Fight Club - July 3, 2011, Proper 9, Ordinary Time, Year A: Romans 7.15-25a

            In 1813 U. S. Navy Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry whipped the British in the Battle of Lake Erie. Perry telegraphed news of the victory to General William Henry Harrison in the famous words, “We have met the enemy, and they are ours.” In 1970 cartoonist Walk Kelly lent his talents to the first Earth Day by publishing a poster that showed his character Pogo the Possum wandering through a polluted Okefenokee Swamp and observing, “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”

            Paul’s language resonates with the military imagery, but his theology is more Pogo than Perry.

            He uses three military terms to describe the plight of the sinner: Sin “wages war,” taking the battle to the turf of our very bodies (v.23). Sin takes the soul “prisoner,” the technical term for a POW (v.23). The soul cries out to be “set free,” a verb that denotes a surrounded soldier sending an SOS from the battlefield (v.24).

            But this is a Fifth Column combat against an internal enemy with a familiar face. I undermine my own goals, I disobey my own rules, I do what I don’t want and don’t do what I love. I have met the enemy, and he is me.

            Alexander Solzhenitsyn, whose imprisonment in Stalinist Russia led to his Christian conversion, acknowledge an inability to exonerate himself by demonizing the Communists: “If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”

            And yet it is for just such a destruction that the apostle cries out.

            “Batter my heart, three person’d God,” begged the poet John Donne, “for you/As yet but knocke, breathe, shine, and seeke to mend./That I may rise, and stand, o’erthrow mee, and bend/Your force, to break, blowe, burn and make me new.” We cannot ask the Almighty to negotiate with terrorists; only total war will do.

            Theologians and exegetes debate the identity of the “I” in this passage. Is it Paul himself? Then is it pre-conversion Paul or post-conversion Paul? Or is it a personification of the nation of Israel, or perhaps some generic Everyman? For myself I have no trouble: I have met the “I,” and I am he. But thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord, who loves me enough to rescue me at any cost – even His own death, and even mine.

Bring It On,

Doug

Collect

God and Father of Christ Our Lord, we confess that we have willingly surrendered to sin. Deny us what we want that you may give us what we need: freedom not only from the consequences of sin but from the curse of sin, deliverance not only from the destruction of sin but from the desire to sin, that we might find the satisfaction of our true longing to be holy as You are holy. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Benediction

May the Law of God attract you,

            That you might see the glory of God’s goodness.

May the Law of God condemn you,

            That you might see the sinfulness of your soul.

May the Son of God set you free

            That you might know the salvation that comes only through the Cross of Christ

Our Lord

In whose Name we pray,

Together with the Father,

And the Holy Spirit,

One God now and forever,

Amen.

            

High Noon on the Narrow Way June 26, 2011 Proper 8, Ordinary Time, Year A Romans 6.12-23

            In Pilgrim’s Progress John Bunyan pictures Christian as he enters the Valley of Humiliation and squares off with Apollyon, a fish-scaled, bat-winged, bear-clawed, lion-mouthed fire-breathing dragon of a brute who claims the pilgrim as a runaway and thus the fiend’s lawful property.

            “I was born, indeed, in your dominions,” Christian admits, “but your service was hard, and your wages such as a man could not live on; for the wages of sin is death.” The devil offers a raise, but Christian stands firm: “O thou destroying Apollyon, to speak the truth, I like His service, His wages, His servants, His government, His company, and country better than thine; therefore leave off to persuade me further; I am His servant and I will follow Him.”

            Negotiations break down at that point. Both sides throw down and the pilgrim and the devil duke it out to the death.

            That’s pretty much the picture Paul offers of the believer’s battle with evil. Sin for Paul is not an itemized inventory of bad actions but an autocratic power over all of one’s life. Salvation consists not of altering isolated behaviors but of swapping kings and kingdoms. “Having been freed from sin, you became slaves to righteousness.” Secession leads to invasion: The Christian continues to fight against temptation, but does so as a member of the resistance.

            So repentance digs deeper than what actions we’re performing and asks instead whose orders we’re obeying. If I sin it is because I believe that doing so somehow staves off death. Admitting to telling socially acceptable lies, Holden Caufield explains, “If you want to stay alive, you have to say that stuff.” But Paul WikiLeaks the devil’s ledger and reveals that our final paycheck bears a skull and crossbones.

            God, by contrast, clears the books and offers a gift instead. When a citizen of Hell in C. S. Lewis’ Great Divorce insists that “I got to have my rights,” his redeemed companion replies, “Oh no. It’s not so bad as that. I haven’t got my rights, or I should not be here. You will not get yours either. You’ll get something far better. Never fear.”

            So don’t bargain with death; sell yourself to life. Don’t cut the best deal you can with sin; switch sides and serve righteousness. Don’t make the best of a bad master; flee to the freedom of slavery to Christ.

Live It Up!

Doug

Collect

God of life, the blood of Your Son cancels the debt of our sin and replaces its deadly wages with the gift of eternal life. Grant us now the strength to cease serving sin and to  live instead as slaves to You, that we might derive the blessings of sanctification and secure the outcome of eternal life in Christ who forever reigns with you Father, together with the Holy Spirit, One God now and forever, Amen.

Blessing

May you reject the reign of sin,

            And offer your bodies as weapons of life.

May you reject the slavery of sin,

            And present yourselves as servants of life.

May you reject the wages sin,

            And receive instead the gift of life.

In the name of the Father,

And of the Son,

And of the Holy Spirit,

Amen.

Of Hugs and Homoousios June 19, 2011 Trinity Sunday, Year A 2 Corinthians 13.11-14

            The good news is that the Western church has conspired to disobey the clear command of Scripture. The bad news is that our disobedience obscures our doctrine.

            Augustine warned that anyone who disbelieves the Trinity is in danger of losing his salvation . . .  and that anyone who attempts to understand it is in danger of losing his mind! Actually the Trinity is one of those things, like fried crawdad tails or dancing or being in love, that one understands not by pondering but by experiencing.

“We worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity; neither confounding the persons nor dividing the substance.” Athanasius puts it rather neatly but perhaps leaves us wondering how to pull off the tricky business of inhabiting what we believe. The doctrine makes us psychological heretics whose nerves don’t connect with our confession.

Paul takes a more practical tack, perhaps because he writes as a pastor and not as a theologian. Just before rapping out one of the clearest Trinitarian statements in all of Scripture, he lays a command on us: Greet one another with a holy kiss. That’s the injunction I am so glad the Church exiles to the exegetical antipodes along with head coverings for women and not boiling a kid in its mother’s milk.

I don’t like it when people hug me; you can imagine how I feel about kissing. And I claim apostolic authority on this one: C. S. Lewis shared my aversion. “It is one of my lifelong weaknesses,” he writes in his autobiography Surprised By Joy, “that I never could endure the embrace or kiss of my own sex.” But there it is, right in the Bible and everything.

See, the problem is that the Trinity states, not an abstract mathematical puzzle but a common-sense relational truth: God is love, and either the Almighty is the ultimate cosmic narcissist eternally self-involved, or God has eternally had Someone to love. And since only God is eternal it must be that the Father has eternally loved the Son, the Son has eternally loved the Father and the Spirit has eternally been that love. And therefore Christians can only study the Trinity by risking the sloppy business of loving one another. And because God makes us bodies we can only love with our bodies. Every hug that breeches my barriers brings me closer to inhabiting the unity of Trinity. Amplexo ergo creedo: I hug, therefore I get it.

In this light, it is interesting to note that this year Trinity Sunday falls on the same day as Juneteenth, a nationwide observance for African-Americans commemorating the day the Emancipation Proclamation actually took effect. Perhaps instead of breaking our brains over the complexities of cosmic calculus, we could study the Trinity by repenting of past segregations and handing out a few hugs across the barriers we have built throughout Christ’s body.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,

Doug

Collect

Father, Son and Holy Spirit, You are love from all eternity. Make us one as You are one, that in us the world may see the grace, love and fellowship of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Amen.

Benediction

May you be broken enough to help one another,

            For wholeness comes from healing.

May you disagree enough to hear one another

            For oneness comes from listening.

May you be lonely enough to hold one another

            For touch defeats division and discord.

In the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ,

The love of God,

And the fellowship of the Holy Spirit,

Amen.

A Salty Sameness: June 12, 2011, Pentecost Sunday, Year A, 1 Corinthians 12.3-13

            The Holy Spirit takes the rap for a lot of bizarre behavior. People who act up in church explain that they are “Spirit-filled.” Those who break ranks tend to claim the sanction of the Third Person of the Trinity. Rational discussion of doctrine dies when someone declares a direct revelation from the Holy Spirit.

            Interesting then that Paul understands the Spirit’s presence to produce unity instead of uniqueness, choreography in place of chaos, and symphony that supersedes solos. True, the apostle raps out nine diverse manifestations of the Spirit in just three verses (v.8-10), but he balances these with corresponding one-words: “the same . . . the same . . . the same . . . the same . . .the same . . . one and the same.” The Spirit leads us to speak from a single script (v.3) and welds us into five-fold oneness (v.12-13).

            The most interesting and individual saints are those who have understood and embraced the truth that singularity grows from the soil of submission. “Men and women in the monastic life,” observes Eric Dean, “seem to me more diverse than any other group of people I know.” Perhaps because their clothing doesn’t outshout their souls. C. S. Lewis once likened Christian uniqueness to the variety of sights produced by the singleness of light, or the riot of tastes unveiled by the sameness of salt. People who have always lived in the dark would assume the same light shining on everything would make everything look the same, whereas it in fact displays distinction. People who know nothing of salt might think all food so seasoned has a similar tang, but salt actually enhances individual flavors.

            Perhaps if God’s Church truly seeks the Spirit we will worry less about standing out and more about standing with; focus less on distinguishing ourselves and more on extinguishing our selves; think more about what we can show than how we can be seen. And maybe (as Paul’s metaphor of the body implies) when we become truly one, we will find that each of us is truly unique.

Collect

Three-in-One-God, by the unity of the Trinity you show yourself distinct from all the gods of the nations. Teach us to seek solidarity over singularity and make us truly one that in us the world may see You, the One God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Amen.

Benediction

May the Spirit who gives the gift of many tongues

            Make all of your tongues confess Jesus as Lord.

May the Spirit who gives many gifts to one body

            Make all of your gifts honor Jesus as Lord.

May the Spirit who gives the gift of one baptism

            Make all of the body grow into her Lord,

In the name of the Father,

And of the Son,

And of the Holy Spirit,

Amen.