I’ve been reading Peter Brown’s immense and marvelous Through the Eye of a Needle: Wealth, The Fall of Rome, and the Making of Christianity in the West 350-550. It’s a magisterial examination of the transformation of Rome and of Christianity in those two centuries, looking at those transformation through the lens of attitudes toward wealth and the poor. The standard account of the rise of Christianity focuses on the conversion of Constantine and sees a rapid move from paganism to Christianity and an equally rapid and thorough transformation of the pagan aristocracy into the hierarchy of the Christian church.
Brown tells a much more complex tale of a slow conversion to Christianity picking up speed in the late fourth century. But even so the tug of paganism remained and aristocratic Christians continued to put on games and donate to secular causes well into the fifth century. The same is true of wealth as those who converted to Christianity and sought to donate their wealth to the church were challenged by family members who saw this as a threat to the family. Interestingly, because legally it was difficult to leave legacies to corporate bodies or institutions, wealthy Christians had to name the local bishop in their wills.
Brown ranges far and wide in his study. He looks closely at Jerome and Rome, at Ambrose and Milan, and Augustine of Hippo. But he also pays close attention to Paulinus of Nola. Importantly, he offers a vivid picture of life in the country villas of Gaul and Spain.
There is much to commend this work as scholarship, but I couldn’t help but reflect on its significance for helping us think about Christianity in the twenty-first century. The fourth century has remained fascinating to Christians and it has re-emerged as something of a battleground among competing versions of twenty-first century Christianity. One of the most powerful narratives at work is the idea of the “Constantinian fall of the Church” that’s recently been challenged by Peter Leithart.
As we move to what many call a post-Christian society, many look back to the pre-Constantinian church for guidance, a church that wasn’t in power. Brown problematizes the idea that suddenly with Constantine the church became the center of political and economic power. The story he tells is much more complex. He shows conflict between clergy and laity, especially lay people who resisted conforming simply to certain standards of Christianity. But he also points out that in the sixth century, the main force trying to set the clergy apart as a separate caste (special dress, tonsure, continence) came from the laity, not the clergy. Brown shows for the fourth and even into the fifth century, many lay people tried to negotiate between competing versions of Christianity, and also tried to remain true to the traditions of Roman civic religion and of their families.
One of the dangers of contemporary Christianity is to revert to a sectarianism. There is seductive appeal in the image of a gathered church following Jesus Christ closely in a hostile world. That image fuels much of the rhetoric of the religious right, but it also drives Anabaptism and neo-Anabaptism. Even mainline congregations in the midst of a different narrative of decline, might find such an image attractive. But the story Brown tells is of different visions of Christianity competing in the fourth and fifth centuries. Importantly, his evidence that the emperors did not lavish wealth on the church until very late in the fourth century is absolutely convincing. The Christianity that emerged in the fifth and sixth centuries did not succeed primarily because it had the power of the empire behind it, but because it was best adapted to the changing historical circumstances. And even then (as now), the institutional church, the clergy and hierarchy, had limited power to shape the faith and practice of ordinary Christians.
Whether or not we are facing the same magnitude of cultural shift in the twenty-first century that late Antiquity experienced is not clear. Certainly Christianity is facing a context it has not encountered before. Brown’s book is an important reminder that history is much more complex than we often assume, and that the future may turn out very different than anyone could imagine. He also shows the creative ability of Christianity to adapt to rapidly changing circumstances.
G.W. Bowersock’s glowing and thorough review is here.
The news has broken that Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Buenos Aires, Argentina has been elected Pope. A Jesuit, he has taken the name of Francis I, no doubt a nod to the Franciscan tradition. He was in contention in 2005 when Pope Benedict XVI was elected and is now 76 years old.
The current take is that he straddles the divide between liberals and conservatives in the church. He has a passion for social justice but is staunchly conservative on sexual matters. As an Argentinian, his election is a symbol of the global shift in the Roman Catholic Church away from Europe.
I watch very little TV and the only time I watch the cable news channels is if the treadmill I select at the gym is underneath a TV turned to one of those channels. Even then, I don’t hear what the pundits and reporters are saying because my earbuds are firmly fixed and I’m either listening to music of my choice or a podcast (often that of workingpreacher.org).
This morning CNN was showing the mass and the procession of the cardinals into the Sistine Chapel. As liturgical processions often are, it was impressive. And as those of us interested in such matters usually do, I noticed the variety of vestments. Some cardinals were wearing elaborate lace cottas; others had more simple garb. I spied one that looked very much like my own. As is often the case in liturgical processions, the camera caught the hand of a bishop (? he was in a purple cassock) stretching up to rearrange the stole of the cardinal in front of him.
Such processions are intended to convey the majesty and power of the Church. That’s true whether it’s a procession of cardinals or a more simple procession at a parish Eucharist. This one did so. As the cardinals moved from the baroque splendor of St. Peter’s to the Renaissance beauty of the Sistine Chapel with its frescoes by Michelangelo, the images sent around the world were meant to signal to all of us the power, majesty, and endurance of the Roman Catholic Church.
The symbolism, or intended symbolism, of the cardinals’ procession this morning, with all of its pomp, its appeal to historical precedent, and frankly its nostalgia, seems rather hollow in the face of the crises facing the Roman Catholic Church and religion in general in the west. I was struck by the narrow demographic reality of those who will elect the pope, the ostensible head of a church with over a billion members. 115 cardinal electors, all of them male of course, the majority European. Their average age (almost 72 years old) is slightly above that of the conclave that elected Pope Benedict XVI in 2005. Remarkably, that’s above the average age of the group that elected John Paul II in 1978 (67). The youngest is 53: Baselios Cleemis Thottunkal of India. 58% of them were named by Pope Benedict XVI. 35% are members of, or retired from, the papal curia (24% in 2005) They are not representative of the world-wide church; but then they are not meant to be. More on the numbers here or here.
Writers for the National Catholic Reporter have this to say about current speculation concerning which cardinals have the inside track:
Many here, following lead of the Italian press, are calling this “a race with four horses.” Scola is said to be in post position, with Canadian Cardinal Marc Ouellet, Brazilian Cardinal Pedro Odilo Scherer and at least one American following.
New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan seems to be gaining supporters, the Italian newspapers say, but Washington Cardinal Donald Wuerl is a possible compromise candidate should the cardinals be unable to find a pope in the first few rounds of balloting.
The Vatican bureaucracy, known as the Roman Curia, has been the subject of sustained criticism in the 10 meetings, or general congregations, the cardinals have met in over the last week.
The Internet, and especially social media, have dramatically altered the conclave, or at least the world’s experience of it. The difference from 2005 is remarkable. My twitter feed is full of jokes, links to commentary, and comments about the election. There is intense interest in it, even among those of us who are not Roman Catholic. On one level, I suspect that interest is generated by the appeal of contests–whether they be elections or sporting events.
And we might wonder with Garry Wills whether the next pope even matters. Sure, he might be able to make changes in papal bureaucracy; if he’s a miracle worker, he might find a way through the sexual abuse crisis. But can a pope do anything about the increasing secularism of the West and increasing religious conflict elsewhere in the world? We are in an age of globalization but there are also powerful centrifugal forces at work (just ask the Anglican Communion). Will the Roman Catholic Church be any more successful in negotiating among the crises and the cultural forces that are challenging it? Can the head of a hierarchy increasingly isolated from the daily lives and concerns of the vast majority of humanity offer the good news of Jesus Christ in words that connect with them and their experience?
Watching the procession from St. Peter’s to the Sistine Chapel with the sound off may be an apt metaphor for the ultimate significance of what’s taking place in the conclave today and in the days to come.
The parable of the prodigal son, the gospel reading we just heard, is probably one of the two or three most familiar of all Jesus’ parables. Most of you have heard the story many times before—in sermons or in Sunday School. It’s so familiar and so beloved because it conveys to us an appealing image of a loving and forgiving God, an image that comforts and reassures us. As familiar as the story is, it is told with drama and detail that draws us in, inviting us to enter into it and to identify with one, or perhaps more, of the characters. So I’m going to invite you to reflect for a moment on which character you most identify with. Turn to your neighbor, introduce yourself if you don’t know each other, and share with each other where you find yourself in this story—does the situation of the older son, younger son, or father most resonate with you at this time of your life? And why is that the case?
This rich parable invites us to do what we’ve just done, to enter into it to put ourselves in it. When we do so, we begin to connect the deep emotions of each character with emotions we’ve experienced in the past, or perhaps are experiencing right now—feelings of repentance, resentment, joy and love. But now I’d like to shift gears a bit, inviting you to hold on to that exploration of your emotions and the emotions of the characters and look at the parable’s larger context.
Luke wants us to read the story in a particular way. The lectionary signals his desire to us by including the very first verses of chapter 15 that tell us about the Pharisees’ complaint that Jesus hangs out with tax collectors and sinners. Luke follows those verses with two other familiar parables before giving us the one we know as “The Prodigal Son.” Those are stories are the one about the shepherd with 100 sheep who loses one, and the woman with ten coins who lost one. So the set up, by the time the reader gets to today’s parable is clear: rejoicing upon finding that which was lost.
The other pieces of information that may help throw light on our parable are a couple of things about ancient culture. First, the idea that a father might give his son part of his inheritance, while not illegal was unheard of. One’s property was disposed of only at death, and for a child to demand his share of it before his father’s death is sort of like telling your father, “You’re dead to me.” Presumably, the property, in this case the land, would have been sold. It’s easy to imagine what both father and elder son thought whenever they passed by the property they had once owned and watched the new owners working it. It would probably also have meant loss of income.
In addition to all that, there’s what happens when the son “comes to himself.” He wastes his inheritance in dissolute living, ends up eating fodder meant for pigs, basically living with the pigs, and finally decides he’s had enough of it. He composes a speech that he hopes will, if not restore him in his father’s good graces, at least ensure him of a better life and half-decent food. He heads home tail between his legs. He is probably ashamed and embarrassed and he expects to be shamed further when he arrives back home.
In her commentary on the text, Alyce McKenzie points out that Roman Palestine village culture was a culture based on honor and shame. By his behavior, the son had brought shame on both himself and his family. Apparently, villages performed a shame ceremony when a villager returned after having left the community for the gentile world, or married a gentile woman. Upon his return, the whole village would gather around him, breaking jars with nuts or other items and declare publicly that he was cut off from the rest of the village. It was an act of public shame and shunning.
But the father’s behavior prevented that ritual of shame. By running out to greet his son, he prevented them from performing that ritual. Even more, he welcomed him back into his own bosom and the bosom of his household. There’s a sense in which the father’s actions are themselves shameful. Respectable men didn’t behave that way in public. They didn’t display affection in that way; they certainly didn’t kiss a son publicly. He’s acting more like a mother than a father, and his behavior is inappropriate. By allowing himself to be humiliated, he stopped the village from humiliating his son.
I’d like to go back to the question I asked you a few minutes ago. Then, it was, “With whom do you most identify in this story?” There are other ways of asking the questions, other questions that the story raises—one is, “with whom ought you identify in the story?” That is to say, where does the story challenge your understanding of yourself and God? It’s easy for us to put ourselves in the role of the younger son. Perhaps we don’t see ourselves as quite as awful a human being as he was. We might not offend our parents as deeply, sin as much, fall into as abject and dissolute life as him. But nonetheless, it’s easy to see something of ourselves in him. Having sinned, we are penitent and seek the forgiveness of a loving God.
But the parable doesn’t let us stay there. It challenges us to see us in those other roles, the roles of elder son or father. If we’re honest with our selves, how often is it the case that we act like the older son? Whether within our own families or at work or school, how often do we resent what seems to be the favored, and undeserved, treatment of someone else? How often do we feel as if we’re the older brother who finds out about the party only after it’s well underway? Do the father’s words offer any consolation to us when we feel slighted or underappreciated?
That’s one challenge the parable presents to us. But there’s an even more difficult one. Think of the father again. The story began with his younger son demanding his inheritance, treating him as if he were dead, jeopardizing his family’s financial security. Now he returns after squandering his inheritance, after years of hard living. He returns with a rehearsed speech on his lips, and the father runs to greet him, inviting more of the community’s humiliation. He pays no attention to past grievances or feelings of moral superiority; he embraces, kisses, invites his son back home and rejoices at his return.
If this parable invites us to imagine our selves in the places of its characters, where might we need to find our selves in the role of the father? Where might we need to offer the joy of forgiveness to someone we encounter in our daily life? Who might we encounter who is in as deep need of forgiveness and love as the younger son in this parable? To offer that forgiveness, to offer the joy of God’s love to someone who feels unable to receive it on their own, may be the greatest gift we can give and is certainly one way to share the good news of Jesus Christ.
“So what” is an essential question for people of faith: what does it matter that we worship, or meditate, or chant sutras? Another way of looking at that question — one that any church congregation could ask itself — is what would we, our neighborhood, our society miss if we weren’t here — we crazy people who choose to act as if God does indeed exist? The rector of my church in Honolulu asked that question of our congregation several years ago, and it moved us to expand our ministries in ways we could never have foreseen. We now offer free-wi-fi to the neighborhood; and host a weekly farmer’s market. We added a hot lunch to our monthly grocery give-away, giving our many elderly neighbors who come a rare chance to socialize.
But sometimes just the presence of a church — a space for something as useless and marvelous as worship — can be a powerful witness. Last year a woman staggered into our church office — she’d had a bad fight with her boyfriend, and had taken an overdose of barbiturates. She’d left their apartment, and after wandering for a bit, was headed to a park where she might curl up under a tree and die. We’re across the street from that park; and the woman told the church secretary that when she saw the church she realized that she wanted to live. Tell that story the next time an atheist tries to tell you that churches serve no purpose; or a misguided and bitter poet says that religious language is a dead language.
I’ve decided that at this point, besides the conversations that are taking place about making a medical shelter a reality in Madison, all I can do about this aspect of homelessness is to continue to blog about it.
A guy showed up at our doors around 4:00 this afternoon. This is his story. He’d been released from Meriter Hospital earlier in the day and sent to the VA. They sent him on to the Men’s Drop-In Shelter at Grace, telling him that he would be able to get in at 4:30 pm. Wrong. To be blunt, they don’t even have basic information about shelter hours. One wonders whether they lack other information that might have provided a more comfortable room for him tonight.
Our staff had brought him into the warm to wait and rest. He was weak, barely able to stand, let alone walk. How will he fare overnight? What will happen for him tomorrow? Does anyone in the VA, Madison’s hospitals or medical community, or even the homeless agencies care enough to try to address the larger issues? I’m not sure I can bear witnessing another episode like this.
As I have written about repeatedly on this blog, incidents like this take place more often than anyone in our county or city government know. They take place more often than I know. I learn about them only when I encounter someone like this man who has been released directly from a hospital to the shelter, and arrives before the shelter opens. What I do know is the pain and suffering in all those who have had to make the transition from a hospital bed to the homeless shelter. I also am well aware of my bleeding heart. Does anyone else’s heart bleed?
I know we don’t really have one but I’ve been interested by the ways in which our own debate about restructuring has its parallels in the Roman Catholic Church. In my previous post, I linked to various commentators inside and outside of the church who are calling for reform of the papal bureaucracy. The Vatileaks scandal exposed the deep resistance to change on the part of much of the Vatican bureaucracy.
History makes clear that reform is difficult. In the Roman Catholic church, true reform has rarely occurred before the crises grew so profound that the future of the Church itself was in jeopardy (the great reform councils of Lateran IV, Constance, and Trent come to mind). In some respects, we may be at a similar place. Certainly American Christianity would seem to be facing an existential crisis. But it’s not clear to me that ecclesial bureacracies perceive us to be at such a point.
In the Episcopal Church, calls for restructuring have gotten louder. At General Convention 2013, a task force was empowered to look at restructuring. It had its first meeting a couple of weeks ago. Here’s the press release. George Clifford, who has written insightfully on the matter of restructuring in the past has a two-part examination of the issue as well (Part I, Part II). He lists ten principles that he thinks should guide the restructuring process:
1. Preserve the four historic orders of ministry
2. TEC’s structure should emphasize both community and mission
3. Preserve governance premised on discerning God’s leading through representative democratic processes
4. Practice subsidiarity
5. Adopt a minimalist approach, reserving all specifically unidentified powers and responsibilities to individuals, congregations, or dioceses
6. Aim for simplicity of structure
7. Form should follow function
8. Incorporate a structural system of checks and balances
9. TEC’s structure should exhibit transparency and accountability
10. Take advantage of the opportunities for new forms of community and structure that technology has made possible, while seeking to avoid or minimize any adverse consequences
General Convention also passed a resolution that the Episcopal Church move its headquarters from 815 2nd Avenue. During the meeting of the Executive Council last week, representatives of the staff who work there presented arguments against that move. More about that here. Again, George Clifford addresses the issue. And in his inimitable way, Crusty Old Dean has this to say:
It really doesn’t matter where our denominational headquarters is unless we are committed to a holistic rethinking of the kind of denominational structure we need. Moving it for the sake of moving it, without concurrent discussion about the nature, scope, and purpose of a denominational structure, is pointless. Likewise, keeping it in place without a holistic appraisal is likewise pointless. … So who the hell cares where a denominational HQ is if we can’t rethink how we need to do mission in radically changed contexts and think through how this relates to dioceses, congregations, ecumenical partners, and other networks and organizations?
Once created, bureaucracies tend to fight for survival. I had to read Robert Michels Political Parties back in college. That’s the book in which he articulates “the iron law of oligarchy” which is this: “Who says organization, says oligarchy.” I was reminded of this as I noted the hubris of church staff refusing to submit to the will of General Convention. This points to one of the central problems facing any restructuring, on every level of the church–the intransigence of those involved.
We can say all we want about the need to restructure, the necessity of change, everything that I and others have written about over the last several years, including the statistics cited by Diana Butler Bass that I refer to in an earlier post. The reality is that there will be profound and absolute resistance to restructuring, that it will come from all sectors and corners of the church, including the top, and that the battles will be long, bloody, and destructive. Too many people have too much invested, at every level of the church, to expect that change will come easily. All we can hope is that whatever change comes doesn’t require total war to achieve it.
On the other hand, it may be that some new form of shared ministry across what is now the Episcopal Church can only emerge and thrive when the old structures have been completely eradicated. Who knows? We shall see–and it behooves us to pay close attention to the fate of restructuring in other denominations, including the Roman Catholic Church.
The cardinals have gathered although the papal conclave hasn’t begun. Journalists from all over the world have descended on the Vatican for the election, and speculation is running rampant.
There are two issues that I find important about Benedict’s resignation and the next pope. First, the resignation itself. As many have pointed out, it is a remarkable event in itself, a sign of Benedict’s understanding of himself, his office, and the needs of the Church. Whatever else one might say about Benedict’s reign as pope, and his time as head of the Congregation on the Faith, this humble act sheds new light on everything he’s done so far. It’s radical, ground-breaking, and it will force future popes to take seriously the possibility of resignation. The power and prestige of the office has been changed forever.
The second issue is the conclave and the speculation about who will succeed Benedict. To say the Roman Catholic Church is in crisis is obvious. It is also an understatement. The dysfunction within the Vatican that led to the Vatileaks; the ongoing crisis over clerical sexual abuse, but even more the hierarchy’s complicity in that abuse, have brought shame upon the church and deep despair among both clergy and laity. The episode this past week, with Britain’s only cardinal elector forced to step down and not attend the conclave because of his own past sexual discretions is one sign of the rot at the heart of the system. That another cardinal, Mahony of LA, will attend in spite of his mishandling of the crisis, suggests that whoever is elected will have to work hard to rebuild trust in the hierarchy and the Church overall.
All this suggests that the hierarchy, the cardinals, and the curia have lost touch with the cultures in which the Church lives and have lost touch with much of the clergy and laity as well. As many of those who I link to point out, the Roman Catholic Church is in deep need of reform. The real question is whether the participants in the conclave realize how urgent the need is. Just as the Vatileaks scandal revealed how out of touch Pope Benedict was with the inner workings of the Vatican, and Pope John Paul II’s incapacity in his later years, it may be that those involved in the election have no idea of the depth of the crisis in the wider church and the wider world. We will no the answer to that question when we find out who they elect.
In this dramatic situation the church needs a pope who’s not living intellectually in the Middle Ages, who doesn’t champion any kind of medieval theology, liturgy or church constitution. It needs a pope who is open to the concerns of the Reformation, to modernity. A pope who stands up for the freedom of the church in the world not just by giving sermons but by fighting with words and deeds for freedom and human rights within the church, for theologians, for women, for all Catholics who want to speak the truth openly. A pope who no longer forces the bishops to toe a reactionary party line, who puts into practice an appropriate democracy in the church, one shaped on the model of primitive Christianity. A pope who doesn’t let himself be influenced by a Vatican-based “shadow pope” like Benedict and his loyal followers.
So what we expect as Catholics from the pope is simply that he be the successor of Peter — that he be faithful to the charge given him and be the rock who will keep us from floating away into the sea of relativism that is often what we live in, in this particular kind of postmodern culture. That’s the biggest gift he’s going to have.
John Allen has a must-read piece on how this conclave differs from the 74 before it; and especially from the one in 2005 in which Cardinal Ratzinger was elected.
By resigning, Pope Benedict served the church well. He has spared it another prolonged period of mounting disarray. He has “humanized” the papacy, as Joseph Komonchak and others have pointed out. He has jolted the church into allowing that something generally considered unthinkable for centuries is really not beyond doing after all. And he has set the stage for his successor to do likewise.
That is important. The Catholic Church needs shock therapy. True, among the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics, millions of saints are leading lives of prayer and charity so ardent, brave, sacrificial, creative, and enduring that they bring tears to normal eyes. They are the best of us—and then there are the rest of us. Except in parts of Africa, the much-heralded growth of Catholicism is simply in line with the growth in population—or not even that. Latin American Catholics are increasingly turning to Pentecostalism or drifting away from religious practice and affiliation altogether, although not yet to the extent occurring in Europe and North America.
I’ll be following America‘s coverage of the conclave.
Our sermon yesterday was preached by Lauren Gallant Cochran, our Christian Formation Director. Here’s what she had to say:
I find deep spiritual comfort in believing that our God is a God of paradox, a God who is the possible version of impossible. I believe God is unchanging, and ‘still speaking’. I believe God is three, and one. I believe God was then, is now, and will be in the future. I think God is unknowable, and yet intensely intimate in my life… everywhere and nowhere all at once. I take comfort in these contradictions because while I will never fully understand everything there is to know about God, God still approves of my questioning and desire to learn and understand. I thank God every day for the opportunities to talk about these paradoxes of God with other people: those who agree with me, and those who do not.
In the Presbyterian Church, every candidate for ordination must write a very concise statement of faith, and I have just read you the opening paragraph of my statement. It seems a bit self-righteous to quote myself, but I want to talk about the paradox present in our scriptures today, which points to the paradox of Lent, and the paradox of our God. I want you to start thinking about all the things in our faith that are opposites but both true and complete all at the same time.
Last week Father Jonathan asked the question “what does Lent mean to people today?” He said traditionally it has been a time for people to focus on an angry God who demands repentance—but noted that that’s not really what it seems to be any more. The lectionary texts- including last week where Jonathan highlighted that God’s covenant with Abram was both terrifying and trustworthy—the lectionary texts of Lent are handing us paradoxes.
Let’s look first to Exodus—to the burning bush.
Moses finds himself in a scary situation. Here he is, peacefully keeping his flocks of sheep when he stumbles across the burning bush. God yells out Moses name and commands him to remove his sandals. The presence of God is so overwhelming that Moses hides his face in fear. Moses knows that this is the same God he has been hiding from after killing a man back in Egypt. But even beyond the wilderness, God has found him and now commands him to return to Egypt and demand that Pharaoh free the Israelites. When Moses musters the courage to respond, he asks “well who should I say sent me?”— God responds “I AM WHO I AM”.
I would be terrified. God in these verses is very powerful, demanding, and frightening. But don’t forget, I want to talk about the paradox in this passage. It was hard for me, at first, to recognize that there is more than a powerful and scary God in these verses… But then I realized that I was thinking about this story with preconceived notions that didn’t have anything to do with the real words of scripture.
It’s even a little embarrassing to admit what these notions were. First, is that when I was 12 years old, the animated movie The Prince of Egypt was released. I loved that movie, and the scene of Moses and the burning bush is what I picture in my head when I read this passage. It is a dramatic point in the movie, of course they chose to make it seem very powerful and slightly scary. Once I found out that the actor Val Kilmer voices the roles of Moses AND God, it seems a bit more comical to me when I picture Val Kilmer talking to himself. But, the point is that an animated movie with dramatic effects was placing a lens over how I read this story.
Secondly, every time I read this scripture—as silly as it may sound—the capitol letters “I AM WHO I AM” always make me think that God is yelling those words. Scholarship tells me that the use of capital letters signifies that God’s name cannot be clearly translated, so in order to get all of this fictional yelling out of my head, I decided to read the passage to myself in the most calm and loving tone that I could.
I imagined God as a mother speaking to her son who is wandering beyond the wilderness, trying to bring him back to help him and their family. “Moses… Moses… “I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed, I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey”.
This presents a completely different picture of God– now it should be also noted that nowhere in this conversation does God ask Moses to repent for his sins. Nowhere are there any conditions for Moses to change—Moses sins aren’t even mentioned. In this light, the passage is not an angry God looking for repentance of sins.
Here is our first paradox. God in this passage IS all powerful, and certainly makes a point to Moses about God’s power to free the Israelites—and Moses is scared. Moses hides his face. But God is also reaching out to Moses, God has compassion for the chosen people serving as slaves in Egypt. God is the shepherd reaching out to a lost sheep from his flock. God is I AM WHO I AM, and I am who I am. God is showing Moses that this task will not be easy, but with the power of God it will be done.
And so we come to the paradox of a parable from Luke.
For our youngest children here at Grace, the Godly Play curriculum (loosely based on the Montessori System) shares the Bible in a story telling format, including the parables of Jesus. All the parables are stored on their own shelf, and each is kept in a special white box. Gwen, their wonderful teacher, patiently shares each story with them, but before they begin she reads these words about the parable they are about to experience.
“The box is closed. There is a lid. Maybe there is a parable inside. Sometimes, even if we are ready, we can’t enter a parable. Parables are like that. Sometimes they stay closed. This box looks like a present. Parables were given to you long ago as a present. Even if you don’t know what a parable is, the parable is already yours.”
I think these words can give us comfort as well when faced with a parable such as this. These verses also show a powerful God in a frightening way. God has the power to remove us from the vineyard not only because we might do something wrong, but also because we have not done anything at all. And then we are left with a cliff hanger ending. I don’t think a more terrifying literary tactic exists- we are left wondering about the fate of the fig tree, about our fate if we lead unfruitful lives. Don’t forget that immediately before the parable, Jesus left us with the words “unless you repent you will all perish”.
Because Jesus was a man who frequently used agricultural metaphors in his parables, he probably knew that it can take up to five years before a fig tree bears fruit, much longer than the 3 years the owner of the tree has come looking for figs. The point is clear, we must be fruitful and we cannot wait to do it, otherwise we are wasting the precious soil in the garden.
So this parable shows us a powerful vengeful God, who demands active fruitfulness. But there is a character that I have not mentioned yet. The gardener. If the parable portrays God as the owner of the garden and the fig tree as you and me… then who is the Gardener? The first time I heard a sermon that suggested the idea that Jesus is the gardener, I thought… Whoa… That changes everything!! Here is Jesus! Interceding on our behalf. But who is Jesus other than God himself? Thus we arrive at the second paradox. God is expecting great things and threatening to throw us out, while still giving us another chance, giving us the nutrients we need to make it happen—fighting for us to stay.
As I shared with you at the beginning of this sermon, I find comfort in believing that God is a God of paradox, that God can be many things at once. Both the owner and the gardener of a vineyard, both a powerful burning bush and a loving mother calling out into the wilderness, both terrifying and trustworthy.
Our reading from first Corinthians reveals that Paul felt the same way. “So if you think you are standing, watch out that you do not fall. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure.”
It is not a coincidence that our scriptures confront us with so many paradoxes during the season of Lent. Lent is a time to repent, but also a time to take joy in our forgiving God. Lent is a time to prepare for the death that we know is coming on Good Friday, but also a time to prepare for the resurrection that comes on that mighty Easter Sunday. There is talk of darkness and light, ashes and life, our pasts that sometimes haunt us and the future of the kingdom to come. Lent is a paradox in itself, leading us to the moment of Easter, preparing us to entertain the notion of an empty tomb. Lent is preparing us to experience the paradox of a God who dies, and rises… for us.
This past week I attended the annual conference of the Consortium of Endowed Episcopal Parishes. It may sound pretentious (and to be honest, there’s more than a little pretension to be seen around) but it’s an exciting opportunity to hear from some of the best minds inside and outside of the Episcopal Church and to hear from others how they are innovating and responding to our rapidly changing culture.
I was especially intrigued when I saw that Stanley Hauerwas and Diana Butler Bass would be presenting back to back on the conference’s last day. I’ve long been an admirer of both and expected to be challenged to think in new ways about the role of the church in twenty-first century America. Although I had to leave before the end of Bass’s presentation, listening to the two of them on the same morning provided some gist for thought as the twitter hashtag emerged: #HauerBass.
As I listened to Hauerwas’ lecture, I puzzled over his intent. He spent much of his time revisiting the history of Liberal Protestant theology. Hauerwas has long been critical of the American church’s embrace of nationalism and easy acceptance of American culture and he sounded those themes again. He railed against the privatization of religion that is one of liberal theology’s hallmark, as well as the high value placed on toleration. The critique of liberal theology led him back to Karl Barth and that earlier critique of German liberal Protestantism. For Barth, the shock came when leading German pastors and theologians, including his own teachers, signed a declaration in support of the German effort and Kaiser Wilhelm II at the outset of World War I. Over against this assimilation of Christianity to the German war effort, Barth began to articulate a theology in which the Word of God stands in judgment of all human effort, including religion. That theological position would ultimately lead Barth to pen the Barmen Declaration in which he and others set out their resolute opposition to the idolatry introduced by Hitler.
Hauerwas seemed to want to suggest to his audience that we are in something of a similar cultural situation. Certainly Protestant hegemony is over; Christendom has come to an end, but as he points out the liberal state demands our allegiance and wages war in which we are complicit. Hauerwas argued instead that the claim “Jesus is Lord” is a political assertion and if we are serious in making that claim, our allegiance is not to the liberal state, but to the Reign of God that is breaking in upon us. He also asserted that “Jesus is Lord” is an absolutist claim and that it does not brook “toleration.”
On one level, none of this is new. As I listened to him, I thought back to workshops I had attended over the previous days, as well as my pastoral experience in Madison. At the heart of Hauerwas’ project is a view of the Christian faith that begins in absolutist claims like “Jesus is Lord” and assumes total allegiance. The Christian community he envisions is a gathered community, in conflict with the dominant culture and open to martyrdom. He looks back to the early church and sees Constantine’s conversion as something of a watershed, perhaps even a “fall.” Unfortunately, none of this describes the lived experience of most people living in America. Perhaps it should. On the other hand, most people experience a host of competing claims, from job, family, financial security, and the demands of the marketplace, to the ongoing search for meaning in life. Christianity, for better or worse, is only one claim among many. A common theme in the workshops I attended was the importance that we (as clergy, as communities of the faithful, as the Episcopal Church) find ways to engage people as they seek meaning. I wonder whether in the American context, for many, if not for all Americans, Hauerwas’ assertion that “Jesus is Lord is an absolutist claim” makes any sense whatsoever.
And this is precisely where I wanted to hear Diana Butler Bass reflect. For the culture she is describing has very different contours than the one Hauerwas described. She too talked about the decline of Protestantism in America, pointing out that according to the latest Pew Survey, the percentage of all Protestants has declined to below 50% for the first time in US history (I presume she wasn’t thinking about Native Americans when making this claim). The percentage claiming to be mainline Protestant is now lower than the number of Americans who claim no religious affiliation whatsoever. This is a culture in which there are multiple claims on our allegiance, religious and otherwise and negotiating among those claims, making meaning in the midst of those competing claims, is difficult, demands nuance. I think it also inevitably requires allowing a certain amount of ambiguity, if one is at all self-reflective.
I don’t find Hauerwas’ construction of “post-Christendom” Christianity particularly helpful. It might work for certain Anabaptist or neo-Anabaptist communities, but the Episcopal Church is situated differently, and Anglicanism, whether or not the Episcopal Church survives, offers a different stance toward its cultural context. We may be able to develop committed communities of faith made up of disciples seeking to follow Jesus Christ, but we also welcome strangers and seekers who encounter Jesus Christ in our liturgy and may not, for a multitude of reasons, ever make the sort of deeper connection we want and hope. They may never be able to experience and submit to the absolutist claims of “Jesus is Lord” because they encounter other absolutist claims from other sectors of our culture. We must be able to minister to them as well. We must be able to find ways of helping them make meaning in their lives, whether or not they are able to fit into the membership boxes we want to stuff them in. It’s more important to speak their language than to expect them to speak, and accept, ours. Because if we are able to help them find meaning in the contexts in which they live, they will also be able to find God there, and to experience the redemptive love of Jesus Christ.
Preaching Grace on the Square 