Monthly Archives: January 2012

Rearranging (redesigning) the church furniture

Posted on by
1

I love the creative incongruity of the internet, which often is reflected either in my Google Reader or facebook feeds. To wit: Today two facebook friends linked to things they had written about seating in churches. Nadia Bolz-Weber has a post on Patheos about the restrictions placed on worship and community by traditional church pews. Scott Gunn highlights news that the Church of England is seeking new designs for church chairs. Gunn is having some fun at the CoE’s expense, but Bolz-Weber is completely serious as she points out the clear message sent to contemporary culture by traditional interior church architecture and design:

There is a critical “why” to the reason we do things this way that extends far beyond taste.  It’s missional.  In a postmodern context people are increasingly leery of organized religion and it’s attendant obsession with hierarchy.  We have peeked behind the curtain and seen only scared little men. So a shared, communitarian experience of liturgy in which we live as the Priesthood of all Believers is inviting in a way that the formality of the traditional church is not.  (To be clear, this is not the same as saying that we no longer need clergy – I still hold the office of Word and Sacrament but I hold it on behalf of the whole community and with their permission).  This population of urban, postmodern young-ish people have a deep critique of consumer culture and as such are far more interested in being producers than consumers.  This goes for church as well. And being able to worship in the round creates an accountability of presence to each other and a shared experience which allows for the community to create the thing they are experiencing rather than consuming what others have produced for them.

It’s an interesting perspective on the debate that’s going on over at the Cafe about “what’s up for grabs.”

There’s more to say about the historical development of the pew. Bolz-Weber aligns it to the Protestant Reformation and the importance of preaching. In fact, preaching was important before the rise of Protestants–the Dominicans, for example, are officially known as the Order of Preachers. Medieval preachers, and many Catholics and Protestants in the 16th century complained, often in their sermons, about the lack of attention paid to their words by the assembled congregation. Pews were in part an attempt not to make the sermon more central but to force disciplined behavior on churchgoers and to establish a clear hierarchical relationship between clergy and people, which undergirds Bolz-Weber’s larger point.

On the other hand, one of the odder moments in the debate between radical reformer Conrad Grebel and Huldreich Zwingli had to to with Grebel’s insistence that communion should be received while seated, just as the disciples were seated at the Last Supper.

This week in homelessness in Madison

Posted on by
2

An update from Dan Simmons of the Wisconsin State Journal on the day shelter in Madison. When he visited on January 2, the coldest day of the year so far, 92 people were using the facilities. Obviously, the shelter is meeting a need.

The article downplayed one significant development–the death a couple of weeks ago of a homeless man. I asked around about it today and learned from my sources some background. The man who died was a regular fixture on Capitol Square, often sitting on the bench on the corner of W. Washington and S. Carroll St. He had significant medical issues. He rarely spent the night in the Drop-In shelter and was found dead in a stairwell in a downtown building.

Another homeless man, a regular in the shelter and around Grace–he often helped us out when we needed an extra hand or some muscle, had a heart attack on Monday and is in the hospital. I’ll try to visit him tomorrow but I know his friends haven’t been able to see him.

One of the people interviewed in the article talked with me on Monday night at First Monday. He’s trying to find housing while living on SSI disability. I’m hopeful he’s been able to connect with the agencies I suggested to him that night.

 

The Church is flat–no, the church is a hierarchy

Posted on by
Reply

Two pieces published on Patheos on January 3 illustrate the struggle over ecclesiology within Christianity. The first is a report on and excerpt from Tony Jones’ new book: The Earth is Flat: The Relational Ecclesiology of the Emerging Church. Jones is one of the leaders of the emerging church movement and in this book he looks closely at eight of the most important congregations in the movement and relates those congregations to the theology of Juergen Moltmann. In an excerpt published on Patheos, Jones explores how the image of “friendship” takes on Christological significance for these congregations as well as helping them to rethink the role of clergy leadership and develop egalitarian structures. Jones is not Episcopalian; the Emerging Church movement grew out of Evangelicalism but it has a strong interest in liturgy and has made inroads within the Episcopal Church as well.

The same day, Frederick Schmidt published an essay entitled, “Jesus is not our elected representative.” Money quote:

The church is a hierarchy—in composition, character, and mission. Jesus is not our elected representative. He is King of King and Lord of Lords.

I read these two pieces while reflecting on the debate at Episcopal Cafe on renewing the Episcopal Church. An earlier post by Jim Naughton led to debate over the centrality of the Eucharist to our worship, whether clergy were needed, and so on. You can follow that discussion here. There’s comment at the Friends of Jake blog as well

I’m coming to the position that all of the discussion about structural reform in the Episcopal Church may need to begin with a thoughtful discussion about ecclesiology and mission in the context of a post-Christian world. In a situation with scarce resources, it’s easy for important debates to devolve into competition over one’s share of the pie. That’s what I often sense is taking place in the Episcopal Church–whether it’s the debate over restructuring General Convention,  the thread on the Cafe about the roles of clergy and laity, or debates within congregations over budget shortfalls.

Naughton’s question, “What is up for grabs?” is the important question. Can we do ministry and mission on the local level with our diocesan and national structure siphoning off significant financial resources? Can we maintain buildings that were constructed fifty or a hundred years ago, are not energy efficient, poorly-suited for twenty-first century ministry, and require expensive maintenance? What might an Episcopal Church look like that was freed up from its structures (historical, institutional, and bricks and mortar) to offer beautiful worship, thoughtful formation, and hospitality to a world full of people seeking meaning in life?

It certainly is an interesting time to be an Episcopal priest. Thanks be to God!

First Monday, 2012

Posted on by
Reply

Friends and members of Grace, and followers of this blog, know that on the first Monday of each month, Grace is responsible for providing the evening meal to shelter guests and others from the community who might find their way to our doors. Today was the first Monday in January, it was also the day of the Rose Bowl. We were worried that we wouldn’t have enough volunteers to help, and hopeful that because of the game, we would have fewer guests. Neither of those things happened. We had lots of volunteers, including a contingent from Madison Mennonite Church.

The meal was excellent, a baked pasta dish, with green beans on the side. The ice cream  came to us via the Fire Department. Musical entertainment was provided by Fungus Humongous who shared their music with us last year.

Three photos from tonight:

Other members of Grace will be at the church early tomorrow morning to cook breakfast for shelter guests, and most of us will be back next month, to provide another meal. Corrie and I didn’t stay throughout the meal and for clean-up, so I can’t report on how many people we served, but the shelter had been averaging right around 150 guests last week.

The Episcopal Cafe’s top ten list

Posted on by
Reply

… and Jim Naughton’s commentary.

The tenth most popular story on The Lead was a brief item I popped up late one Monday evening a couple of months ago, noting that there aren’t nearly as many Episcopalians as there used to be and wondering if we ought to try to do something about that. It was also among the items that drew that most comment.

Naughton gets the significance of that development right, and points out that the Cafe, and probably most other Episcopal blogs, are focused internally, on issues of interest primarily to insiders (“Episco-geeks” maybe?). But the important stories, the developments that will have a long-lasting impact on local congregations, on the health and vitality of the Episcopal Church, and Christianity as a whole, are taking place outside the doors of our churches.

At the end of his piece, Naughton says:

The greatest danger facing our church has less to do with its stand on LGBT issues than with its quickly diminishing capacity to witness effectively on behalf of the Gospel.

I am hoping we can pay some attention to the simple issue of survival in the year ahead.

Unfortunately, he ended on a negative note. To put the issue in front of us in terms of “survival” is to see the problem in terms of the institution, and not the gospel. I don’t think the problem is that we “have a diminishing capacity to witness effectively on behalf of the gospel.” The problem is, we are too focused on institutional questions, on structural questions. We spend too much of our time and energy debating the Anglican Covenant, and have nothing left over for witness.

It’s not a problem of our “capacity.” After all, the gospel was spread by a small, ragtag group of disciples who were uneducated and ill-equipped for the commission they were given. That didn’t matter. They were on fire for the gospel. We need to be as well, or we might as well close up shop now and not waste further effort.

 

Time like an ever-rolling stream: A homily for Holy Name, New Year’s Day 2012

Posted on by
Reply

New Year’s Day is a curious thing in the liturgical calendar. We don’t really celebrate it most years; it’s only when it falls on a Sunday that most Christian churches worship on that day. At the same time, however, January 1, because it is the eighth day after Christmas, is commemorated in another way. Traditionally called the Feast of the Circumcision, in more recent times, it has come to be known as the Holy Name, because according to Luke, it was on that day that Mary gave Jesus his name.

We are still in the liturgical season of Christmas, we will be until January 6—the Feast of the Epiphany—but already our culture has gone beyond Christmas to think about other things: New Year’s Day, the Rose Bowl, and the NFL playoffs, to name only three of the biggest. Still, it’s rather odd that we don’t make much religious observance of New Year’s Day—Christianity may be one of the only religions of the world not to make a fuss of it. In most, New Year’s Day is quite a celebration, with everything from religiously sanctioned parties to reenactments of the story of creation. For us, we leave it to the secular world to observe. Our New Year’s Day, the First Sunday of Advent, is focused not on the changing year but on what is to come: the birth of Jesus Christ.

We pause today, continuing to ponder, with Mary the significance of Jesus’ birth as we remember his circumcision and naming. Only Luke records Jesus’ circumcision. For him, it is part of his overall concern to depict Jesus as fulfillment of prophecy and in continuity with Jewish tradition. We see his parents keeping Jewish commandments concerning birth. Every good Jew had his sons circumcised, and every good Jewish mother presented herself at the designated time for purification in the temple. Luke records each of these events carefully, drawing our attention to the continuity with the past even as he makes the case that with Jesus Christ, something quite new, a new age, has begun in the world.

The Christian tradition has a conflicted attitude toward time and the passing of the years. It used to be quite common for theologians and Christian thinkers to make a sharp contrast between how time was conceived and understood in the wider ancient context, and indeed in the world’s religions, and the Christian perspective. One way of making that distinction was to contrast two different terms used for time in Greek—chronos, from which we get such words as chronology. One can think of chronos as sequential time—the passing of the days and years. By contrast, kairos is the irruption of something new and different into that sequence, an opportune moment. In Mark 1:15, the gospel writer uses kairos when he records Jesus preaching: “The time is fulfilled, the kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news.”

There is some truth in this distinction between kairos and chronos, and our liturgical calendar, which begins with Advent and culminates in Easter preserves something of that sense. On the other hand, each year we repeat that same sequence and our celebration of the new breaking in on the old, Jesus Christ coming into the world to make all things new, seems to fall back into a repetitive sameness.

We want all things to be made new, but we experience time and our lives, especially as we grow older, as a constant circling of the years. We want all things to be new, we want to change, and that’s why we make new year’s resolutions: we promise to lose weight, get more exercise, to eliminate bad habits, or to learn new things, but as we all know, those resolutions too often end up broken within a few weeks or months. And it’s not just us. It’s our whole society. One need only to visit a gym or fitness center in the first few days or weeks of the new year to see evidence of those resolutions. A return visit a month or two later will show how few of those resolutions were kept.

It’s a frustrating thing, but quite human to want to change but to find the strength to change difficult or impossible. And so it goes. Time passes; the years circle around, we make resolutions and break them, and we seem stuck in the same old, same old.

In this recurrent cycle, we believe Christ does enter to make all things new. It is that we celebrate in this season of Christmas, when God takes on our flesh, comes into our midst, and gives us new perspective, new faith. But even at those times when such newness seems quite far away, our faith proclaims that God is among us, that God is  the ruler of history.

We see evidence of that faith in our reading from the Hebrew Bible today. It is the familiar, magnificent Aaronic blessing:

The Lord bless you and keep you.

The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you

The Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.

It appears at a crucial moment in the history of the Hebrew people. Following their escape from the Egyptians and the crossing of the Red Sea, the Hebrews make their way to Sinai where they receive the Law, the Torah, and spend almost a year. Finally, as they break camp, Yahweh instructs Moses to bless the people. In other words, this blessing, or benediction, is both an ending and a beginning. It completes the time at Sinai, and is meant to accompany the Israelites as they make their way through the wilderness. Yahweh instructs Moses to tell Aaron and his sons to begin each day with this blessing. The final word of the instruction explains what is meant by the blessing—with the words of the blessing the name of Yahweh is put on the Israelites, and through those words, Yahweh blesses the people.

We don’t often think about what it means to “bless” or to “be blessed.” In the biblical tradition, blessing refers to or bears witness to, the work of God. It refers to gift we have from God that benefits individuals or communities, whether that gift be physical, material, or spiritual. It encompasses all of God’s activity, from creation to redemption.

To bless in that way is to see ourselves and our lives in God’s hands to recognize that God rules all, time, history, the changing years, and ourselves.

To bless in that way is to put our lives and our life’s changes, in God’s hands, to release ourselves from the burden of wanting to change and not being able to, to put ourselves in God’s hands. To bless in that way also means, and this may be more difficult to understand and accept, that God is working God’s purpose out, in the chances and changes of our lives, and in the chances and the changes of the world.

But perhaps Isaac Watts put it best, in his hymn “O God our help in ages past:

Time like an ever-rolling stream,

bears all our years away;

they fly, forgotten, as a dream

dies at the opening day.