Unruly Wills and Affections

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The Collect for the Fifth Sunday in Lent is one of my favorites, full of rich imagery and language. I didn’t preach today because I spent it with our kids. They’ve been learning about the Eucharist and today I talked with them about it during the Liturgy of the Word. At the offertory, we rejoined the main congregation and the children gathered around the altar for the Great Thanksgiving.

All this meant that I really hadn’t spent any time with the propers this week, so the beautiful collect came to me as a wonderful surprise while I was presiding at the early service:

Almighty God, you alone can bring into order the unruly wills and affections of sinners: Grant your people grace to love what you command and desire what you promise; that, among the swift and varied changes of the world, our hearts may surely there be fixed where true joys are to be found; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen

It has an interesting history. It derives from early sources (the Gelasian and Gregorian sacramentaries), where it was used in the Easter season. Cranmer appointed it for the Fourth Sunday after Easter. His translation was altered in 1662, introducing the phrase “bring into order the unruly wills and affections of sinners.” The 1979 Book of Common Prayer moved it to its current location. It seems much more appropriate as a Lenten collect than as an Easter one.

I’m taken by the understanding of human nature expressed in the prayer. The phrase “our unruly wills and affections” certainly implies sin, but doesn’t dwell on human sinfulness. But there is also an appeal to God working in us to effect our salvation, the request to God to give God’s people grace “to love what you command and desire what you promise.”

It then moves out to put us in our context–amid the swift and varied changes of the world and expresses the hope that we might focus our attention not on the constantly changing scenery around us, but on our true hope.

The New Day Resource Center: Making the best of a difficult situation?

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The news finally broke yesterday. Dane County has purchased Porchlight’s Hospitality House facility which will be the site of the new Day Resource Center. Here’s the press release.

I’ve written about the need for such a facility before and I’ve also written about the difficulty the County and others have had in finding an appropriate site. In some ways, Hospitality House seems like the path of least resistance. It’s in the Town of Madison rather than in the city so there won’t be much pushback from city administration or alders. It will be located at a site where some of the same services have been offered for years, so there shouldn’t be a lot of pushback from neighbors.

Pat Schneider’s article includes interviews with homeless advocates who are opposed to this location and claim to have been shut out of the process. Here’s where it is: a half-hour bus ride from downtown. While I share their concerns about how this process has played out, I am also acutely aware of how difficult the search for an adequate facility has been. I think it’s safe to say that the downtown area has been carefully searched for possible sites to no avail. One of the problems is that in this real estate market, few property owners are going to want to sell underused land or buildings to the county when they might be able to sell it at a high profit for another upscale apartment complex. I also appreciate that few County politicians or bureaucrats want to start another dust-up with city officials who would likely have opposed any proposed location.

One of the persistent difficulties faced by Hospitality House in the past has been transportation from downtown. Porchlight has operated a van that has transported guests from the Salvation Army and the Drop-In Men’s shelter downtown to Hospitality House but that hasn’t always been an effective means of getting people back and forth. The County will need to assess the transportation needs of the new Day Resource Center and have an effective plan in place when the Center opens in order for this renovated facility to be a success.

What homeless advocates and community members need to do now is work with the county and those who will operate the Day Resource Center to ensure its success. Let’s make sure we get the best facility possible with the necessary resources, fitted out with showers, storage, and laundry, and access to the support services that can help homeless people find adequate housing and stabilize their situations.

 

 

 

 

Whenever You Pray–Sermon on the Mount Bible Study

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This evening, we’ll be looking at Matthew 6, especially vss 1-14. I’m always struck when I encounter texts in different contexts and the liturgical uses of these verses are powerful and foundational for the Christian life. The Lord’s Prayer is also our prayer, recited in the Daily Office and at every Eucharistic celebration. Its familiarity is both blessing and problematic. When said consciously and meditated upon regularly, it offers the possibility of helping us shape our discipleship and faith. It helps to create a relationship with God that stresses our dependence on God for the necessities of life as well as our purpose and end (“Your kingdom come, Your will be done). But it’s also easy to allow the words to roll off our tongue unthinkingly. Sometimes that’s OK; for example when we need to pray but can’t find words of our own. Sometimes it may be an example of the sort of external piety that Jesus criticizes in the first verses of the chapter.

Those verses are always the gospel reading on Ash Wednesday. In that context they are problematic and challenging, especially of the piety we display on Ash Wednesday. It’s hard not to think about how our actions look to others, whether we’re walking around on Ash Wednesday with ashes on our forehead or attending church on Sunday morning when our friends and neighbors are drinking coffee and reading the paper or out on a bike ride or run. But hiding our piety for the wrong reasons is also a problem. Jesus criticizes “hypocrites” for wanting others to know about their donations and fasting. He isn’t addressing those of us who hide our actions or faith because we are slightly embarrassed of our quaint habits.

Perhaps most important is something implied rather than directly stated here: that our prayers and other practices should be sincere and come from the heart. Prayer is not about others or about ourselves; it is about God. Bonhoeffer has this to say:

Prayer is the supreme instance of the hidden character of the Christian life. It is the antithesis of self-display. When men pray, they have ceased to know themselves and know only God whom they call upon. Prayer does not aim at any direct effect on the world; it is addressed to God alone, and is therefore the perfect example of undemonstrative action

 

John Donne, 1631

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A Hymn to God the Father

By John Donne

Wilt thou forgive that sin where I begun,
         Which was my sin, though it were done before?
Wilt thou forgive that sin, through which I run,
         And do run still, though still I do deplore?
                When thou hast done, thou hast not done,
                        For I have more.
Wilt thou forgive that sin which I have won
         Others to sin, and made my sin their door?
Wilt thou forgive that sin which I did shun
         A year or two, but wallow’d in, a score?
                When thou hast done, thou hast not done,
                        For I have more.
I have a sin of fear, that when I have spun
         My last thread, I shall perish on the shore;
But swear by thyself, that at my death thy Son
         Shall shine as he shines now, and heretofore;
                And, having done that, thou hast done;
                        I fear no more.

From The Poetry Foundation

John Donne, the Dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, brilliant poet and preacher, died on this day in 1631.

Blindness, Sight, and Faith: A Sermon for the Fourth Sunday in Lent

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I used to have an intense fear of going blind. I was born with weak eyesight but on top of that I was, to put it in the words of a college friend of mine “wall-eyed.” I had two surgeries as a child in an attempt to correct that. I remember waking after the second of those surgeries when I was about 9 years old. When I couldn’t open my eyes–the lids were sealed by dried excretion–I screamed out in terror. For years after that, I practiced walking around in my house in the darkness, so I would be able to get around if (or more likely when) I went blind. I’m not blind yet, but my eyesight continues to deteriorate. In fact, one of the reasons I’ve taken to using an ipad in services is because I can increase the font size so I can read my sermons and the Book of Common Prayer. Continue reading →

Noah: I’m going to go see it!

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So, after reading a bunch of stuff about Noah, I’ve decided to go see it. Although I’ve not seen all of Darren Aronofsky’s movies, I have found his work thoughtful, challenging, and entertaining (especially The Wrestler and Pi). Among the most interesting reviews and writing about Noah are these:

Noah: A Jewish perspective:

Noah is not a hero in Jewish lore. The Bible says that Noah was a righteous man “in his generation.” He was only a righteous man compared to the others who were far worse than he.

Now, why wasn’t he righteous? Because righteousness is all about what you do for your fellow man. And Noah does NOTHING for his fellow man. He doesn’t care, he has no compassion. He executes God’s commandment to the letter. So when God says “I’m going to kill everybody,” Noah says, “will you save my skin? Oh, I get an Ark? Okay, fine.”

From Christianity Today:

Rather, it’s a movie that approaches the level of “good art.” It asks big questions. It explores concepts like grace, justice, pride, guilt, and love. It respects its source material and respects the power of human imagination. It takes a sober look at the evil in the human heart.

An interview with Aronofsky and Ari Handel, his co-writer from Christianity Today

Tony Jones:

From the New York Times:

“Noah” is occasionally clumsy, ridiculous and unconvincing, but it is almost never dull, and very little of it has the careful, by-the-numbers quality that characterizes big-studio action-fantasy entertainment. The riskiest thing about this movie is its sincerity: Mr. Aronofsky, while not exactly pious, takes the narrative and its implications seriously. He tries not only to explore what the story of the flood might mean in the present age of environmental anxiety and apocalyptic religion, but also, more radically, to imagine what it might have felt like to live in a newly created, already-ruined world, and to scan the skies for clues about what its creator might be thinking.

Andrew O’Hehir (Salon):

“Noah” is a grandiose and baffling journey that’s almost worth taking, a free-form adaptation of one of the world’s most famous myths that halfheartedly tries to appease those who long to take it literally. When it connects it’s awesome, and when it doesn’t it’s awesomely silly. If it’s a bad idea, at least it’s a bad idea on a grand scale, and a better bad idea than 90 percent of the ones that reach the screen from Hollywood.

The System is Still Broken

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I was given a stark reminder yesterday that Madison’s safety net for homeless people has gaping holes. It’s not just that the Men’s Shelter returned to “Summer Hours” with the arrival of Daylight Savings Time (I wonder if they ever considered changing that policy when the period of DST was extended into early March) and that the 60-day limit runs out for most men.

As I was leaving the church yesterday around 5:30, I encountered a couple of guys huddling for warmth in our entry way. Another staff person had seen them in the courtyard and invited them inside for a few minutes. One of the two men was carrying an oxygen tank. He had spent the day at Hospitality House and been brought back to the shelter by Porchlight’s van at 4:30. However, since the shelter didn’t open until 7:30, he would have to wait in 20 degree weather for three hours. He told me that doctors had instructed him to stay out of the cold weather and minimize physical exertion (like walking three blocks to the Public Library where he could be safe from the elements). So here he was.

I don’t know for certain he had been in the hospital last week. If so, I wonder if anyone considered how a homeless person could comply with instructions to minimize physical exertion and avoid being in cold weather. And I wonder about policies and procedures that leave a frail and nearly incapacitated man on his own on the streets for several hours or more. And I continue to despair about a nation and community that treats its weakest and most vulnerable members so callously.

 

Salt, Light, and the Law: Reflections on our Sermon on the Mount Bible Study

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Last night at our Lenten Bible Study, we focused on Mt. 5:13-32. I had hoped to get all the way through chapter 5 but that was not to be. We began by exploring the saying about salt. The scientists among us pointed out that salt can be adulterated but it can’t not be salt. Then we sought to understand the saying about salt via the saying about light. Both seem to be sayings directed at the disciples (Jesus first uses “you” in v. 11: “Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you”). This seems to suggest that the disciples by definition change the world, that their very presence and manner of life witness to the Reign of God.

Someone offered the parables as comparable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which is the smallest of the seeds…” I find this helpful because Jesus is holding up the disciples as members of the new community he’s calling into existence, a new community that is intended to usher in and witness the Reign of God.

We struggled with Jesus’ language in these verses. What should we understand as metaphorical; what should we take literally? That’s especially true when dealing with passages like vss 29-30: If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out; if your right hand causes you to sin, cut if off. But if we are meant to understand this metaphorically, what about other things Jesus says, like love of enemy and turning the other cheek? Might Jesus be talking about our priorities here, what we ought to give up in order to follow him?

Next week, we’ll try to make it through chapter 5 and get into chapter 6.

My help comes from The Lord: A Sermon for 2 Lent

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We are accustomed to think of our lives as people of faith as a journey or pilgrimage. It’s an image that’s deeply rooted in the Christian tradition, perhaps beginning with Jesus’ own journey to Jerusalem, dramatically depicted in Luke’s gospel where he writes, “and Jesus set his face to go to Jerusalem.” Devout Christians over the centuries have understood their own lives and the experience of the Christian community writ large in terms of journey or pilgrimage. Journey is a word I often use when I’m welcoming newcomers and visitors to our services on Sunday morning. Like any metaphor it can become over-used, tired, even meaningless. The question becomes whether we can breathe new life into such language and by doing that, help us to think about our own lives and experiences in new ways. Continue reading →

Who are the “poor in spirit”?

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That was the burning question last night at our first Lenten Bible Study on the Sermon on the Mount. We began and ended with the Beatitudes, exploring what they meant in the historical context, in the context of Matthew’s gospel, and in the context of our own lives. The behaviors and attitudes Jesus blesses (declares happy), are they things to which we should aspire?

We struggled most with “poor in spirit.” What does  that mean? One powerful suggestion was that it refers to those who are beaten down by life, dejected, depressed, hopeless. Perhaps it refers to those who are spiritually empty, or empty themselves spiritually to receive God’s grace.

Frederick Buechner proposes that the poor in spirit “are the ones who spiritually speaking, have absolutely nothing to give and absolutely everything to receive …” That fits with another theme in Matthew’s gospel, the emphasis on the weakest, most vulnerable, “the little ones” (cf Mt 18:6).

In Christian communities, our tendency is to do just what we do in the rest of life, distinguish between the proficient and the struggling, the powerful and the weak, the successful and those who fail. God’s reign entails a reversal of values. We’re somewhat comfortable when the values that are reversed are material, there’s plenty of biblical precedent for that. What if God’s reign entails a reversal of spiritual values, too? What might that mean?