Category Archives: Grace Church

Hauerwas on the church–local and universal

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Several weeks ago, I came across this essay by Stanley Hauerwas of Duke Divinity School: The place of the church: locality and catholicity – ABC Religion & Ethics – Opinion.

It begins with Constantinianism, post-Constantinianism and John Howard Yoder. Yoder argued that with the rise of Constantine, something important was lost in Christianity. It’s often assumed that Yoder viewed the church in the centuries after Constantine as completely fallen. That’s not the case. Hauerwas cites Yoder’s views concerning faithfulness in the Middle Ages, but he also thinks Yoder’s analysis went deeper than that:

For him the alternative to Constantinianism was not anti-Constantinianism, but locality and place. According to Yoder, locality and place are the forms of communal life necessary to express the particularity of Jesus through the visibility of the church. Only at the local level is the church able to engage in the discernment necessary to be prophetic.

Hauerwas’s essay is actually a review of Bruce Kaye’s Conflict and the Practice of Faith: The Anglican Experiment, in which Kaye uses the controversies in Anglicanism to explore the tension between locality and universality (catholicity) in the Christian faith.

Kaye is building on ideas of Rowan Williams. In defending the Church of England’s unique role in English society, Williams (according to Hauerwas) argues that:

the New Testament testifies to the creation of a pathway between earth and heaven that nothing can ever again close. A place has been cleared in which God and human reality can belong together without rivalry or fear.

For Williams, “the role of church is to take up space in the world, to inhabit a place, where Jesus’ priesthood can be exercised. Such a place unavoidably must be able to be located on a social map so that it does not have to be constantly reinvented.”

Hauerwas’ final sentences are provocative:

The culture that inhabits us – and by us I mean Christians – is a subtle and seductive one. It tempts us to believe we are free of place. It tempts us to believe that we do not have the time to do what needs to be done, so we must constantly hurry. These temptations are often assumed to be congruent with the gospel imperatives to have no permanent home.

But in the process we lose the visibility necessary to be witnesses to the One who made it possible to be Christians.

There’s something quite interesting here–and important for us to reflect on as we think about the role of the church in contemporary culture. But it’s more than that abstract question that I find interesting. It’s the concrete question: What is Grace Church’s role in our community?

We occupy a unique space that offers opportunities, challenges, and responsibilities. What does it mean to be church on Madison’s Capitol Square?

Back in the 1980s, Richard John Neuhaus wrote a book entitled The Naked Public Square. I don’t recall the gist of his argument (it’s been over 25 years!) but the image of a public arena in which religion had no role is a powerful one. We don’t live in a completely secular world, and religious voices continue to clamor for attention and influence policy. But at the same time, the church as an institution plays a much smaller role in our society than it did even a half-century ago.

But there’s something to be said for the reality of place. For what it’s worth, Grace Church still occupies a corner of Capitol Square. Whatever mission and ministry we do at Grace, part of what we do has to involve nurturing that space where heaven and earth meet, as Williams put it, “to inhabit a place where Jesus’ priesthood can be exercised.”

A Sermon for the 3rd Sunday in Lent

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March 27, 2011

One of the things I’ve learned over the years is that no matter how much we bring to God—our questions, fears, hopes, and needs, God has a way of transforming it all into something quite different. Take me, for example. In my former parish, I was the person who was always thinking ahead—urging staff to look at the long-range planning calendar, to make sure we had all of our ducks in a row, or service bulletins, well in advance of Holy Week, to take just one example. Continue reading →

Where does my help come from? A homily for the Second Sunday in Lent

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March 20, 2011

Lent is a season when we are encouraged to examine our faith with perhaps more seriousness than at other times of the year. It is an opportunity for us to reflect on where we stand with God, to seek ways of deepening our relationship with Christ. All of our lessons encourage us, in different ways, to do just that. We are given two very different stories, the familiar stories of Abraham and Nicodemus. They challenge us to reflect on how we approach God, and how we respond when God approaches us. Continue reading →

The future of church…

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A couple of disparate pieces have got me thinking, especially in light of the role Grace has played on Capitol Square in the last month.

The first is a review by Bob Duggan of Denis McNamara’s How to Read Churches: A Crash Course in Ecclesiastical Architecture. He concludes:

Even if you are not a believer, McNamara’s How to Read Churches will make you wonder what we shall turn these monuments of the past into for us today—meaningless ruins or emblems of a passion and hope that we can, and should, recognize and incorporate into our lives.

The second is the ongoing debate on the effects of facebook on churches. Elizabeth Drescher asks the question on Religion Dispatches.

I think her conclusion is both valid and quite challenging:

It’s a start. But until churches and other religious groups, their leaders, and members feel comfortable interacting with one another around real questions of meaning and value—questions having little to do with doctrine and much to do with practices of compassion and justice—their social media participation will do no more to revitalize declining religious institutions than holding weekly Jazzercise classes in the parish hall.

Mobile computing and associated social media have not replaced the main draw of the traditional church: spiritual connection in social context. But they have made it more difficult to mask the modern, broadcast-era practice of social and spiritual disconnectedness that plays out as much in generic coffee hour chitchat about football scores and the latest lame Seth Rogan chucklefest as it does in Facebook pages that enable participants (really, the old Facebook “fan” terminology is more accurate) to see a church’s message and comment on it, but which don’t invite genuine, person-to-person or people-to-world interactivity.

I was struck, in the midst of that surreal Ash Wednesday service last week, that our congregation consisted overwhelmingly of young people, many of whom I had never seen before. They came for something; ashes, certainly, but also to be reminded of who they are and who God is, and they chose to come to a specific place, that was designed to connect with the sacred. We address profound questions in a liturgy like Ash Wednesday, that need not have any social dimension on the surface, but the very performance of them had enormous meaning, both within and outside our walls that night

A Homily for the First Sunday in Lent, 2011

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March 13, 2011
Grace Episcopal Church

As if things couldn’t get any worse. On top of everything that we as individuals and as a community were dealing with, tragedy and crisis continue to accumulate. We woke up Friday to learn of the horrific earthquake and tsunami in Japan; yesterday morning brought the news that a nuclear reactor had exploded. Today, things have gotten even scarier, with reports that two reactors may be in partial meltdown, and others in danger. Closer to home, tragedy struck as well with the death of Vince Puglielli, our friend and neighbor, father of Dave and grandfather of Josh. Like Peter Finch in Network, I want to open up my window and shout, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore.” But, there’s not much point in that, because my shouts would be drowned out by all of the other noise on the square.

Lent is supposed to be a time for us to reflect on our faith, to deepen our spiritual lives, to explore new ways of encountering and following Christ. Traditionally, it has been a time of fasting, one of those spiritual disciplines that, like many, has fallen out of favor with contemporary Christians. We may go on diets, even radical ones in order to improve our health, or more often in the quest for achieving a more attractive physique. But to limit our food or drink choices for a spiritual reason seems just a bit odd.

It may be though, that fasting would be inappropriate this Lent, given our context. Oh, I don’t mean a small gesture like giving up chocolate or some other favorite food or beverage. I’m talking about the intense spiritual disciplines that are often associated with Lent. It may be that for many of us, the emotional and spiritual strength needed to sustain us through such a season of fasting is just not there.

What might Lent look like for us this year? In the Ash Wednesday liturgy, I recite what is sometimes called “An Invitation to a Holy Lent.” In that exhortation, a holy Lent is defined by “self-examination and repentance, by prayer, fasting, and self-denial, and by reading and meditating on God’s holy Word.” All of those are certainly worthy efforts, but in this time, for many of us, it may be that we have no energy left for such things. What might a holy Lent look like for us?

Our lessons invite us to reflect on who we are, as individuals and as humanity—our very human nature. The reading from Genesis includes excerpts from the creation story, actually, the second creation story, in which Yahweh God plants a garden, and creates a human being, Adam, is the Hebrew word for human, to till it and take care of it. To end the man’s loneliness, Yahweh God fashions all manner of animals, and in the end, crafts the woman out of the man’s rib. Then in chapter 3, one of those animals that Yahweh God had previously made, the serpent, the craftiest of them all poses a question to the woman, asking whether God forbad them to eat of anything. When she realizes that the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was beautiful, good to eat, and could make one wise, she ate of it, and gave some to the man, who was with her, and he ate.

We know this story as the Fall. It may explain, at least for those of us in the Western Christian tradition, the origin of sin and evil, but as I used to enjoy telling my students, if it is about original sin, then it’s very interesting that among the words that never appear in the story are apple, Satan, and sin.  Whether or not it describes original sin, and that notion is not present in traditional Jewish interpretation, nor particularly important in the Eastern Orthodox tradition, it is clearly about human nature.

The story reveals something deep and lasting about us. We are innately inquisitive, impulsive, and seek to be independent. All of these things make us who we are. Indeed, one could say that those desires for independence, self-sufficiency, and knowledge are the very yearnings or desires that help us grow and mature. Without them, we would remain as little children, even infants.

There was another temptation that Adam and Eve faced in the garden, something besides the desire for wisdom and self-sufficiency. Eating the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil also promised the possibility that they might become like gods.

As humans, those desires for wisdom, self-sufficiency, and divinity drive us to great lengths. We might say that these desires have created all of human culture, all of the great achievements of civilization. Yet however hard we as individuals and as a race, strive, no matter how much we desire, there remains something beyond our grasp.

I am an Augustinian. That is to say, my theology and my understanding of human nature is profoundly shaped by my encounter with St. Augustine of Hippo. Now that may come as a surprise to some of you and some of you may even find my acknowledgement of that as problematic. If people know anything about Augustine, they tend to think that he is responsible for the West’s hang-ups over sexuality. But that’s a very superficial read. For Augustine, sex is just one way in which we humans seek to fulfill an even deeper yearning, a desire that is in the very core of our being, a desire for God. Because of the fall and because of our sin, we seek to feed our desires in all kinds of ways that ultimately disappoint us, and sometimes damage us deeply. As Augustine puts it in the first paragraph of his Confessions, “my heart was restless until it found its rest in you.”

In the gospel, Jesus is presented with temptations that confront us, as well, at every turn—temptations to be self-sufficient, to have great power and wealth. But the temptations were much more than that. The story of the temptations in the wilderness follows immediately after Jesus’ baptism, when a voice from heaven announced, “This is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased.” Satan came to him in the wilderness and said, “If you are the Son of God….” By rejecting the temptations and that identity with God, Jesus’ relationship with God was confirmed. To put it another way, Jesus dependence on God was reaffirmed.

In Paul’s letter to the Philippians, in a passage where he is commending the love and fellowship that community shares, he urges his readers to have the same mind that was in Christ Jesus:

“who, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God
as something to be grasped,
7 but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
8 he humbled himself
and became obedient to the point of death—
even death on a cross.

This mystery of our faith, the mystery of the cross, may be quite beyond our comprehension, or even our understanding. It is certainly far beyond our imitation. Still, the actions of Jesus Christ beckon to us across the centuries. His ability to reject the temptation to power, wealth, and equality with God helped shape him and confirm him as God’s Son.

Perhaps it is enough, this Lent, in the middle of everything that troubles and worries us, that we take as our Lenten discipline nothing more than reflection on that gift, on that miracle. We know what comes when we grasp for security, power, and wealth. We know our deepest desires can be met not by any of those things.

To desire God. Perhaps this Lent, that is enough. To seek God where God may be found, in the example of Jesus Christ, but, yes, also deep in our own hearts, where, with Augustine, we might say, our hearts were restless until they found their rest in you.

 

Grace in the midst of it.

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Another Saturday, another rally. There was a good deal of sunshine today, but it was cold and rather windy. I wasn’t sure what to expect when I got downtown this morning. After Wednesday and Thursday, I thought the mood might be somber. It wasn’t. There was a great deal of exuberance and laughter in spite of what had happened. Perhaps the tone was set by the tractor-cade:

Here’s the view of W. Washington from the courtyard this evening:

Here’s the view from Grace this afternoon:

We were helped by a great group of volunteers and many parishioners dropped by to see if they could help (and to warm up). We had hot cider on offer. That and our warm space were much appreciated as the rally wound down.

I am poured out like water

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For some reason Psalm 22:14 has been running through my head since last evening. The full verse reads:

I am poured out like water;

all my bones are out of joint; *

my heart within my breast is melting wax.

Psalm 22 begins with “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” The Psalmist’s cry is repeated by Jesus on the cross in Matthew and Mark. The Psalm is a profound reflection on personal pain and suffering that ends in a triumphant expression of praise of God. It probably served as the template for the shaping of the passion narrative in Mark and is used liturgically by many churches during the Stripping of the Altar on Maundy Thursday and is designated for use on Good Friday.

No doubt, my memory called it up because of Ash Wednesday and thinking ahead to Lent. I find much of the imagery problematic when used as personal devotion, however powerful it is in the context of communal worship during Holy Week.

But v. 14 speaks to me, and for me, today.

Those who read my blog regularly may remember that I mentioned at some point in the last three weeks that I was caught completely unawares by both the protests and in thinking what role Grace might play because of its location as “the church on the square.” I’ve been reacting, often without the time for reflection that I want to take. It has also up-ended everything else at Grace. Our Lenten planning, begun in early February, came to a crashing halt and we’ve had to piece it together at the last minute.

This week was intense for reasons quite beyond events on the square. We had an elaborate and exquisite liturgical and musical celebration on Last Epiphany, with a Haydn Mass and string players. Monday was the first Monday of the month, so that meant we were feeding 150 people from the Men’s shelter and the community. Then came Shrove Tuesday, and Ash Wednesday. The Capitol Square, though, was quiet, and I felt like I was able to catch my breath and was hoping that after Ash Wednesday I could regroup and enter fully into the season of Lent.

Events at the Capitol overtook us. The protests that provided a backdrop and accompaniment for our service. It was surreal.

It was while driving home that the verse of the psalm first came to me. It remained with me as I talked with Corrie about the day, we followed events on the internet, and then watched a few minutes of local news.

It remained with me when she said, “We’ve got to do something. You have to organize volunteers to be in the church tomorrow.” I replied, “I can’t do anything. I can’t write an email right now.” In the back of my mind was, “I am poured out like water.” A few minutes later, I went to bed, reciting that verse to myself.

When I awoke in the morning, it was still with me. I managed the email; we got the volunteers. And I went off to Clergy Day which was a welcome reason to be away from Grace and Capitol Square, for at least most of the day. But still those words were on my lips and in my heart, “I am poured out like water.”

Being with Bishop Miller and with my brothers and sisters among the clergy today was restorative. Many expressed their good wishes, their support, and told me I and Grace were in their prayers.

As they spoke, shared, hugged me, and offered to help however they could, I was deeply moved and uplifted. But still, the tears were close all day, “I am poured out like water.”

When we talk about Lent, we often use language of desert and wilderness. As a community, a city, a state, we are in a very difficult place. Wherever we stand on the political debates, deep harm, perhaps irreparable, has been inflicted on our community and on our body politic.

I came home on the bus this afternoon, really the first time I’ve ridden the bus in the past few weeks. As I was waiting, a young man engaged me in conversation. I’m sure he was a student. He had been at the Capitol and asked where I was headed. As we talked, and as he learned that I was Rector of Grace, he began to open up about his fears. I was grateful to God when my bus came before we were able to enter to deeply into conversation and just as two other bystanders began to engage us.

“I am poured out like water.” I will stay away from Grace and Capitol Square tomorrow, but somehow I have to open myself up to God enough so that I can craft a sermon to preach on Sunday, the First Sunday of Lent.

While I was at Grace this afternoon, I took the time to pass through the nave and chat with the volunteers who were present. One of them said that, while she couldn’t carry a sign, walk around the Capitol, and protest, she could be in the church, sit, and pray. She said she was praying for me. My hope is that everyone who reads this blog prays for me, for Grace, and for Wisconsin.

“We are poured out like water.”

Ash Wednesday: The Changing Drama of a day

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Earlier, I posted a photo showing what the Capitol looked like at 6:45 this morning. We received an unexpected snowfall. I wasn’t sure at 6:55 that anyone would make it to our 7:00 service, but a few hardy souls arrived. The beauty and silence of our surroundings made our worship meaningful, allowing us to reflect on the day, our human nature, and the God who created us. I had prepared a homily, but instead of preaching it, I reflected on our human nature, laid bare for us in the ashes of Ash Wednesday, and in the love of the God who created us.

What a difference eleven hours makes. It was obvious from the noise outside that as we prepared for our 6:00 pm service, things were heating up. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I hoped to use the Joel reading to think about the  significance of social and communal sin.

I’m not sure it worked, but the incongruity of it all struck home after the exhortation (“An Invitation to a Holy Lent”). There is an instruction in the prayer book for silence following the exhortation and before the imposition of ashes. We kept the rubric, but there was no silence. We could hear the chants from the capitol, but even more distracting were the horns of passing cars.

We could still hear the chants and the horns as we began the Litany and prayed:

We have not loved you with our whole heart, and mind, and strength. We have not loved our neighbors as ourselves. We have not forgiven others, as we have been forgiven.
Have mercy on us, Lord.

We have been deaf to your call to serve, as Christ served us. We have not been true to the mind of Christ. We have grieved your Holy Spirit.
Have mercy on us, Lord.

We confess to you, Lord, all our past unfaithfulness: the pride, hypocrisy, and impatience of our lives,
We confess to you, Lord.

Our self-indulgent appetites and ways, and our exploitation of other people,
We confess to you, Lord.

Our anger at our own frustration, and our envy of those more fortunate than ourselves,
We confess to you, Lord.

Our intemperate love of worldly goods and comforts, and our dishonesty in daily life and work,
We confess to you, Lord.

Our negligence in prayer and worship, and our failure to commend the faith that is in us,
We confess to you, Lord.

Accept our repentance, Lord, for the wrongs we have done: for our blindness to human need and suffering, and our indifference to injustice and cruelty,
Accept our repentance, Lord.

For all false judgments, for uncharitable thoughts toward our neighbors, and for our prejudice and contempt toward those who differ from us,
Accept our repentance, Lord.

For our waste and pollution of your creation, and our lack of concern for those who come after us,
Accept our repentance, Lord.

Restore us, good Lord, and let your anger depart from us;
Favorably hear us, for your mercy is great.

Accomplish in us the work of your salvation,
That we may show forth your glory in the world.

By the cross and passion of your Son our Lord,
Bring us with all your saints to the joy of his resurrection.

To put the debates over the budget and collective bargaining in the context of Ash Wednesday and Lent is no easy thing but knowing what is occurring outside our walls as we pray meant we were praying not only for ourselves but for our whole state.

The past weeks have been interesting, challenging, and incredibly stressful. Lent brings with it its own intensity. Given what happened tonight at the Capitol, the task of reconciliation will become even more difficult; our task as Christians, to respect the dignity of every human person, to love our neighbor as ourself (and our enemy as well), and in the midst of the cacophony, to trust in a God who is “gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.”

Sanctify a Fast: A Homily for Ash Wednesday, 2011

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March 9, 2011
Grace Episcopal Church

When I was a grad student at Harvard, one of my work-study jobs was helping to catalog a vast collection of what librarians and archivists call ephemera. In this case, it was material related to the history of religion in America in the first half of 19th century. Almost all of it was from New England, and in keeping with the historical roots of Harvard Divinity School, almost all of it was related to Unitarianism or Universalism. Continue reading →

Ash Wednesday on Capitol Square

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Here’s what the Capitol looked like from Grace this morning:


Quiet and beautiful.

It’s hard not to think about the protests when preparing for Ash Wednesday and Lent, particularly when dealing with a text like Joel 2. I attempted in my homily to make a connection between the communal repentance advocated in Joel and our usual focus, on Ash Wednesday and Lent, on personal repentance. I’m not sure whether I pulled it off, but I’ll post the homily in any case, in a few minutes.

I spent some time before the 12:10 service offering ashes to passers-by. A couple of protesters saw me from across the street and ran over. They were clearly from out of town, for one said, “I hoped somebody would be doing this.” There wasn’t a lot of foot traffic on the square, the weather probably kept people inside today but my little gesture of bringing the ashes out onto the street met with smiles, laughter, and acceptance. A number of people thanked me, and as one woman passed by, I heard her say, “Oh, yeah, I forgot it was Ash Wednesday.” I hope my presence there didn’t make her feel guilty.