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.

The Summer—and our Lives—Begin and End with Our Lady

Howard Stringfellow
4 June 2012

The summer in very truth begins with The Feast of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary (May 31) and has well entered its decline with the Feast of the Blessed Virgin Mary (August 15). When this discovery dawned on me, I began to see the season as a figure for life, for living well, and for letting life take its Providential course. Summer is much more than baseball.

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.

Christopher Hitchens dead at 62 – Is he still an atheist?

By Bill Lewellis

Christopher Hitchens was diagnosed during the spring of 2010 with stage-four metastasized esophageal cancer. He may may have been our best known and most bitter atheist – author of God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. Reviewing the book in the Washington Post, Boston College professor Stephen Prothero wrote that he had “never encountered a book whose author is so fundamentally unacquainted with its subject.” Hitchens went after easy targets. Most would be on my list of “bad religion.”

During the next few months, he wrote three brutally honest pieces for Vanity Fair on his experience of “the unfamiliar country” of people undergoing treatment for cancer. The same critic who panned Hitchens’ knowledge of religion wrote that Hitchens' reflections ranked up there with the best writing he knows on the topic of cancer. “In whatever kind of a ‘race’ life may be,” Hitchens wrote in VF, “I have very abruptly become a finalist. 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."

Then he 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, he wrote, 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." 

During his battle with cancer, there were people who told him 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 could not understand such people. Because Hitchens was an atheist, they wanted him to agonize in his illness and then go to hell rather than discover our compassionate God in the undiscovered country of death and what lies beyond.

Read articles in the NYTimes and the Daily Beast.

Thanks,
Bill

Bill Lewellis, Diocese of Bethlehem, retired
Communication Minister/Editor (1986-2010), Canon Theologian (1998)
newSpin blog, Email (c)610-393-1833
Be attentive. Be intelligent. Be reasonable. Be responsible.
Be in Love. And, if necessary, change. [Bernard Lonergan]

The Tithe and Leadership

by Archdeacon Howard Stringfellow
8 December 2011

What plan do you have, or does your parish have, for beginning to tithe?  By its nature, because of its costliness, tithing cannot begin accidentally.  You begin intentionally if you begin.

Dan Charney, the Stewardship Missioner of the Diocese, preaches passionately and eloquently about the tithe, or the practice of giving ten percent of one’s income or produce to the Lord.  Since I came to this Diocese in 1993, I have heard more here about tithing than I had heard altogether before or since from other people including clergy.  Tithing enjoys a long and widespread history.  Religions of people other than the Israelites refer to it and expect it.  Dan’s ministry stakes the claim that tithing is expected here also, and I admire him for it.  He witnesses no failure of nerve on this subject, and he is the better leader for taking a stand.

He is of age; we can ask him, of course, but his stewardship talks have emphasized three reasons to tithe that I list in the priority he gives them.

A Rope We Cannot Give Away

A Homily Preached at Diocesan House by Archdeacon Howard Stringfellow
Thursday after Advent Sunday
Isaiah 26:1-6, Psalm 118:19-24, Saint Matthew 7:21-27
1 December 2011

[Better to understand the image of the rope, look at Edwin Friedman’s fable, “The Bridge.”  It has been made into a brief film, “The Crux,” available on YouTube.  The Staff at Diocesan House have seen it and discussed it.  —  H. S.]

It happens every year.  It is as certain as finding Santa Claus at Macy’s in November.

Here we are almost at the very beginning of Advent, and things are about to take a turn.  They do every year.  The solemn and sobering image of our Lord as Savior and Judge will again this year, as it does every year, morph into the image of our Lord as a pitiable and helpless Baby, so helpless that even our help seems necessary.  Even a Little Drummer Boy has a gift to offer.

I understand this.  It’s so much more rewarding to be helpful than it is to be accountable.  Taking a rope is a lot more fun than being asked what in the world we’re doing with rope in our hands—especially when the rope isn’t our own.

While we have time, let’s let our Lord be our Savior and Judge, and not distort him into helplessness.  He can be a Savior and Judge at once, at the same time, because his Mercy is his Justice, and his Justice is his Mercy.  I mean by this that Jesus’ love for us, unconditional and uncompromised, seems to be one or the other, depending upon where we are, where we’ve strayed or where we haven’t strayed, or whether we’ve identified with him or accepted a substitute.

In the terms of the Gospel today, we receive his Justice if our house is built on sand, if we’ve heard and not acted on his words.  We receive his Mercy if our house is built on rock, if we’ve heard and acted on his words.

Each one of us has the power, the freedom, to decide which foundation our lives shall have.  We inevitably become in this life what we most want to be.  And this choice is a rope that we cannot give away either in time or in eternity.

My Inner Naaman

Archdeacon Howard Stringfellow
5 November 2011
 
“What is it about this oil that you have that will cure me?”
 
There; I had said it and said it aloud for the priest to hear.  “What is it about this oil that you have that will cure me?”  My inner Naaman, though nameless to me, had stepped out of the shadows and was right there for the two of us to see.  For my part, I was proud of that Naaman, for that Naaman kept me me and not another.  It was the other I feared, I suppose.  I can only guess what the priest thought.
 
At the time I was a sophomore in college.  I had been to the doctor—several doctors in fact—to discover the cause of the dizzy spells that were plaguing me at some inopportune times.  I remember once being overcome with dizziness while I sped westward on Interstate 40 midway between Nashville and Memphis.  That was scary.
 
When dizziness hits, reason flies out the window.  Contrary to all reason, I once held onto the bed where I was lying, because the sensation that I might be thrown off of it could not by reason be put down.
 

Pretensions Die Hard

by Archdeacon Howard Stringfellow
6 October 2011
 
Pretensions die hard, but help in nailing them sometimes comes from unexpected quarters.
 
One day some years ago I was putting things back in my locker in a hallway at the Jewish Community Center in Scranton.  I was dressed in my Fifth Avenue finest though without the suit jacket I would don later: Palm Beach wool suit from Duffy & Quinn on Fifth Avenue (of course), rabbat from Wippell’s trimmed with an Anglican collar, and a white shirt with French cuffs joined by gold cuff links: just a humble parish priest collecting anecdotes for inclusion in his own version of Journal d’un curé de campagne.  This is the same rig worn in my Diocesan Life photograph.
 
And a seven year-old Jewish boy dressed in black and white, as I was, and just beginning to sport fringes on his tallis and to sprout forelocks asked intrepidly, “Are you a waiter?”  “No,” I reactively thought, “not me.”  Then I thought my case would be hard to sell this little judge when he found out about my handling of patens, chalices, and purificators on special tables.  So, I actually said, “I guess in a way.”  Smiling, he showed his sense of success and ran to rejoin his group of friends who unlike him had passed me by.
 
The boy is something of a terror, I later learned.  The son of a rabbi, he asks tough questions of his teachers and adult supervisors as he did that day of me.  And while I didn’t like it at first, slowly I began to see something of the humor (from my perspective) of his determined inquisitiveness.
 
And the notion of the humor itself did not last long.  It melted and resolved itself rather quickly into what I think had happened.  I and my pretensions had been in his scrutiny placed in the balance and been found wanting.  This was tough to take.  I can’t just have my costume and exalted self-image at the same time?  Doesn’t the one require the other, and are they not part of the same thing?  What about all those Anglican priests in former times riding in the car with the deceased’s family with a nose in the breviary?  Were they not more self-aware than I was?
 
The answer of course is No.  We get to have our cake and to eat it, too, in fairy tales, dreams, and cartoons but not in real life where in ordinary circumstances we are accountable to each other on a very fundamental level before we arrive at the mature though none the less divisive specialties of denomination, theology, priesthood, sacrifice, belief, and a long list of other props that serve very well as barricades.
 
And just the other day I (in Anglican collar) was on the verge of asking someone a question that should’ve been asked of someone much closer by.  I hope to get it one day.
 
Pretensions indeed die hard, and we need the help God sends even if it be in the person of a little kid doing little kid things.

The Office Book

By Archdeacon Howard Stringfellow
6 September 2011

It’s more valuable than my cell phone (contacts, calendar, and communication).  Its information is more reliable than that on my computer.  I would be lost without it.  I have given it away and take it with me wherever I go.  I have used it on an airplane in the middle of the night, in my car before a meeting, in great cathedrals, and in my favorite chair.

I refer (of course) to the Contemporary Office Book (New York: Church Publishing, 2000; $140), that single volume and 2884 page repository of all things necessary to offer The Daily Office in Rite Two using the New Revised Standard Version of the scriptures.  Its name comes from the Latin word officium, meaning duty or service.  This service is and is not a duty.

Today’s Old Testament reading (I Kings 16:23-34) gives us the entire scriptural account of Omri, King of Israel, whose name means worshipper of Yahweh.  But Omri is important for another reason.  The scriptures say that he “did what was evil in the sight of the Lord,” but they overlook his quelling of a rebellion and his might shown in capability both abroad and at home.  He was one of the greatest kings of Israel.  I came by this extra knowledge innocently: a Bible professor I had in seminary wrote his dissertation on Omri.

But I have come to see that nothing about the scriptures and the daily prayers is irrelevant to my daily round cellular activity: contacts, calendar events, and communication.  In fact, the scriptures and the daily prayers give to me and reinforce in me an important meaning lying behind the events.  We are God’s, and we remain God’s despite what we do.  And, at times, we even answer our calling to do God’s will.  Even old Omri reminds me that we all have a double story, the one that is written down and the one that defies writing, the one that’s harder or more inconvenient to see.  We all pray that God’s will be done, and occasionally we actually do it.

For the scriptures tell our story, too.  We find duplicated in us the events and the emotions of the people of Israel through the ages.  And we find, too, that place where we can trust in God’s loving-kindness and mercy.  Over and over we are called to that trust and to commit to that relationship so that it is as firm for our part as it is for God’s part.

I’ve said it in sermons precisely because I believe it.  When Jesus speaks in the proclamation of the Gospel for the day, he speaks and is present to all his hearers not only those of two thousand years ago.  He speaks to you and to me, and to the situation of our lives.

And so I carry the Office Book with me and use it though I think of it more as a breviary, a collection of those short readings that give to me and remind me of the deeper meaning, and open the door of eternity.  To me it’s very like Jacob’s Ladder, stretching to heaven and declaring God’s promise: “Know that I am with you and will keep you wherever you go” (Genesis 28:15).  I’ll take it over a cell phone any day.

Let us pray, by Raymond Harbort

By Raymond Harbort

At the “cleansing of the temple” Jesus said, “My house shall be called a house of prayer but you have made it a den of robbers.”  I have often wondered if what Jesus was objecting to was, at least in part, the “din of robbers”---the noise made by moneychangers and sellers of animals so that prayer, knowing the presence of the Holy God, was made difficult if not impossible.

There was a time when, as you entered an Episcopal Church (anywhere, of any stripe of churchmanship), you would find quiet.  As people gathered for worship they knelt and prayed or they sat in silence. If people found it necessary to speak, they did so in whispers.  This silence told you that you were in a holy place, a place set apart for prayer and worship, a place in which God’s Presence could be known.  The silence spoke of the congregation’s awareness of the holiness of what they were about to do.  And it created a space and time that enabled and encouraged prayer and worship.

There still are parishes where silence before worship is still observed.  But, what you find on entering most Episcopal churches today is a “din of robbers”, people chatting----robbing others and themselves of the quiet most of us need to pray.  Anyone wanting to pray will find it difficult.  (I confess that too often I find myself judging and grumbling to myself about the talkers rather than praying.)  Sometimes, admittedly, the conversation is expression of the love we ought to have for one another (words of sympathy or support, inquiry about health, etc.). But couldn’t that wait until after the service or coffee hour?  More often it is just chitchat about things like “where we went for dinner last night”.   It seems to me that what loving one another should mean as we gather for worship is praying for ourselves and others or being silent so that others can pray.

If what we do during worship is of supreme importance (and it is---for we are seeking to enter into communion with God) then how we come to worship---the heart, soul and mind we bring to worship is of great importance.  All of us struggle with distraction in prayer and worship.  But  if we are chatting and distracted as the service begins we will not be prepared to worship God with all our heart and mind and soul and strength.

 I do not know how we got this way---how over the last 20-30 years we seem to have lost this custom of silence in the presence of the holy.  Does the atmosphere of “friendly informality” that so many clergy and parishes adopted since the 1960’s and 70’s have something to do with it? Or is it perhaps a tendency to treat the church building as an ordinary place (not “sacred space) except during the times of worship (and, perhaps, sometimes not even then)?  Is it that worship has come to be seen as a form of entertainment so that people are inclined to behave beforehand as they would at a concert?  I have heard it said that the chatting before the service is a sign of the congregation’s love for one another---and therefore a sign of welcome and hospitality to the newcomer.  (Hmm? I wonder if people interrupt their conversations to greet the newcomer? Perhaps.)  On the other hand, if the ushers or greeters have exercised the ministry of hospitality at the door, then perhaps, once inside, a reverent silence would be more welcoming? What if a visitor, drawn by the Holy Spirit, came in deep spiritual hunger, seeking God, wanting to pray and couldn’t because of the noise?  Yes, if visitors show up, welcome them in a whisper.  Help them find their way through the service.  And then, when the service is over, invite and escort them to coffee hour and introduce them to the clergy and members of the parish.

I don’t know how we got this way and I’m not sure how we get this counter-productive genie back in the bottle.  I, like many others, have tried but have sometimes meet with resentment and little success.  If I had it to do over again I think I’d try to enlist the understanding and cooperation of the vestry, parish groups, and those matriarchal/patriarchal pacesetters that everyone follows and who are present in every parish.  Over time, by praying or sitting quietly in their pews before the service, their example could change the culture of the parish.

Finally, people not spending the time in prayer before the service raises another concern:  have they prepared themselves to receive their Lord in Holy Communion?  It is possible (but unlikely) that people have “made their preparation” at home the night before or that morning.  More likely, they are coming to Communion having made no preparation whatsoever. When I raised this concern with a friend he replied, “Who can ever be “properly prepared?”  True, nothing we can do, no amount of repentance and prayer, can ever make us worthy.  It is all grace.  But it seems to me that love and reverence bid us to at least make an effort.  Preparing for Holy Communion by examination of conscience and prayer is grounded in Paul’s counsel to the Christians in I Cor. 11:28 and has always been part of the tradition.  The many devotional manuals of all stripes of churchmanship witness to this as does, most eloquently, the Exhortation in the Prayer Book (p. 316-317).  When was it last read in your parish?  Maybe it would be a good subject for some preaching and teaching.

Let us pray.

---(The Rev.) Raymond Harbort

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.

Diocesan Life for December 2010 and January 2011

Attached is the latest Diocesan Life for December, 2010 and January 2011. Remember, we love to get stories and pictures! If you have something you want featured, please contact Kat Lehman to discuss publication. Diocesan Life deadlines are posted on the calendar as well so you know when to get the stories in. For February's issue, we need the stories by January 4th. The attached file is 3 MB in .pdf format.

Download December2010_DiocesanLife_SMALL

Constance, Nun, and her Companions

Making God's consolation more widely known
Homily by Archdeacon Howard Stringfellow
Preached at Diocesan House on 9 September 2010

1 Corinthians 1:3-5, Psalm 25:15-21, Saint John 12:24-28

I find the Epistle of this Eucharist haunting. God consoles us, we are told, so that we may be able to console others. God consoles us, in other words, so that others may be consoled. God’s consolation, then, is not about us or our feelings; it’s about making God’s consolation more widely known. We are touched by it, washed in it, and refined by it, but it is not about us.

I believe that to some extent all martyrs understand this mystery. God’s love passes through them for the purpose of reaching someone else.

The Martyrs of Memphis made sure that more, much more, than yellow fever passed through them. They made sure that God’s love passed through them just as God intends. About the former, about the contagion, they may have had no choice. But about the second, about God’s consolation, they made the choice of their lives.

Consumers ... or Shareholders?

By Marius Bressoud
[Marius is a shareholder at Trinity Bethlehem]

“I’ve been thinking.” Whenever I spoke those three words to my wife, Harriet, her immediate reaction was one of alarm. “What kind of a wild idea are you off on now?” she’d respond.

Well, let me tell you. But don’t say you weren’t warned. I’ve been thinking lately about two kinds of Christian church members, those who take the role of consumers and those who assume the role of shareholders. I’m describing now not just Episcopalians but also other Christians I know, representing many different ways of being “the Church”.

Three reasons not to call terrorism 'Islamic'

1. Refuse to accept self-described religious motivations at face value.

2. Don't dignify evil by linking it to one of the world's great religious traditions.

3. Simple American self-interest

Read the reflection by David Gushee (professor of Christian Ethics, Mercer University) at the "On Faith" blog of the Washington Post.

[Posted by Bill Lewellis]

Ascension Day reflection by Archdeacon Stringfellow at Diocesan House

The Bear Went over the Mountain?
by Archdeacon Howard Stringfellow
The Eucharist at Diocesan House on Ascension Day
13 May 2010
 
In the Name of the True and Living God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
 
A senior warden of a prominent Anglo-Catholic parish in the Mid-West said to his priest that the Ascension of the Lord was a case of the bear going over the mountain to see what he could see. This charming anecdote came my way as a cautionary tale from priest to seminarian not to inquire too closely into what the lay people believe.
 
I have taken that advice but, at the same time, have held out to all people at all times that the bodily ascension of the Lord continues the Lord’s bodily resurrection to it full conclusion as St. Paul points out in the Epistle: God the Father raised Jesus from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly place, putting all things under his feet and making him head of all things for the church (Ephesians 1:20-23).
 
That to me is a lot more engaging, a lot more worthy of our worship, than a bear who went over the mountain. Somehow I think: that bear sadly disappoints. But the Lord of Life never does disappoint. The Lord of Life continually engages and delights; the Lord of Life takes us with him, and not just over the mountain. Amen.

From the Lectionaries, by Archdeacon Stringfellow

Scapegoats, Bond Traders, and Big Petroleum Companies
by Archdeacon Howard Stringfellow
Tuesday in Easter 5 (Year Two)
Leviticus 16:20-34
6 May 2010

In the First Lesson at Morning Prayer on May 4 we read: “When he has finished atoning for the holy place and the tent of meeting and the altar, he shall present the live goat. Then Aaron shall lay both his hands on the head of the live goat, and confess over it all the iniquities of the people of Israel, and all their transgression, all their sins, putting them on the head of the goat, and sending it away into the wilderness by means of someone designated for the task. The goat shall bear on itself all their iniquities to a barren region; and the goat shall be set free in the wilderness” (Leviticus 16:20-22).

My first encounter with this selection of holy Scripture was not in church or in Sunday School; it was in a Shakespeare class when the play discussed was The Merchant of Venice. The professor’s object in introducing us to the Biblical source for scapegoats was to say that Shakespeare’s intention was to make of Shylock a scapegoat on whose head had been placed “all the iniquities of the people” of Venice before he was banished to compulsory baptism. For many reasons, the professor said, this intended effect did not “work”: “all the iniquities” of the Venetians did not fit or properly belong on his head, and we, probably like the Elizabethans, have a question or two when the subject turns to baptism against one’s will.

The Vestry Meeting, by Archdeacon Stringfellow

The Vestry Meeting
Beyond Majority and Dynamics to Functioning Up
6 April 2010

“Although you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and rejoice with an indescribable and joy, for you are receiving the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls” (1 Peter 1:8-9).

Every Eastertide, I seek this passage out though the lectionaries put it forward during the season. It seems to describe our circumstances perfectly: we do not see the resurrected and ascended Lord except in the Sacrament and in peoples’ lives transformed by his Spirit, yet we love him and are joyous, and we receive and look forward to the salvation of our souls.

That is quite a lot, more than enough to see the dots of life most every day and to connect them to the resurrection of Jesus. The Epistle is addressed to people in provinces of Asia Minor (1:1), and the head note in a Bible I have suggests it may have been written in Rome for the people in those comparatively remote places.

Again, I think the Epistle describes our circumstances exactly: we do not see the Lord; we were not there when they crucified him or when he appeared to the disciples afterwards. But we know him, and we love him. As we receive the consequence, the result, of our faith, we follow his guiding through his Spirit. The distances, in time and space, I mention are bridged by fidelity to the Lord and by living the abundant life he came to give us and to open to us. All of this remains true any day of the year on any day of any of the seasons of the Church Year.

And so all of it was true when I attended a meeting several months ago. The theological and experiential context I’ve tried briefly to set is true of any of the many meetings I attend. But this context contrasts sharply with what happened, what went down, we might say, at this particular meeting.

Three members of the clergy attended, and five members of the laity were present also. And as often is the case (but often is not understood to be the case), the clergy had a specific role, a role not to take the decision or to determine the outcome of the meeting. Our role was to provide the context as described as an elaboration of the verses from 1 Peter and to try to encourage the people to see their decision as part of the way forward for all the people concerned, a way forward that bridges the distance in time and space between all of us and the Lord, a way forward that we all can see as a step toward salvation, the abundant life that Jesus died and rose to bestow upon us.

The role of laity was no less specific; they were to take the decision, and by that decision they were to take that step toward salvation and abundant life. The decision (I believe) that was in the air, hovering about the heads of us all that would take that step, was a decision that three of the five were prepared to make. Two of the five were not prepared to make that decision, and they found pleasant and affective reasons not to make it. And those two, the minority, held the emotional valence in their hands. To be fair, the majority, the three prepared to take the decision and to move forward, had given them that valence. And there the matter stood for the meeting. Nothing could be done, and nothing was done. We left the meeting accomplishing very little (I thought) except participating in an exercise that was to me an example of what life is like when we let the distance between Asia Minor and Rome, between our direct experience and our spiritual experience of the Lord, and the empty tomb and the recognition of the Lord in the breaking of the bread prevent us from taking a step toward our salvation.

Well-meaning and sincere people may disagree about the issues present at this meeting (or any meeting). But what Christians, I think, should agree upon is that the resurrection of Jesus improves the quality and increases the possibilities in our lives. We are “delivered from the gloom of sin, and are restored to grace and holiness of life,” as we heard proclaimed at the Easter Vigil (Prayer Book, page 287).

A crusty and flinty Scottish headmaster used to admonish with a pithy proverb me and all of my fellow urchins in elementary school: “You can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make him drink.” This may very well be true of dumb animals, but let it not be true of us, the resurrected and ascended humanity of God.

Christ's Own For Ever, by Archdeacon Stringfellow

From the Lectionaries
Christ’s Own For Ever
The Easter Vigil
Romans 6:3-11
By Archdeacon Howard Stringfellow
3 April 2010

At each Easter Vigil, we hear St. Paul’s famous Epistle exploring our union with Christ in his death and in his resurrection through our Baptism: “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life” (Romans 6:3-4).

Over the years, I have so accepted St. Paul’s identification of each of us with Christ’s death and resurrection that I have often thought that at our births and certainly at our Baptisms something of Christ’s dead body lies buried in each of us. And when it is raised in us, when we experience something like the Easter moment, we are raised with it to newness and abundance of life. It is the moment, in the words of the Celebrant’s opening address to the people at the Easter Vigil, that “we share in” the Lord’s “victory over death” (Prayer Book, page 285).

The Paschal Mystery – In the dying is the rising

By Patrick Malloy

[This column was written prior to Holy Week 2009. Download the Diocesan Life page, Download 090402.pdf, or read it all below.]

The Triduum we will celebrate in 2009 –– the three-day feast often called “the Paschal Mystery” that celebrates the passing of Jesus from life to death to glory and our share in the pattern of his life –– will not be like the Triduum we celebrated in 2008.

It was only one year ago, but the world was different then, so the three-day feast was different, too, than the one we celebrate this year.

It will not be the same, because we are not the same. The story most people tell about their lives and their world this year is not what we told just one year ago. Yet, the wonder of how God-in-Christ passed from eternity into time, and from life into death, and from death into glory, has not changed. We have changed, our world has changed, but God remains.