I’ve been at St. Joseph of Arimathea for two years as Priest-in-Charge. This month, I became Rector. This coming Saturday, January 28th, Bishop Bauerschmidt will officially install me during a service at St. Joseph’s:
I’ve just returned home from the 180th Annual Convention of the Diocese of Tennessee. After the better part of two days spent in meetings, considering resolutions and hearing reports, I’m pretty much brain dead and for the most part am only doing the most necessary things (like reading stories to my 9 month old son) before bed. But, in the quiet this evening, as I reflected upon tomorrow’s gospel text and ordered my thoughts for my sermon and brief report on convention, my attention was caught by one of the old Prayer Books that sit on my shelf. This one is a beautiful 1928 Book of Common Prayer printed in 1929 by Cambridge/James Pott & Company in New York. It has fantastic red under gold edging on the pages of india paper. But it’s beauty isn’t the best thing about it. It’s what’s inside this Prayer Book, which I picked up at an SPCK book sale while I was in seminary at the University of the South, School of Theology.
As with old Bibles, old prayer books become the repository of mementos and notes, cards printed with favorite hymns and hand written heartfelt prayers. As I flipped through its pages tonight, trying to still a mind that is still on over drive, I noticed the section of family prayers toward the end, it’s pages marked with the incidental dirt of hands pressed against them in prayer. Obviously the owner of this prayer book had used these family prayers frequently, even marking certain ones with an x, presumably to indicate favorites: For Quiet Confidence, For Guidance, the first of two prayers for trustfulness, and finally the prayer for Joy in God’s Creation and For the Children.
Marking these pages were several sheets of paper including a Prayer for The United Nations Organization adapted from the Book of Common Prayer, and Acts of Devotion. Finally there was what seemed to be the most interesting piece, at least for the present, a prayer for the unemployed by the Bishop of New York, reproduced below:
A Prayer for Those in Need through
Unemployment
Set forth by the Bishop of New York
For Use in the Churches of the Diocese and
by the People in Their Homes*
O Almighty God Who hast blessed the earth with all that is needful for the life of man, give Thy help and comfort to all who are in need and especially to those who are now suffering through unemployment; stir us to do our part for their aid and relief; help us to realize our responsibility for the injustices of our social and industrial life; fill us with the desire to purify our civilization and make it truly Christian that we may be delivered from the evils alike of grinding poverty and of excessive riches; lead us into the paths of simple and upright living; take from us the spirit of covetousness and give us the spirit of service; show us the way so to order our life as a nation that, receiving the just reward of honest labour, none may want, but each according to his need may share in Thy bountiful provision.
We ask this in the Name of Him Who came into this world to show us the way of justice and love, Thy Son Christ our Lord. Amen.
St. Philip
On December 15th one of the more intelligent, pugnacious, and acerbic banner bearers of the so-called New Atheists passed away. Christopher Hitchens was well known for his political and cultural commentary, and for his books such as God is not great. There were unfortunately, I’m sure, some Christians who exhibited a bit of schadenfreude at his passing. On the whole though, his death seemed to inspire thoughtful commentaries and reflections upon the nature of belief and disbelief.
Hitchens was insistent, up to the end of his battle with cancer, that he had no doubts and remained firm in his conviction that God does not exist. There would be no death bed conversion, no rolling of the dice or Pascal-like wager in favor of theism.
When asked how he would respond if he discovered there was a state of consciousness beyond this life, he responded with “I will be surprised, but I like surprises.”
The most poignant commentary by far was that of his brother Peter. Of course, the commentary of any family member on the passing of a loved one is bound to be poignant. This was more so because of the long running disagreement between the two, a disagreement centering on faith. While Christopher was one of the more well-known atheists in the western world–or at least the Anglo-sphere–Peter is a Christian and responded to his brother’s book with his own, The Rage Against God: How Atheism led me to Faith.
While Christopher and Peter participated in a number of public sparing matches over the years, limited eventually by their desire that, in Peter’s words, their disagreement not “…turn into gladiatorial combat in which nothing would be resolved and enmity could be created.”
In the end, it seems, faith was a subject that was off limits as a topic that would inspire more heat than light in their relationship. As Peter writes toward the end of his reflections on his brother’s passing, about the last time they saw each other:
We both knew it was the last time we would see each other, though being Englishmen of a certain generation, neither of us would have dreamed of actually saying so. We parted on good terms, though our conversation had been (as had our e-mail correspondence for some months) cautious and confined to subjects that would not easily lead to conflict. In this I think we were a little like chess-players, working out many possible moves in advance, neither of us wanting any more quarrels of any kind. (In Memoriam: Christopher Hitchens 1949-2011)
Some, perhaps, would be inclined to say that Peter failed in keeping his duty as a Christian, that he should have harried his brother to the end in order to bring him to faith. I would submit that such a view of sharing the gospel is not only ineffective, but in the end, runs counter to the gospel that it purports to espouse. Fundamentally, such a situation highlights that it is not our responsibility to convert others.
Only God can bring others to conversion, attempting to do so ourselves only serves to alienate people and in fact, drive them away from the opportunity to see God at work in our lives.
The story of the calling of Nathaniel illustrates some of this.
Philip invites Nathaniel
John 1:43-51, the calling of Philip and Nathaniel, closes out the chapter and follows immediately on the heels of the calling of Andrew and Peter. Jesus is traveling through Galilee and he sees Philip along the way and simply says to him, “Follow me” (John 1:43). If Philip asked any questions or had to be convinced, the gospel account is silent. He responds to Jesus’ call quickly, and more than that, he immediately goes out to share what he has discovered, going to his friend Nathaniel and telling him “We have found him about whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth” (John 1:45).
Just as Philip’s response may reveal something of his character, Nathaniel’s response shows that he is at least a bit incredulous, if not cynical of Philip’s pronouncement. “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” he asks. Some scholars think that this sounds like a local saying, but there is no attestation of it outside the gospel of John. Regardless of whether this were a local saying around parts of Galilee, taking a swipe at Nazareth, Nathaniel shows his quick wit, skepticism and directness with this response.
I would say that, in many ways, there are a lot of Nathaniel’s in our culture today. People who, while not exactly hostile to faith, are at least skeptical of its more traditional and institutionalized forms. Ours is, largely, a culture that empowers the individual, including in the area of the spiritual. This can be a good or bad trait, but it always means that received authority is a poor support for something you’re hoping to share with others. Likewise, argument becomes a self-defeating tool when trying to share the faith with others.
Imagine, if you will, what might have transpired if Philip had tried to brow-beat, cajole or otherwise convince Nathaniel of the rightness of his assessment of who Jesus is. Nathaniel seems a pretty self-possessed guy, free with his thoughts and secure in them. Of course we can’t know exactly what would’ve happened, conjectural as that thought is, but we can take something important away from the way Philip handles the situation. He doesn’t attempt to overwhelm Nathaniel with the prowess of his logical argument, or to confound him with scripture citation after scripture citation. Philip knows his friend, and that makes all the difference.
Rather than attempt to convince Nathaniel, Philip does something profoundly simple. He says in response to Nathaniel’s quip, “Come and see.”
This is precisely how we’re to respond to the various Nathaniel’s in our own lives today. We share with them what we have found in Jesus Christ, but when it comes time to convince them, time for them to move from audience or bystander to participant, we’re called to simply say, “Come and see.”
This is an amazingly freeing proposition. Episcopalians and other mainline protestants have rightly been accused of being a bit embarrassed by the “e” word, evangelism. There’s no denying that one of the reasons our congregations are shrinking is because of a simple failure to share what we have found with others. Few mainline folks invite others to church for example.
And that raises an important question. Are we neglecting to invite others because we are embarrassed by Jesus, by the forcefulness of other Christians or is it something else. Is it because we are afraid that people won’t actually meet Jesus if they come to worship with us?
The Invitation is to see Jesus at work
Philip invites Nathaniel to come and see Jesus, and in so doing he recognizes that the impetus for conversion comes not from his argument, no matter how well crafted or how well meaning. The impetus for conversion comes from Christ himself. It is God who turns hearts, not us.
This truth is evidenced in John by a contrast between what Philip says and what Jesus says. Philip, in his invitation to Nathaniel says that he has found the Messiah, the one of whom Moses and the prophets wrote. Of course, as readers and hearers we know that it is in fact Jesus who finds and calls Philip. The reality behind this is highlighted even more starkly when Nathaniel takes Philip up on the invitation to come and see Jesus.
As Nathaniel approaches, Jesus calls out to him, saying “Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!” (John 15:47). In the exchange which follows, Nathaniel is amazed that Jesus tells him what he was doing before they met, that he had been sitting beneath a fig tree. Jesus tells him that he will see greater things than these, including “heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man” (John 1:51). This demonstrates an important theological truth that will be emphasized even more in John 15, when Jesus says “You did not choose me but I chose you” (John 15:16).
So it is Jesus who does the choosing, not the individual. Philip does not convince Nathaniel, he simply offers an invitation for him to come and see Christ at work. When we invite folks to come and see, we are inviting them to come and see what Jesus is doing, whether that is in our corporate worship, in the way we live our lives, in the way we respect one another and serve those in need. We are relieved of the need to convince others as though they could come to faith through debate, but we should be reminded of the responsibility to share our experience with others, and to invite them to come and see Christ at work. When we have come and seen, we have the responsibility to go and tell, without the fear of rejection, without the added expectation of somehow having a good enough argument, or a profound enough story to convince someone else. We bring others to Christ, and let Christ do the work, just as Philip did.
In the past a person hounded by others may have feigned belief to keep the peace in their relationship, or they may have attended church services simply because it was the culturally acceptable thing to do, but today, there is no such pressure. Indeed, societal pressure actually runs against belief or at least active involvement in a faith community. There is truth to the old adage that “a man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still.” In today’s world, attempts to force agreement don’t even result in false believers, they result in people alienated from faith and more people cheering on the criticisms of the New Atheists.
So, while it is unfortunately true that some well meaning Christians would (and have in my hearing) criticize Peter Hitchens for not “doing enough,” and that there are many who would opine with certainty on the eternal fate of his brother, I applaud Peter for not pushing, and for offering a witness to the fact that a Christian can maintain their convictions while also maintaining their relationship with those who do not agree. When we let go of the lie that we can save others, then we are truly free to share the good news with them, in deed as well as word, and in a situation where words just won’t do, we still have the relationship and we can say, by our love, “come and see” Christ at work in the way we live our lives.
Let all of us who have seen, have the strength to share the truth, and also the strength to let go of what is not our responsibility, so that we can fulfill what is: inviting others to meet Jesus and let him do the convincing.
C.S. Lewis used to talk about what he termed Chronological Snobbery, that is, the belief that the art, practices, culture etc… of an earlier time are inherently less valuable or evolved than those of the current era. This attitude, of course, crops up a lot at every point in history. Unless we’re incurable cynics we like to focus on the good things going on in our time, and explain away the bad. It goes against the very modern narrative of continual progress to suggest that there may actually be some ways in which we are less moral or less well-equipped than our forebears.1 One of the ways this comes out in the era of the New Atheists and the like, is the condemnation of religion as a source for the world’s ills. Two events in the history of the Christian west in particular bear a great deal of scrutiny and are repudiated, with reason: the Crusades and the Inquisition.
Obviously I’m not going to defend the actions that folks are condemning when they condemn the Crusades and the Inquisition. The sorts of things people have in mind are fundamentally wrong, whether such actions actually color the whole of either set of events. Moral outrage is not a very nuanced emotion, in large part because it cannot be, and still lead to the sort of cleansing that is needed. An ironic thing came to my attention this evening though, as I read the newest edition of the Atlantic Monthly (January/February 2012). One of the articles in the magazine is entitled “Torturer’s Apprentice” and discusses the use the United States has made of “enhanced interrogation techniques.” I’ve written about issues of torture and Christian belief in the past, and shared resources, here and here.
Our continued justification of torture-by-another-name, as well as other behaviors we would never tolerate from another nation if directed toward us, are attributable to a particularly negative aspect of American Exceptionalism (and no, I am not a person who believes that everything that would fall under that category is necessarily wrong or evil. I would argue there are definitely good aspects related to the unique character of the United States). I’ve argued in the past that this negative form of exceptionalism, which sees the United States as always being in the right, is in part bolstered by a national narrative that can only exist because of the Civil War and the creation of a shadow side in the form of the American South. Because the United States was purified through blood in the fighting of a morally good war to free people from slavery, somehow it affirms the God-given rightness of all that we do. Ironically, many of those raised in what Flannery O’Connor rightly called the Christ-haunted South (as distinct from Christ-centered) are the most supportive of such a narrative. On the other hand, I think that Southerners are often in a better position to question the dominant narrative of the spotless moral record of our nation, since there are aspects of our own history–communal and familial–that, when dealt with honestly, force us to weigh our past as a morally mixed bag of both good and bad.
All that is to say, these two factors combined: generalized chronological snobbery overlaid with an unjustified presumption of moral superiority2, lead us to assume that some things done in our name are not wrong because they are done in our name. Case in point from this article in the most recent Atlantic. It is not out online yet, so I will simply type the portion I’d like to highlight, but I encourage you to purchase the magazine and read the article in its entirety:
As it happens, the Inquisition invented that defense [i.e. the defense that the number of time someone was waterboarded actually meant 'pours' rather than 'sessions' and was therefore not as bad as it looked]. In theory, torture by the Church was strictly controlled. It was not supposed to put life in jeopardy or cause irreparable harm. And torture could be applied only once. But inquisitors pushed the boundaries. For instance, what did once mean? Maybe it could be interpreted to mean once for each charge. Or, better, maybe additional sessions could be considered not as separate acts but as ‘continuances’ of the first session. Torture would prove difficult to contain. The potential fruits always seemed so tantalizing, the rules so easy to bend.
The public profile of torture is higher than it has been for many decades. Arguments have been mounted in its defense with more energy than at any other time since the Middle Ages. The documentary record pried from intelligence agencies could easily be mistaken for Inquisition transcripts. The lawyer Philippe Sands, investigating the interrogation (which used a variety of techniques) by the United States of a detainee named Mohammed al-Qahtani, pulled together key moments from the official classified account:
‘Detainee spat. Detainee proclaimed his innocence. Whining. Dizzy. Forgetting things. Angry. Upset. Yelled for Allah. Urinated on himself. Began to cry. Broke down and cried. Began to pray and openly cried. Cried out to Allah several times.’
The Inquisition, with its stipulation that torture and interrogation not jeopardize life or cause irreparable harm, actually set a more rigorous standard than some proponents of torture insist on now. The 21st century’s Ad extirpanda is the so-called Bybee memo, issued by the Justice Department in 2002 (and later revised). In it, the Bush administration put forth a very narrow definition, arguing that for an action to be deemed torture, it must produce suffering ‘equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death.’ To place this in perspective: the administration’s threshold for when an act of torture begins was the point at which the Inquisition stipulated that it must stop.
So, the next time someone bashes the Inquisition, perhaps we should tout their humanitarian credentials…
Wonderful piece to consider on this second day of Christmas and feast of St. Stephen, the first martyr. Hat tip to Bishop Graham Kings (@BishopSherborne).
Around 15 years ago I had the opportunity to be in northern India in December. The churches in Delhi had a remarkable tradition I’d never contemplated before. They had nativity plays, like everyone else. But all the adult characters – Mary, Joseph, the shepherds, the angels, the wise men, Herod and so on, were played by grown-ups.
I was flabbergasted. How could the church in India have got it so wrong? Surely they must understand that the whole point of nativity plays is that they be performed by children.
Surely December is to be filled by fathers comforting their daughters with the reassuring words that not everyone can play Mary (and that Third Angel really is the crucial role), mothers finding squares of burlap that look convincing on the head of Joseph without being too scratchy, and Sunday School teachers persuading a reluctant wise man from the east that there’s a subtle but significant difference between frankincense and Frankenstein.
Everyone knows the unique charm of Christmas is lost if adults take it too seriously. I sat there in Delhi and thought, Don’t these people realize that Christmas is really for the children?
But look what happens when you see a nativity play performed by adults in a country like India, a place where to be a Christian is always to experience being in a minority, often to face cultural discrimination, and sometimes to find yourself in a place of physical danger. You start to see aspects of the story that get overlooked when it’s all about a little donkey on a dusty road.
You see for a start that Christmas is about suffering people.
Read it all via Christmas is really for the Grown-Ups – Opinion – ABC Religion & Ethics (Australian Broadcasting Corporation).
As I mentioned in the post below, I’ve just started reading Robert Jenson’s systematic theology. In the prologue Jenson makes the following claim, and I’d be interested to hear folks’ response to it:
The Western church in turn divided at the time of the Reformation, and Protestantism has since been notoriously fissiparious. The ecumenical dialogues have, however, revealed only one functioning line of continuing division between the parties of the Western church. It runs between Catholic and Protestant, that is, between the Roman Catholic Church, together with any Protestants who may on a given question side with her, and what is on that question the remainder of the Protestants (p. viii).
I thought this was an interesting way to frame things, and it seems accurate in many ways. Thoughts?
Though I’ve had it for a while, I’ve just picked up the first volume of Robert Jenson’s systematic theology, The Triune God. I’ve long appreciated Jenson’s writing, but I particularly appreciate the way he begins this endeavor. It would be easy to find myself quoting way too much of this text, but I wanted to share some from the prologue.
Publishing a system of theology is an irremediably hubristic enterprise (p. vii).
Awesome (and quite true) first line.
Theology is the church’s enterprise of thought, and the only church conceivably in question is the unique and unitary church of the creeds. Therefore theology may be impossible in the situation of a divided church, its proper agent not being extant–unless, of course, one is willing to say that a particular confessional or jurisdictional body simply is the one church. To live as the church in the situation of a divided church–if this can happen at all–must at least mean that we confess we live in radical self-contradiction. Also theology must make this double contradiction at and by every step of its way.
We commonly speak of such things as “Roman Catholic” or “Baptist” or “Lutheran” theology. Such labels can be used in a harmless historically descriptive sense, as one can say that “Orthodox theology” tends to a Cyrillean Christology. They may be used in a somewhat more ominous descriptive sense, as someone might say that “Reformed theology” cannot accept certain ways of asserting papal primacy. But a theologian who described her or his own work as “Lutheran” of “Reformed” or whatever such, and meant by that label to identify the church the work was to serve, would either deny the name of church to all bit his or her own allegiance, or desecrate the theological enterprise.
It is sharpened recognition of such stark alternatives that has driven a characteristic form of modern ecumenism, the search for healing of churchly divisions by theological “convergence.” The dialogues and the convergence-theology they practice have achieved marvels. But it is becoming clear that reestablishment of ecclesial fellowship between East and West and within the West across the divisions begun at the Reformation will not occur by any straightforward continuation of these efforts. It increasingly appears that no degree of theological convergence can by itself suffice to reestablish communion once broken. An act of God is needed.
Nor need this be a pessimistic prediction. The church must regard waiting as the most creative of activities, since she apprehends fullness of being only in the coming Kingdom. And God may act tomorrow. In the meantime, it is a great blessing specifically to theology that we need not wait for the church to be undivided to do theology for and even of the undivided church. For theology itself is a form of the waiting we must practice. (p. viii)
Whatever happens,
those who have learned
to love one another
have made their way
to the lasting world
and will not leave,
whatever happens.
–Wendell Berry, Given: Poems, p. 55
Julian Assange is one arrogant SOB (as are the others at Wikileaks), having taken it upon themselves to reveal sensitive information as part of their self-appointed crusade, believing that they somehow had sufficient knowledge and right to endanger the lives of others and usurp the authority of officials elected and appointed by elected officials of multiple democratic governments. Answerable to no one, elected by no one, granted authority by no one, they decide to share everything they get their hands on, and now a tiny minority is under threat because of their actions. I agree with one of the commenters, if anything happens to these folks, Assange and his proteges ought to be charge at least with incitement, if not as accomplices to murder.
The seven remaining Jews in Baghdad have been named by WikiLeaks, leaving them in danger of persecution, according to the city’s Anglican vicar.
Their lives are now in immediate danger, according to Canon Andrew White, and they’ve been advised to hide their religion.
Canon White said Baghdad’s Anglican Church is trying to protect them, as they fear extremists might try to kill them if they’re identified.
Read it all via Last SEVEN remaining Jews in Baghdad are named by WikiLeaks… leaving their lives in danger | Mail Online.
Since seminary I’ve been researching the history of the marriage liturgy and Christian approaches to marriage (I’ve written two essays here: Love That Has Ends Will Have an End & History of the Marriage Liturgy), especially the ways in which Christians have dealt with existing relational patterns and have either baptized them or critiqued them. Many people fail to realize that much of the structure of marriage promoted for so long by the Church was not a means for the social control of women–far from it–it was a means of protecting women and providing protections for them in societies where they had little to no recourse (the double consent formula of “I will” and “I do” in the marriage rite of the Book of Common Prayer is just one example of this, as is the prohibition against clandestine marriage).
One thing is quite obvious: in our society there is no way that Christians can avoid the question of cohabitation. I attempt to approach the topic as a missionary would. The difficulty, however, is the number of people who would self-identify as Christian, yet still cohabitate with no clear expectation or plan for marriage. The consequences of this way of organizing family life are far reaching. Marriage is indeed, much more than a “piece of paper.”
To the article below, i would simply add the observation that the Church did indeed recognize some concubinage as equivalent to marriage–namely those relationships that were committed and monogamous and blessed by by the Church but, because of the difference in social status of the partners, could not be contracted as a legal marriage. This allowance, it should be noted, was one which encouraged commitment and recognized the sacramental nature of the unions in a manner that called into question the legal limitations imposed upon them by the Roman state.
The piece from Salvo below discusses many of the problems with the current trend toward cohabitation. It is but one example of the ways our society encourages transitory and unstable relationships.
In ancient times, there was an option for a man who desired a regular sex partner but did not wish to marry her. He could take a low-status woman as a concubine. He could enjoy her company as long as it pleased him, and he could dismiss her at any time. The man made no promises and signed no contract; consequently, the concubine had few legal protections. Any children that she bore would have an inferior legal status.
The early Church fought long and hard against concubinage. It insisted that such a sexual relationship, without the permanent and total commitment expressed in marriage vows, was immoral and unjust. Over the course of a thousand years, concubinage retreated into the shadows of social disapproval.
In the past 40 years, it seems, concubinage has come to light again under a different name. Like ancient concubinage, contemporary cohabitation is a deliberately ambiguous relationship. The partners make no promises and have no legal obligations to one another. The arrangement has no specified duration and can be terminated at a moment’s notice. Those who cohabit tend to be of lower social status. Their children, on average, do not fare as well as children born to married couples.
Read it all via Salvo Magazine – Cohabitation by Alan F. H. Wisdom.