Let There Be Light January 8, 2012 The Baptism of Our Lord, Year B Genesis 1.1-5

            In his famous essay “Meditation in a Toolshed,” C. S. Lewis describes the difference between standing in the dark looking “at” a shaft of sunlight, and stepping into it looking “along” the same beam to the sun beyond. Lewis likens this experience to two ways of knowing: standing outside a thing and analyzing it, and stepping into the same thing and experiencing it.

            Modernity, Lewis charges, assigns “reality” to the exterior view and dismisses the interior vision as fantasy. “But,” he cautions, “it is perfectly easy to go on all your life giving explanations of religion, love, morality, honour, and the like, without having been inside any of them. And if you do that, you are simply playing with counters.”

            “Then God said, ‘Let there be light.’”

            The first recorded words of the Almighty bring forth a blaze that bathes the chaotic creation in brightness. Light is not here to look at, but to look by – and all light ultimately shows its source, the light-giver God.

            Many millennia after Eden’s illumination, after speckled centuries of the chiaroscuro of God’s goodness checkered by humanity’s sin, Our Lord waded waist-deep into Jordan to plunge into the symbolic darkness of the death that would literally swallow him on Calvary. As Jesus rises spluttering to the surface, Mark’s Gospel describes the sky-splitting descent of the dove: the Heavens “opening,” like a shrunken patch ripping a thread-bare shirt (Lk 5.36), like a record catch of fish shredding an over-burdened net (21.11), like the grace of God tearing apart every boundary that righteousness has woven between a loving Lord and fallen creatures (Mk 15.38).

            Some looked at the light that day, and saw the scandalous particularity of a soaking-wet peasant, one more convert to some radical religious revivalist. But the Baptizer stepped inside the beam; he looked along the light and saw the source and knew that his Lord had come.

            Some watch baptism and see a religious ritual that they can take or leave. Some get wet and see a solidarity with their Savior. “Let there be light” – and there was, and there is. But are we looking at, or looking along?

Come In, The Water’s Fine!

Doug

Blackout January 1, 2012 Holy Name, Year B Numbers 6.22-27

            Archaeologists in Jerusalem recently uncovered two silver cylinders of Hebrew text that predate Qumran by four centuries. They record this ancient benediction, making it the oldest portion of Scripture we possess. The Ancient Hebrews clearly treasured the blessing of God.

            The poem consists of three lines of three, five, and seven Hebrew words as the Lord’s presence flows ever outward over the flock. The start of each line invokes the holy Name, so that the purpose of the poem is to invest God’s people with God’s presence.
And at its center lies the promise of light: “The Lord make His face shine upon thee.” Thus the presence of God and the peace of God pivot upon the power of God to illuminate the darkness.

            On Monday, December 19, 2011, a transformer blew near Candlestick Park in San Francisco and left two football teams and seventy thousand fans in darkness and delayed the kick-off for twenty minutes. Midway through the second quarter, blackness descended again as the hasty repair work failed. The next morning, I awoke to discover that local vandals had stripped one hundred feet of copper wire from a nearby substation, ungrounded a transformer and left my home and over six thousand other people powerless.

            “The Lord make His face shine upon thee.” We hunger more for light after we’ve been abandoned in the dark.

            When Mary and Joseph, acting on angelic orders, named their baby “Jesus,” they loosed God’s light on our melancholy midnight. Our Lord made his face to shine upon us when he took on a literal face in the miracle of the Incarnation. And in days of dark and discouragement, when all our clever kilowatts fail and thieves plunder our self-willed power, we bask in the blaze of the Name that is above every other name.

Light This Candle!

Doug

God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen December 25, 2011 Christmas Day, Year B Isaiah 9.2-7

            “We have a new credo,” hedge fund manager Douglas A. Kass recently told the New York Times, “carpe noctem – seize the night.” Kass was describing the necessity of rising at half-past two to see what Angela Merkel had been getting up to in the Euro Zone. The Tar Baby connectedness of the modern market has Wall Street types seared with trade, their sleepless eyes bleared and smeared with ceaseless toil.

            “The people who walk in darkness will see a great light; those who live in a dark land, the light will shine on them.”

            Isaiah envisioned something different from the backlit glow of liquid crystal displays that stab the insomniac stares of free market slaves. A ruler would at last arise who would obliterate the benighted notion that getting and spending late and soon can beat back the dark of encroaching death. Instead this Wonderful Counselor would give to his beloved even in their sleep.

            Matthew recorded the light that shone on Bethlehem’s babe and the dark that descended on Calvary’s cross, but in between he saw the subtle beam of an itinerate carpenter’s relocation to the seaside: “This was to fulfill what was spoken through Isaiah the prophet.” (Mat 4.14) Christmas comes to remind us that between the miracle of Christ’s birth and the promise of his return we rest in the homely glow of his daily care. God’s Son has seized the night, shaken it free of fear and made it shine like the noonday sun. We can power down in the presence of the Prince of Peace.

Good Night,

Doug

#OCCUPYADVENT December 11, 2011 Third Sunday of Advent, Year B Isaiah 61.1-11

            Though Kalle Lasn didn’t occupy Wall Street, he did conquer the emotional turf that drove the movement. Last July, Lasn, editor of the radical magazine "Adbusters," launched the Twitter hashtag #OCCUPYWALLSTREET and welded it to the image of a ballerina dancing on the back of the stock market’s famous bull sculpture. It was the initial air strike in what Lasn calls a “meme war.” Whatever you think of the movement, remember that it began with an image.

            Isaiah’s image of the coming Messiah does not drift in a vapor six feet above history but dances on the broad back of actual oppression. He speaks to the situation of the post-exilic Jewish community – predatory interest rates, exorbitant taxation and the wage slavery of low-paying jobs – then reaches back to Leviticus 25 and the Year of Jubilee when all possessions revert to their original owners, and offers an image of a coming Savior, an Anointed One, who will put things right. It remains for Nehemiah to respond to the #OCCUPYJERUSALEM mob (Neh 5), but the prophetic hashtag cracks open a closed reality to make change possible.

            Jesus takes Isaiah’s text for his inaugural sermon in Luke 4 and preaches a message that forever links the idea of “gospel” with actual hope in the present world. At the end of his earthly ministry, He will lead his own #OCCUPYJERUSALEM mob right into the temple. Both sermons produce the same result: attempted assassination on the one hand, and successful assassination on the other. It seems we prefer our Messiahs a trifle more spiritual and a good deal less practical.

            As we move into Advent, we do well to remember that the Lord for whose coming we yearn promises a community where a crucified God dances on the bronze shoulders of the world system, and that whether His coming is “the favorable year of the Lord” or “the day of vengeance of our God” largely depends on which image you embrace. God grant that when the Son of Man comes, He will find His church at #OCCUPYCALVARY.

Occupado,

Doug

           

Collect

Father, You promise that at His coming Your Son will judge privilege and end poverty. Grant that that we may prepare for Our Lord’s return by choosing to live now in the world He offers, that those around us may see the Kingdom and embrace the Christ in whose name we pray to You, Our Father, through the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Benediction

May Christ who comes empower you,

            To bring forth, bind up, and break free.

May Christ who comes transform you,

            With garlands and gladness and good.

May Christ who comes make you mighty,

            To rescue, restore, and repair.

In the Name of the Father,

And of the Son,

And of the Holy Spirit,

Amen.

God on a Tear November 27, 2011 First Sunday of Advent, Year B Isaiah 64.1-9

            The home-stretch of the 1990 Minnesota senate race found candidate Paul Wellstone down by double-digits, yet he continued to scrap. Campaign manager Patrick Forciea explained the strategy: “We are going to get as close as we can, wait for a lightning storm and then head out to the golf course and wave a 9-iron around.” In the end his opponent stumbled and Wellstone won by a sliver.

With time running out for Israel Isaiah adopts a similar strategy: He takes to the wilderness and brandishes a verbal lightning rod in the face of the Almighty. Like Leer on a storm-strafed heath or Captain Ahab on the pitching decks of the Pequod, the prophet dares God to do the worst on the argument that divine action – even judgment – is better than divine indifference. “Oh, that you would rend the heavens.” The verb describes ripping cloth, as the Almighty blasts into oblivion the veil that makes Heaven seem distant.

But Isaiah sneaks in another idea here: This word appears frequently for the rending of garments as a sign of mourning. (Isa 36.22, 37.1) Father and potter: God who begets and shapes us, if You cannot excuse, can You at least mourn?

At Advent God’s church confesses that we should have done better by now. Two millennia after Our Lord’s appearance and still we wallow in partisan bickering and cut daily deals with the devil to survive. All our religion is menstrual rags. If Christ should split the eastern skies the blast of his breath would blow our works away and leave us as naked as Adam’s fig leaves left him after the Fall.

And yet we cry for Christ to come. We dare to wave the nine-irons of our prayers in the lightning storm of eternity for two reasons: First of all, God is better than no-God; better to be ignited than ignored. Secondly, the God who condemns is the God who grieves. At the moment of Christ’s death the Lord rent the temple veil, an act of judgment, of grief and of mercy. Naked we wait love’s uplifted stroke: Even so, Lord Jesus, come!

Let ‘Er Rip!

Doug

           

Every Seditious Dog Has His Day November 20, 2011 Christ the King Sunday, Year A Ephesians 1:15-23

            The poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge once launched a short-lived political paper called “The Watchman.” An aristocrat who took exception to the decidedly republican tone of the sheet’s politics once glanced at the epigraph on the masthead and condemned it as “a seditious beginning!” Upon being told that the motto was a quotation, not Coleridge’s own work, the detractor scoffed, “Poo! What odds is it whether he wrote it himself or quoted it from any other seditious dog?”

            The slogan ran: “That all may know the truth; and that the truth may make us free!”

            Paul reminds the Ephesian believers that the preaching of the gospel is the seditious baying of the Hound of Heaven. As Paul piles up the synonyms – rule and authority and power and dominion – he ransacks the vocabulary of majesty common to Jewish angelology, Roman bureaucracy and Ephesian thaumaturgy. And he weds this rebellious grito to the unseemly assertion that a dead Jew walked out of his tomb, that defeat is God’s secret weapon, and that submission the ultimate form of sedition.

            Then he adds insult to injury when he insists that this crucified conqueror belongs especially to a scruffy set of so-called saints whose founder skipped town half a step ahead of a riot, a man whose preaching undercut the local economy by lowering demand for high-quality idols. He . . . gave Him as head over all things to the church. The Kingship of Christ is God’s great gift to the visible body of believers. Thus the church never courts politicians, begging for a place at the table, but calls them to account and issues terms of surrender.

            Earthly authority, whatever its surface piety, never welcomes the barking of the seditious dogs of the gospel. In 1612 the great Baptist leader Thomas Helwys published A Short Declaration of the Mystery of Iniquity, the first call for religious liberty ever written in English. He sent an inscribed copy to King James, noting on the flyleaf that, “The king is a mortal man and not God, and therefore has no power over the immortal souls of his subjects.” They jugged him for that crack and he died in prison four years later.

            The church can only celebrate Christ the King Sunday by simultaneously celebrating Nobody Else the King Sunday. If we dare to do so, we may know the wrath of a world that dislikes the Seditious Dog we serve. We will, however, certainly come to know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what is the surpassing greatness of His power toward us who believe.

Ruff, ruff!

Doug

Collect

Almighty God, by the humiliation of the cross You exalt Your Son to rule in the highest heavens. Grant that we may be true to the crucified Christ though it means being traitors to every lesser loyalty, that by embracing the same cross we may find in Him our place at Your right hand. We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

Benediction

May all your knowledge make you to know Christ,

            And all your wisdom make you fools for Him.

May all your riches make you rich in Christ,

            And all your hope be your belief in Him.

May all your loyalty be unto Christ,

            And all your worship be alone for Him.

In the name of the Father,

And of the Son,

And of the Holy Spirit,

Amen.

           

            

Knock, Knock . . . Who’s There? November 13, 2011 Proper 28 Ordinary Time, Year A 1 Thessalonians 5.1-11

           “Sister, open for us.”

            New York Times reporter Christina Lewis Halpern admits to hearing the plea outside her door in a Nairobi convent. She admits to hearing female weeping, male shouting, female screaming.           

She admits that she did not open the door.

            The mosquito netting tangled her legs as she half-awakened. Fear tangled her mind as she came fully awake. “Surely they would go away. Surely someone would come. Surely they would leave me alone.”

            “Sister, open for us.”

            The next morning Halpern learned that gunmen had invaded the convent, shot a guard and stolen cash meant for the order’s missions in Uganda and Sudan. She admitted her cowardice and asked for and received the forgiveness of the terrified nuns who had sought refuge at her door. (For the full story, see http://www.nytimes.com/ 2011/10/30/ magazine/at-an-african-convent-desperate-knocks-and hours.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq= sister,%20open%20&st=cse.)

            When, drawing on the teaching of Jesus, Paul warns “that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night,” he may well have just this image in mind. Scholars debate whether the “day” in question refers to the end of history (the subject of the preceding paragraph) or, in the Old Testament sense, a time of judgment within history. Certainly the terms destruction and labor pains come from the prophetic vocabulary for the latter.

            When horrors overtake a benighted world, God commands Christians to heed their cries. “Let us be alert” – the word does not mean to wake up, but to fend off sleep in the first place. Practical difficulties should not entangle our agile compassion. Personal safety should not anesthetize our ready response. We rush to the rattling doorknob and reject the chattering syllogisms of safety. “Sister, open for us”: Surely they will go away. Surely someone will come. Surely they will leave us alone. But we are the ones Christ has sent.

            If we fail we may, in the final undying dawn of eternity, receive the forgiveness of those we abandoned, whom someone else sought out and saved, but better to receive their embrace here in this present crisis. Shakespeare’s Portia, on seeing her lighted home from afar exclaims, “How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed in a naughty world.” May we awaken, and so shine.

Open Up!

Doug

Collect

Lord God, You have appointed your beloved Son as the judge of the living and the dead. Grant that we who see the day of judgment approach may fling wide the doors of salvation and welcome the lost into the safety of Your kingdom, not stopping first to consult our own convenience or security. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.           

Benediction

When the day comes as a thief in the night,

            May you be the night watchman.

When the day comes as the pangs of labor,

            May you be the physician on call.

When the day comes to drive away the dark,

            May you be one who walks in light.

In the name of the Father,

And of the Son,

And of the Holy Spirit,

Amen.

Dancing with the Dead: All Saints Sunday November 6, 2011, Proper 27 Ordinary Time, Year A 1 Thessalonians 4.13-18

            Once a year Christians hold a business meeting and invite the dead to participate. All Saints Sunday is the day we extend the franchise to the deceased. “Tradition,” G. K. Chesterton explains, “means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead.” This day matters because it reminds those currently alive that we constitute an infinitely small slice of the communion of the saints.

            The Thessalonian church worried about those who had died, and Paul didn’t tell them to stop. In fact, he reminded them that these old souls had outdistanced them in death and would beat them to the final finish line. Hopeful respect replaces hopeless grief for those who truly believe that death brings us closer to the throne.

            For the ancient world history was mostly examples to be imitated. For the modern world, history was mostly mistakes to be overcome. For the postmodern world history is largely lost in the mists of individual isolation. For Christians, however, the past is, quite simply, the present: Barnabas and Bunyan, Lydia and Lottie Moon, Apollos and Annie Armstrong are not just our precursors but our partners as their example continues to inform our own faith.

            We do not stratify certain saints as somehow more saved than others. Imperfections litter the lives of our beloved dead and we serve them best by rejecting their wrongs. But we should not over-correct by regarding the dead in Christ as irrelevant to the living. We must not confine ourselves to what Chesterton labels “the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about.” We carry a flame of faith entrusted to us by our spiritual forebears and our job is to hand it on, not to extinguish it in favor of whatever small blaze we can kindle in the airless confines of our own era.

            In a day when the adjectives “contemporary” and “relevant” outshine words like “ancient” and “faithful,” we do well to make sure we listen well to the voices of our heritage. Those who have gone before us will come back to get us, and they can help us understand the Christ to whom they guide us.

Saints Alive!

Doug

Collect

God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, You assure us of the security of the saints who have gone before. Grant that rather than mourn their death we may affirm our faith in their ongoing life by advancing on the path they have shown us, and live in the hope being reunited with them at the coming of Your Son, Our Lord Jesus Christ in whose name we pray, Amen.

Benediction

May you live through the grief of death

            By faith in eternal life.

May you live through the grief of separation

            By faith in the final reunion.

May you live through the grief of loneliness

            By faith in the ultimate togetherness.

By the presence of the Father,

At the coming of the Son,

Through the power of the Holy Spirit,

Amen.

Work as Witness October 30, 2011 Proper 26 Ordinary Time, Year A 1 Thessalonians 2.9-13

            An old joke: the judge warns the man in the dock that the prosecution has a witness who saw him do it. “That’s nothing!” the accused scoffs. “I can find five people who didn’t see me do it.”

            Robert Weston will go you one better: For every guy the cops think did it, he will find four others who most definitely did not do it. Like a member of G. K. Chesterton’s famous Club of Queer Trades, Weston has created a completely new profession: lineup casting director. When the police in the Bronx collar a suspect and need the witness to ID the perp, they phone Weston with a brief physical description – gender, ethnicity, facial hair – and he makes a few calls. Each participant earns a sawbuck, as does Weston for his role as impresario. If he also sits in as a pseudo-suspect, he pockets an extra tenner. Crime’s a pretty steady commodity: Weston apparently makes a fair living. (Read more at http://www.nytimes.com /2011/10/17/ nyregion/a-casting-director-for-police-lineups.html?_r=1&hp.)

            This doesn’t seem like hard work; anybody could do it. So how does Weston hang onto his monopoly? “He always picks up his phone,” explains one officer.

            Paul developed a rep in Thessalonica as a man who picked up his phone: that is to say, one who did good work. Paul put in hard hours (the Greek words for “labor and hardship” in v. 9 carry the idea of hacking away underbrush and slogging through the mud) and worked double-shifts, making sure that he did not unsay with his tents (Acts 18.3) what he said with his testimony.

            In the end, the apostle rejoices that his converts received the gospel “not as the word of men, but . . . the word of God.” Perhaps one thing that made this possible was that they could, up front, receive it as the word of honest men.

            “Seest thou a man diligent in his business?” asks Proverbs 22.29. “He shall stand before kings; he shall not stand before mean men.” Paul was diligent in his business, and the mean men before whom he stood became a nation of priests and kings.

            So whether you supply tents or fake muggers, do your job well. Answer your phone; stand behind your product. Let your work say “amen” to your witness, and show the world what a worthy walk looks like.

That’s the One, Officer!

Doug

           

Collect

Great Creator, You said of all you made that it was good, and they said of Your Son that He did all things well. Grant now that we may do with all our hearts whatever work we encounter, whether high or low, great or small, bringing all our labor before You as an offering, that the world might see in our smallest deeds a reflection of Your greatest praise. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.           

Benediction

May you choose labor over laziness,

            For in labor we show Christ’s love.

May you be burden-bearers rather than a burden-bringers,

            For Christ bore our burden on Calvary.

May all of your works bear witness to the worthy walk of faith,

            That the Word of God might perform its saving work.

In the name of the Father,

And of the Son,

And of the Holy Spirit,

Amen.

All in the Family October 23, 2011 Proper 25 Ordinary Time, Year A 1 Thessalonians 2.1-8

            Mixed metaphors let the cat on a hot tin roof out of the bag. Paul doesn’t care.

            In 1 Thessalonians 2 he runs his metaphors through a mad mixer, morphing in just a few verses from a infant to mother to father in describing his relationship to the little congregation. Some very good manuscripts read “infants” for “gentle” in verse 7 (a one-letter difference in Greek). Paul pairs this with the image of a “nursing mother” and then throws in dad (verse 11) for good measure.

            The unifying theme in this disjointed syntax is vulnerability.

            We all understand an infant’s insecurity but too seldom see the helplessness of parents. Frederick Buechner explains it well: “When it comes to your own hurt there are always things you can do. . . .But when it comes to the hurt of a child you love, you are all but helpless. The child makes terrible mistakes, and there is very little you can do to ease his pain.”

            The interesting thing is that this is Paul’s picture of apostleship.

            1 Thessalonians may well be his first epistle and he does not identify himself with the title apostle as he will in later letters. Some scholars think this means that we are watching Paul hammer out his own understanding of what it means to be God’s authorized messenger. Sure, there’s the opportunity to throw one’s weight around (verse 6), but the true mark of a minister is an openness that, in welcoming relationship, risks pain. When they hammered on Paul in Philippi he shook it off and preached as boldly as ever. When he had to sacrifice his own security, he never hesitated. But when his converts pay the price for faith, he can only hurt alongside of them.

            And that’s how Paul gauges whether a ministry has been “in vain.”

            He never mentions numbers of converts. He says nothing about attendance statistics. He only records that a community of Christians comforted one another in the suffering brought about by the offence of the gospel. Now there’s wisdom you can take to the bank for a rainy day.

Metaphorically Speaking,

Doug

           

Collect

Almighty God, You revealed Your power in a human body hung on a cross and a human heart broken for our sins. Remind us that in vulnerability is our victory, and in pain is our power, that in us the world might see embodied the love of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, One God now and forever, Amen.

Benediction

May you learn that asking is more powerful than ordering,

            For an infant is armed only with its need.

May you learn that feeding is more fulfilling than being fed,

            For a mother’s reward is in giving.

May you learn that life grows by being given away,

            For our living Lord loved us even unto the death.

In the name of the Father,

And of the Son,

And of the Holy Spirit,

Amen.

Chameleon Christianity October 16, 2011 Proper 24 Ordinary Time, Year A 1 Thessalonians 1.1-10

            Thaumoctopus mimicus, the mimic octopus of Indonesia, is the consummate copy-cat. All octopi can change their skin color to blend into the background, thus avoiding predators or fooling prey. But thaumoctopus ups its game: It actually does imitations.

            When it wants to swim through hostile waters, it decks itself out in the pinstriped spines of a poisonous lionfish. To cruise the ocean floor, it Frisbees itself into a toxic flatfish. If its arch-enemy the damselfish comes nosing about, it turns one of its eight appendages into a damselfish-devouring sea-snake. There’s an element of the marvelous in all of this: Thaumoctopus means something like “eight-armed wonderworker” and the name seems apt. Another great shape-shifting member of the species goes by the moniker wunderpus, which I roughly translate as “miracle face.”

            We Americans like to see ourselves as rugged individualists but for all our efforts to march to the beat of our own djembe the fact remains that we, too, are unconscious mimics. In conversation with friends we match their body language, posture, and speech patterns. This puts the other person at ease, and tests have shown that you can stress somebody out by deliberately failing to reflect such imitative cues.

            Paul is all for thaumoctopus theology. In his greeting to the Thessalonian congregation he commends them for becoming “imitators” of the original apostolic band, and then for offering themselves as an “example” for their own converts. That first word gives us our English term mimic, and the latter leads to our noun type.

Of course, any imitation is only as good as its original object. Reproduce an imperfect pattern and you perpetuate its flaws. Paul pursued Christ with such passion that he dared offer his own life as a connect-the-dots template for his congregation. They in turn had the nerve to display their pattern of discipleship as a paint-by-numbers paradigm for those they won to Jesus.

The New Testament challenges Christians to such concentration on Christ that we become eight-armed miracles, nimble wonder-pusses who can show the face of Jesus to drive away the devil or enfold our fellows in an inescapable embrace of octagonal love. Of course, the analogy breaks down because thaumoctopus, whatever his external wardrobe, remains an octopus on the inside. We, by contrast, embody the internal transformation of the Holy Spirit who reworks us from the inside out. But, Paul’s words seem to indicate, a proper outer focus seems to empower this inner revolution.

As Christians we are all of us swimming through shark-infested waters and in our own persons we lack the resources for survival. So the important questions become: Who are you looking at? And who’s looking at you?

Octoprayerfully,

Doug

Collect

Heavenly Father, you sent Your Son to be not only our substitute but also our example, and He sent forth His apostles to extend that pattern to Your church. Grant now that we may so focus on Jesus and the faith once for all revealed to the saints that our world may see the true image of Christ the Son, together with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God now and forever, Amen.

Benediction

May you focus your faith on Christ,

            For He is our author and finisher.

May you find faithful Christians on whom you can focus,

            For in them Christ comes among us.

May you faithfully show forth Christ to those who focus on you,

            For they seek an example to follow.

In the name of the Father,

And of the Son,

And of the Holy Spirit,

Amen.

           

           

Zoned Out October 9, 2011 Proper 23 Ordinary Time, Year A Philippians 4.1-9

Back around the turn of the last century psychologists Robert M. Yerkes and John D. Dodson did some experiments which indicated that if you agitate a mouse it performs better, but only up to a point. Stress it out too much and the rodent backslides. Behaviorists now call this sweet-spot between a hammock and a bed of nails “optimal anxiety.” The popular term is “comfort zone.” Writer Daniel Pink dubs it “productive discomfort”: when the bed is just right, Goldilocks takes a nap and nothing gets done; introduce a trio of bears and she does some productive cardio training.

            Paul confronts a Philippian church jerked wide awake by a bruising battle between its two pastors, but he doesn’t seem overwhelmed. Amidst a lot of talk about rejoicing and being non-anxious and God’s peace doing sentinel duty over one’s heart and mind, he approaches this rift as an opportunity for ministry. He even tosses a third, unnamed minister into the mix as his special envoy. Of course, the apostle sits this battle out from the safety of his ringside cell in a Roman dungeon, but we still get the idea that the whole mess holds hope for increased growth among the Philippian saints.

            Sometimes it seems that the modern American church is too comfortable to be creative in the face of stimulating conflict. Sensitive to seekers and saints alike we pad the pews and the preaching until our feet are shod, not with the gospel of peace but with the bunny-slippers of a mild coma. The slightest hint of conflict freaks us out and leaves us doubting that the local church can really be what the Lord had in mind, since surely a lobotomized bliss is the logical outcome of following a crucified Lord.

            Optimal anxiety and productive discomfort: Maybe the Lord makes the soup too hot, the chair too small and the bed too hard to keep us from settling in for a long winter’s nap. “The Lord is near!” Paul tosses in that aside like an IED buried by the side of the straight and narrow way. And that thought should supply enough productive anxiety to keep us working hard at loving one another in ways that open new possibilities in an ever-expanding Christian community.

Anxiously,

Doug

Collect

God of peace, your servant Paul urged the church at Philippi to embrace conflict as an opportunity to grow. Grant us grace in our inevitable times of disagreement to seek understanding rather than victory, and unity rather than sameness. This we pray in the name of the God whose Oneness is Unity in Trinity, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Amen.           

Benediction

May the Lord make you one,

            But never make you the same.

May the Lord make you peaceful,

            But never make you boring.

May the Lord make your mind to dwell

            On the things that last forever.

In the name of the Father,

And of the Son,

Above Average October 2, 2011 Proper 22 Ordinary Time, Year A Philippians 3.4-14

           The day before the final game of the 1941 baseball season the Red Sox’ Ted Williams had a batting average of .39955. Since the league rounds to the nearest decibel, he could have benched himself for the next day’s double-header, thus clinching the only .400 average in the history of the game.

            Williams chose to play.

“If I’m going to be a .400 hitter,” he insisted, “I want more than my toenails over the line.” He went six for eight and finished at .406, a mark that remains unmatched to this day.

            Paul would’ve liked Ted Williams.

            Paul insists on intensity in the pursuit of Christ. Three times in two verses the apostle uses a term that is of the break-the-tape type vs. the toenails-over-the-line variety: “Lay hold . . . laid hold of . . . having laid hold . . . .” A preposition intensifies the basic Greek verb: The idea of the Christian life is not to sneak in on a technicality but to finish with a flourish.

            But Paul tempers this intensity with soft-hearted humility and hard-headed reality. First the humility: What really counts here is not how hard he holds on, but who holds onto him. The center-piece of his grabbing is the certainty of having been grabbed: “I was laid hold of.” We call this grace. Bluesman Bill Withers once told his children that we pass through “all right” on our way to “wonderful,” “and when you get to all right, take a good look around and get used to it because that may be as far as you’re going to get.”

Then the reality: Paul denies perfection in v.12, but appeals to the perfect in v.15, and counts himself among their company! I approach this paradox as a rejection of perfectionism. New York Times reporter Lawrence Cheek describes his efforts to construct hand-crafted frames for the portholes in a boat he built. He produced work that was flawed but serviceable, something he had to come to terms with as a “recovering perfectionist.” He calls his productions, “a recording of my own skills at the time – imperfect, but not because of sloth or carelessness. They testify to the best work I had in me at the time.” Paul’s “not that I have . . . already become perfect” echoes the Greek verb and tense of Christ’s cry of “It is finished” from Calvary’s cross. (Jo 19.30) Our momentary best finds sufficiency in the permanent best of Our Lord.

Intensity: I won’t sit safe on a .399 batting average while the season’s still going on.

Humility: I won’t worry that a subpar performance undoes the gift I didn’t earn in the first place.

            Reality: I will give to God the best work I have in me today.

            Intensity, humility, reality: Not a bad formula to bear in mind on your next trip to the plate.

Batter Up!

Doug

Collect

Heavenly Father, Your Son declared His perfection at the moment of His death. Grant us grace to pursue perfection without fear, knowing that in the end we cannot fail because we are held fast in the grip of Your perfect grace. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.           

Benediction

May you serve Christ with intensity

            That demands the best you have.

May you serve Christ with humility

            That demands your best be better.

May you serve Christ in the reality

            That He makes your best sufficient.

           

An Unenviable Indulgence September 25, 2011 Proper 21 Ordinary Time, Year A Philippians 2.1-13

            If you set a bunch of monkeys to work to earn slices of cucumber they toil away industriously. But start paying one member of the group in grapes and the rest suddenly lose their taste for gourds and go on strike.

            This is called envy, and it can make monkeys out of us all.

            Science writer Natalie Angier marvels at our race’s addiction to a sin that hurts like a hair shirt. “It is,” she observes, “a vice few can avoid yet nobody craves, for to experience envy is to feel small and inferior, a loser shrink-wrapped in spite.” (See more at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/17/science/17angi.html.) Envy is a Mobius strip of selfishness, a twisted, single-sided spiritual prison which offers no reward beyond the opportunity to go on feeling bad.

            Paul offers Christians an escape from this zero-sum game envy, and the exit is shaped like a cross.

            “Be like minded . . . let this mind be in you.” The old King James preserves the underlying link between verse two and verse five in the original Greek. In the middle comes the mandate to avoid “selfishness,” a word that originally referred to a day-laborer who saw nothing in a job but what he could get out of it in the short-term. Not surprisingly, it quickly migrated to politicians and party squabbles. This selfishness sits at the center of two lists of virtues which amount to unity (v.2) and selflessness (v.3).

            So all pursuit of virtue and all avoidance of vice comes from having the right mindset. William James famously defined conversion as a shift in the habitual center of one’s personal energy. Paul says the Christian is one whose habitual center shifts from self to self-sacrifice, whose bull’s eye in life lies at the cross-hairs of Calvary, whose focus on the absolute glory of God obliterates all awareness of her own relative rank.

            Christian unity can never consist of an effort to get in harmony with one another. We are far too inconsistent – and too envious – for that. Oneness instead arises from each individual clawing his way downward toward the standard of the cross. And when we get to the very bottom, Paul claims, we will realize we have arrived at the top. Or, better still, we will discover that top and bottom no longer matter, and that we are free at last.

Enviously,

Doug

Collect

Heavenly Father, your Son sacrificed glory for the bankruptcy of the cross. Grant that we, taking up our crosses, might set aside self in the service of others, that in the unity of the church the world might see the unity of the One God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Amen.

Benediction

When you feel small

            May the mind of Christ enlarge your love for others.

When you feel ignored

May the mind of Christ make you aware of others.

When you feel worthless

            May the mind of Christ deepen your delight in others.

In the name of the Father,

And of the Son,

And of the Holy Spirit,

Amen.

Same Court, New Rules September 18, 2011 Proper 20 Ordinary Time, Year A Philippians 1.21-30

            Sam Owen wants to play tennis like Jesus.

            Not that the four canonical gospels reveal much about the Son of Man’s forehand, although there’s probably a Nag Hammadi knock-off somewhere that covers the topic. No, Sam, a former tennis standout and current Episcopal seminarian, wonders whether “Christian competition” is an oxymoron. College tennis coach and devout Christian Comron Yazdergdi likens his racket to Moses’ rod: You throw down a snake, the very embodiment of deadly temptation, and pick it up again only by careful obedience to the voice of God. (Read more at http://www. nytimes.com /2011/ 09/03/us/03beliefs.html.)

            These two examples hit the key points of Paul’s admonition to the Philippian believers: “conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ . . . striving together for the faith of the gospel.”

            Conduct yourselves comes from a Greek verb that gives us words like politics and police – the idea of conforming to the standards of one’s social milieu. This was a flag-waving word to the Philippians, whose city was an official Roman colony, meaning that it’s residents enjoyed all the privileges of native turf even though actually located in the provinces. The worst crime a Philippian could accuse someone of was acting in an un-Roman fashion. (Acts 16.21, 37) Yet Paul boldly insists that as Christians they have a higher citizenship and serve a superior Lord. Every action and attitude that a Roman citizen assumes without thinking about it now faces re-evaluation in light of the cross.

            That won’t be easy.

            Which is why Paul makes three references to Christian unity and, on the third, defaults to a sports metaphor: He wants these subversive citizens to strive together. The root of that verb begets the English word athlete and could literally be rendered something like “competing as teammates.” The wholesale rejection of surrounding social norms requires either a sociopath’s indifference to other people or the formation of a new community.

            Yazgerdi nearly quit tennis after his conversion, not sure that his competitive spirit could be of use to the Holy Spirit. Sam Owen decided to switch his mindset from a contest to a dance, admiring the good play of his opponent as a contribution to the overall beauty of the game. I don’t play tennis so I don’t much care how Jesus would have played. But I do spend money, and speak to people, and wear clothes and vote and drive a car. And I must do three things if I want to call myself a Christian: pay enough attention to uncover the standards by which I automatically do these things, rethink them by the standards of the Sermon on the Mount, and find a colony of the Kingdom where I will have the positive peer-pressure of other ex-pats who claim citizenship in my true home.

            Oh, and golf: Jesus wouldn’t have played at all.

Fore!

Doug

Collect

King of Kings, Your Son came to proclaim the in-breaking of a reign that uproots all human systems and upends all earthly statutes. By faith may we defy the standards of this world, and in fear may we fly to the support of Your church, that in us all might now see that coming day when the kingdom of this world is become the kingdom of Our Lord and of His Christ, together with the Holy Spirit, one God now and forever, Amen.

Benediction

May you live as rebels to the kingdoms of earth,

            As a sign that those kingdoms will crumble.

May you live as citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven,

            As a sign that God’s kingdom has come.

May you live as a colony of the citizens of the Kingdom

            To find strength in this clashing of kingdoms.

In the name of the Father,

And of the Son,

And of the Holy Spirit,

Amen.