Christmas I: The Word Made Flesh

Borrowing the language of Genesis, the final editor of the Gospel of John has attached the text of a liturgical hymn to the gospel-proper as a prologue.  It is a magnificent poetic theological reflection, evidencing considerable development in Christological thought in the seventy-five or so years from the crucifixion of Jesus in 30 C.E. to the completion of this fourth gospel in.the early second century.

This Prologue, which came to constitute the first eighteen verses of the first chapter of John, speaks about a "word" just as Genesis does.  In Genesis, God speaks words and creation happens.  Here in Johannine depiction, we learn that this Word was present with God from before time and was the divine agent through whom creation occurred.  This entity is referred to in the Hebrew Scriptures as Wisdom -- a female figure described both in Proverbs and the Wisdom of Solomon.  Also, in extra-biblical Jewish writings, there is reference to God's Wisdom being sent from heaven to earth from time to time on special missions to do God's will.  Now the author of John's hymn borrows a term from Heraclitus, logos, and substitutes it for Wisdom.  The Greek logos is appropriately applied to Jesus, as it is a male term and refers to  the rational principle behind the Universe.  Thus the Word of God, which is all divine, creative, and eternal, is seen as sent from heaven to fully inhabit the person of Jesus so that God may express in a human life everything God has to say to us!   Christ, not the Bible, is the Word of God.

When the One fully possessed of the Word enters human life, he will be misunderstood and rejected.  And, because his life will be infallibly conformed to God's will, he will be crucified by the minions of wealth, influence, and imperial power.  But to those of us who trust in him he gives, through our Mother Church, the sacred sacrament of baptism, a new "birth from above" into a new family in special relationship with the Divine.  And so we begin to be like him,  redeemed people of a new covenant "full of grace and truth."

In other words, the Incarnation is the means by which we become incorporated in God through the mission and ministry of Jesus.   As the great composer Oliver Messiaen said, "The Word became flesh and dwelt in me!"  Jesus has saved us, so we can save the world.  That is what Jesus and the coming of the Kingdom mean for us.

Christmas Eve, 2015

As Catholic Christians, we Episcopalians are countercultural.  In the early days of colonial America, the Puritans outlawed the observance of Christmas with very severe penalties.  Now the protestant pendulim has swung to the other extreme. These days our neighbours, who have been celebrating Christmas since well before Hallowe'en, will be throwing out their trees tomorrow morning, In the meantime, we have been observing the lovely, anticipatory season of Advent for four weeks.  Now tonight we begin to celebrate twelve days of Christmas.  What were they thinking? We have eleven extra days to party!,

And what are we partying about?  We celebrate one gift:  the Incarnation, in which God got "under our skin," lived human life in the person of Jesus, and, likewise, in Jesus, taught us what a life fully attuned to God looks like.   At the point in the Mass when the priest pours wine into the chalice and then tops the wine off with a little water, the priest says silently, "By the mingling of this water and wine, may we come to share in the divinity of Christ who humbled himself to share in our humanity."  That's it: he became as we are so we might become as he is.

Tonight;s readings tell the story of this marvellous conjunction.  I suspect if you or I had written the script, the Divine Son would have appeared as a prince, born in a palace in some prominent city like Rome or Athens, surrounding by courtiers and all the rich and the famous of his age.  But when God writes the script, we find the Son of God born in a cave to a refugee family from a backwater town, the child resting in an animal feeding trough, and being visited by smelly, sinful shepherds. What a difference between our reality and the world in which God always values the outcast, the poor, and the oppressed.  "He has pulled down the powerful from their thrones and lifted up the lowly.  He has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty handed." (Lk 1:52,53).  Thus Our Lady describes God's Kingdom.

As important and central to this night's message as is the Incarnation, it is all for nought if God does not become incarnate in us.   As Mother Barbara Brown Taylor wrote of this season, "God is in the midst of it, after all, still hunting new flesh in which to be born."

Happy Christmas!

Advent IV: Mary Sunday

Anglicans informally call this day Mary Sunday, not as if it replaces her feast in August or other Marian days, but because the readings on the last Sunday of Advent bid us reflect on Our Lady's role in the economy of salvation.  Many years ago, I toured an Anglican church building in Peper Harow, Surrey, England where the priest explained that all the church records had been burnt by dissenters in the 16th century.  In the sanctuary, the side and rear walls beside and behind the altar were made of marble and contained beautiful statues of great figures in the Christian Tradition.   One of those figures, depicting Mary, had been utterly obliterated by the Calvinist Taliban in the same attack.  As one writer put it, the continental reformers banished Mary to her celestial bedroom, never to return. And that was true until recent times.  The Ecumenical Society of the Blessed Virgin Mary -- of which I am a member -- is an international association composed of Anglicans, Episcopalians, Roman Catholics, and Orthodox but also Methodists Presbyterians, and others who have discovered the wonderful person who was the mother of Jesus and model disciple.

She was honoured from the beginning of her life with special graces [the Conception] to follow God' will perfectly.   Her strong 'yes' to an unconventional and inconvenient pregnancy [the Annunciation] made our own salvation possible.  Her teaching of the Faith to her son was followed by aid to his ministry alongside the other women.  Later she was there at the foot of the cross, and on to the upper room at Pentecost, then to the church in Ephesus with Saint John, and finally to Glory, reunited with her son [the Assumption.]   What a life!

In today's Gospel reading, Luke 1: 39-55, Mary's cousin Elizabeth expresses the first 'Hail Mary.'
And Jesus' mother responds by predicting that all generations to come will call her the "Blessed" Virgin Mary, and she utters the amazing poem we call the Magnificat.  From her prophetic side, we learn that the Kingdom of God that we are called to build is based on a new vision of justice and compassion:  the powerful will be cast down, the lowly raised up, the rich sent away empty.  We also learn that God is faithful to his promises to the Jewish people forever.  When God covenants he never reneges; God can be trusted.  Finally, the totality of the story reveals Mary as Theotokos, God-bearer, Mother of God, as she has been known since ancient times.  Following her example, each of us is to bear the Light into the world in our own time and place.  This was beautifully expressed by Episcopal priest and author Barbara Brown Taylor when she wrote:

     "You can decide to take part in a plan you didn't choose, doing things you do not know how to do, for reasons you don't entirely understand.  You can take part in a thrilling and dangerous scheme with no script and no guarantees.  You can agree to smuggle God into the world inside your own body."    

Advent I : God is With Us

The gospel pericope is Luke 21: 25-36.  If you or I were to hold a press conference and and talk like Jesus did in this passage, we would be taken to jail, which is where we keep our mentally ill here in Oklahoma.   But the language Jesus is using is eschatological, a fifty-cent word referring to the last things in time.

Early Judaism believed in the possibility of the Kingdom of God on earth.  Later, some experienced discouragement and began to look for direct divine intervention.  This is apocalyptic eschatology in which people imagined that the end-time would be cataclysmic, with universal disturbances, as the cosmic forces of evil are finally defeated.  The Lord would arrive on Zion, serve an eschatological banquet at which the wine never ran out, abolish death, raise the dead to judgement, and create new heavens and a new earth that is paradise.  The prophet Daniel changed the script by introducing a mysterious Human One ("Son of Man") who would be in on the action, and whom people quickly began to identify with an expected Messiah.

We call expectation of the Kingdom on earth realized eschatology, and expectation of the Kingdom at the end consistent eschatology.  What Jesus himself introduced  was what we call inaugural eschatology meaning Jesus believed that he had brought the dawn of the inbreaking of the Kingdom, but that its full realization must await the end,which he talks about today.  He speaks of the actual generation in which he lived experiencing that end; yet, elsewhere in Lucan material, he says he has no idea when the end will come!   Perhaps Jesus thought his death would trigger the final age, the coming of God's kingdom in its fullness. 

In any event, as Christians we must see ourselves as living somewhere between the coming of Jesus and the end.  It is no time to be passive, it is the right time to work for Kingdom values.  In the film The Shawshank Redemption, we see the theme that being freed from prison after a long time did not bring joy but anxiety, because jail had become home.  We can be like that -- trapped in our old ways of thinking, mired down in the world's values.  So we resist liberation, perhaps without knowing it. With God as the beginning and end of our journey, and our companion in between, we can live new and bountiful lives, and prepare with confidence to celebrate again  the coming of the one whose name is Emanu-el, meaning 'God is with us.'  

Advent III: The War on Christmas

Every year we hear about a war on Christmas, usually related to saying 'Merry Christmas' to people who celebrate a different religious holiday, or to expecting government officials to use tax money from non-Christians to fund nativity scenes and the like in public venues.

In my opinion there is a real war on Christmas but it is rooted in other problems, sentimentalism and consumerism.  In today's gospel reading [Lk. 3: 7-18] John the Baptiser chops away the props of the real war on Christmas.  First he attacks merely inherited religion: it wasn't 'good enough' just to be a child of Abraham, i.e. Jew, any more than it is now good enough to be a member of the politically- connected or most entertaining church in a community.   John also attacks spiritual feelings that only warm the believer who then ignores the real-life needs of other people in the community.  Finally, John hits hard on the habit of blurring ethics -- going along to get along.  And there you have the problem: religion that is prideful, affirms faith without works, and tolerates ethical sloppiness.

The answer to these unhealthy tendencies is repentance:  In Hebrew, teshuvah, meaning to turn around and go in the right direction; in biblical Greek, metanoia, a new way of thinking, a new attitude; in Latin, the language of the Church, poenitentiam agere, taking action that shows the reformed way of thinking and the decision to move in the right direction.

When the crowd asked for specific instructions, John offered commonsense advice.  The one with two coats must give one to someone who has no coat, and those with food must give food to those going hungry.  The tax agent must collect only his due.  The soldier must not extort to enhance his income.  With honest discernment, you and I can determine where the holes in our individual souls are, and respond with true repentance.  That is how we are called to prepare to celebrate Christmas.

Advent II: Baruch 5: 1-9

The book of Baruch is one of seven books the continental reformers removed from their bible.  That is a shame because they are all wonderful literature.  For example, there is the book of Baruch who was historically-speaking the secretary of the prophet Jeremiah.  He treats of the Babylonian Exile and, in today's pericope, the author and prophet speaks to those about to return to their Holy Land. Scholars tell us that the Jewish exiles had done well in what is now Iraq and most were assimilated. Only perhaps twenty percent made return to Palestine but they apparently did so with great passion and vigour to restore their heritage in their homeland.  He makes two particularly important points.

First, he tells the returning exiles to change their clothes -- a metaphor for repenting, returning to God, and discerning the divine will in their personal lives and the lives of the greater community. Repentance in the biblical Hebrew is "teshuvah," meaning to turn around and go in a new direction.   Certainly there is a message for us that God is always ready to lead his people into a brighter future, but it requires work on our part.  We must trade the "clothes" of sorrow, distress, and disillusionment for new clothes of integrity, vision, and hope.  In other words, we must trust in God, which is the primary definition of faith.

Second, Baruch reminds us that when exiles are ready to return -- the Hebrews from bondage to a foreign power, us from bondage to sin and death -- God will make a straight path, one that has been levelled by chopping off mountains and filling in valleys.  We may think of this as a way that God reveals to us that all of his children are equal in his sight and equally loved, equally challenged to follow a straight path to the Kingdom.  There is to be no one percent and ninety-nine percent, no upper crust and lower crust, no good-enough and not-good-enough, in the Kingdom.  God calls us to level the playing field in our society and world.   A favourite Advent character, John the Baptiser, reminds us of that because he came bypassing the players of his time (whom he called a bunch of snakes) and going to the marginalized, the forgotten, the nobodies.  Just like his cousin Jesus.

Unity and Diversity

The understanding and interface of these two concepts vary widely across Christianity.  For example, unity in the Roman Communion must be "organic," that is, based on absolute obedience to the Pope.   The papal office developed in history from that of Bishop of Rome to Vicar of Peter (one who rules in the Petrine location) and finally to Vicar of Christ (one who rules in Christ's place on earth.) When one so surrenders to this arrogation, it is possible to receive Communion in a Roman Catholic venue.

Many evangelical churches seem to have unity in the congregational pastor.  The teachings of their church will be the opinions of the central personality of the community, and members are expected to believe and do as he says. Not infrequently this"holy opinion-maker is himself uneducated; the old saw "God doesn't call the qualified, he qualifies the called" is used as an excuse for the lack of real preparation for professional ministry.  That is serious, because messing with peoples' souls is serious business.

In Anglicanism, we find unity in the baptismal covenant, which makes us brothers and sisters in a spiritual family (we admit all baptised to Communion), and in the apostolic succession of bishops, as each congregation is under the stewardship of a diocesan bishop who, as a successor to the Apostles, serves with authority and protects the faithful people in his care.  One sees this in action when there is a troubled congregation.  The bishop intervenes to preserve the integrity and heal the discord, so that the congregation may move forward again.   By comparison, protestant churches frequently split like amoebae into new congregations centred round some element of dispute, often disaffection from a particular personality in the leadership.

Diversity is a great strength in our Episcopal congregations.  We take seriously Jesus' counsel not to judge others.  So we accept persons without regard to race or ethnicity,age or social status, colour, gender, or sexual orientation.  And we prepare and admit people for all levels of ministry within the Church without bias.  Over the years I have welcomed, and been blessed by, persons who had been judged and excluded from other Christian affiliations because of who they were.  Often bad biblical exegesis, poor theology, and scientific ignorance, were working together in a system closed to new knowledge and information, which led  to the rejection of good people.  We try to be faithful to the example of Jesus who reached out to all, especially to outcasts not good enough to pass muster with the religious professionals of his time.  The gift of diversity also serves to build understanding and tolerance in a world where fear fuels ignorance which in turn feeds hatred and, finally, violence.  In our tradition, we practice the gospel of peace and leave judgement to the One who alone can judge without error.

Duty Calls

I remember reading once that a cultural difference between earlier generations --  the Builders and the Boomers --and those who have come after is the loss of the concept of duty, the notion that there is an inherent moral obligation to do what is right rather than what one wants. From relationship.  For example, I had a duty towards my parents.  It did not derive from what they did or did not do for me, although that was significant.  Nor did it arise from my desire to have my own children feel dutiful to me.  The obligation arose strictly out of relationship, because they were my parents they deserved the respect and care.  When I received my I-A draft classification in 1967, I recognized a duty to my own country.  I did not flee to Canada or opt for incarceration.  I signed up, though I reserved the right to decide the path that service would follow and joined the Coast Guard.  It was my duty to serve.

Duty exists regardless of the motivation for serving it.  So, for example, I may be faithful to my wife because fidelity was inculturated in me.  I may refrain from straying because it is in the best interest of the marriage and family.  I may abstain from wandering because I fear the social and financial consequences of divorce.  I may be true to my wife because I am in a sacred sacramental relationship. But none of these things creates the duty; they only motivate me to acknowledge it.

As Christians, we also have a duty to our fellow Christians and those beyond church boundaries.  The duty arises from baptism, which makes each of us a member of a new family with a number of new brothers and sisters, and confirmation, in which we were mustered and commissioned to a mature effectuation of that family relationship, and also to help build the Kingdom of God beyond church walls.  That means loving neighbour as oneself  -- helping to create a society in which the will of God is done on earth as in heaven.  I see it as a duty growing out of deep gratitude for the many blessings we enjoy, growing out of relationship with the Divine.  We so act because it is the right thing to do, and not to garner a reward.  And, after all, Christ's kind of life -- life lived for others -- is the only life truly worth living.          

God and Wealth

In the gospels Jesus speaks more about wealth than any other topic.  He says that the love of wealth, and its accumulation, constitute the greatest danger to a person's spiritual life.   That concept stands in stark contrast to the false message of today's seed-faith evangelists who teach that wealth is a sign of God's special favour because God wants us to be rich in the things of this world.  This phony word is called prosperity theology and it is based on re-creating God in an image that benefits certain people.

The growing wealth gap in our country adversely affects the middle and lower-income Americans -- directly in suppressed wages and benefits, and indirectly through the crippling of social programs. What a difference it would make if our nation could guarantee a job with decent wages to every willing able-bodied person, generous welfare to those unable to work, daily child care, free higher education to the motivated and qualified, and for all citizens good health care plus life and exigency insurance.  The greatest obstacle to those accomplishments is inadequate taxation of the wealthiest, accompanied by our corrupt tax code that allows corporations to avoid taxes and receive corporate welfare from government, while hiding huge lots of revenues in offshore banks and paying obscene compensation to senior management in cash and stocks.

As Jesus suggests, gross wealth disparity is not good for anyone including, finally, those at the top.   The great writer Ernest Hemingway wrote, "Later on, when reality got to me, I saw the rich for what they were, a goddamn blight like a fungus that kills tomatoes.  I set the record straight in 'Snows of Kilimanjaro'.  I still feel the way Harry felt about the rich in the story, always will."  In his deathbed statement, the fabulously wealthy Steve Jobs, founder of Apple, said, "Stop pursuing wealth.  It can only make a person into a twisted human being like me."

I believe that we can, and should, continue to honour and reward entrepreneurship. I am not talking about flattening incomes.  I am talking about people giving to the common good according to the extent to which they have prospered, a biblical concept.   I believe we can do that and create a new nation of economic justice, opportunity and compassion.  It would be in the spiritual best interest of our country and, most of all, a real blessing to the wealthiest amongst us.

Another Ancestor

Genealogical research is a lot of fun.    It is also hard work and can be a sobering experience when one encounters the panoply of characters in our human story.  Yet, for every person of dubious repute, there always seems to be another person of real virtue.  In my family that is particularly true regarding persons who have stood up for religious liberty and paid a price for that.  My earliest such ancestor was Alisdair McIain McDonald, who was the Twelfth Chief of Clan Glencoe, a clan of Catholic (Roman and Anglican) Christians in the Northwestern Highlands of Scotland in the early seventeenth century.  He was murdered in his bed in a surprise attack by lowland Presbyterians, who also killed all the other men (except his sons, who escaped) and burnt down the homes, leaving the women and children to freeze to death in the particularly virulent February snowstorm that day.

This week I discovered a later remarkable ancestor, Mary Seymour Stuart Barrett Dyer.  Mary was born in Greater London in 1611, the year the first and complete King James Bible was promulgated. She spent some time in the Court of King Charles, later married and bore a son before she and her husband William immigrated to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in the New World.  Later, on a return journey to England, she converted to the Quaker religion.  That meant that she would come afoul of Governor John Winthrop (an ancestor of my wife!) and the constitution of Massachusetts which made Puritanism the state religion and outlawed all other faiths.  When Mary birthed a stillborn child, Winthrop examined the foetus, declaring that it showed evidence of demonic possession. Finally, on 1 June 1660 she was hanged on Boston Common for apostasy, for having abandoned Puritan religion.  She and three other executed Quakers were denominated "the Boston Martyrs."

Mary's statue in Boston bears her words, "My life not availeth me in comparison to the liberty of the truth."  I salute in spirit Alisdair, Mary and all those of every faith who have suffered at the hands of ignorance and intolerance, and still do.

Faith and Culture

I participate in a monthly discussion group consisting of Christians of all stripes.  Our conversations focus on our commonalities and distinctions, the things that tend to unite us and the things that keep us separated.  In a recent discussion on the issue of marriage equality, a conservative Roman stated the opinion that people have turned their back on the teachings of the Church and of the Bible, just to follow a secular culture.  In response, a progressive Evangelical pointed out that, at the time of the Civil War, the Church and the Bible were both wrong on slavery, but the Spirit led the culture to the conviction that owning people had to stop.  The culture, this participant said, dragged the Church into compliance with new revelation through the guidance of the Holy Spirit.  He maintained that the same kind of progressive revelation has led our modern culture to embrace justice for gay people based on the new scientific understanding of sexual orientation, yet church response is uneven.

Progressive revelation works against the idolatrous tendency to attribute infallibility to someone's reading of Scripture or to some body of religious teaching, or to a particular hierarch or Council, or to the Church generally.  In that way, religious faith can be kept fresh, faithful but relevant in every age.

Christ the King

Sunday is the Feast of Christ the King, the last Sunday in the liturgical year.  Unlike most festivals, this celebration is recent and was first celebrated in 1926 at a time when many false saviours like Mussolini and Stalin were appearing round the world.  The feast was launched in the encyclical Quas Primas by Pope Pius XI which I took the time to read today.  His emphasis on the primacy of divine rule in the lives of everyday Christians seems to me a challenge to give our highest priority to living the teachings and actions of the Master in our daily lives.  As Jesus said, few enter that narrow gate.

The Roman pontiff notes some negative trends that commitment to the Reign of Christ could help to reverse.  Amongst other, he mentions, "the seeds of discord, sown far and wide; those bitter rivalries and enmities between nations, which so hinder the cause of peace; that insatiable greed which is so often hidden under a pretence of public spirit and patriotism...blind and immoderate selfishness making men seek nothing but their own comfort and advantage, and measure everything by these; no peace in the home because men have forgotten or neglect their duty, with the unity and stability of the family undermined."  This, the Pope notes, "is society, in a word, shaken to its foundations and on the way to ruin."

The Kingdom of God is the world as it would look if the will of God were done here as in heaven.  It is a matter of allegiance and, for too many, religion is not allowed to get in the way of their politics. The Gospel goes begging.  Kingdom living requires a radical re-orientation and re-prioritization of our lives.  It is hard to do.  But we need to do it for Christ's sake, for the sake of our own souls, and for the sake of the world.