly Archives: October 2009

Bishop Elections

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I haven’t been keeping up with the Anglican blogosphere in the past couple of years, but it seems to me that one of the very interesting effects of the internet on the Episcopal Church has been the way in which things that once were probably almost unnoticed, have become matters of great significance throughout the Anglican Communion and indeed, often far beyond.

One example of this is bishop elections. I’ve never actually participated in one, on either the lay or clerical side, but I’ve been Episcopalian for nearly twenty years and have never even been cognizant of the politicking involved until the last few. Probably it was the controversy surrounding the consents to the election of the current Bishop of South Carolina that brought elections to the front of my mind. But certainly the failure of the bishop-elect of Northern Michigan to receive consents from bishops and standing committees elevated the profile of elections to a matter of national and international significance.

The slate of candidates for Bishop of Upper South Carolina was announced a couple of weeks ago. I am interested because until mid-September, I was canonically resident in that diocese, and I was nominated, though thankfully not selected to serve on the search committee earlier this year. It’s clear that the internet has changed the dynamics of the election process. There is discussion in various quarters about the relative merits of each candidate, and about the process itself.

On one level, such conversation can help to bring issues of enormous significance to the fore. I do think that the controversy surrounding the election in Northern Michigan was useful to some degree. It remains to be seen, however, whether any candidate can survive close internet scrutiny. We are allowing ourselves to be shaped by the way in which the blogosphere has shaped the political process nationwide. One wonders whether the church will be any better off than the nation as a result. If you want to know more about the candidates for bishop of Upper South Carolina, I commend Deacon Tim Ervolina’s blog.

Tim is a deacon of the church and one of the few voices of progressivism in church and state in South Carolina.

Old Blind Barnabas

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Blind Bartimaeus

Proper 25, Year B

October 25, 2009

With today’s readings from Job and Mark, we are coming to the end of a series. We heard today the very end of the book of Job, and the gospel story of blind Bartimaeus brings this section of the gospel of Mark to a close. As we have heard for several weeks, Jesus and his disciples have been wandering around the countryside. Sometimes their journey has seemed aimless. Occasionally Mark gives us geographical details that seem absurd. But as they go along the way, Jesus seems to be ever clearer on the fate that will ultimately await him in Jerusalem.

As they go, Jesus predicts his suffering and death, and says a great deal about what it means to follow him, to a group of people who have no idea why they are following him. And now, at the very end of this section of the gospel, comes the story of blind Bartimaeus. In fact, this brings us to the end of Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem, because the very next story in the gospel is the story of Jesus entering into Jerusalem, which we remember each year at Palm Sunday. So this story of blind Bartimaeus has enormous significance.

But before exploring that, I want to go back to the very beginning of this crucial section of the gospel of Mark because Mark has done something very interesting here. He bookends this section having to do with Jesus’ death and discipleship with two stories of Jesus healing a blind man.

The first took place near Bethsaida at the beginning of this section. It is a very odd story because it involves a two stage healing process. A blind man is brought to Jesus; Jesus leads him by the hand out of the village. First Jesus put saliva on the man’s eyes and laid his hands on him. After that, Jesus asked if he could see and the man’s response was “I can see people, but they are like trees, walking.” Then Jesus laid his hands on him again, and the man’s sight was fully restored. Jesus sent home, instructing him to tell no one.

In the second healing, all is different. It takes place near Jericho, only 13 miles from Jerusalem. One important difference is that this man has a name, the only one of all of those healed in all four gospels to be named. Second, in the first healing, the blind man was brought to Jesus, and it was those who brought him who pleaded with Jesus to heal him. Here, Bartimaeus speaks on his own behalf, calling Jesus “Son of David” a messianic title. Then, when he continues to cry out for help from Jesus while onlookers tell him to shut up, Jesus calls to him. Bartimaeus throws off his cloak, runs to Jesus.

Jesus asks him a rather odd question, given that Bartimaeus is a blind beggar. “What do you want me to do for you?” Bartimaeus asks to be healed, and Jesus responds, “Go, your faith has made you well.” In response, Bartimaeus follows Jesus “along the way.”

Mark uses these stories to emphasize everything he has stressed in these chapters of his gospel. In the first story, a blind man slowly comes to see, he needs extraordinary effort from Jesus, and when he’s healed, he goes back home; he doesn’t proclaim the good news. It’s as if nothing had happened. In fact, Jesus orders him to tell no one.

Bartimaeus is just the opposite. He takes the initiative, first crying out to Jesus, then abandoning everything, even his cloak, in order to have an encounter with Jesus. He asks Jesus for help, and when he’s healed, instead of returning to his home and family, he follows Jesus on the way—to Jerusalem.

Between these two stories of Jesus healing blind men, one who goes back home and one who calls him the Son of David, and follows him on the way, Mark puts much of Jesus’ teachings on discipleship, on what it means to follow Jesus. In fact, Bartimaeus stands as something of a contrast to the disciples, who weren’t really, or didn’t know how, to follow Jesus.

But I don’t want you to think that these stories or only symbolic, that they lack concrete, literal meaning. One of the things that may be the hardest for us to get our heads around in the twenty-first century is that Jesus healed people. The gospels are quite clear on that. He gave sight to the blind, restored the hearing of deaf people, made the lame to walk. He also cast out demons.

Now what precisely these healings consisted in I don’t know, I do know that such healings were relatively commonplace in the ancient Mediterranean—Greek and Roman sources, as well as Jewish materials give evidence that there were miracle workers around. I also know that health meant something quite different in the ancient world than it does to day. Indeed, the Greek word that is most often translated as “salvation” could also be rendered as health or wholeness. In the ancient world, health involved body and soul, not just body. Part of our problem in understanding Jesus’ miracles lies there, we are thinking in terms of modern medicine and science, when the people in the ancient world thought in very different terms.

We are often very uncomfortable with the notion of Jesus healing people of their illnesses and maladies, and yet when we find ourselves struggling with our health, or the health of loved ones, we pray to God for deliverance. Few of us would be comfortable with what seems to be the message of Mark’s gospel in this instance, that Bartimaeus’ faith healed him. To make such a clear link is deeply problematic.

As I was thinking about this story this week, a song came to mind that has been going through my head repeatedly. Perhaps some of you know it. “Old Blind Barnabas” I know from a version the Blind Boys of Alabama sang on an album a few years ago. From the lyrics that I recall, I’m pretty sure it’s based on this story. The name Bartimaeus was changed to Barnabas to fit the meter. The Blind Boys of Alabama came together as a group in 1936 at the Alabama School for the Blind; and the core group sang together until a couple of the members retired in 2006, but Clarence Fountain kept on, and the group continues to sing. I wonder how many times over the decades they sang that song. I wonder how they thought about it, their faith and their blindness.

We know that God doesn’t take away all of our pain and suffering. But many of us may sometimes wonder whether it’s because we don’t have enough faith, or perhaps God is punishing us for something. That of course brings us back to the book of Job, and finally, today, we’ve reached the end of it. I must say, of all the works of literature I’ve ever read, this may be the least satisfactory conclusion to any. It’s as bad as a typical “Hollywood ending” of a movie, where the boy gets the girl, or everything works out ok. Job has gone through all of this pain, all of this intense suffering. His children have died, his flocks and his herds, he’s lost his property, and finally he is plagued with a wretched ailment of the skin. After all of his complaints and challenges to God, after God in the end tells him, “Shut up.” Now this. After all of his trials and tribulations, after all of his suffering, after all of that profound poetry, Job is rewarded with twice as much stuff as he had in the beginning. It makes me sick.

Now let me be clear. The book of Job is not a history book or a biography. It is a morality tale. There was no historical figure named Job. Even though his story seems to be set in the time of the patriarchs, the time of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, on close reading it clearly comes from a much later period. Job is a sort of everyman, he is one of us; and the whole story is intended to help us think about the problem of suffering—theodicy, as the philosophers call it.

Those middle chapters of the book, where Job rails against God for his plight, are meant to be words we might say in a similar situation—Job is speaking for us, and for every human throughout the existence of the human race, who has tried to make sense of why they are suffering. The problem is, the book of Job raises the question of human suffering with eloquence and profundity, but it does not provide an answer.

As we saw last week, when God finally responds to Job, when God speaks to Job out of the whirlwind, the answer God gives is, in a nutshell, “Shut up.” Or to put it in the Book of Job’s terms, “where were you when I created the universe?”

Now, I don’t think there is an adequate answer to the question of theodicy, of why bad things happen to good people. I don’t think it’s God punishing us, I don’t think it’s intended to teach us something. Sometimes suffering simply lacks meaning. And when we struggle with our pain, misfortune, or suffering, one of the things we as humans want to do is to make sense of it, to put it in a framework that helps us comprehend it. That’s what the book of Job is trying to do, but in the end, it fails to give an adequate response to Job’s suffering.

And in the end, the story of Bartimaeus, as important as his healing is, is not an object lesson on the power of faith, or miracle, or the nature of Jesus Christ. It, like the chapters that come before it, is a lesson about discipleship. Bartimaeus healed of his blindness, follows Jesus. All of Jesus’ teaching in these chapters was intended to open the eyes of the disciples to Jesus and to the cost of following him. As we have seen these last weeks, the disciples could not, would not open their eyes to Jesus. Like them, we are often blind to what following Jesus really means, to the commitment it requires, to the life that beckons us. With Bartimaeus, let us cry out to Jesus, “Teacher, help us see!”

Some Articles on the Pope’s announcement

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A few days’ reflection offers the opportunity for more insight. I would like to highlight three pieces that came out this weekend.

First, an article by A. N. Wilson, who has previously been mentioned on this blog. He emphasizes the probably unintended consequence of the pope’s move in making England even more secular, and perhaps being the final straw that breaks the camel of establishment for the Church of England. It’s available here.

There’s also an article by Diarmaid McCulloch, one of the great contemporary historians of Christianity in England. His works The Stripping of the Altars and The Voices of Morebath have been groundbreaking and he has also written a history of the papacy and most recently a history of Christianity in England. His comment is available here.

Finally, a comment from Colin Coward, one of the leading figures in the push for full inclusion of Gays and Lesbians in the Church of England. He points out the hypocrisy of many of Anglo-Catholic clergy in England. It’s well worth a read.

Ecclesiological Reflections on recent developments

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I mentioned in my last post that I view the papacy as the product of a historical development, not the mark of the true church. It may be helpful to make some more comments on this matter.

The history of the church in Rome in the first and early second century is shrouded in obscurity. While it is clear that there was by the late first century an emerging sense of a coherent and cohesive body of Christians in Rome (the letter of I Clement testifies to that), it is not at all clear that there was a “bishop” of Rome, let alone that the bishop exercised authority outside of the city of Rome.

In the second and third centuries, other churches were equally powerful–Carthage in the West, and certainly the bishoprics of Alexandria and Antioch. Rome became most important in the west, because it alone of all the western churches, could claim apostolic foundation. As early as c. 200, Tertullian, writing in Carthage, recognized that Carthage’s claim to apostolicity rested, not in having been founded by an Apostle (as Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch, could claim) but in its teaching being consistent with that of the Apostles.

But a half-century after Tertullian, Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage, could challenge papal teaching and authority. For Cyprian, bishops working together in a synod were more important than a bishop who could claim direct apostolic succession. It is pretty clear that Rome’s supremacy in the church is a product of two things: 1) its unique status in the west as an apostolic foundation, and 2) the importance of Rome as the Imperial capital (the latter explains why Constantinople eventually overtook Antioch, Alexandria, and all other apostolic foundations to become the most important patriarchate in the East).

In the Protestant Reformation, the true church was defined as that community where “the word of God was truly proclaimed and the sacraments rightly administered.” Again, it was largely for historical reasons that the Church of England insisted on the apostolic succession of the episcopacy as one of the marks of the true church. It was a powerful weapon in the conflict with Calvinist polity, but it conceded a great deal in the conflict with the papacy.

It seems to me that one of the key issues for Anglicanism is to articulate a clear ecclesiology that doesn’t merely distinguish it from the Roman Catholic church, but provides a positive rationale for its existence. I’m wondering whether the heart of our current problem isn’t a definciency in ecclesiological reflection.

More on the Vatican’s pronouncement

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Much of the blogosphere’s reaction to yesterday’s announcement has focused on what many perceive to be the challenge it seems to present to ecumenical efforts. I’ve always thought that for the Vatican, particularly under this pope, ecumenism meant all other Christian traditions accepting papal supremacy.

I’m actually more interested in what this provision for allowing the ordination of married Anglican priests says about clerical celibacy and about Holy Orders. Either celibacy is required, or it’s not, but to allow exceptions in certain cases seems to me very odd , indeed. If I were a Roman Catholic priest, who was certain about my call to the priesthood, but uncertain about the charism of celibacy, I would be outraged.. If I were a Roman Catholic priest who married, I would be outraged. If I were a devout Roman Catholic, uncertain of the call to celibacy, but certain of my call to the priesthood, I would be outraged.

For me, there are basically three things that stand in the way of my conversion to Catholicism:

1) the papal supremacy, which I think is a historical fiction and not a necessary mark of the true churcch

2) clerical celibacy, which is a medieval development (product of the Gregorian reforms, although with earlier roots)

3) ordination of women (see Romans 16, where Paul refers to Junia (a woman) as an apostle

There’s a great deal more, of course, but the greater Catholic tradition has always made room for theological diversity, and until the sixteenth century, considerable liturgical diversity as well.

Vatican receives Anglicans! Film at 11:00!

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The Vatican announced today that it has created a canonical structure for Anglicans disaffected by developments in the Church of England. They will be allowed liturgical latitude under the rubric of personal ordinaries. What precisely this all means remains unclear, but some are announcing the end of the Anglican Communion. The New York Times article is here, but more information is available at the Lede and at Thinking Anglicans.

The significance of this isn’t quite clear. In fact, it seems on the surface not unlike the system that already operates in the US, where Episcopal priests (yes, even married ones) can become Roman Catholic priests. Rather curiously, and somewhat inconsistently, they must be reordained.

Whether this will be true in England remains uncertain, and whether married Anglican bishops might be able to serve as bishops in the Roman Catholic Church is highly unlikely.

The importance of this is largely for the English context, where there is an ongoing debate over the ordination of women as bishops. Anglo-Catholics are very resistant to this as they are to the ordination of women to the priesthood, and many people think that if and when the Church of England finally admits women to the episcopacy, there will be a wholesale departure of Anglo-Catholics from the Church of England. We will see.

It is probably not a very important move for the Episcopal Church. Those who have left in recent years include a few Anglo-Catholics, but many more of a more Protestant theological bent, who would chafe at papal supremacy.

I’m sure we’ll hear much more about this.

Preaching Every Sunday

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One of the biggest adjustments I’ve had to make in my ministry is that I am preaching every Sunday for the first time. My guess is my longest previous stretch was three. The adjustment is not to the work load but rather to thinking how sermons work or do not work cumulatively.

That has really struck me this month as we work through the central section of Mark’s gospel and are also reading snippets of Job.  Of course, I hope my sermons stand on their own, but I am also searching for ways to make connections week to week. Right now, I’m especially looking forward to this week’s propers: the story of blind Bartimaus and the end of Job. Juicy texts both and even juicier in conjunction with one another.

It’s also interesting to make those connections for people from week to week, to help them understand that the biblical texts aren’t single verses, or even short readings, but that they are part of larger narratives which help to shape them.

I’m disappointed that I’ve not been able to do much with Hebrews these past weeks. Perhaps I’ll remedy that situation in three years when Year B comes around again.

Proper 24 Year B

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The Whirlwind

Proper 24, Year B

October 18, 2009

I’ve been enjoying the embarrassment of riches the lectionary has given us these last few weeks. As I’ve said before, we are in the heart of those chapters of Mark in which Mark places Jesus’ teachings on discipleship in conjunction with his predictions concerning the fate awaiting him when he and his disciples finally arrive in Jerusalem. Today we have come to the end of our brief excursion into the Book of Job, and we finally hear God’s response to Job’s criticisms, questions, and demands. And the letter to the Hebrews, which I’ve not preached about, continues to expound its author’s understanding of the meaning of Jesus Christ. Wonderful texts, all, profound themes and questions.

As I’ve been reminding you these past few weeks, this section of Mark is tightly and very carefully constructed, around three episodes where Jesus predicts his suffering and death, followed by the disciples’ misunderstanding, and concluding with Jesus giving them instructions on how to be his disciples. Today’s Gospel comes immediately after the third prediction. Given that it is the third time through, the repetitive nature of the whole sequence becomes more clear, and the absolute idiocy or incomprehension of the disciples stands in ever-sharper relief.

In fact, on careful reflection, this sequence of events, with the disciples continually misunderstanding Jesus seems somewhat artificial. After all, who could be that dumb? As teachers, as parents, as bosses, if we’ve said something three times, we expect it to be learned. So if they still don’t get it, we suspect it’s not a matter of incomprehension, rather it is willful ignorance. This construction puts the disciples in such bad light, that when Matthew goes to rework this section of Mark, he rewrites it so as to soften the negative depiction of the disciples.

The first time it was Peter, the second time it was “the disciples,” this time it is James and John, the Sons of Zebedee, who put their feet in their mouths. In Matthew’s version, however, it is not them, but their mother who asks this question of Jesus.

After Jesus predicts once again, for the third time, that he is going up to Jerusalem, where he will be arrested, tortured, and executed, two members of his inner circle come to him with a special request. When he comes into his glory, they want to be at his side, they want to be closest to him. Jesus has been teaching his disciples about a Messiah who will suffer and die, and the disciples are still thinking of a Messiah who will deliver the Jewish community from its Roman occupiers. They think that they are on their way to Jerusalem to challenge the Roman legions militarily.

Jesus’ response is full of symbolism: “You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?” When they say they are ready, Jesus predicts that they will share the cup and the baptism that Jesus will undergo.

The disciples were unwilling or unable to imagine the future that Jesus predicted. They were so bound by their values and world view that they couldn’t conceive of what Jesus was talking about when he talked about discipleship, suffering and death.

I always take comfort in the way Mark depicts the disciples, even though many Christians are scandalized by his portrayal. The disciples misunderstand Jesus at every step of the way. They are unable to do the kinds of things Jesus does, heal people or cast out demons for example. And in the end, when Jesus makes his final journey from the Upper Room to the cross, the disciples leave him utterly alone, abandoned by his closest friends. Many Christians find the brief synopsis I’ve given you of the disciples in the Gospel of Mark offensive. They can’t believe it’s true, because Peter, James and John, and all the rest—except Judas of course, became the pillars of the church, they are saints, they spread the word throughout the world.

I take comfort in this depiction because Mark depicts a group of men in some respects very much like ourselves. Why were they drawn to Jesus? Why did they obey him when he said, “Come, follow me”? And Jesus’ teachings were so astounding, so out of this world, that they had no way of understanding him, most of the time. Jesus didn’t choose them because of their brilliance, their talents, skills, whatever. He didn’t read their resumes he didn’t carefully assess how they would work together, he simply called them, and they followed.

But we are like them in many ways. We, like they, are so bound by our lives, values, and assumptions, that we can’t hear what Jesus is saying to us. We hear the words “cup” and “baptism” and we immediately think of the sacraments—Eucharist and Baptism. Who knows what James and John thought Jesus was talking about? But Mark knew—the cup and the baptism, were what awaited Jesus in Jerusalem, his arrest, torture, and execution.

For us cup and baptism have almost become what scholars of symbol call dead symbols, so often used that they have lost their meaning for us. Part of the reason for that transformation over the centuries is precisely because of another image used in Mark’s gospel, and then greatly expanded upon in the letter to Hebrews. At the end of today’s gospel, there’s a word that has taken on enormous significance in Christian theology—ransom, and in the letter to the Hebrews we have heard repeatedly of sacrifice.

These words, this doctrine, have so shaped our experience, our theologies, and our world views, that is hard to hear what Jesus said in the Gospel of Mark with open ears. For Mark, this word ransom, and indeed Jesus’ death on the cross was not about sacrificial atonement, it was not about Jesus dying for our sins. It was about something different, and perhaps even more radical. Throughout these chapters we have been hearing Jesus teachings about discipleship. Take up my cross and follow me, you will drink the cup that I drink, and be baptized with my baptism. For Mark, discipleship was all about sharing in Jesus’ death, about walking with him to Calvary. Disciples were to expect the same fate that awaited Jesus in Jerusalem.

The disciples recoiled from Jesus’ words, because his suffering and death were inconceivable to them. We drink the cup, and are baptized with water, never thinking of Jesus’ words here. That we might share his fate, suffer and die as he did is inconceivable to us. But of course, it is not just our own death that is inconceivable to us. We should not be able to make sense of Jesus Christ’s death either. The doctrine of atonement, that Jesus died for us, for our sins, should not make sense. The problem is, the notion is so familiar to us, that we can no longer see the horror of it, the evil of it.

Could God, did God, require Jesus die so that we might be saved? What does that say about God? Oh, I’m not talking about God’s love, but rather of everything else, the mercilessness, the lack of compassion, the sheer necessity. What does the doctrine of atonement say about our notion of God?

Let’s leave that question for a moment and move back to the book of Job. After all, in a sense, that’s Job’s very question. The understanding of God operative in the day of the book of Job had God rewarding the righteous and punishing the evil. Job suffered, therefore, he must have sinned. But Job refused to accept the equation of sin equals suffering, so he challenged God. And after lengthy speeches, finally, at last God speaks, out of a whirlwind, and says, “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?”

This speech of God to Job is powerful, haunting, but in the end it is unsatisfying. For God does not explain Godself to Job. God simply tells Job that he cannot understand God, because God is so far beyond Job, beyond comprehension. God’s response to Job is meant to put Job in his place. It is meant to end the conversation, to shut Job up. And it does all of that, but in those questions are a reminder to us about the nature of God, and about our nature. True, God is ultimately beyond our comprehension, but this scene between God and Job reminds us not only of that, but also that too often we try to understand God by forcing God into categories of our making. We limit God by placing boundaries around God.

Job did it; James and John did it as well. When we define God in our terms, we limit the ways in which God might come to us; we close ourselves to the possibility of transformative experience. Occasionally, God comes to us in a whirlwind, sometimes God is present in bread and wine, sometimes God speaks in a still, small voice. Listen!

Teresa of Avila (1515-1582)

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Today is the commemoration of Teresa of Avila who is a rather odd inclusion on the Episcopal calendar. She’s one of the most remarkable and most important figures in the Catholic Reformation. She led an intense reform of the Carmelite order (both female and male), but she is better known for her mysticism and her spiritual writing. The Interior Castle and The Autobiography.

Teresa is interesting to me because of my double experience of her. As a historian of Early Modern Christianity, and as someone who taught The Reformations of the 16th century numerous times, I have read her as an example of a remarkable woman  with deep spiritual experience and important for the developing institutional church. To read her autobiography is to encounter someone who is caught in the midst of history. A descendant of converted Jews, a woman who sought to create for herself an authentic religious life, and sought to force other women into that life, who submitted to and challenged authority, Teresa’s autobiography is a wonderful lens through which to examine the 16th century.

But she is more than that. Reading and rereading her autobiography and The Interior Castle I am reminded at each reading by the depth and breadth of her spiritual experience, and surprised by her psychological insight, into herself, her fellow nuns, and the nature of religious experience. I used her work once in a course on Theological Anthropology in the Christian Tradition, and reading her in light of earlier authors from Pseudo-Dionysus and Athanasius to Luther and Descartes was quite illuminating.

creative prooftexting

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I always wanted to teach a course called “Creative Prooftexting,” the premise of it finding the most absurd and outrageous ways to take individual verses of the Bible out of context. Here’s a prime example:

6a00d8341c730253ef0120a5e967c0970b-800wiIt’s a tattoo quoting the Christianists’ favorite verse against Gays. Of course Leviticus prohibits tattoos:

“You shall not make any gashes in your flesh for the dead or tattoo any marks upon you: I am the Lord.” Lev. 19:28