Monthly Archives: December 2009

Fear Not: Advent 3, Year C

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Advent 3, Year C

Grace Episcopal Church

December 13, 2009

What is it you fear most? Death, debilitating illness, loss of your job? Homelessness? Are there things you are so afraid of that you cannot even think of them? And how do you deal with those fears? Do you examine and analyze them? Or do you push them away, repress them, ignore them, or try to develop ways of avoiding or not noticing them?

For those of us who grew up in the fifties and sixties, we can remember fears of nuclear war. The threat was always there, lurking under the surface. Occasionally it broke through our ordinary lives, during the Cuban missile crisis, for example. But we came to live with it as a reality and as a backdrop to everything we did. More recently, the fear of terrorist attack has played some part in our lives; though again, that fear has receded dramatically since 2001.

Still, it sometimes seems as if fear is everywhere. Certainly, those of us who have been driving in Madison the past few days know the experience of ordinary, common activities becoming fear-inspiring. But it goes much beyond the lingering effects of this week’s snow storm. If like me, you tend not to pay to close attention to the news, it’s because you don’t really want to know what’s going on in the world, it’s all just too scary and depressing.

It’s often the case that when the world seems to be a threatening place, that the future is uncertain, people turn to religion. In fact one common refrain by detractors of religion is that religion both preys upon people’s fears, and survives by inciting fear. People turn to religion when or because they fear death, so it is said. Many people argue that religion creates supporters by inciting fear in people, fear of damnation, fear of hell.

Among the fears that religions, specifically Christianity, (or some forms of it) exploit, is the fear of the end of the world. Advent confronts us with that fear as we hear lessons that promise destruction and the second coming. Such fear drives the perennial popularity of movies like the recent 2012 that try to depict the future according to some religious text, in this case from the Mayan tradition. There was also the recent phenomenon of the Left Behind series that sold millions upon millions of copies. There is biblical precedent for such beliefs; we have heard over the past two weeks imagery of death, destruction, and rebirth that was used by Jews and Christians to make sense of the violent and oppressive world in which they found themselves.

John the Baptizer was an apocalyptic prophet. He foretold doom and destruction, and we hear part of his message in today’s gospel:

“YOU BROOD OF VIPERS! WHO WARNED YOU TO FLEE FROM THE WRATH TO COME? BEAR FRUITS WORTHY OF REPENTANCE…. EVEN NOW THE AX IS LYING AT THE ROOT OF THE TREES; EVERYONE THAT DOES NOT BEAR GOOD FRUIT IS CUT DOWN AND THROWN INTO THE FIRE.”

John preached what used to be called “fire and brimstone” sermons, promising hell to everyone who didn’t repent of their sins and amend their lives. John is one of those biblical figures toward whom few contemporary Episcopalians feel any sympathy. We like our religion nice and tidy, and usually not too emotional. We certainly don’t want to be pressured, whether it be to repent, or to give money. That’s all too unseemly. And many of us came from Christian traditions where, like John the Baptizer, preachers pulled out all of the stops in order to effect conversions. Some of us may still carry emotional scars from those day, scars that make it more difficult for us to find our way in faith.

And even if you come from a different religious background, or even none, you may have read Jonathan Edwards famous sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” where he describes “natural men held in the hand of God over the pit of hell” or if not that, perhaps you recall James Joyce’s wonderful description of a sermon preached at a retreat in The Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man. The notion of religion, of Christianity inciting fear and wreaking havoc on the psyches of individuals, and even whole communities, that notion is something with which we are all too familiar and perhaps turned off by.

So we hear the story of John the Baptizer and we hope to get over it and through it, and to the much better story of the birth of Jesus, which we are still waiting for. Yet Luke provides us with detail concerning the Baptizer’s message that shades the image of John as a fearsome prophet.

John delivered those frightening words, “The axe is laid to the tree, everyone who does not bear fruit will be cut off and cast into the fire.” We hear those words and imagine ourselves terrified, caught between fear of eternal punishment, the wrath of almighty God, and our own weaknesses and sin. We wonder about John’s listeners, how did they respond? Why did they come out into the wilderness to hear him preach?

We don’t notice what Luke tells us about those listeners. They don’t fall on their knees in terror, begging forgiveness. They don’t run away in fear. They engage the prophet, they ask him, “what then should we do?” Unlike the televangelist or revivalist, John doesn’t answer, “accept Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior.”

No, John gives his listeners advice. He tells them what to do. But his advice isn’t the obvious. He doesn’t tell those who ask him to come out and join him in a counter-cultural movement. Instead, he gives them rather straightforward, and not at all that radical advice. “If you have two coats, share with someone who has none. If you have food, do likewise.” That’s what John says to the crowds, to all those who ask. Luke has other people, specific groups come to John and ask the same question. And to them, John responds in much the same way. Tax collectors ask him what they should do, and he replies, “collect more than the amount prescribed to you.” And to soldiers, John says, “Do not extort money from anyone, be content with your wages.”

Now, as you probably know tax collectors and soldiers in the Roman Empire were not simply government workers. Tax collectors made their income by taking a percentage of what they collected. Soldiers supplemented their meager wages by extracting money from the people they protected. In other words, they were both part of a deeply oppressive, and profoundly unjust system. Yet John did not demand they leave that system.

Instead, he gave them relatively simple and easy-to-follow advice. Don’t game the system, he said. Do what you can. In fact, it’s not a message of fear at all, but rather of hope. He gives to his listeners a way of living in a corrupt and evil society. The only options are not to either flee from it or to make your peace with it. Instead, you can live within it and do our best. It’s a message many of us might find appealing as we try to make our own way in a difficult world. How many of us find us in situations, in jobs that present us with difficult alternatives, in jobs that are dehumanizing or exploitative, making decisions that are far removed from the ethic of love espoused by Jesus.

Our response is often to ignore the ethical implications of those decisions, to say to ourselves that what matters in the end is keeping the job and taking care of our families. But such decisions, such jobs, can eat away at us. In such cases, John offers us a way through. Do what you can, act as justly, as ethically as possible in this corrupt and evil system.

John’s preaching offers us one set of messages for this third Sunday of Advent. Caught between God’s judgment and the ethical demands of the gospel, we waver uncertain. There is yet another, very different message in today’s lessons. Paul, writing to the Philippians says, do not worry about anything. The rich language of Zechariah includes the advice, “Do not fear, Oh Zion.” More importantly, each time an angel appears in the gospel of Luke, whether announcing the coming of John the Baptizer, or the birth of Jesus, or even the resurrection, each time, the angel says, “Fear not.”

Our faith is not a faith created or sustained by fear. Rather, our faith is a faith that has no fear. Our God offers us salvation, love, not death and destruction, we need not worry about what might happen to us tomorrow, at death, or when Christ returns in majesty.

Fear not, the angel said, fear not the prophet Zechariah said. As we go forth from this place, let us go, rejoicing in the coming of Christ who offers us hope and love in a harsh and fearful world.

New Bishop for the Diocese of Upper South Carolina

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Having left the diocese only four months ago, I followed the election closely. I will admit that I was deeply concerned when the slate of candidates was announced. The addition of a petition candidate did not assuage my fears. Part of my concern stemmed from my knowledge of the diocese and of the state after living there for ten years. I had spent enough time with lay people from across the diocese and knew the general tenor of religiosity and of politics.

I also have enormous respect and deep affection for Bishop Henderson. He navigated an incredibly difficult situation after 2003 with grace and skill and he was a gifted pastor to his clergy. I hoped that his legacy would be a strong diocese, moderate theologically, and diverse in its churchmanship. The slate of candidates seemed not to reflect his wisdom and perspective.

There are those who regard Bishop Henderson as a heretic or as spineless. He is neither. The same people regard at least three of the candidates for the next bishop as “revisionist,” whatever that means.

The election is a clear repudiation of the theology and politics of marginalization and polarization. I found it interesting that Waldo+received a clear majority from the lay delegates from the very first ballot, while the clergy were more divided amongst themselves. What I learned of him from a distance suggested to me that he would be an unlikely fit for the diocese I know so well. That he prevailed so quickly and easily suggests to me that he wa eloquent and charismatic in the walk-abouts, and that he connected very quickly with lay people.

I continue to pray for the people and clergy of the diocese. I count many among my friends. They have done good work under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. And I pray that they will continue to do such good work. Thanks be to God.

Obama’s Nobel speech

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There was considerable controversy over the selection of President Obama as the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. Many saw irony, or perhaps a desire on the part of the selection committee to influence events, in the confluence of the award ceremony with the decision to increase US troop presence in Afghanistan. Obama took his critics head on in the speech.

He did more. He addressed the just war theory in the opening paragraphs. Later in the speech, he argued that no war waged as Holy War could be just: “For if you truly believe that you are carrying out divine will, then there is no need for restraint – no need to spare the pregnant mother, or the medic, or even a person of one’s own faith.” Alluding then to the “Golden Rule” that has its parallels in most of the world’s religions, Obama continued,

Adhering to this law of love has always been the core struggle of human nature. We are fallible. We make mistakes, and fall victim to the temptations of pride, and power, and sometimes evil. Even those of us with the best intentions will at times fail to right the wrongs before us.

But we do not have to think that human nature is perfect for us to still believe that the human condition can be perfected. We do not have to live in an idealized world to still reach for those ideals that will make it a better place. The non-violence practiced by men like Gandhi and King may not have been practical or possible in every circumstance, but the love that they preached – their faith in human progress – must always be the North Star that guides us on our journey.

He strikes a rather Niebuhrian tone is these paragraphs, recognizing both the fallibility of human nature, and the importance of striving for a goal that lies beyond the natural and obvious.

I am deeply troubled by a number of Obama’s choices in foreign policy and in combating terrorism–among them the reluctance to come clean on torture and especially to prosecute those who tortured, and advocated the use of torture, the defense of the Bush Administration’s justice department, and the reluctance to come clean on what happened overall during the Bush administration.

I don’t know what the answer is in Afghanistan. I doubt whether this expansion of US military presence there will be successful. It seems to me that there are only difficult choices there, and overall in dealing with terrorism in Afghanistan and in Pakistan. But I suspect Obama’s hands were tied by many factors, including the generals and the hawks on Capitol Hill. It will be interesting to see if he can extricate the troops from that place in 2011.

Having invoked just war theory at the beginning of his speech, the question of whether Afghanistan conforms to just war theory is valid. I think that question would make for a lively debate, even on the limited definition Obama provided. This is what he said. A war is just “if it is waged as a last resort or in self-defense; if the forced used is proportional, and if, whenever possible, civilians are spared from violence.” I’d be curious to hear his arguments defending Afghanistan’s conforming to those criteria.

more on the election of bishops

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I’ve never voted in the election of a bishop, and as time passes, I’m increasingly grateful for that, and hopeful that I will never be burdened with that responsibility. Seeing the firestorm that was ignited by last week’s elections in the Diocese of LA, I can’t imagine what it would be like to be casting a ballot with the knowledge that all of the Anglican Communion, and perhaps the world-wide press, would be taking an interest.

I almost did vote in the election of a bishop, and even more onerously, I was nominated to serve on the Search Committee for the next Bishop of Upper South Carolina (thankfully, wiser heads prevailed and I was not selected). My prayers are with all of those people who will be casting ballots on Saturday in Columbia. I’m wondering what effect last week’s elections is having on this week’s. How are events in the wider church having an impact on the decision-making by those who will be voting?

I’ve not followed the discussions closely and know only two of the candidates at all. I’m curious to see how the clergy and the laity, after more than ten years of Bishop Henderson, go about choosing his successor.

More on the Archbishop of Canterbury

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There have been a number of blog entries concerning what seems to be a double-standard from the ABC. He spoke out immediately to criticize the election of the Rev’d Canon Glasspool as Suffragan Bishop of LA, but continues his silence on Uganda. Fr. Jake points out the timing here.

Ruth Gledhill observed that the Archbishop is in a very difficult spot because of these two events.

Others have contrasted Williams’ statements before becoming ABC with his current stance. Among the most eloquent is from Colin Coward, who was one of Williams’ students in the 70s. Again, Ruth Gledhill has the story.

Perhaps the best analysis of the ABC’s apparent inconsistency is this blog entry. The money quote from Williams:  “I concluded that an active sexual relationship between two people of the same sex might therefore reflect the love of God in a way comparable to marriage, if and only if it had about it the same character of absolute covenanted faithfulness.”

gay bishops and gay bashing

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It was inevitable. Resolutions passed at General Convention this past summer affirmed the canonical process for ordination of priests and deacons, and elections of bishops. Namely, our canons (laws) do not discriminate against sexual orientation. In other words, sexual orientation does not preclude ordination to the diaconate, priesthood, or election, and consecration to the episcopacy.

That reaffirmation for many of us was nothing more than a statement of reality. But it also seemed to affirm the possibility that gays and lesbians might be elected to the episcopacy. For conservatives, that seemed to suggest that the decisions of General Convention in 2006 were being abrogated. In fact, the hotly disputed resolution that was finally passed on 2006, only urged that bishops and standing committees exercise restraint in consenting to the election of a gay or lesbian bishop.

Yesterday, the Diocese of LA elected an openly lesbian, partnered woman to be suffragan bishop. This has again brought the Episcopal Church into the news, aroused the ire of conservative Episcopalians, and led to much confused thinking. We will see whether the bishop-elect receives the necessary consents from standing committees and bishops. That is not a foregone conclusion by any means. You can read about the election and its aftermath in all of the usual places.

While this is going on, Uganda is debating a bill that would punish gays and lesbians with the death penalty. The Anglican Church of Uganda has thrown itself behind the bill, and today, we’ve learned that a Ugandan Anglican priest has equated gays and cockroaches. The Episcopal Church has made its views known on this issue and it is said that the Archishop of Canterbury is furiously working behind the scenes to soften the legislation. At the same time, some of those most actively involved in crafting and pushing the legislation are supported by American Evangelicals.

There is much wailing and gnashing of teeth about the “impaired” communion created by actions of the American and Canadian Anglican churches. I, for one, don’t want to be part of a communion in which a member church supports capital punishment for gays and lesbians. Let’s be done with it already.

Advent 2, Year C

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Blessed be the Lord

Advent 2, yr C

December 6, 2009

I sometimes think Advent is like being in a time warp. If you pay close attention to the readings, and the season, it’s very disorienting. First, there’s the fact that Advent is a season about two different comings—the coming of Christmas, the birth of Jesus Christ, and also about the second coming, Christ coming in majesty. Are we looking backward two thousand years, or looking ahead to who knows how many years? Or are we looking forward just two and a half weeks to Christmas Eve? Which is it?

And then there’s the reality that the world around us is in the midst of Christmas, while we are still in Advent. Advent and Christmas are two quite distinct seasons of the church year. In Advent, we wear purple, a penitential color, while Christmas is festive white, for celebration. We shouldn’t even be saying “Merry Christmas” until Christmas Eve.

If that weren’t enough, Luke adds another layer of time for us in today’s lessons. We are in year C of the three-year lectionary cycle, so we are reading for most of the year from the Gospel of Luke. Luke was written later than the gospel of Mark, which was the focal gospel last year, in year B. Like Matthew, Luke builds on Mark, relies on its overall framework, but adds considerable material. Even more importantly, Luke was not content with only writing a gospel. He wrote what was in essence a two-volume work that includes the book of Acts, and tells the story of Jesus Christ and the early church that is carefully constructed. For example, Luke uses a geographical framework that takes the story from Bethlehem, to Galilee, to Jerusalem, and ultimately to Rome and the world.

Luke is also concerned to connect the story of Jesus Christ and the early church with themes from the Jewish tradition and the Hebrew Bible. Nowhere is that more true than in Luke’s version of the story of Jesus’ birth. There are themes, images, and motifs that return us to the Hebrew Bible again. The song of Mary for example, the magnificat, is by and large a reworking of the song of Hannah from I Samuel, which she sang after giving birth to her longed for son, Samuel.

These themes and resonances come out especially in the story of John the Baptist. Luke depicts him as the last of the Hebrew prophets, dressed as they dressed, delivering a message straight from their works. But perhaps the strongest example of the connection between past and present, between God’s working in the history of Israel and God’s working in the present is the song of Zechariah, which we read together a few minutes ago: “Blessed is the Lord the God of Israel, he has come to his people and set them free.”

These words of Zechariah were the first words he spoke after first hearing that his wife would give birth nine months earlier. It is his response when his son John is circumcised, and one can imagine someone thinking for those nine months of just what to say if he ever got his voice back.

In fact, the words are Luke’s creation and demonstrate Luke’s powers as a writer and poet. Luke ties the birth of John to salvation history, to the story of God’s mighty acts in saving God’s people.

If you are familiar with the Daily Office, especially with the service of Morning Prayer, and I would encourage you to familiarize yourself with it; you would recognize the Song of Zechariah as one of the canticles that are recited or sung on a regular basis. It was in that context that I became familiar with those words, and other wonderful biblical hymns, like the Song of Simeon. As is so often the case, when we repeat things often enough we can memorize them. Sometimes memorization means that we never pay attention to the words, but it can also mean that those words become engraved in our memory, and come back to us often and at random.

Our lessons today, and throughout Advent, are full of such familiar words. “For he is like a refiner’s fire” or “And he shall purify” from the Malachi reading, and of course, Handel’s Messiah. We know them from Messiah but barely notice what they are saying. “Who can endure the day of his coming and who can stand when he appears? The images Malachi presents us with seem full of violence and the promise of the destruction of God’s enemies. Even the words of Zechariah seem directed at the same end. God promised to save God’s people from their enemies. Violence and destruction lurk just beneath the text.

And of course, there is violence to in the imagery used by John the Baptizer. John leaves the settled area of Palestine, leaves Jerusalem for the wilderness, where he takes potshots at the culture he has abandoned and threatens the coming of destruction from God. He demands repentance and promises a world upended by divine intervention: “every valley shall be filled and every mountain and hill made low.”

Violence, too, lurks just beyond the world of the text. Luke takes great care to place his narrative in the political context of the Roman Empire. He is writing after Rome has brutally suppressed the Jewish revolt and destroyed the Temple. Luke is writing with those terrible events in mind and one of his goals is to offer an alternative. That may be why he so carefully and completely delineates the powers arrayed against John, and by extension against. He lists seven names, beginning with the emperor Tiberius, and extending downward to Pilate and Herod, and including in the mix the high priest. Seven powers challenged by a voice, crying in the wilderness.

Rome promises violence and oppression, Zechariah hopes for a God who will deliver God’s people, will save them from their enemies. The nature of that salvation isn’t completely clear. Perhaps it will be violent, but the end will be radically different. Zechariah’s hymn ends with the hope that God’s tender compassion will come down from and how and that God will “to guide our feet into the way of peace.” In fact, peace is one of Luke’s central themes. He uses the word more often than all of the other gospels combined.

I couldn’t help thinking of that promise of peace this week. It is a sentiment we hear repeatedly this time of year, the words of the angels in Luke’s gospel easily roll off our tongues “Peace on earth, good will toward all.” Yet we live in a world in which there is no peace; our nation continues to be at war, increasing its military presence in Afghanistan with no end in sight and apparently no real plan nor real hope for bringing stability and order to that part of the world. Apparently, we fight because we fight.

It’s hard for us to take peace seriously in such a world, it’s hard to believe that God’s in-breaking into the world might bring peace. It’s hard to even imagine what it might be like for us to have a faith like Zechariah’s. In some ways, we might understand John a little better. We might imagine ourselves, or a different version of ourselves, getting so tired of everything—the religious establishment, the political establishment, a culture that focuses on White House party crashers and adulterous golfers rather than the intractable problems that face us as a society and a world community—we can imagine getting so sick and tired of everything that we go off into the woods, or go crazy, and start preaching on a street corner or screaming from that wilderness that it’s all going to come to an end.

We might even think that John is somehow more faithful and more responsible than Zechariah, his father. Last week, I talked about the irrelevance and futility of lighting advent candles in the growing December darkness. I spoke of the difficulty of paying attention to that light, of how hard it was to discern the signs of the times.

Zechariah saw, and knew. In the baby that was born to him and Elizabeth in their old age, he recognized the dawn from on high breaking in and he expressed his hope and faith that God would deliver God’s people. His hope was not a hope limited to himself, to his family, or even to his religious and ethnic group. His hope of peace and salvation ultimately extended to the whole world, even to the universe. Such a hope is the hope of Advent. Such hope should be our hope now and always.

Collect for the first Sunday of Advent

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Almighty God, give us grace that we may cast away the works of darkness, and put upon us the armor of light, now in the time of this mortal life in which thy Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the quick and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal; through him who lives and reigns with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

The prayer book collects are a wonderful spur to reflection. Having said them over the years, they strike me anew each time with power. That is especially true of the collects for the Sundays in Advent. I mentioned in my sermon the contrast between the candles we light on the Advent Wreath and the growing darkness of the season. This collect draws on that imagery, too. It’s been running through my head all week.

According to Hatchett, Commentary on the American Prayer Book, this collect was composed for the 1549 Book of Common Prayer. The juxtaposition of dark and light, as well as the emphasis on the contrast between now “in the time of this mortal life” and “the last day” remind us of the poles of our existence. They remind us, too, of the sharply different times in which we live, this present time, and God’s time, or eternity.

The beginning of Advent marks the beginning of the liturgical year, which takes us each year from the expectation of the birth of Jesus Christ, through his death and resurrection, to the birth of the Church at Pentecost. That annual remembering of the story with its incessant yearning for us to return to those events, to participate in them is challenged by another powerful force in the Christian message–the urge to look forward to the second coming. Those are two very different attitudes towards time, and occasionally they leave Christians feeling schizophrenic. Where should our real focus be? On the past, or the future?

Perhaps our focus should be somewhere else entirely. God exists outside of time and created time in the process of creating all things.