Author Archives: djgrieser

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About djgrieser

I have been Rector of Grace Episcopal Church in Madison, WI since 2009. I'm passionate about Jesus Christ and about connecting our faith and tradition with 21st century culture. I'm also very active in advocating for our homeless neighbors.

First Mondays at Grace

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We’ve been calling it the Shelter Meal but that doesn’t describe what takes place at Grace. On the first Monday of each month. Grace takes its turn providing the evening meal for the guests of the Men’s Drop-In Shelter. This was something that began long before I arrived at Grace, but Corrie and I thought it had the potential of becoming something quite exciting. It has.

We try to create a great meal, and great community as well–among the shelter guests, and visitors from the community who might come in for a meal–community for our volunteers, too. We invite our guests to come in and take a seat, and our volunteers offer table service. While they eat, we have musical guests, sometimes from Grace, sometimes from the larger community. While the meal, service, and clean-up is staffed by Grace parishioners, there are also people from the community who come in and help out. For example, I met a guy tonight who works on Capitol Square but lives on the west side. He wanted to volunteer downtown, so he contated us. I’m sure he will be back.

Besides fellowship and entertainment, we also want to provide a delicious meal. Tonight in honor of Mardi Gras, we had chicken and sausage jambalaya, roasted sweet potatoes, and corn and black bean salad. For dessert, there was ice cream (Sassy Cow gave us an incredible deal on incredible ice cream! Thanks so much!), banana sauce and chocolate sauce. We all had a great time. Here are some photos:

 

The Midtown Jazz band warming up. They were hot!

The band likes to brag that they have over 300 years of experience playing jazz.

In the middle of all that’s going on around us on Capitol Square, it’s good to do something tangible that touches the lives of people and puts the gospel into action.

Facebook and the Church

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The Episcopal Cafe continues to direct us toward debates on the relative merits of churches using social media, and the longer range implications of the growth in social media for religious institutions.

Most recently: Four questions on social networking. They are:

  1. What will happen to churches that are anchored in historic beliefs and hidebound in traditions, where hierarchy prevails over democracy and where expectations are that individuals will support the institution without question?
  2. How will clergy of all ranks respond now that church institutions are being peppered with demands for accountability from people in the pews?
  3. How will scholars debate online with integrity disciplines such as theology, ethics, and discipleship when the conversation opens up to those misled by the many irresponsible, unfounded myths, legends and outright lies passed along via the Internet?
  4. Can enthusiasm for various missions and ministries expressed via social networking be translated into real-life, feet-on-the-ground human effort and relationships?

They also comment on Ian Paul’s discussion of the benefits of facebook for ministry: Using facebook to build Christian community. I find his first two observations especially trenchant. Facebook connects me with people I don’t see except on Sunday, and people I don’t see at all regularly anymore. I think it strengthens community and it also nurtures the bonds of community and pastoral connection with people who have moved away.

Finally, they ask: Will Facebook kill the church? Picking up on an essay written a year ago.

We are in a rapidly changing culture with the decline of institutional religion and the rise of social media. What will happen is not at all clear, but what I am seeing is that social media, my blog, facebook, etc., are ways of reaching out to people who might not be closely connected to the church and finding ways of tightening those bonds.

I was struck on Saturday by comments from a number of people who walked past while I was standing outside of Grace, talking to people. Strangers came up to me and said that they had heard what we were doing, praised our hospitality, and thanked us. Had they learned of our open doors by seeing the sign? My guess is, most heard through the grapevine, facebook, or twitter. It has raised our profile in the community.

Now, we will we get new members or “pledging units” from this effort? Who knows? What I do know is that we are making a difference in people’s lives, in some small way.

St. Teresa of Avila

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I mentioned her in my sermon. Andrew Sullivan posted the following poem today: “Teresa” by Richard Wilbur, who turned 90 this week.

After the sun’s eclipse
The brighter angel and the spear which drew
A bridal outcry from her open lips,
She could not prove it true,
Nor think at first of any means to test
By what she had been wedded or possessed.

Not all cries were the same;
There was an island in mythology
Called by the very vowels of her name
Where vagrants of the sea,
Changed by a word, were made to squeal and cry
As heavy captives in a witch’s sty.

The proof came soon and plain:
Visions were true which quickened her to run
God’s barefoot errands in the rocks of Spain
Beneath its beating sun,
And lock the O of ecstasy within
The tempered consonants of discipline.

via The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan.

Teresa, as I said today, thought deeply and extensively about prayer, and wrote with great insight. She was especially concerned to distinguish between “true” visions and those which seemed to come from Satan or were self-induced. Jessa Crispin, in an essay devoted to the question about the relevance of philosophers’ lives for their thought, uses Teresa as an example of someone who “did not always live out their philosophy.” In fact, Teresa’s life was full of times when she lived far from the ecstatic experiences for which she was famous, when her attempts to come close to God were thwarted, either by herself or by God, and faced constant criticism from churchmen who thought her experiences were faked.

At the same time, she was well aware that such experiences could be faked, or products of self-delusion. In her autobiography, she writes with considerable sophistication about how to distinguish the “real” from the faked and shows herself a perceptive psychologist.

Do not be afraid: A Sermon for the Last Sunday after Epiphany

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March 6, 2011

Today is the Last Sunday of Epiphany. It’s been a long season of Epiphany, almost two months. Christmas is nothing more than a faint memory and if we were in a different part of the country, spring would be well on its way. The season of Epiphany always begins with the story of Jesus’ baptism by John. It always ends here, with the story of the Transfiguration. In between those two, we hear stories of Jesus Christ’s appearances to his disciples and to us. This Sunday provides us with another opportunity to experience and try to understand the glory of Christ, even as we look forward to Lent with its very different emphasis.

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Doubt and Certainty

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Mark Vernon writes in The Guardian today:

Doubt in relation to religion is almost mandatory in public life, whereas doubt in relation to politics is almost forbidden.

He is talking about the situation in the UK, of course, but what he says is of interest to me, especially given two issues I’ve been following in my blog–the debate over Rob Bell and universalism and the protests in Madison.

Vernon asks:

If God is not to be a tyrant, but is to allow us a degree of autonomy, must God not introduce a corresponding degree of doubt and uncertainty into human experience?

It’s an excellent question. Certainty, whether in politics or religion, tends to heighten conflict and cause suffering.

To Change the World

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I’m working through James Davison Hunter’s To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World.

I’ve been carrying it around in my bag for the last few weeks, in hopes of cracking it open. I finally did today. It’s quite interesting. Hunter is a Professor at the University of Virginia. The book is an analysis and critique of the ways in which Christians, left and right, have approached cultural change. Hunter argues that change in culture occurs largely by means of networked elites, i.e., top-down, rather than bottom-up. He points out that for all of their efforts in the second half of the twentieth century, Christians were unable to effect much cultural change at all. Take a hot-button issue like same-sex marriage. Recent polls suggest that in spite of all of the efforts against it, a majority of Americans now support it in some form.

I’m not all the way through, but it’s clear where Hunter is headed. He starts, not with Jesus’ teachings, but with creation: “In the Christian view, then, human beings are, by divine intent and their very nature, world-makers.” He argues against the politicization of Christianity, either by left and right, and seeks to place Christianity’s role in “faithful presence.” I will say more about this idea in a later post.

It’s interesting reading in the context of what is taking place in Madison right now. I have made the case that Grace Church, by its very presence on the square, is an actor in the current drama. Whatever we do or don’t do sends a message. Hunter, I’m sure, would agree, because of his perception that politics (power) has become all-pervasive in our culture. Yet what should I or Grace do?

We have opened our doors, welcoming in those who are protesting in the streets, offering hospitality, a place to warm up and rest. As we open our doors, we offer something else, too. Grace is a beautiful space. As I’ve said here before, people sense its beauty, experience it, and for many who enter, they have never experienced anything quite like it before.

This weekend we will be doing a couple of other things. First, we will make more room for prayer. I don’t know how many people will come in tomorrow, but we will offer our chapel as a place where those who seek silence and prayer can find it.

Serendipitously, we will also be offering two musical experiences that will also evoke the beautiful. The first is a concert Saturday night by Seraphic Fire. The second is a performance in the liturgy at 10:00 on Sunday morning of a missa brevis by Haydn. Each will be an opportunity to encounter beauty. Whatever else we might do this weekend, we can do that. We can invite people to encounter beauty, and through beauty, to encounter God.

I don’t mean this as a distraction from what’s taking place on the streets. Rather, it seems to me that beauty can put everything else into its proper perspective, and by helping us touch the divine, help to ground us when all around seems to be chaos.

 

Rob Bell and Universalism

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There’s been quite the dust-up among Evangelicals about Rob Bell’s new book, in which, according to HarperOne’s marketing, “With searing insight, Bell puts hell on trial, and his message is decidedly optimistic—eternal life doesn’t start when we die; it starts right now. And ultimately, Love Wins…”

Here’s Christianity Today’s take on the controversy.

Rob Bell, for those who don’t know, is pastor of Mars Hill Church, and has produced a wildly popular video series, entitled NOOMA. The series was used for a time by a group at my former parish. Many of those in attendance found him inspiring. Maggie Dawn judges his genius in his ability to communicate rather than in the depth of his theology.

As Dawn points out, universalism is not particularly rare in the History of Christianity, nor even among evangelicals or conservatives. As examples, she cites no less an orthodox figure than C.S. Lewis. It’s an issue that continues to fascinate people, just as it continues to rouse the ire of many. In part that’s because the notion of a loving God who condemns people to hell for eternity seems an oxymoron and is an issue which for many thinking people lies at the center of their discomfort with Christianity.

It’s a question that often comes up in my random encounters with people. Sometimes it’s couched in terms of whether adherents of other religions can be saved. Sometimes it’s phrased as I did it above, as a problem in the nature of God. In either case, it is almost always asked by someone who is sincerely struggling with the issue and is seeking guidance or clues on how to begin to think about the question in such a way that helps them make sense of their own experience and deepest values, as well as their experience of God.

When I respond to them, I try to honor their experience, values, as well as their understanding of God and try to explore with them the full implications of belief in a loving God, and what might limit that love.

A few links related to the Wisconsin Protests

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It really is becoming surreal. After the arrival and departure of the concrete barriers, access to the Capitol remains very limited. Even former Democratic congressmen can’t get in.

Democratic members of the Assembly have taken their desks outside and meet with constituents there.

There are voices of moderation. One is that of Republican State Senator Dale Schultz, who also happens to be Episcopalian. Here are excerpts from a recent interview. It’s well worth watching, wherever your political sympathies lie:

Here’s a link to a thoughtful piece by Paul Grant, a doctoral student at UW Madison, in which he talks a little bit about the unique culture of Wisconsin, going back to the 19th century.