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,