I am very good at knowing 'what I don't know'. I live fully into my ignorance of many, many things. I actually glory in not having to 'know' everything.
One thing I don't know--and know I don't know it--is, as I've said before in this space--what happens when we die.
I consider myself a faithful Christian--I'm an Episcopal priest, after all. But I know I don't know if I truly know the Christian belief of an after-life. I lean toward it and try to believe it--but I know I don't know.
Bern told me about a novel she was reading when someone very important to an 11 year old girl died.
"Where is he now?" she asked.
Her father answered, "before he was born he was no where and now that he's dead, he's no where again."
That's one of the answers of what I know I don't know about what happens when we died.
But just the other day, I talked with a woman whose father had just died. I asked her how she was and she said, "I just know he's with my mother now and that's where he wanted to be since she died."
I nodded and hugged her.
Being with people you loved who are dead when you die is a lovely way of thinking. I'd be delighted and exuberant if that turns out to be true.
But I know I don't know if it is.
You see, I think Christianity is about 'how we live', not about 'what happens when we die'.
Jesus taught us to be compassionate and generous and to care about the lot of 'the least of these' in our midst. He taught us to be truthful and courageous in the face of sin. He taught us to never buy into the lies of those above us and to always love and care for those below us.
And that's enough for me to be a Christian. I know that I know all that is true and right and good.
Beyond that there is simply a lot I know I don't know.
And I'm fine with not knowing.
What I lean toward and live for is enough for me.
Monday, November 25, 2019
Sunday, November 24, 2019
Nobody, I mean 'nobody' read this....
I was looking through my blog archive and saw the not a single person read this 2016 post. Some posts have been read by over 450 people, but no one read this. Let's fix that, okay?
In my sermon on Sunday, I apologized to the congregation and to David,
who was being baptized for the Collect of the Day. ('Collect' is
Episcopal-speak for a prayer....also, the entryway to the church is the
'narthex' and the basement is the 'undercroft'--go figure Anglicans!)
Here it is: the collect for the Sunday closest to July 20...
Almighty God, the fountain of all wisdom, you know our necessities before we ask and our ignorance in asking; Have compassion on our weakness and mercifully give us those things which for our unworthiness we dare not, and for our blindness we cannot ask; through the worthiness of your Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
OK, in one prayer (sorry, 'collect') we are calling ourselves "ignorant, weak, unworthy and blind". And we prayed that prayer on a day when David IV (and the other three were all there!) was being 'marked as Christ's own forever' and declared both a child of God and a member of Christ's Body.
It is times like that which cause me to think Christianity is schizophrenic! On a day we declare David and ourselves "marked as Christ's own" and, indeed, Christ's Body in this world we decide that we are, as Marcus Aurelius (not a Christian, a Stoic) said: 'a bag of bones and foul smell'.
Ignorant, weak, unworthy and blind are hardly attributes of "Christ's Body in this world". And certainly far, far, far short of the Bible's assertion that we are created 'in the image and likeness of God'.
So, which will it be? God's beloved or pond scum? The Body of Christ or miserable, nasty, sinful, awful creatures?
So I told the group I go to on Tuesday mornings about my apology and read them the collect to prove my point. They'd all heard it since 3 of them were priests and the 4th is an every-Sunday worshiper.
And to my utter dismay, none of them were offended at all by the collect. They even seemed to agree with it. I became so irrational that I really could do very little except sputter in exasperation and utter four-letter words....
I just assumed they, like me, thought of human beings (much less Christians) as beloved 'children of God'. Can I be that out of line? I'm not stupid. I can't miss the incredible evil of the world. But I simply assume that 'evil' is a perversion of who we really are.
I have known for some decades that my heresy of choice is Pelagionism. Pelagious was British but taught his theology in Rome in the late 4th and early 5th centuries. What he taught was rather simple (if condemned by 5 or 6 church councils and St. Augustine!). It went like this: human beings were born with the same free will and moral choices as Adam before the Fall. Humans could choose to do 'the right thing' without Divine intervention. The concept of 'original sin' was rejected by Pelagious.
I reject it too. I told David IV's parents that God loved David IV as much before he was baptized and God would love him after he was baptized. We are not 'born sinful' in my theology.
(By the way: since you're going to be a heretic anyway, CHOOSE your heresy carefully. I start my classes in Gnostic Christianity at UConn by saying, "How many of you are heretics?" Only a brave soul or two might giggle and raise their hands. Then I ask, "How many of you believe in the Immortality of the Soul?" Every time either all or almost all raise their hands. "So," I tell them, "read the Nicene Creed. We believe in the 'resurrection of the body', not 'the immortality of the soul'. You're all heretics!")
More and more these days, I find that I'm outside the 'orthodox' box. I've never much wanted to be 'inside' it, but I'm often struck by how 'out of line' I am.
I still think that's a terrible Collect!
Some of the Episcopal Church's collects are wonderful in their wisdom and guidance. My favorite is the Collect for Good Friday. Listen: Almighty God, we pray you graciously to behold this your family, for whom our Lord Christ was willing to be betrayed, and given into the hands of sinners, and to suffer death upon the cross.....
Now that's something to hang your Pelagion hat on: we are God's 'family' and Jesus was willing to die for us. That's the humanity I'm a part of. Part of the Family. Worth dying for. Know what I mean?
Am I that out of line?
(But then, maybe my archive is just on the bad....)
Tuesday, July 19, 2016
Am I that out of line?
Here it is: the collect for the Sunday closest to July 20...
Almighty God, the fountain of all wisdom, you know our necessities before we ask and our ignorance in asking; Have compassion on our weakness and mercifully give us those things which for our unworthiness we dare not, and for our blindness we cannot ask; through the worthiness of your Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
OK, in one prayer (sorry, 'collect') we are calling ourselves "ignorant, weak, unworthy and blind". And we prayed that prayer on a day when David IV (and the other three were all there!) was being 'marked as Christ's own forever' and declared both a child of God and a member of Christ's Body.
It is times like that which cause me to think Christianity is schizophrenic! On a day we declare David and ourselves "marked as Christ's own" and, indeed, Christ's Body in this world we decide that we are, as Marcus Aurelius (not a Christian, a Stoic) said: 'a bag of bones and foul smell'.
Ignorant, weak, unworthy and blind are hardly attributes of "Christ's Body in this world". And certainly far, far, far short of the Bible's assertion that we are created 'in the image and likeness of God'.
So, which will it be? God's beloved or pond scum? The Body of Christ or miserable, nasty, sinful, awful creatures?
So I told the group I go to on Tuesday mornings about my apology and read them the collect to prove my point. They'd all heard it since 3 of them were priests and the 4th is an every-Sunday worshiper.
And to my utter dismay, none of them were offended at all by the collect. They even seemed to agree with it. I became so irrational that I really could do very little except sputter in exasperation and utter four-letter words....
I just assumed they, like me, thought of human beings (much less Christians) as beloved 'children of God'. Can I be that out of line? I'm not stupid. I can't miss the incredible evil of the world. But I simply assume that 'evil' is a perversion of who we really are.
I have known for some decades that my heresy of choice is Pelagionism. Pelagious was British but taught his theology in Rome in the late 4th and early 5th centuries. What he taught was rather simple (if condemned by 5 or 6 church councils and St. Augustine!). It went like this: human beings were born with the same free will and moral choices as Adam before the Fall. Humans could choose to do 'the right thing' without Divine intervention. The concept of 'original sin' was rejected by Pelagious.
I reject it too. I told David IV's parents that God loved David IV as much before he was baptized and God would love him after he was baptized. We are not 'born sinful' in my theology.
(By the way: since you're going to be a heretic anyway, CHOOSE your heresy carefully. I start my classes in Gnostic Christianity at UConn by saying, "How many of you are heretics?" Only a brave soul or two might giggle and raise their hands. Then I ask, "How many of you believe in the Immortality of the Soul?" Every time either all or almost all raise their hands. "So," I tell them, "read the Nicene Creed. We believe in the 'resurrection of the body', not 'the immortality of the soul'. You're all heretics!")
More and more these days, I find that I'm outside the 'orthodox' box. I've never much wanted to be 'inside' it, but I'm often struck by how 'out of line' I am.
I still think that's a terrible Collect!
Some of the Episcopal Church's collects are wonderful in their wisdom and guidance. My favorite is the Collect for Good Friday. Listen: Almighty God, we pray you graciously to behold this your family, for whom our Lord Christ was willing to be betrayed, and given into the hands of sinners, and to suffer death upon the cross.....
Now that's something to hang your Pelagion hat on: we are God's 'family' and Jesus was willing to die for us. That's the humanity I'm a part of. Part of the Family. Worth dying for. Know what I mean?
Am I that out of line?
(But then, maybe my archive is just on the bad....)
Friday, November 22, 2019
Another old sermon
The 'children's sabbath' is in October every year. I forgot all about it this year--I'm older and forgetful. So here's an old sermon about it.
CHILDREN’S SABBATH 2001
Today’s
lesson from Genesis tells the story of Jacob wrestling with an angel. All through the night, Jacob holds on for
dear life in his wrestling match. As dawn breaks, the angel damages Jacob’s
hip, but still Jacob will not let go. He demands a blessing from his enemy and
adversary, instead he gets a new name. Jacob becomes known from that day and
forever as ISRAEL.
And
besides a new name, Jacob—now known as ISRAEL—will always walk with a limp.
A
new name—a new lease on life, a new identity, a new start—none of that comes
cheap or easy. To be born again requires
a death. A new name brings with it a limp.
When
my children were very small—Josh was 6 or 7 and Mimi was 3 or 4—we would end
many of our days with a wrestling match in our living room at 612 Chapel Street
in New Haven. We lived in a huge house that had lots of room for wrestling and
we took advantage of the space. I would
always be Andre the Giant and Josh and Mimi would be Spaghetti and Meatball.
Josh was Spaghetti because he was long and lean and Mimi, who has grown into a
beautiful woman, was Meatball because she was short and round as a child. And we would wrestle for an hour or so, until
I was gasping for breath and the children were worn out and ready for bed. Often, because they were so energetic and I
was so much bigger than them, one or the other of them would get hurt—they
would get a limp. But they wouldn’t stop. The wrestling itself was worth the
pain it inadvertently caused.
One
more story before I try to make some sense of all this. And the story is
this—it is one of my earliest memories, perhaps my earliest memory. My father and mother and I were out in the
yard of my Uncle Russell’s house. My father was lying down in the grass with me
when a stranger came running across the yard toward us. My father leaped up and
ran toward him. The two men—my father and the stranger—grabbed each other and
wrestled. I wasn’t yet two years old, but the image of the two men struggling
terrified me. I started crying and my mother rushed to pick me up. But she was
crying too, just like me, and my father and the stranger fell onto the ground,
wrapped in mortal combat. I clung to my mother in great fear.
It
wasn’t combat at all, I was seeing. And my mother’s tears were tears of joy,
not fear. The stranger who was wrestling with my father was my Uncle Del who
had been away for a long time. And they weren’t wrestling at all—they were
embracing, but the exuberance of their hug caused them to rock back and forth
and then fall on the ground.
Today
is the Children’s Sabbath. For years
now, we at St. John’s have celebrated this Sunday of the year as the Children’s
Sabbath. And never before has observing
a Sabbath for Children been so important, so vital, so necessary, so
appropriate, so needed….
The
English word Sabbath is derived from the Hebrew noun Shabbot
and it means, literally, REST. The Sabbath is the “day of rest.” It is the
day reserved for God and God alone. Orthodox Jews refrain from any “work” at
all on Shabbot—they do not drive cars or operate machinery or cook or
even turn on light switches. The food for Shabbot must be cooked before sunset.
The lights must be left on. The family must walk to the synagogue for the
prayers. The day belongs to God and God alone.
The
Children’s Sabbath is meant to reflect that commitment to God. This day must belong to the children and to
God—to the children and God alone.
There
are a multitude of children we are called to remember this day. The children of
our world are not responsible for the crises that surround us. Today we must
find a pray that all children find REST from the weariness of the
world.
When
thousands died on September 11 it left a multitude of children without a mother
or father or both. The September 11 orphans need rest from their mourning and loss—a time for
God to heal them and open our hearts to them.
There
are tens of thousands of children living in poverty and war in
Afghanistan. Those children are not
responsible for the decades of fighting or the numbing poverty of that
land. They need rest from their
senseless suffering—a time for God to strengthen them and open our hearts to
them.
Hundreds
of thousands of Muslim children living in the West—in our nation, in our
community—are suffering ridicule and violence merely because of their ethnicity
and faith. They need rest from their torment—a time for God to guard them and
open our hearts to them.
The
events of the past 6 weeks haunt the dreams of millions of children in this
country—their world has been invaded by violence they’ve not known before. They
need rest from their fears—a time for God to comfort them and open our hearts
to them.
Our
culture romanticizes childhood in a remarkable and dangerous way. We tend to
think of the years of childhood as simple and carefree and happy. For the most
part—and for most children—that is not true.
For the most part, CHILDHOOD IS A NIGHTMARE. Children have no power, no control—children
are innocent victims of a Grown Up World.
Children
did not pilot airplanes into buildings.
Children
do not make war and cause poverty.
Children
do not abuse and neglect adults.
The
night terror of children is all our doing—the result of the actions and
decisions of adults.
CHILDHOOD
IS A NIGHTMARE. That is why fairy tales speak so powerfully to children. In
fairy tales there is a struggle between Good and Evil. In fairy tales, the weak
and defenseless triumph over Monsters and Giants and Ogres.
(You
know, don’t you, who the Monsters and Giants and Ogres are? They are the “big people”—the adults who have
absolute control over children…the adults who create the terror of children’s
nightmares.)
Sabbath
is a time for “rest”, a time that belongs to God alone—and to God’s precious
children.
This
holy Shabbot—this holy Children’s Sabbath—speaks to the “big people”, to the
Monsters and Giants and Ogres, to the ADULTS of the world. And this holy,
sacred time that belongs to God and to children calls us to open our hearts to
the children in our family, in our church, in our community, in our world. They are OUR RESPONSIBILITY. It is our “job”, our sacred duty to teach the
children to ‘WRESTLE’.
Spaghetti
and Meatball ALWAYS defeated the awesome Andre the Giant. Just like in Fairy
Tales, Josh and Mimi ALWAYS won, against all odds.
That
is part of what we must teach our children—that God is on the side of the
underdog, the weak, the powerless. And we must teach them that the Cross of
Christ is the ultimate example of how POWERLESSNESS wins out in the end.
We
must teach our children that wrestling with God will give us both “new name”
and a limp. That life is confusing and painful, but that God is finally on our
side and that God will not only guard us from harm, God will give us new life.
And
we must teach our children that what sometimes looks like conflict and
wrestling might just be a dance of joy. We must teach our children that true
maturity is being able to live with ambiguity and confusion.
This
is the Children’s Sabbath. Today belongs to God and the Children alone. And EVERY DAY must be the Sabbath of the
Children. They are our only True Gift to the Future. We must wrestle with them
and dance with them and hold them ever close.
As if our very lives depended on it.
Because our very lives DO depend on that. Our lives truly depend on wrestling with and
dancing with and holding our children close.
That
MATTERS MOST. And it may be all that matters.
Christmas Eve
I should save this, I know. But wanted to share it since all the Christmas stuff is already in the stores though it's not yet Thanksgiving. Earlier ever year.
CHRISTMAS EVE 2001
Do
you know what “Beth-le-hem” means?
The
literal translation of that word from Hebrew into English is House of Bread. Bethlehem means “HOUSE OF BREAD.”
So
Jesus was born in the house of bread.
The
Child of Bethlehem—the House of Bread—grew into the Man of Jerusalem. And “Je-ru-salem” means, literally, “The
City of Peace”. So, the Child of the House of Bread became the Man of the City
of Peace.
That’s
the problem with Christmas: we know how the story ends. We cannot linger long
by the stable because we know that the story of that little child born in
Bethlehem will end, years later on a cross in Jerusalem.
We
are the People who don’t want to know “how the story ends.”
We
want to find out for ourselves about the ending. We want to be surprised. We
want the pleasure of hearing or reading or seeing the story without knowing how
it ends. “Don’t ruin the ending for me,” I’ve said to people countless
times. I don’t want to “be told” how the story ends. I want to discover “the
ending” for myself….”spoiler alert!” has become part of our culture's 'familiar
sayings'.
But
we know this story all too well. We have all heard the Angel’s song before. We
have all known the shepherds’ wonder before. We have all gone to Bethlehem
before to see this thing that has happened before. There’s the mother and her
newborn babe, and Joseph in the background. And, more importantly, we know the
end of the story that began in Bethlehem. The story ends on a bleak and brutal
hillside in Jerusalem—that Baby, grown to manhood—hangs from a cross between
two thieves, suffering, bleeding, dying.
We’ve
heard it all before. Old news. No better than reruns late at night.
So
where’s the wonder, where’s the magic, where’s the mystery of it all?
Imagine
this—you don’t know what’s going to happen next, you don’t know about Jerusalem
and the Cross. Imagine you don’t know the story. Imagine it’s all happening
right now, for the first time. Imagine this…and LISTEN.
It
gets cold in the Judean desert. Not like the cold of Connecticut—the cold there
is surprising and sharper, more distinct,
because the days are so much warmer than here in mid-winter. So, imagine
that kind of cold—the cold that suddenly chills you to the bone and leaves you
weak, vulnerable, helpless.
Imagine
the desert’s cold. Then imagine this, a baby is being born.
That
is miracle and magic enough. A baby born in the cold on nearly the darkest day
of the year. A baby born hungry and chilled, wrapped hurriedly in rough
blankets and handed to his mother. The mother is almost a child herself—a
young, unsophisticated teenager—and she takes the child and holds it to her
breast.
Miracle
and magic. But not the whole story.
That
child, in most ways, is just like any other baby—vulnerable, helpless, totally dependent—but
in one way, that Child is different, unlike any other baby ever born.
That
child, mother’s milk running down his cheek, cold and hungry—that Child is God.
Here’s
where the story of that magic, miraculous baby—as magic and miraculous as every
baby—turns weird. That Baby is God.
This is the
part of the story we miss and don’t hear and don’t fully appreciate because we
know it so well: THAT BABY IS GOD.
This
is the Eve of the Incarnation.
What we celebrate this night is not just the magic and miracle of birth and new
life and joy—we celebrate something hopelessly profound, utterly mysterious,
totally irrational.
Tonight
we celebrate that God—the great God Almighty, the Creator of all that was or is
or ever can be, the one who flung the stars into infinite space and formed this
earth, our island home and made us from imagination and hopefulness—that
God…the Holy Otherness…the “Being-ness” that brought all else into “being”…that
God took on flesh, the Divine and Ineffable and Eternal ONE took on Humanity
and Carnality and Mortality.
If
we didn’t know how the story ends, we would stop believing the story right
here, right now. It’s too much to bear, too fantastic, too unbelievable, too
irrational….And yet, in spite of all that, it is TRUE.
And
when God took on human flesh and became one of us, all humanity—each and every
human being who ever lived or lives now or will someday live—each human being
became a little HOLY. The magic and miracle runs both ways. When the HOLY ONE became HUMAN, all HUMANITY
became a little HOLY.
We
tend to say that God is “omnipotent”—all
knowing. But there WAS ONE THING God—who is Eternal Spirit—did not know.
God did not know what it felt like to be mortal and have flesh. So God became a
human child—to know hunger, know cold, know pain, know suffering, know
death—just like we human beings know those things.
But
when God took on flesh and became a human being, God learned some other things
from us. God learned how humans experience wonder and joy and excitement and hopefulness
and love. From the flesh God took on, God learned love. God learned about love
from Mary, who held him and nursed him and kept him safe. God learned about
love from Joseph, who guarded him and cared for him and taught him. God learned
about love from Jesus’ disciples love for him and the love of those Jesus
taught and healed.
Jesus—who
is God incarnate—learned Love from human beings like us. The true meaning of
the Incarnation is contained in what God learned from being human. And what God
learned from taking on flesh was this—God learned how to love.
I
know this all sounds backward from the way we’ve been taught about it. In the
breathtaking gospel I read from John tonight, it says “God so loved the world that he gave his only son….” I know that’s the way we’ve been taught—that
it was God’s LOVE that caused God to put on flesh in the first place. But the
magic and miracle runs both ways. God DID put on human flesh because God
LOVES us; and when he became human, God learned about “human love.”
God
loves in a different way that we love. There’s even a different word for God’s
love in Greek. God’s love is always AGAPE in Greek. Agape is a pure, ultimate and unmotivated concern for
another’s well being. That’s a kind of love
human beings are incapable of feeling—and that’s because it’s not a “feeling”
or an emotion at all. Agape
is more like a “philosophical position” than it’s like what we human beings
would ever call “love”. Until God became a human being in the person of Jesus,
God’s love was distant, detached and rather “passionless”.
And
human love is always full of “passion”. Whether it is a mother’s love for her
children or a husband’s love for his wife or the erotic love between two lovers
or the noble love of one’s companions and community and nation—whatever kind of
“human love” we’re talking about—it is full of PASSION and messiness. Somehow,
in becoming human, God learned that “passion” that caused the Child of Bethlehem to grow into the Man
of Jerusalem.
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About Me
- Under The Castor Oil Tree
- some ponderings by an aging white man who is an Episcopal priest in Connecticut. Now retired but still working and still wondering what it all means...all of it.