DioBeth newSpin

'This is my Jesus,' the stranger said

By Bill Lewellis
July 17, 2012

A few weeks ago, Monica and I dined with three close friends. We sat three on one side and two on the other of a rectangular table in a crowded Italian restaurant. I was at the end where no one was directly across from me. A 50-something couple at a small table to my left was within arms reach, closer to me than my friends at the other end of our table. 

Occupied with our conversation, the gentleman at that table frequently stared our way. Turning toward him was my first mistake.

Faith is golden – Beliefs are overrated

By Bill Lewellis
The Morning Call, May 26, 2012

Faith is golden. Beliefs are overrated. As are works.

When one reduces religion to either beliefs or good works, both are overrated. Reductionism (think "nothing but") usually destroys anything it attempts to explain, as in religion is nothing but belief or religion is nothing but morality.

Morality itself has for many been reduced to nothing but sexual morality. It is so much more, embracing personal, business and community relationships. And faith is so much more than belief, as in “I set my heart on” God rather than purely intellectual acts of belief.
 
Belief and good works are overrated especially when we think of them as prerequisites to being befriended by God.
 
Some 50 years ago, I sat in a university classroom in Rome when a professor introduced his course on the theology of revelation –– what we know about God because God told us –– with this image.

In a large lecture hall, accommodating several hundred students from perhaps 50 countries, he paced, slowly, along a raised platform.

He pressed one white dot with chalk on an enormous blackboard. After a dramatic pause, he said, in French-accented Latin, “The white is what we know about God. The black is what we don’t. What we know is little. But the little God has given us to know is precious.”

Among that precious little are two biblical themes: Be not afraid and you are loved.

A few years ago, as Monica and I walked through a subway corridor in New York City’s Port Authority, we passed a woman hawking literature near a table laden with posters proclaiming that judgment was at hand. Bold strokes. “Be afraid.”

I was embarrassed that anyone might think she and I were colleagues. As we passed her, to allay my anger within, I smiled and slowly shook my head.

She screamed. Threats of God’s wrath. God would get me. She followed us, proclaiming her caricature of God to everyone within earshot along hundreds of feet of subway corridor. Thirty seconds seemed like five minutes.

The irony is that versions of “Be not afraid” and “You are loved” appear throughout the Bible, the same Bible the tormented woman had deconstructed because she thought people had to be frightened into repentance before an angry and vengeful God.

Our scriptures, Jewish and Christian, tell the story of God’s love in many ways… from the Exodus story of deliverance from slavery to freedom to the Paschal Mystery of God in Jesus Christ demonstrating his love on a cross to God raising Jesus. In between are many stories of God’s love and our freedom to respond.

Those stories abound, I think, because the single, most difficult Christian belief is not belief in God as Trinity, nor that God became one of us in Jesus Christ, nor that God raised Jesus from the dead, nor that God continues to live in us through the Holy Spirit, nor that we too will be raised. It’s none of those. It is that God forgives and loves us even before we repent.

God’s Good News, as I understand it, is threefold. First: we’re all sinners. We stand in a long biblical line of negative role models.

Second: we’re all forgiven and loved by God. “You can’t conceive, nor can I,” wrote Graham Greene, “the appalling strangeness of the mercy of God.”

Third: we’re all forgiven and loved by God not because we’ve been repentant. We’re repentant and transformed because we’ve been forgiven and loved.

God’s relentless love will last. I promise you. I set my heart on God's incredible love. I do not rely on beliefs or works.

[Canon Bill Lewellis, blewellis@diobeth.org, a retired Episcopal priest, served on the Bishop’s staff of the Episcopal Diocese of Bethlehem for 24 years and on the Bishop’s staff of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Allentown for 13 years before that.]

I Saw You Kneeling There

Bishop Paul Marshall

[Frst published in the February 2012 edition of Diocesan Life, the newspaper of the Episcopal Diocese of Bethlehem]

In a few weeks it will be that time again.

What will you be thinking? How do you suppose people the age of toddlers, teens, seniors, and so on will hear the Ash Wednesday words, “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you will return?” We will all hear them as we gather later this month, February 22, for the beginning of Lent, and it might be interesting to imagine for a moment what you and the people next to you could be thinking. Here are some possibilities that occur to me.

Three to six
I suspect that for young children, three to six years old, going up to the rail and being smeared with ash is a new part of their exploring and experiencing the world. The words may not mean very much, but doing all this with parents or grandparents says that something important is going on, a part of what it means to be big. Impressions are being stored, and the intent to be big is forming. This is a bank of experience that cannot be made up later.

Six to twelve
For a six-to-twelve year-old, busily gaining competences in the world but also wondering if they can make it, the words may have some meaning to add to the by-now familiar act of coming up, kneeling down, and being smudged. By this time a great-grandparent or other important figure has died, and the years of awe are tainted with other, darker, realities.

How good to be in a place where this is not denied, and people can be open about reality without freaking out! The calmness of it all. We accept reality and also go forward. As the child’s conscience develops during this period, the calm acceptance of responsibility and comforting words of forgiveness provide a note of balance. Taking on a Lenten discipline of some appropriate kind can be a way of gaining the “mastery” in life that this age group seeks.

Teens
For teens, life’s big question is “who am I?” with “what can I become?” as a close second. Perhaps the last thing teens want to hear is that they are mortal and limited, but they do know about frustration and perhaps rage against it as they seek to become their own person. Perhaps in the midst of that they can also hear that even when they are most alienated they are still God’s person. Finding out who they are involves taking moral responsibility on their own—and beginning to experience that they can mediate as well as receive grace.

Adults through middle age
If we can generalize about adults from their twenties through middle age, big questions form about the ability to love and be loved. Questions of vocation and of financial survival enter along with reproduction and the increasing interest in “what it all means.”

The other side of the coin of the downturn in the economy is that some people are sensing the difference between having and being and are re-examining what it means to be human. Remembering one’s dustiness is remembering that he who dies with the most toys is still dead, and that nobody on their deathbed ever wished they had spent more time at work. Repentance for adults may be about choosing meaning, maintaining balance.

Older adults
Older adults are seeing their parents die.  That is profoundly sad, but not unanticipated. The shock is that one’s friends are dying off.  The world is becoming a lonelier place. The concept of being dust that we’ve lived with all our lives comes closer to home: I start to feel the dust, and some of it is in my hip joints.  I can and--I suspect--will die.  How do I tell the story of my life? How will I use the time I have left? Will I choose to contribute what I can or will I withdraw?

Looking for the end
And there are those who are waiting to die. For them the words may speak hope and release. They are given little permission to have or express their feelings in our life-affirming culture, and they are a little tired of hearing about plans for their 115th birthday party when they know they are done and now wish for stillness and rest. At least God is honest with them and will be there to receive them. It is OK to say “Lord, now let your servant depart in peace.” These ashes may be the only affirmation they get this season as they prepare for the last transition, and the agèd eagles spread their wings.

The gifts of Lent
One sentence in a long liturgy, a liturgy about mortality, repentance, forgiveness, and rebuilding the self, and so many ways to hear and respond. These reflections have been in the long run about my awareness that while we are all so different, we are all embraced in a single set of symbols that carry us through life, and beyond it.

As you look at the people around you in worship (and that’s OK to do!), let your imagination go and see if one of the gifts of Lent isn’t increased empathy and prayer for those who stand around the table with us. See if the other gift is not a greater sense of our own belonging to the human community that Christ came to redeem.

Mary could get you out of jail – and put you in

Bill Lewellis
The Morning Call, Feb. 18, 2012

When I was growing up in a small town in Schuylkill County, a strong woman was my hero. Before folks heard the word, Mary was a feminist in the Forties.

She kept Port Carbon, except for a few contrarians, Republican. In nearby Pottsville, she had a patronage job, matron at the county courthouse. I never had the nerve to ask her what the matron did.

She knew every judge, lawyer, bureaucrat, policeman and politician in the county. And they knew her. In Port Carbon, Mary was your network. She could get you out of jail quicker than a lawyer could.

Mary had a big heart. She and Vince had no children of their own, but they raised a few. None bore their name. Billy came to live with them when he was eleven after appearing in juvenile court on a petty theft charge. Mary happened to be sitting in the courtroom. Billy’s parents told the judge they couldn’t handle him. The judge said he’d have to send Billy away. They called it “reform school,” in those days.

“Judge, you can’t do that to this nice boy,” Mary said. “What can I do?” the judge replied. “I’ll take him home,” she said. She did. She and Vince raised Billy until he enlisted in the service.

That would have been enough to make Mary my hero; but she also did something for the women of Port Carbon that no man could have done.

My parents operated a neighborhood tavern in Port Carbon for some 35 years. That’s where I got the scoop. After I was ordained a Roman Catholic priest, my mother quipped that she may have already heard more confessions than I ever will.

Domestic violence, wife battering, may have been every small town’s dirty secret. The word in town, however, was that if a woman was abused by her husband she should call Mary. Mary went to the house, She’d go jaw to jaw with any man, confronting the abusive husband for the jerk he was. Her language was vivid. I’d love to supply samples. The confrontation often ended with the husband spending the night in jail. Mary could get you out of jail – but she could also put you in.

Some women didn’t call Mary. Some felt they had no economic alternative. Some feared that something worse might happen to them later. Some stayed in the “relationship” for what they called religious reasons. It was difficult to convince some that God did not want them to be abused.

One of my favorite readings is from the Book of Isaiah: Thus says the Lord who created you, who formed you: [Hear this word the Lord speaks to each one of us.] Be not afraid, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you. For I am the Lord your God… You are precious in my sight, and honored, and I love you… Be not afraid, for I am with you…

Hear this word of the Lord… hear it in your mind and heart: You are precious in my sight, and honored, and I love you.

[Canon Bill Lewellis, blewellis@diobeth.org, a retired Episcopal priest, served on the Bishop’s staff of the Episcopal Diocese of Bethlehem for 24 years and on the Bishop’s staff of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Allentown for 13 years before that. He has written hundreds of columns for newspapers and collaborated with Jenifer Gamber in the 2009 book, Your Faith Your Life: An Invitation to the Episcopal Church.]

Defeating our Enemies

Our Need for Lent
Archdeacon Howard Stringfellow
15 February 2012

The Lord’s words to Cain never quite become silent.  They never leave, and they remind me, as they linger, of the need we have of using every means possible to prefer the good and to leave the evil alone: “If you do well, will you not be accepted?  And if you do not do well, sin is lurking at the door; its desire is for you, but you must master it” (Genesis 4:7).

The choice is ours, of course, whether we do well or do not do well, or whether we master sin or permit sin to master us.  The desire to defeat our enemies as much as anything I know points to our need for Lent—our need to repent and to return to the Lord.

Defeating our enemies clearly belongs to the category of not doing well and letting sin become our master.  As long as we’re clear on that, some room may remain to have a little fun.

A kind-of Thanksgiving column

Savin’ up for the things money can’t buy
Bill Lewellis
The Morning Call, Nov. 19, 2011

In The Marriage Plot, Jeffrey Eugenides writes of two 1982 Brown University graduates backpacking through Europe. They part when Mitchell, on a religion quest, goes to India to serve at a guest house for the dying.

Working for a week within his comfort zone, Mitchell is challenged by an older man to color outside his lines.

The older man removes a dying man’s bandages, revealing putrid sores. Pouring water on the man, he says, “This is the body of Christ.” Not finding God there, Mitchell leaves Calcutta with a different prayer on his lips: “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me a sinner.”

I am thankful for God’s mercy on me, a sinner.

Doris died last week. A longtime editor with a difficult ministry in the onetime reactionary Diocese of San Joaquin, she wrote this to a colleague a week earlier.

“I have rather suddenly become filled with cancer of just about everything. This week is my last week of lucidity, then it's off to la-la land and eventually to heaven.

“You know how much Episcopal Communicators [a national organization] has meant to me all these years, and I am going to count on you to pass on the information and all of my thanks for everything everyone has done for me. Don [spouse] will let you know when I am gone. Doris.”

I am thankful for those who teach me to die with gratitude and trust in my heart.

Margaret, a onetime colleague, shared a nightly practice suggested in the book, Simple Abundance. “Every night, before going to bed,” she said, “I jot down five things about that day for which I am thankful.” Later, she told me how this practice changed her perspective on so many things, how it gave every day greater validity.

I’m thankful for all the blessings of this life.

"For the beauty and wonder of your creation, in earth and sky and sea, we thank you, Lord. For our daily food and drink, our homes and families, and our friends ... For minds to thik, and hearts to love, and hands to serve ... For the brave and courageous, who are patient in suffering and faithful in adversity ... For all valiant seekers after truth, liberty and justice ... we thank you, Lord." {From A Litany of Thanksgiving in The Book of Common Prayer)

I once sat at the coffee counter of a local Dunkin’ Donuts. A glass-shattering crash spun me around. I touched the hood of a car that had burst through the plate glass window. No one was hurt, not even the elderly driver who had accidentally hit the accelerator rather than the brake. Later that day, my eyes widened as I pulled a handful of glass pebbles from my jacket pocket.
I’m reminded to be thankful when I drive by a Dunkin’ Donuts, to be thankful for accidents where no one is hurt.

Onetime UPI religion editor Lou Cassels was syndicated in 400 newspapers. He died in 1974. A fellow journalist, perhaps at Lou’s funeral, said he wrote three columns and one sermon every month. I looked forward to reading all four.

I thank God for Lou Cassels.

Sermons may be found at times today in films and on TV; also in songs by Bono and Bruce Springsteen, among others.

Try on this refrain from a Springsteen song: You’d better start savin’ up for the things that money can’t buy.

I am thankful for sermons that catch me by surprise.

[Canon Bill Lewellis, blewellis@diobeth.org, a retired Episcopal priest, served on the Bishop’s staff of the Episcopal Diocese of Bethlehem for 24 years and on the Bishop’s staff of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Allentown for 13 years before that. He has written hundreds of columns for newspapers and collaborated with Jenifer Gamber on the 2009 book, Your Faith Your Life: An Invitation to the Episcopal Church.]

Diocesan Life for September 2011

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The Man on the Park Bench

By Bill McGinty
June 23, 2011

There is a man sitting on the park bench, I think he has been there all night. He smells awfully like the storm drain and his face is masked in pain. The children say that he is crazy, they want to stop to call him names. They don’t know that he was famous once or the source of his fame.

There is not a waterfall, a single lake or stream that does not have a picture painted by his hand. He has recorded Pike County with all its color and beauty and dressed in every season and for all time. You cannot name a building with any historic significance that has not been detailed in all its complexity in the town of Milford by so fine an artist. His paintings number in the thousands, illustrations in so many publications, but there were no shows or exhibitions. This was a journeyman artist, grinding out a living with his raw talent. Famed at West Point where his oil paintings were purchased by Colonels and Generals and traveled to the furthest corners of the land.

He is the last of the Hudson Valley School of artists, whose fine detail recorded the beauty of our finest places from the Hudson to Lake George, Pike County to Yellowstone Park.  His eyes are failing now, his health declined, he can’t remember anymore and his balance is unsure.

There should be a place for him; some shelter from the storm, but he lost his health and then his apartment, so now the bench is his home. Welfare say they can do nothing. He falls between the cracks! He is too young for Medicare, too old in wear and tear. Last week he went to the hospital, right to the ER. They told him he had cracked ribs and deep congestion; then sent him out through the door into the night. He tried to walk home to Milford, but fell upon the road. Two cops picked him up and dropped him at the park. There he spent the night. He’s the man on the park bench, without any place to go. He’s the Jesus of Milford, I just thought you’d like to know.

They said last week we give Pakistan 20 billion a year. It seems like a lot. Makes you wonder why we can’t look after our own poor, so they don’t  live their days on a park bench. I asked a lot of questions this week, about what is available in Pike County for the homeless. Apparently, the answer is ‘nothing’. There is no homeless shelter, no place for them to go. There is no half-way house or any place that will care for the poor, the lost and the homeless. That makes me wonder about the endless stream of politicians, who year after year promise so much, but perhaps not for the poor and not for an old artist living on a park bench.

There are empty houses all over Pike County owned by the banks. They lie empty, many falling into decay. No one lives there. No one wants them. I hope there are a thousand voices from the good people of Pike County reading this article who this week will shout: “Give us a house and we will shelter our poor! Give us a roof and we will do the rest!”

There’s a man on the park bench. His face is lined in pain. I think that he’s my brother!

I feel we are all to blame.

[Bill McGinty is the pastor of the Good Shepherd, Church in Milford. You can contact him on 570-296-8123. or 110 W.Catharine Street, Milford. 18337.]

Workers of the world, incorporate!

Op-Ed by Brian Pavlac
Citizens Voice, Wilkes-Barre
Published: June 25, 2011

Unions are dying in America. Their percentage of the workforce has declined from about 32 percent 60 years ago to under 12 percent today. Many of those that remain are under assault, especially since new Republican governors have targeted public employee unions.

Some of the death of unions results from many people seeing unions as unnecessary. In the last half of the 20th century, governments have indeed spread some of the benefits of unionization to the public by legislating protections of paid holidays and vacation, minimum wages and overtime, safe workplace conditions, etc.

Increasingly, though, unions are not naturally declining, but being murdered. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, corporate executives, and their political allies who have never liked the power assembled in union activity are more motivated than ever to finish them off. Many conservatives hated the recent successful bailout of GM and Chrysler because it allowed the auto unions to survive. Businesses have also deliberately moved factories and offices to states and countries whose laws and customs limit unionization.

Why are they trying to kill unions? Laissez-faire economists say that unions make us less competitive in international markets (although most of our competitor industrialized nations have higher rates of unionization). Corporate executives say the high union wages and benefits cost too much (although corporate profits and executive salaries are now at near-record high levels while median household incomes remain stagnant or in decline). Governors say public unions are bankrupting their states (although lack of tax revenues in an economic slump is more to blame). Libertarians condemn unions as evil socialist collectivization.

True, unions use collective bargaining to empower workers who as individuals would be in a weak position to negotiate for better wages, benefits, and working conditions. Is that so bad?

Unions indeed arose more than a century ago because too many businesses used to exploit workers. As the industrial revolution geared up, business leaders often put profit before humanity. Sound business policy was to pay workers too little to survive, as a lethal poverty prevention measure called the "Iron Law of Wages." Owners could feel virtuous, while they reduced the surplus population (in the words of Charles Dickens). Early industries, supported by governments, opposed any and all efforts of workers to unionize.

In 1935, the American government finally supported unions with the Wagner Act. While that law and the National Labor Relations Board it created supports unions in name, it creates all sorts of difficulties for unionizers. Meanwhile, governments still often side with corporate interests over the workers.

And now the Supreme Court has dismissed a class action suit against Wal-Mart, further preventing workers from acting together for their rights, even without unions.

Maybe unions are too weak to survive these days. Yet, the wealthy interests of capital should not have a monopoly in the marketplace. Instead, I suggest that workers create a voice using the tools of capitalism.

If you can't beat 'em, join 'em! Since the economic and political powers-that-be despise unions, workers should instead incorporate. Then these new worker corporations will sell the services of workers, in turn negotiating, signing, and enforcing contracts, and making profit, for their own benefit.

Ironically, the modern corporation is also a collectivist organization. Governments first created them by law a century and a half ago, as a new way to structure economic enterprises, increasingly replacing the traditional family firms and partnerships. Corporations are artificial people, financed through capital collected by selling stock, run by professional managers, who are, in turn, supervised by a board of directors. Unlike normal human beings, corporations might never die - as long as they continue to make profit, they might exist forever.

What else are corporations but collectives of stockholders and managers who then employ workers to provide goods and services?

I've been inspired by ads I've heard lately proclaiming the advantages of incorporating, even for individuals. Some states, like Wyoming or Delaware, offer ease of incorporation, lack of corporate taxes, and lax regulation and supervision. And we all know how much businesses and the courts respect contracts with other corporations!

I'm not a lawyer, so the incorporation of workers and citizens to better recognize their interests may not be easy or possible. If the current laws allow it, then someone can find a way; if new laws need to be passed, the corporate interests may stop this idea from moving forward.

Either way, I see no alternative to the growing dominance of American society by the wealthy and well-connected armed with their lawyers and accountants. If our society continues to favor artificial profit-making corporations over quality of life for genuine individual human beings, then only corporations will be our future.

Workers of the world, incorporate! You have nothing to lose, but your humanity. The courts, politicians and businessmen are already taking away your dignity and livelihood, anyhow.

[Brian A. Pavlac is a professor of History at King's College, an Episcopal Priest, and the author of "A Concise Survey of Western Civilization: Supremacies and Diversities throughout History."]

Diocesan Life for June 2011

Open publication - Free publishing - More anglican

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The deadline of mortality – not today

By Bill Lewellis

[This, or an edited version because it is significantly longer than I usually send, will be published in The Morning Call on Saturday, May 21.]

I admire intelligence, insight, wit and wisdom. I know them when I see them. That may explain why I do not admire those who claim to have deciphered scripture to predict the end of the world.

Despite his 1994 "miscalculation," 89-year-old evangelist Harold Camping of Family Radio has touted for at least three years that the beginning of the end will happen today (May 21). At 6:00 p.m., two percent of the earth's population will be "raptured" to meet Jesus, while the rest of us experience five months of torment before the final end.

If you enjoy non-contextual play with scripture, read a Dan Brown novel. It's at least entertaining.

Never having listened to Family Radio, I don't know whether Camping has ever encouraged listeners to put an end to poverty, war, or the marginalization in many churches of gays and lesbians. Betting man that I am, however, I'd lay odds that he has not.

I don't mean to ridicule people who have given some credence (and money) to Camping. I'm simply saying, "Shame on you, Harold Camping."

On the other hand, I have admired the intelligence, insight, wit and wisdom of Christopher Hitchens. Because he is arguably today's best known atheist, I wonder about wisdom –– but that's not fair.

Upon reading the following, how can one not read on, seeking wisdom?

"Like so many of life’s varieties of experience, the novelty of a diagnosis of malignant cancer has a tendency to wear off. The thing begins to pall, even to become banal. One can become quite used to the specter of the eternal Footman, like some lethal old bore lurking in the hallway at the end of the evening, hoping for the chance to have a word. I don’t so much object to his holding my coat in that marked manner, as if mutely reminding me that it’s time to be on my way. No, it’s the snickering that gets me down."

Hitchens, 61, was diagnosed last summer with Stage Four metastasized esophageal cancer. "The thing about Stage Four," he quipped, "is that there is no such thing as Stage Five."

He recently lost his voice.

"Like health itself, the loss of such a thing can’t be imagined until it occurs ... I wait impatiently for a high dose of protons to be fired into my body at two-thirds the speed of light. What do I hope for? If not a cure, then a remission. And what do I want back? In the most beautiful apposition of two of the simplest words in our language: the freedom of speech."

The oncology bargain is that "in return for at least the chance of a few more useful years, you agree to submit to chemotherapy and then, if you are lucky with that, to radiation or even surgery. So here’s the wager: you stick around for a bit, but in return we are going to need some things from you. These things may include your taste buds, your ability to concentrate, your ability to digest, and the hair on your head." 

Hitchens has written three brutally honest columns* on his experience of cancer.

"In whatever kind of a 'race' life may be," he wrote in one, "I have very abruptly become a finalist."

We all became finalists the day we were born. Only when we approach the deadline of mortality, however, might we become intentional about the undiscovered country of death, whatever lies beyond. There is some shortsightedness in most of us about the deadline of mortality. I know indications of mine.

Hitchens knows cancer, aggressive treatments, and the snickering of the eternal Footman.

He does not know religion. Boston College professor Stephen Prothero wrote In a scathing review of Hitchens' 2007 book, God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, that he had "never encountered a book whose author is so fundamentally unacquainted with its subject."

Prothero wrote later that Hitchens' reflections about “the unfamiliar country” of people undergoing treatment for cancer rank with the best writing he knows on that topic.
 
I admire compassion and action arising out of compassion, seeking to ameliorate misery. I cannot understand people who tell Hitchens in hard, hard copy or online that God is punishing him, especially with the loss of his voice, for his "blasphemies" against God and religion. I cannot understand people who, because Hitchens is an atheist, want him to agonize in his illness and then go to hell.

Christopher Hitchens might not last long. I know God will be compassionate.

Jesus will be with him the way he was with his disciples on the night before he died. He will have a basin, some water and a towel. He will pour water into the basin. Jesus will look deeply into his eyes and heart. He will see him for the best person he had ever been … and all the suffering he may have experienced. “You’ve had a long journey,” Jesus will say. “You must be tired. dirty and sore. Let me wash your your feet and dry them. The table has been prepared." Jesus will take bread and wine. He will bless the bread and wine and say, “Welcome to the banquet.”

* Published in Vanity Fair: Topic of Cancer (Sept. 2010), Unanswerable Prayers (Oct. 2010) and Miss Manners and the BigC, (Dec. 2010)

[Canon Bill Lewellis, blewellis@diobeth.org, a retired Episcopal priest, served on the Bishop’s staff of the Episcopal Diocese of Bethlehem for 24 years and on the Bishop’s staff of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Allentown for 13 years before that]

'I Want It All'

by Archdeacon Howard Stringfellow
8 May 2011

It must have been Holy Tuesday.  Just when I thought I had seen most everything, walking to the Post Office on West Fourth Street in Bethlehem, I saw one of those personalized license plates.  Not the official ones that are made to order and are legal plates found on the rear bumper.  This was an unofficial one found on the front bumper.  Palm trees, after a manner of speaking, were to the right and to the left, framing an orange sunset across a bay.  And in the middle, in script, was this confident advertisement: “I want it all.”

What does it mean to have it “all”?  Does it mean that as long as someone else has a penny in a bank account or in a mattress somewhere that you don’t quite have it all?  Maybe you have a tremendously expensive house, as someone once described his house to me, on that very beach, framed by those same palm trees.  Then, do you have it all?  Or you may have a penthouse in Manhattan and a studio in Nob Hill.  Maybe you have a BMW and a Porsche.  Season tickets to the Yankees and the Giants.  Then, do you have it all?  Or maybe an apartment in West Allentown or a house in historic district with all your bills paid.  Or, perhaps, the roof over your head leaks during hard rains, and you have to pick and choose among your necessary medications.  Then, do you have it all?  The answer is: “Quite possibly.”

This is the Season about having it all, about having everything of any importance whatsoever.  For the time is now when we can be assured that the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ conquers the enemy of us all and opens to us the gate of everlasting life.

But Easter is about having it all in another way, too.  Have you ever seen a child at around Noon on Christmas Day, when all the family and friends have gathered, and the thought is moving across her or his consciousness that all the presents have been given, and the day holds no more mountains to climb, no more wrapping paper to wrestle?  We are in a similar circumstance—all of God’s truly significant gifts have been given to us: the enemy of us all has been conquered.  God has given us the most precious gift in his bounty to give whether we have too much or too little, whether we dine on hamburger or crab, whether our stocks are rising or falling, or whether we are “in” or “out” at the club or the office.

From time to time I am asked why the Bible stopped being written—if the Bible is God’s revelation to us, and it is, did that revelation stop at the end of the first century when additional writings stopped being added to the body of writings thought to be the Word of God?  The answer I usually give is an Easter answer.  The gift of eternal life given in the resurrection and the gift of the Holy Spirit given at Pentecost are the very big gifts God has to bestow.  It isn’t that God doesn’t have the money or the goods to be more generous; it is that God has given us what we need.  And God has given it in full measure.

I suppose a kind of ambition is in our nature: to want more, to think we deserve more, and to go out and try to get it.  And so much of our culture and our national ideals propel us to do just that.  But wrangling more and more out of God may just not be in the cards we’ve been dealt.  And we may forget what a tremendous barrier the just and innocent man, indeed, the Son of God, broke when he was killed and when God raised him from the dead.  Do any of us need to go faster than the speed of light?  Can we really make heaven a better place?  Will our lives be significantly improved if our ISP provides the 100 Mbps that it promises?  How much do we have to be given before it dawns on us that we really do have it all?

Luther K. Snow and Asset Mapping

By Howard Stringfellow
9 April 2011

This note is unusual in that it looks back rather than forward; rather than advertise a future event, I plan to reflect on one that is past and is memorable for its quality and implications for our life together.

Under the auspices of continuing education at Moravian Theological Seminary, Luther Snow presented in Allentown and Bethlehem on the last Friday and Saturday in March. We advertised the events as much as we could. Fr. Charles Cesaretti, Chair of the Diocesan Renewal Committee, included the presentations in his schedule of events for Renewal in the Diocese. Many clergy and lay people from the Diocese attended one or both sessions—along with many people from other denominations—more clergy on Friday and more lay people on Saturday.

The most striking, memorable, and compelling feature of Luther Snow’s presentations is his solid grounding in theology.  He really believes and trusts in God. He truly stands where he believes. Moreover, his belief and trust in God trump and overshadow the technique of what he calls asset mapping. The technique is valuable, don’t misunderstand, but it is all the more valuable because of his commitment in faith. His commitment and trust in God pervade everything he says whether he is presenting his material or responding to a comment. Every remark opens the door to God’s possibility and future, to God’s goodness and mercy.

I found it very moving for him to conclude a segment by saying, “Let us have a word of prayer.” And what he did then was to read a passage of Scripture, in most cases a portion of a reading assigned to the Sunday before us. He read not dramatically nor in any way that called attention to itself, but he read with conviction and with clarity and understanding. When he finished his passage, he stopped and said nothing but held the moment, held it as a spiritual reality. He broke the moment by physical movement. Having watched people conduct public services for over fifty years and having conducted them myself as an ordained minister for over twenty-five, I do not believe that his presence and obvious connection with the Almighty can be taught or faked. It only comes from being connected. And, we need more of it, more connection with each other and more connection with God. In other words, we need Renewal.  As an aside, I observe that ordination is not necessary to read the Scriptures in public, nor is Baptism necessary, for that matter.

Asset mapping is his term (though he acknowledges mentors and forerunners) for taking an inventory of assets and then combining the assets in creative ways to further mission. The process and exercises for groups to undertake the inventory and combination may be found in his book, The Power of Asset Mapping, published by the Alban Institute and available from the Brazilian River (my cheeky name for Amazon).

The image he uses often in his presentations is the water glass. Is it half-full or half-empty? And his point is that even if the water glass holds only 5% of the water it can hold when filled, a lot is there for God and God’s people to work with.

Asset mapping, then, is called for when the vestry gets to the point of saying, “We don’t have the money we need to open an overnight shelter.” But what resources do you, in fact, have? What can you do with what you have? How can you use what you have to open a door to the kingdom of God for people bumping into walls looking for that door?

Though he would, I suppose, abominate the term, he is a “supply-side” theologian, a Christian who sees enough in her or his daily bread or weekly offering or annual budget to do something to make God known. The water glass, holding something, holds enough to do something. Always. We may not be able to multiply loaves and fish, and convert water into wine, but the loaves, fish, and water can be used in such a way to declare that God gave them to us to use.

Late on Saturday one of the participants said that Luther Snow was to preach the next day at the early service at East Hills Moravian Church in Bethlehem.  Lord, I wanted to be in that number.

Invited to believe, with your heart

By Bill Lewellis
The Morning Call, Feb. 17, 2011

"We are invited to believe." The line jumped out at me from the printed copy of a sermon a friend recently preached. It was on the Dorchester Chaplains. Two Protestant, one Roman Catholic and one Jewish chaplains, they gave up their life jackets and means of rescue to others on the Dorchester, a converted cruise ship whose boiler room was struck by enemy fire on February 3, 1943, one day from their Greenland destination. They are commemorated in an Episcopal book, Holy Women Holy Men.

Diocese of Bethlehem Archdeacon Howard Stringfellow mentioned "the ice and the horribly cold water," 19 degrees, in which they drowned. "We are invited to believe," he said, "that the Lord was there with them. We are invited to believe that theirs was the greatest love, for indeed they laid down their lives for their friends (John 15:13). We are invited to believe that their sufferings are not worth comparing to the glory that is being revealed in them (Romans 8:18).

We are invited to believe. What a wonderful way to imagine the faith to which we are called. Not an obligation, not a should or a must, but an invitation. We are invited to trust, as much a matter of the heart as a matter of the head. Perhaps more a matter of the heart.

Becoming grateful, surprise upon surprise

By Bill Lewellis
New Year's Day 2011
The Morning Call

When she was growing up in New England, a onetime colleague on the staff of Bethlehem Bishop Paul Marshall related that her doctor father would sit with her at bedtime until she remembered at least five things for which she was thankful.

I suspect this grew easier when she discovered the hints in the Book of Common Prayer:

For the beauty and wonder of God’s creation, in earth and sky and sea, for the splendor of the whole creation, for the beauty of this world, for the wonder of life, and for the mystery of love.

For all that is gracious in the lives of men and women, revealing the image of Christ.

For our daily food and drink, the blessing of family and friends, and the loving care which surrounds us on every side.

For minds to think, and hearts to love, and hands to serve.

For health and strength to work, and leisure to rest and play.

For setting us at tasks which demand our best efforts, and for leading us to accomplishments which satisfy and delight us.
 
For the brave and courageous, who are patient in suffering and faithful in adversity.

For all valiant seekers after truth, liberty, and justice.

For those disappointments and failures that lead us to acknowledge our dependence on God alone.

For the great mercies and promises given to us in Christ Jesus our Lord.

I thank you, Lord. I thank you. I thank you.

Studies show, according to a recent article in Christianity Today, that “grateful people are happier and more satisfied with their lives and social relationships, more forgiving and supportive than those who are ungrateful, less depressed, stressed, envious, and anxious.”

Near the southern end of the Northeast Extension of the Pennsylvania Turnpike, when New Jersey by way of the Walt Whitman Bridge is my destination, I listen to a Philadelphia radio station at 2, 12, 22, 32, 42 and 52 minutes after the hour. KYW promotes this minute as Traffic on the Twos. Listening helps me determine whether the Schuylkill Expressway or the Blue Route and I-95 north might be the better, or at least the less harrowing route to take.

My occasional Traffic on the Twos practice has suggested another practice to help with a daily journey.

I give thanks for some happening or relationship of the preceding three hours as I reflect for a few seconds at 9:00 a.m., noon, and 3:00, 6:00 and 9:00 p.m.

Thanks on the Threes. It helps, often in unexpected ways.

Brother David Steindl-Rast asks if we've ever noticed how our eyes open a bit wider when we are surprised. Surprise is the beginning of living with a clue.

Surprise is often the beginning of gratitude.

Be surprised, open your eyes a bit wider as you walk through a supermarket brimming with the gifts of God and the labor of people you'll never know.

Be surprised –– and grateful –– when your car starts in the morning.

Computer technology has been part of my job and my life for many years, but I'm still surprised when my computer works. As a “high-use, low-tech” person, I'm grateful for the Info/Tech person who fixes it when it doesn't.

I have been surprised when I've been able to connect so quickly with someone by email or text, post something on a blog, download a podcast, find a helpful web site, lay out a newspaper with a computer program and convert the page files to specs required by a distant printer.

When I sit with my laptop to write a column or sermon, I'm surprised that words begin to appear on the screen.

Someday, the words will not come. I will not chance putting thoughts together for public scrutiny. Someday, my sight and reflexes will not allow me to chance the drive to the bridge. Someday, my legs won't tolerate exercise.

I have been surprised during the past year by how much I have enjoyed retirement, even though I have loved the work I had been doing at Diocesan House (Diocese of Bethlehem) for 24 years.

Moving into 2011 I want to remember how well I have felt during 2010, after having experienced some six months of ill health during 2009. Of course, I am grateful. In fact, one thing I find as I grow older is how much more grateful I have become.

[Canon Bill Lewellis, blewellis@diobeth.org, a retired Episcopal priest, served on the Bishop’s staff of the Episcopal Diocese of Bethlehem for 24 years and on the Bishop’s staff of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Allentown for 13 years before that.]

Thanks on the Threes

By Bill Lewellis

[This is a revision of a column published in The Morning Call in 2006.]

Near the southern end of the Northeast Extension of the Pennsylvania Turnpike, when New Jersey by way of the Walt Whitman Bridge is my destination, I listen to a Philadelphia radio station at 2, 12, 22, 32, 42 and 52 minutes after the hour. KYW promotes this minute as Traffic on the Twos. Listening helps me determine whether the Schuylkill Expressway or the Blue Route and I-95 North might be the better, or at least the less harrowing, way to my destination.

My occasional Traffic on the Twos practice has suggested another practice I've devised to help with a daily journey.

I give thanks for some happening or relationship of the preceding three hours as I reflect for a few seconds at 9:00 a.m., noon, and 3:00, 6:00 and 9:00 p.m. Thanks on the Threes.

It helps, often in unexpected ways. When I'm inclined to complain, I search between the threes for something or someone to be thankful for.

St. Paul encourages us to "pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances." Alice Walker advises us to "live frugally on surprise." Brother David Steindl-Rast asks if we've ever noticed how our eyes open a bit wider when we are surprised. Surprise is the beginning of living with a clue. I'd say surprise might often be the beginning of gratitude.

Be surprised, obviously grateful, as you walk thrugh a supermarket brimming with the gifts of God and the labor of people you'll never know.

Be surprised when your car starts in the morning.

Be surprised when you computer works. As a "high-use, low-tech" person, I'm usually surprised, even though my computer works 99% of the time.

I have been surprised when I've been able to connect so quickly with someone by email or text, post something on a blog, download a podcast, find a helpful web site, lay out a newspaper with a computer program and convert the page files to specs required by a distant printer.

Using computer technology has been part of my job and my life for many years, but I'm still surprised when it works. And I'm grateful for the Info/Tech person who fixes it when it doesn't.

I have been surprised during the past year how much I have enjoyed retirement, even though I have loved the work I had been doing at Diocesan House (Diocese of Bethlehem) for 24 years.

When I sit with my laptop to write a column or sermon, I'm surprised that words  begin to appear on the screen.

Someday, the words will not come. I will not chance putting thoughts together for public scrutiny. Someday, my sight and reflexes will not allow me to chance the drive to the bridge. Someday, my legs won't tolerate the exercise  I need to take time to do.

This Thanksgiving I will remember how good I have felt over the past year, after having experienced some six months of ill health during 2009.

I intend to continue to be surprised, to thank God on the threes, to be grateful that the whole of my life is greater than the sum of its parts.

"For the beauty and wonder of your creation, in earth and sky and sea ... For our daily food and drink, our homes and families, our friends ... For minds to think, and hearts to love, and hands to serve. For the brave and courageous, who are patient in suffering and faithful in adversity ... For all valiant seekers after truth, liberty and justice ... We thank you, Lord. (From A Litany of Thanksgiving in the Book of Common Prayer)

[Canon Bill Lewellis, blewellis@diobeth.org, a retired Episcopal priest, served on the Bishop’s staff of the Episcopal Diocese of Bethlehem for 24 years and on the Bishop’s staff of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Allentown for 13 years before that.]

God doesn't resolve

By Bill Lewellis
Published in The Morning Call
September 18, 2010

Donald Miller (Blue Like Jazz) never liked jazz because it doesn't resolve. 

One night he listened for 15 minutes to a man on the street play the saxophone without opening his eyes. "Sometimes you have to watch somebody love something before you can love it yourself. It is as if they are showing you the way. I used to not like God because God didn't resolve."

God doesn't resolve. Intransitive. It's not about resolving problems, also problematic. Godself isn't resolvable. 

Throughout our lives, God remains a question rather than an answer. Some say mystery. As we pursue the mystery, however, our questions about God do resolve into questions about ourselves, more embraceable questions.

Prepare to be misunderstood - Canon Andrew Gerns

[Published in The Morning Call, July 31, 2010]

The other day I was walking through the mall dressed in my “official” clerical garb. While I was at the kiosk for the cell phone people, another customer was treating me with a noticeable deference and even with good humor. As I walked out of the mall, I saw a group of young people. One of them made eye contact with me but it was not a friendly connection.

His t-shirt had a red circle and slash over a cross under the caption “no bad religion.” I wanted to stop and ask about the shirt. After all, if I am going to wear the symbol of the churches ordained ministry in public, I had better be able to take the brickbats as well as the bouquets.

From risk to opportunities: Congregational renewal in the Diocese of Bethlehem

[Editor’s note: This is the first of a three part series focusing on congregational renewal within the diocese. If you would like further information please contact Fr. Charles Cesaretti or one of the members listed in the article.]

From risk to opportunities: Congregational renewal in the Diocese of Bethlehem

By Ty Welles and Canon Andrew Gerns
A group of laity and clergy are working to create a process to assist congregations with renewal and development in rapidly changing times, based on utilizing inherent strengths in local communities and networking parishes with similar situations in creative and collaborative ways.

The group was called together in response to Bishop Paul Marshall’s address to the Diocesan Convention in October, 2009. Bishop Marshall said the  following concerning congregations in the diocese:
“The problem with help [for parishes] from the outside is that it can look and feel imposed. Therefore, to help less endangered parishes reclaim their vitality I have been meeting with the Congregational Development Commission in order to reorganize their activities. . . . It is very important to me that parishes in similar situations talk with each other and as far as possible, work together.”

Soon after Convention, Bishop Paul invited the Congregational Development Commission, and a group interested laity and clergy together to talk about how the congregational development process can be reoriented. Instead of providing resources to assist congregations from “above” as it did in the past, the goal will be to facilitate parishes to work together for renewal. The goal will bring together diocesan and congregational resources in a network to assist both troubled and stable congregations move from mere survival to a sense of Christ-centered vitality and world-focused mission.

The new group is chaired by the Rev. Charles Cesaretti and consists of Bishop Paul, Archdeacon Howard Stringfellow, Fr. Cesaretti, Canon Jane Teter, Canon George Loeffler, Canon Andrew Gerns, Fr. Bill McGinty, Fr. Scott Allen, Charles Warwick, Ty Welles, Rachel Bartron, and Dean Tony Pompa. Some of these people were already members of the Congregational Development Commission, and others represented both parishes and other programs or oversight committees of the diocese.

The group designated a drafting team tasked to develop a report about the current state of congregation development and support as well as the needs, hopes and vision of the various groups and parishes in the diocese. The group convened four mini-consultations with representative focus groups from across the diocese to seek out information, background and suggestions. One consultation was with a joint meeting of Diocesan Council and the Standing Committee; a second was with diocesan staff; a third was with representatives of a number of parishes exhibiting growth; and a fourth was with representatives of a number of struggling parishes.

The report, titled From Risks to Opportunities: Congregational Renewal in the Diocese of Bethlehem was the result. The paper describes the standards, practices, and resources that will foster faithfulness of ministry in every congregation of the diocese. The writers suggested that the mission and instrumentality of the committee should be to strengthen all parishes, especially those that have exhibited vitality; provide resources to those congregations “at risk”; and provide self-realization and eventuality to those congregations that have lost their sense of purpose or vitality.

After being presented to Diocesan Council, the Standing Committee, the Incorporated Trustees, and various program committees of the diocese, the outline in From Risks to Opportunities will be brought to the diocese at large through Diocesan Convention this fall. These three articles provide the background for the decisions we will make together in October.

At the heart of the findings described in From Risks to Opportunities is the definition of mission found in the catechism in the Book of Common Prayer: “the mission of the Church is to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ. The mission is pursued as it prays, worships, proclaims the Gospel, and promotes justice, peace, and love. This mission is carried out through the ministry of all its members.” This understanding of mission proclaims that our first and primary relationship is with God; the second relationship is in the worship and proclamation of the church; and the third relationship is with the community and the world. From Risks to Opportunities suggested that this should be adopted as the mission statement of the committee.

A second suggestion was that the committee be renamed The Committee on Congregational Renewal. This would align the committee with the mission statement, and with both the goal and process.

A third finding in From Risks to Opportunities was that the Committee on Congregational Renewal should become the catalyst and agent for a multi-year program to shepherd all congregations of the diocese to renewal and transformation, and to move from risk to opportunities.

Out of the meetings held by the committee there developed a number of assumptions:
1. The bedrock of Christian action is a spiritual life, which must start, direct, and sustain all congregational life.
2. Congregations must focus on their strengths rather than on their weaknesses.
3. Congregations can greatly strengthen their witness when they link up with neighboring congregations in cooperative ventures.
4. Congregations do better when they do not become dependent upon outside sources.
5. Many clergy are ill-prepared to lead a small rural or village church.
6. Every congregation in the diocese must be included in the renewal and transformational process at the appropriate level.

The Committee on Congregational Renewal is developing a process for the diocese and congregations to move into a new era of renewal for parishes in the Diocese of Bethlehem. The vision also includes improved collaboration between the several commissions of the diocese.

As we move towards Diocesan Convention this coming October, the next two parts in this series will describe in more detail how this process will be laid out and frame the discussion and decisions before us. We will spell out the ways in which parishes in the diocese can move into the renewal process beginning at the convention, and how every Episcopalian in northeast Pennsylvania can support a renewed, re-vitalized sense of mission and Christian community.

Lost Horizons on TV and in Life

A column by Bishop Paul Marshall

[Published in the Opinion section of Episcopal Life Online and in the July/August issue of Diocesan Life]

From the old joke department, I told a colleague that I had a new heart medicine (I do), and that I was having some trouble following its directions. The first was easy: Do not drink alcohol while taking this medication. The second was harder: Keep away from children.

I was hoping for a quick chuckle, which I got. My colleague was more playful -- and thoughtful -- than I. He added, "It's an odd sort of medicine that thinks keeping away from children is good for your heart." Touché.

Children bring us so many gifts. Everybody has their favorite. Mine is that children bring out my imagination and sense of play. When I visit with children during a Sunday service, it's the time in the week I feel most free, most safe. It's good for my heart.

It was a great step in evolution when the Romantic movement discovered childhood. I found myself wishing I had a platoon of children to send in when the bloggers starting arguing after the final episode of "Lost" aired on television.

The series was about plane crash survivors who work out their personal issues and relationship problems on a Pacific island. The jungle island has polar bears, lost colonies, archaeological remains, and nuclear weapons. There are flash-forwards, backwards and sideways. And there is time travel.

In other words, it is all dreamlike and slightly mind-bending fun. Everything is imaginable, and in six seasons just about everything happens. People are born and people die. They have issues with their parents. They love and hate. They change.

The writers had a lark, but something else was happening in the audience. Some viewers, known as "Losties," were attaching Deep Meaning to the show just as Trekkies did to "Star Trek."

I think that is basically good news. Think about the themes of "Lost." Characters work out their own issues at the same time that they participate in a community not of their choosing.  They can decide to help save the world. Life defeats death. That an audience would be committed to these themes is strong evidence that a yearning for meaning and connectedness still thrives amidst the quirks in our culture.

The twist was obvious before the end of the first season: these characters are dead and are being given a last chance to develop as human beings. It's not a new plot, but here it is wonderfully done. Sort of "groundhog day of the dead." That this twist was "revealed" in the last episode can have shocked only literary innocents.

So whether you use the word "purgatory" or not, the idea played with in "Lost" is the yearning each of us has to get it right. Through many a struggle the characters basically do get it right, are reconciled, and go on to a pleasant afterlife. The story is fuzzy and imprecise. It also fits the "basic story" that C. S. Lewis says is at the bottom of most the great stories worldwide. Life has a goal, and attaining it is sometimes very hard work. Life defeats death.

On the child's make-believe level, where all equations do not need to balance, "Lost" is a wonderful playground for the mind, and I am happy to let it go at that. But what are we to make of the Lostie "theologians" who need the series to have a consistent and finely defined philosophy where everything makes precise sense? Some indignantly hate the ending, others gleefully shout that they told us so, others triumphantly see their own religion's catechism writ large in the script. Some patently cannot handle the ambiguities presented. And they argue. For them, the fun is gone amidst the arguing.

When we overinvest data in symbols or rituals, which do their work by evocation and ambiguity, we kill them. All too often the human desire for security and control takes over, and living symbols become inanimate objects. Imagination dies. This is why most explanations of the alleged meaning of church ritual and hardware are not only wrong but also damaging.

On the other hand, for instance, the genius of having four gospels is that we can never get the story down pat, so we have to hold their different reports and points of view in a tension that makes our sense of balance better. We understand them as we live them. There is a great gift here. Arguing about the details destroys the sweep of the narrative, and keeps people from entering into the drama personally. The debate about "Lost" teaches us something about the temptations that come to all religions: the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life (2 Cor 3:6). 

Children are fascinated by stories and love to play them. They get meanings they could never define with precision by doing them. They would know to leave "Lost" alone and just enjoy it.