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.

Wolf Hall

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I’ve been reading Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall over the holidays. It’s a marvelous book. There was a time when I could have rattled details of the English Reformation off the top of my head; I still could do it, I suppose. Cromwell is rarely depicted by historians as a sympathetic figure. Certainly not in recent years as revisionism has set in. Mantel makes him a human being–ruthless, power-hungry, acquisitive, to be sure, but with deep affection for his family, for Wolsey, and for those young men who have been given over to his care.

She also fleshes out Thomas More. At least since A Man for All Seasons if not for centuries earlier, More has been depicted as a gentle man of letters and deep religious faith. He was both of those things but he was also a ruthless hunter of religious dissidents and a tireless, and humorless polemicist against William Tyndale. For those who know him only as the author of Utopia and someone who died for his faith, a few hours spent reading his attacks on Tyndale will shed very different light on him.

I’m not quite done with the book which ends with More’s execution. It’s not clear why one would choose this particular period of Cromwell’s life on which to focus–from the fall of Wolsey to the execution of More. In some respects, the years immediately following More’s execution are even more interesting, with the execution of Anne Boleyn, the dissolution of the monasteries, and ultimately Cromwell’s fall.

For another interesting take on Cromwell, I would recommend the mystery novels of C. J. Sansom which are vivid portrayals of the religious and political turmoil in the 1530s and 1540s.

By the way, either is a much better portrayal of the period than the recent TV series The Tudors.

Night – The New York Review of Books

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There’s a deeply moving, brief essay by Tony Judt in the New York Review of Books. Judt is a historian whose work I respect immensely. I began reading him during 1989 when the Iron Curtain was coming down and Corrie and I were making plans to live in Germany. I have followed his work ever since. He is an astute and perceptive commentator on current events, especially in Europe. His deep knowledge of European history allows him to see things that go unnoticed by others.

He was diagnosed with ALS (Lou Gherig’s disease) in 2008 and is now paralyzed from the neck down. This meditation focuses on his experiences during the night. It’s available here: Night – The New York Review of Books.

He describes an existence that most of us find unfathomable–an active mind trapped in body that can’t move, but through which he continues to have feeling. He will continue to write these brief essays for the NYRB and they promise to give insight into this disease but I feel somewhat voyeuristic as I read.

His essay does raise questions about the relationship of body and mind that have long intrigued me and about which I may write more substantively some day.

Re-reading old sermons

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In Maryanne Robinson’s Gilead, the elderly Protestant pastor is going through decades of sermons, ostensibly to put them in some sort of order for posterity. His sermons are written on paper. The exercise gives him the opportunity to reflect back on his ministry, on those many years of being with his congregation, on the changes that took place over those decades, and also, to ask about the meaning of it all.

I haven’t preached anywhere near as many sermons as that, and I’ve preached in several different contexts but I do go back and look over what I’ve written before. It is fascinating to do so. I find myself drawn back into the life of the parish in which I preached the sermon and very often into the mood of the time, even if fewer than five years have passed. Rereading those sermons often brings to mind members of those parishes, the struggles they were going through, and, inevitably, those people who have departed this life.

Very often I go back over past sermons in hopes of finding some nugget to include in the sermon I’m currently writing. This week, not having to write a sermon for the First Sunday after Christmas Day, I went back over some I had preached over the years. Given the heightened anxiety over terrorist attacks again, I thought it might be of interest to others:

Continue reading →

Scary blog stats

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WordPress provides all sorts of info about blog hits: number of hits per day, per month, per week; referrers; i.e, where hits came from (most of mine come from http://www.graceec.org); and most popular searches. It’s the latter that has me scared. I posted several months ago a photo of a guy with a tattoo of the verse from Leviticus that states “If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall be put to death; their blood is upon them.” I pointed out at the time another verse from Leviticus 19:28: You shall not make any gashes in your flesh for the dead or tattoo any marks upon you: I am the Lord.

But apparently, they haven’t gotten the message: “You shall not … tattoo any marks upon you: I am the Lord.”

In fact, I don’t have any particular problems with tattoos, although I will admit I come from a generation where they were only seen on people of a certain class, and especially men who had served in the military. They were considered tacky. But why conservative Christians would want to tattoo bible verses on themselves, when it is so clearly forbidden by the Bible which they claim to take literally, I simply don’t understand. That’s why I found the original tattoo so absurd.