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.

William Laud

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The January calendar of Lesser Feasts and Fasts (no, I’m not going to address Holy Men and Holy Women) has one of my least favorite commemorations, that of William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury. Fortunately for my Protestant sympathies there is still no commemoration of King Charles I.

Even though my liturgical sensibilities tend toward the Angl0-Catholic, as I said in a recent post, I’m always rooting for the Protestants in the English Reformation. Certainly that’s true when we get to the seventeenth century (and let’s be real, the English Reformation didn’t end until the Restoration in 1660). But Laud is no hero of mine. Even if his liturgical sympathies corresponded to mine, his political ones did not. And besides that, he lacked political sense. His attempt to impose a prayer book on the Scottish church was bone-headed, and his whole-hearted support for Charles I was all about putting your money on the wrong horse. Charles may have been deeply religious and of authentic faith, but scholars agree that he was not a very good ruler, apparently not terribly intelligent.

True, the Presbyterians and Puritans were pressing their point, but surely some compromise short of revolution was possible.

As I write this, I wonder about the relevance of the seventeenth century experience for contemporary Anglicanism. It may be that we have an Archbishop of Canterbury and Primates who are urging centralization when there are powerful forces moving the other direction.

For more information on Laud, the place to begin is Affirming Laudianism. Hattip to David Sibley.

Baptism of Our Lord

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Baptism of our Lord

January 10, 2010

Some of you know that I grew up Mennonite. It’s not something I talk about a lot, if only because I’ve gotten tired of telling the story over the years. For many of you, the term “Mennonite” conjures up people who dress in funny clothes, drive around with horse and buggies, or bring choirs to sing at the Dane County Farmer’s Market. Well, all of those things are true, I suppose, but that doesn’t at all describe my upbringing. The only funny clothes I wore growing up were the clothes we all wore in the 70s and I’ve never driven a horse and buggy. The Mennonite community in which I was raised had abandoned most of its peculiar dress and ways in the first half of the twentieth century and now if you were to visit my mother’s church, the people would look very much like typical Midwesterners.

That is not to say there are not, and were not, oddities about the Mennonite Church and over time, I’m sure I will have more to say about them and Corrie would be happy to share with you her take on them. My journey from the Mennonite Church of my childhood to the Episcopal priesthood was a long and winding road filled with wrong turns, the occasional dead-end, and a few visits to the ditch.

One of the roadblocks for me was infant baptism. The roots of the Mennonite Church lie in the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century and with a group of people who rejected infant baptism, arguing that only baptism of adults, made after a mature confession of faith, was valid. What I find interesting in my own journey is that while I came to accept the theological arguments in defense of infant baptism relatively quickly, imagining myself baptizing a baby took a very long time. My spiritual forebears had given their lives because of their commitment to adult believer’s baptism, and if you look at the 39 Articles in the back of the Book of Common Prayer, you can read the denunciation there of the practice of adult baptism.

I say all that because today we are baptizing both children and an adult. We don’t often do that in the Episcopal Church, but I suspect that as our culture changes and becomes more secular, we will be doing more and more of it. Jewel Rose will be taking the big step in a few minutes, and with her will be Cade and Phoebe Seep. I will ask all of them if they want to be baptized; during our run-through yesterday, all three of them answered that question for themselves, and I hope they will today, too. But the next set of questions, Jewel will answer for herself, while Cade and Phoebe’s parents and godparents will respond on their behalf.

It is traditional that we baptize on this day, the First Sunday after the Epiphany, because it is on this day, each year, that we celebrate the Baptism of our Lord, Jesus’ baptism by John the Baptizer in the River Jordan. It may seem somewhat strange that we do this now, when we have just celebrated Jesus’ birth a little over two weeks ago, Jesus’ baptism marks the beginning of his public ministry, and except for Luke’s mention of Jesus’ visit to the temple when he was twelve, the gospels are completely silent about Jesus’ childhood.

We heard Luke’s version of Jesus’ baptism as the gospel today, and well, having taught Bible all those years, I can’t resist pointing out the most interesting piece of Luke’s story. Unfortunately, the lectionary editors left the most interesting part of the story out. You will notice that several verses of chapter 3 were left out of the gospel reading. The reason they were left out was because in them, Luke tells the story of John’s arrest by Herod. In other words, in the Gospel of Luke, John the Baptist is arrested before Luke mentions Jesus’ baptism. Now there are good reasons for this. It’s not that Luke doesn’t know that John baptized Jesus; rather it’s because he wants to de-emphasize John. The question I always used to ask my students when they were confused about this was, “Who has more power, the person doing the baptizing, or the one who is baptized?” Of course, in the case of a toddler, the answer to that question may not be obvious.

So we don’t really see John baptizing Jesus in Luke’s gospel. Instead the focus is on something else—the expectations of the crowd, and the question concerning John. We will see this again in the coming weeks, the question of who John was, and whether he was the Messiah, the one people were waiting and hoping for.

It is a question that was asked in the first two chapters of Luke, and it is a question we will hear again as we read through Luke’s gospel this year. But it’s always a matter of just what one expects, and whether one’s expectations are realistic or warranted. In this case, the answer is not quite obvious.

The problem was not just the question of the relationship between Jesus and John the Baptizer, the problem was also about the meaning of the baptism itself. The gospels agree that John’s baptism was a baptism for the forgiveness of sins, and everyone knows that Jesus was without sin, therefore, why did he need to be baptized? That’s the question the gospel writers struggled with, and part of the reason Luke writes the way he does is to downplay the significance of Jesus’ baptism, for his own self-understanding and for his ministry. The lesson from Acts underscores Luke’s interpretation that John’s baptism was ultimately inadequate.

The crowd was filled with expectation and wondering. Baptism is an important celebration in the life of the church. It is an opportunity for us to welcome new members and to remind ourselves of our baptisms and what we committed ourselves to at that point. In fact, it’s helpful for us to watch an adult being baptized. Too often, the questions that are asked during the service, and the vows we make are treated lightly, as if they really don’t mean what they say.

The baptismal covenant lays out our responsibilities as members of the body of Christ. They are what is expected of everyone who takes that step: to continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, the breaking of bread and the prayers; to persevere in resisting evil; to proclaim by word and example the good news; to seek and serve Christ in all persons, and to strive for justice and peace, and respect the dignity of every human person.

Those are enormous responsibilities and tasks, and how each of us fulfills them is between us and God. But membership is not about occasionally attending services. Membership is about committing oneself to the body of Christ, using one’s gifts, talents, and resources to build up the community and to reach out to others. We’ve included in the service bulletin one way for you to do that. While many of you already participate in our worship service by serving as acolytes, readers, and the like, we are always in need of others. I encourage you to think about how you might help out with services, fill out the form, and put it in the offering plate. Of course, there are many other ways you can volunteer. The shelter meal which has been organized by Sarah and Sparky Watts for several years, can always use additional volunteers, for example, as can the food pantry.

The prayer book actually views adult baptism as the norm, not the exception as is our practice. That’s a good thing, because the vows that Jewel makes today are vows that we all make together. As we make them, let us make them, not only with our lips, but with our lives, promising to do all that we can, body and soul, to strengthen the body of Christ and serve God’s kingdom.

Wolf Hall update

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Finished it and have been reflecting on it ever since. I’m still not sure about the title, but of course the Seymours would loom large over the next stage of Cromwell’s life. I also liked the constant presence of Mark Smeaton, foreshadowing events to come as well. The final scenes of the novel were quite powerful. In the end, I found the depictions of both More and Cromwell utterly believable.

As I thought about the novel, I also thought more about my perspective on the 1530s, that first phase of the English Reformation. I suppose it’s safe to say my scholarly judgement was largely shaped by my own Protestant upbringing. In addition, my undergraduate senior thesis focused on the early English reformers’ attacks on the wealth of the church. In researching that project I read almost everything written in the 1520s and 1530s against the Catholic establishment and I gained a deep appreciation for the theological and ethical commitments of the early reformers like Tyndale, Frith, and Latimer. They had a vision of a church and state that were very different from the institutions that existed, and the ones that emerged in the course of the English Reformation.

Cromwell used those reformers to support his efforts to dissolve the monasteries. Of that there is no doubt. That the reformers’ ideals were not realized is also true. But somehow over the last 150 years or so, the Protestant side has tended to get the blame for what happened.

But between More and Cromwell, I suppose I would still choose Cromwell. For all of Cromwell’s faults, I find More’s choices, and his theological positions, deeply troubling.

It’s interesting finishing that book over the holidays when the attempted bombing of a Northwest flight is in the news and there is again talk about the use of torture in the media. Andrew Sullivan’s blog, as always, keeps a close watch on all of the outrageous statements by politicans and pundits. More’s problem, from my perspective, was his absolute sense of certainty. That’s always a danger, because if you know you are right, than any means you use will be justified.

The Anglican Covenant

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I suppose I ought to make some comment on recent doings in Anglican-land. Truth be told, I’ve come to find it rather tiresome. In December, the latest draft version of the Anglican Covenant appeared. Some of the background and the full text is available here. There has been considerable commentary on it. As always, one can keep abreast of the latest developments at Thinking Anglicans.

Among the saber-rattling is a statement from someone that any province that doesn’t sign on to the covenant by the end of 2011 will be excluded. Unfortunately, the Episcopal Church cannot sign on before General Convention 2012, and if canonical changes are necessary, until 2015. In other words, the lengthy process continues.

As the years have passed and the conflict within Anglicanism continues to boil, I am more and more inclined to say the Communion is simply not worth the hassle. One of my greatest concerns has always been the increasing centralization of power and the disenfranchisement of lay people in communion structures.

There have been enormous theological disagreements in Anglicanism for generations–deep fissures between Anglo-Catholics and Evangelicals, for example–and now there are deep divisions on matters of sexuality. It really is hard to see what a church that elects Rev. Glasspool bishop has in common with a church that seems to be pushing for a law that would punish gays and lesbians with execution.

Unity for unity’s sake is meaningless and overcoming diversity by centralization of power will never succeed. It seems to me that the communication and media revolution of the last decades has brought us closer together but has also heightened awareness of our differences. What it has not done is led to increased understanding.

It may be that the idea of “national churches” which is at the heart of the traditional notion of Anglicanism no longer has any meaning. Certainly, to call the Church of England a national church is misleading. It is the church of a small portion of people in England, and in fact the various parties within it have stronger ties within themselves than to the national church.

In the US, with its long history of denominational diversity, it is relatively easy for like-minded people to break off and form their own church. That has happened repeatedly, and among Anglicans in the US, it continues to happen. But whether groups from different perspectives (Anglo-Catholic, Evangelical) can remain united in spite of their theological and liturgical differences remains to be seen.

One of the most perceptive comments on the Anglican Covenant was written by Scott Gunn.

Religious whiplash

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I stopped by one of the blogs on my blogroll today, the Anglican Centrist. It was my first visit in some time. I had come to appreciate its perspective on things Anglican–theologically insightful with thoughtful commentary on developments in the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion. I read an entry that referenced someone’s attempt to visit an Episcopal Church on Christmas Eve. The blogger bemoaned that the priest’s response to this person was to discourage them from attending. This provided the jumping-off point for  screed against liberals, Obama (blaming the attacks at Ft. Hood on progressive politics) and much more. I couldn’t finish the article because of the vitriol.

The blogger at Anglican Centrist wanted to use this as an example of how not to evangelize. Now, I’m all for leaving party identity outside the church, where it belongs. But I wonder whether the priest who responded negatively sensed the anger in the person. I will welcome anyone who seeks God, and desires to love God and their neighbor–whoever that neighbor might be. You can follow the exchange here.

I’ve been a big fan of Sojourners bumper sticker: “God is not a Republican… Or a Democrat.”

After reading that, I went over to Madison.com, where there’s an article about a very different expression of religion:

The group, a branch of the Madison Church of Religious Science, is reinventing the idea of church, with “stand you up” live music, meditation, singing, chanting and “an inclusive message of self-empowerment.”

The article is here.

One of the things I’ve appreciated about my move to Madison is that I have escaped the overwhelming presence of the religious right. The author in the article cited by Anglican Centrist was highly critical of progressive Christianity’s embrace of Obama, with nary a mention of the close connection between the Republican party and the religious right and the vilification in many circles of Obama, to the extent of viewing him as the Antichrist, and advocating praying for his death.

But in a town where the guy who came to work on the boiler at Grace last week had to go next to the Freedom from Religion foundation to work, and new religious movements like the one described in the State Journal, negotiating a path as a religious leader can be tricky.

Epiphanies

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I scheduled an evening Epiphany Eucharist today, just because I thought I should. If we were in a different location, we could do it up right with the burning of the greens and all; but I couldn’t imagine the logistics of a bonfire in the courtyard of a church on Capitol Square. Perhaps someone will come up with an alternative.

When Deacon Carol asked me how many people I expected I replied, maybe no one besides us. But in fact we had a total of 17, including some first-timers. I was thrilled. Sure, 17 is a small number, but we did almost no publicity, and no arm-twisting. It gives me hope that a weekday evening service might prove to be attractive. We will be trying a number of things in the coming months on Wednesday evenings, and I hope that by next year we will have a regular weeknight program.

What surprised me most was the percentage of young people in attendance; certainly more than half of those present tonight were under 40.

I’ve been ruminating on outreach to young adults. We attract our fair share of them without really providing any program targeted at them. I occasionally hear grumbling that young adults aren’t a demographic on which we should spend time and energy. Certainly, if one is interested in attracting people who will be long-time members and have a lot of financial assets they can donate, young adults aren’t worth the effort. But on the other hand, we provide community, fellowship, and a place for them to explore their faith during a difficult period of their lives. And truth be told, many sociological surveys have revealed that involvement in church is temporary even among older demographic cohorts–often five years at the outside.

We have an opportunity to reach to a huge population within just a few blocks of Grace. It seems to me that we ought to think about programs that might speak to people in their twenties and thirties, many of whom are searching for stability and meaning in their lives.

The Light of Epiphany

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On January 6, the liturgical calendar marks the Feast of the Epiphany. We may know it best as the official end of the season of Christmas, which has twelve days, ending on January 5. The word itself comes from a Greek word that means “to manifest” or “to show,” and it was frequently used in pagan contexts to refer to an appearance of the divine. In the early Church, Epiphany was probably the more ancient celebration than Christmas. It is a festival of the Incarnation and brought together much of Jesus’ life, from his birth to the beginning of his public ministry. Among the events that were commemorated at Epiphany were his baptism and the Wedding at Cana.

With the rise of the commemoration of Christmas in the late fourth century, Epiphany came to focus on these other episodes in Jesus’ life. That focus continues to this day. All of the gospel readings used during Epiphany emphasize the divinity of Jesus Christ and the different ways in which his divinity was revealed to his followers and to the world. In the Episcopal Church, the season of Epiphany traditionally ends on the last Sunday before Lent with the reading of the gospel story of the Transfiguration.

Like Advent, Christmas, and Easter, Epiphany uses the image of light as a dominant symbol. From the star that in Matthew guides to the magi to the place of Jesus’ birth, to the celestial radiance that descends upon Jesus during the Transfiguration, light shines brightly in Epiphany. There is none of that darkness in which the Advent candles burn. The light of Epiphany shines on everything, transforming the world into the brightness of joy. Bach captures this idea in his lovely chorale, “Break forth, O beauteous heavenly light, and usher in the morning.”

I always experience Epiphany through the bright light of January. Among my favorite winter memories is walking through a woods on a moonlit night after a fresh snow. The light of the moon reflects off the snow and gives an eerie, heavenly light to the dark night. Sometimes it seems as if it were daylight. Then there is the brightness of a sunny day after the snow has fallen. The world always seems brighter to me in January. That, I suppose, is the message of Epiphany.

The Death of Mary Daly

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We learned yesterday of the death of Mary Daly, perhaps the most important feminist theologian in the twentieth century. She taught for more than thirty years at Boston College. I never met her but she had an enormous impact on Harvard Divinity School. When I arrived there in the early ’80s, feminist theology was beginning to make significant inroads there and her books were widely read.

Women still told war stories from the seventies when the concern over gendered language first surfaced. By the mid-eighties, that concern had morphed occasionally into silliness. I’ll never forget the time a female student castigated a male classmate who referrred to “the thrust” of an author’s argument. She said, “we don’t use that term anymore.”

Daly’s Beyond God the Father was an important work in my theological development, and I can remember laughing uproariously while reading Gyn/Ecology. Daly had a wicked sense of humor that she used effectively to show the patriarchal roots of language, symbolism, and religion.

There’s more about her death, and the reaction to her death, available here.

Religion’s return to the historical profession

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Until recently, I was a historian. I suppose I still am, though I’ve not done any serious historical research in quite some time. But for fifteen years, I taught the History of Christianity in Religion departments. During that time, I worked closely with colleagues from History Departments and my own research was more interdisciplinary than purely “religious” in content. Still I struggled to carve a niche for myself and my discipline both within the Religion Department, and over against medievalists and early modern historians in History Departments. It was actually amusing at times when we were team-teaching Humanities courses to divvy up the lectures.

A recent survey put out by the AHA has gotten considerable press because “Religion” is now the most popular topic for researchers. What most of the articles don’t point out is that it received a total of 7.7% of the responses, beating out “Cultural History” by 0.2%. That’s hardly earth-shattering. One blog post discussing this is here.  I’m especially amused by the quotation from David Hollinger:

Religion is too important to be left in the hands of people who believe in it. Finally, historians are coming to grips with this simple truth.

That’s quite beside the point. What matters is how one approaches religion, what kinds of questions one asks, what methodology one uses. And how do you assess belief? How do you interpret claims of the supernatural, claims of revelation? These are questions that scholars of religion have struggled over for more than a century. Their answers are not particularly satisfying, but it would be helpful for historians to have some sense of that tradition so they can avoid making the same mistakes.

All this puts me in mind of a plenary session of the Sixteenth Century Studies Conference a decade or so ago where participants were anguished over the decreased investment by institutions in early modern history. Any number of people stood up to say how important it was to teach the Protestant and Catholic Reformations so students could understand where their faith traditions came from. These arguments came exclusively from people trained in social history and teaching in history departments. In fact, that was a primary reason I chose to do my degree in Religious Studies rather than History, so questions of faith could be addressed in the classroom.

Taking another road: Sermon for the Second Sunday of Christmas, 2010

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Taking Another Road

Second Sunday after Christmas

January 3, 2009

Although Corrie would tell you otherwise, I’ve got a pretty good sense of direction. I was talking with someone a couple of weeks ago about having to find our way around, and he observed that there are two types of people: map people and directions people. Both he and I are map people. We have to see on a map where it is we are supposed to be going. Directions just won’t do. In my case, by the time I’ve received the third piece of information (take a left at the old Shell station), I will have forgotten the first two. But even with a map, and if I’ve made no wrong turns, it’s often the case that when I leave, retracing my steps is very difficult. Instead of turning right, you have to turn left, and what happens if there’s a one-way road? It often happens that a trip that took fifteen minutes one direction, can take a half hour the other. So finding the way to a new place can be difficult, but finding one’s way home is not always easy, either.

I was reminded of this while reading this week’s gospel—the story of the wise men and the star. We know it well, but we don’t often note that while the magi had little trouble finding their destination, thanks to the star, and a little help from Herod and his advisers, we know very little about their journey home. Matthew writes simply, “they returned home by another road.” The story ends there; the magi leave the scene, but continue to pique our curiosity.

In the reading from Jeremiah, the prophet promises that Yahweh will lead the people of God home. It’s actually not at all clear when this particular passage was written, but it seems to presuppose that the prophet is writing during the exile, when many of the people of Israel had been carried off in captivity to Babylon. God is promising them that their exile will cease, that God will bring them back to the promised land, that God will lead even the lame and the blind home. It is a powerful image and theme, common not only to the Hebrew Bible but also to the Christian New Testament, to both Judaism, and Christianity. Such imagery was also seen in our readings for Advent; with the cry of John the Baptizer: Prepare a way for the Lord.

But we often think of this imagery only in terms of God leading God’s people to a new place—the promised land, and not in terms of God leading God’s people back. The familiar story of the wise men is a good example. They followed a star from the east to Bethlehem, stopping in Jerusalem to confirm their directions. Let’s unpack this story a little bit; let’s make it strange instead of familiar.

First of all—the wise men themselves. As you know, there is no mention in the text of the number, that they were kings, and certainly not their names. All of that is later pious Christian accretion to the story. In fact, “wise men” is even something of a mistranslation. They are magi—astrologers. That they come from the east suggests that Matthew is trying to emphasize their foreign-ness, that they are exotic travelers. What’s more from the perspective of the Gospel of Matthew, to call someone a wise man is not necessarily a compliment. Matthew consistently contrasts wisdom and foolishness—the wisdom of the world is not true wisdom but folly.

To be sure, there are kings in Matthew’s story—two of them, Herod and Jesus with very different kingdoms and with different sorts of power. The magi come to Herod for directions, because Matthew wants to highlight the opposition between Herod and Jesus and because, I think, he wants to say that for all the magi’s knowledge, in fact, to call them wise is somewhat misleading. They have seen the star, and they want to follow it, but they still don’t know its meaning.

When they reach Bethlehem, they bow down and worship Jesus. And then they go home by another road. We don’t wonder what happened to them after that. Matthew isn’t interested in their journey home; just as Luke is not interested in what happened to the shepherds after their encounter with the infant Jesus.

I’m inclined to imagine that what happened to the magi and the shepherds after Christmas is very much like what happens to us, too. There’s this tremendous build-up: growing excitement, heightened activity, everyone’s just a little bit on edge with the planning, the parties, and all. And then comes Christmas, and inevitably, there’s something of a letdown.

But it’s not just Christmas that has such an effect. No doubt you’ve all experienced it—working toward some goal that was at once elusive, yet seemingly full of promise, even life-changing. Reaching that goal takes all of one’s effort, incredible psychic, spiritual, and sometimes physical energy. Then having achieved it, what’s next?

Perhaps some of you the George Clooney movie “Up in the Air.” His character lived and worked for a single goal, one that he hardly dared articulate to his friends. At the end of the movie he achieved it, but his victory seemed somewhat hollow. There was no one to share it with, no one who cared and the goal itself, 10 million frequent flyer miles, seemed hardly worth the effort.

For many of us, achieving the goals we laid out for ourselves may be something of a game, a way of challenging ourselves to improve our lot, to better our selves, and when we’ve achieved them, we set a new goal. For others, that goal may be our raison d’etre. And when we get there, we have nothing more to look forward to.

What the magi may have had in mind is quite beside the point. According to Matthew they saw the star; they followed it, and when they reached their destination, they returned home by another road. Did their long journey and the encounter at the end change them? Who knows? That’s not really the point. For Matthew, what mattered was to depict these men, come from afar, worshiping the newborn Christ, while others, most notably Herod, sought to kill him.

The magi knew to go home by a different road but what was next for them? Did they set new goals? If so, how? And we, like the magi, have encountered the incarnate Christ again at Christmas. What’s next for us? What are we looking forward to? How do we set those new goals? How do we find our bearings, when the star we were following no longer leads us, and we’ve reached our destination? Where do we go from here? Do we retrace our steps, or embark on a new journey?

These questions are especially compelling, now, with the beginning of a new year. We look forward to what might come, with some apprehension perhaps, but also with a sense that there are infinite possibilities lying ahead. We want to start over anew. We make new year’s resolutions to change our lives.

In the life of our parish, we have also reached an important milestone. After years of conflict and turmoil, uncertainty, many of us finally feel like we have achieved what we were working for the last few years. There seems to be some stability, new energy, and a new rector. Outgoing Senior Warden Sally Phelps and those vestry members who have seen us through so much in the past few years have stepped down. They may feel like they deserve a break, and indeed they do. As a parish, we need to thank them again and again for their hard work, and for having brought us to this place in our common life.

Yet all is not perfect by any means. There is work to be done and it is no time to rest on the journey. We must continue to move forward. Perhaps we do not yet have a clear goal in mind; there is no star leading us forward. The direction may not be clear.

The magi knew where they were going when they left Bethlehem, they were going home. They chose a different route for expediency’s sake. We may lack the clarity they had as they got up from the encounter with Christ but like them, we should be wise enough to choose the better road, for ourselves, and for Grace Church. Let us be like those, as the Psalmist says, whose hearts are set on the pilgrims’ way.