Holy Saturday

It's Holy Saturday. The church sits empty - desolate. Not even the sign of Christ's presence remains. It is empty, because we remember Christ's death. There was a time when the Son was not, but it was not before the Incarnation. It was the time of Christ's hollowness, the time of Christ's descent into Hell. For this one day, we remember the day not in which God in his humanity died, but the day in which God stayed dead. We hold our breath. We wait.

It is hard to hold one's breath, but this is the first year where I have felt it. I feel the waiting all around me. The world is about to burst forth into new day . . . but not yet. This is the time of Christ's hollowness. This is the time of Christ's harrowing. This is the time of Christ's eternal sleep.

Tomorrow will be the time of Hell's hollowness, of Hell's harrowing, of Hell's eternal sleep, doomed as it is to spit forth the saints of old and to have the human race in its grip no longer. The gates of Hell are torn down. There is nothing to keep us there save our own hollowness, our own harrowing, or own eternal sleep.

Oh, that Christ would burst forth from the grave! Oh, that Christ would finish his work and not be absent from us any longer. Oh, that Christ would make himself known again, to send forth his disciples into the nations, to heal the world and bring people to his love and knowledge.

Oh, that it might be. Maranatha! Come, Holy Spirit, come! Fill our hollowness. Negate our harrowing. Wake us from our sleep.

Do It Tomorrow

Over Indian food on the banks of the Cam, the conversation between myself and the Vicar turned to time management. This caught my attention because as a David Allen acolyte, I have been through my own personal journey from chaos to order. And, as a priest, I am always looking for ways to help myself and my fellow clergy better keep our promises.

He continued talking about a string of things I'd never heard about before: closed lists, the manana principle, and knowing when you're done for the day. Wait, what? You, a vicar, can know when you're done with work for the day?

Yep. That's the power of Mark Forster's little book, Do It Tomorrow (US version).

I picked up the book the same week and devoured it on a train ride to and from London. I implemented the ideas last week, and they have upended the way I look at and practice time management in at least four ways.

First, it has changed the way I look at a day's work. One of the book's promises is that you can know what a day's worth of work is, and that you can complete it every day. Forster says that you can only keep all the promises you've made to yourself and others if your work output is roughly equal to your work input. Basically, a day's work is the work that arrives on your desk during the day (in this case, yesterday), plus anything else you need to do to keep active projects functioning. When you've done that, you're done.

Second, the book has changed the way I look at lists. There's a distinction between open and closed lists. An open list is, well, open. You can always add things to it. If you work on perennially open lists, then all you can do is 'prioritize.' By default, a few important things will always make their way to the bottom, where they will die. A closed list, on the other hand, is one to which you add nothing. Being closed, it can be completed, which is motivating. The point of the books' recommendations are to create the possibility of making and completing a closed list every day.

Third, the book has changed the way I look at urgency. With an open list, things get done when they get done. Forster recommends that there are only really three categories of urgency: emergency, urgent, and tomorrow. Emergencies are when something comes up that forces you to drop everything else and leave the building. Urgent items require a response or an action the same day, not necessarily at this moment. But, the genius of the system is that everything else is given an urgency of tomorrow. Do It Tomorrow is the name of the book after all.

Fourth, the book has changed the way I handle email. Since a day's work is the work you receive in a day, a day's worth of email is the email you received yesterday. He suggests scanning email for urgency. If it is isn't an emergency or urgent, put it in a folder marked "Tomorrow." The next morning, move all the email to a folder marked "Today" and work through it. You should be able to deal with all your email for the day in 30 minutes to an hour. I spent less than thirty minutes this morning dealing with all my email from yesterday. I have had the rest of the day to deal with my day's work, a closed list that included drafting a piece of this blog.

Wrapping up, I highly recommend Forster's Do It Tomorrow. It's recommendations are easily implemented, and the results are profound and immediate. My Vicar friend said that after he bought the book, his staff team, seeing the difference, started using it themselves. Since then, his entire deanery has joined in.

So, go ahead. Read it and let me know what you think. Tomorrow.

Why Skype helps us understand Christ's Presence at the Table

I struggle to articulate a view of the Sacrament of the Eucharist, particularly about views of Christ's presence. I think the Reformation debates were not so much about presence (sans Zwingli, of course) but about the means and modes of presence. Luther and his compatriots committed the unforgivable sin of mixing the humanity and divinity of Christ into a cocktail that allowed Christ to by present in his humanity everywhere: the infamous doctrine of ubiquity. Calvin says a solid "No" to this proposal, suggesting instead that we be lifted up into heaven with Christ. It is not that Christ's humanity is made present to us; we are made present to Christ's humanity. The Anglican way is somewhere in the midst of this morass, struggling around words like "sacrament," "presence," and "sacrifice" in order to find something, anything, that might account for the words of Scripture and the tradition of the Church.

If there is anything that the 39 Articles of Religion are clear about, it is the local presence of Christ's humanity in heaven. Here is the first mode of presence we need to discuss: local. To say that Christ is locally present in heaven is to say that the location  of Christ's resurrected humanity is there, not here. It affirms that we cannot be in the presence of his body and blood without being present there as well, and this is where Calvin's solution comes in. By means of the Holy Spirit, we are spiritually lifted into the presence of Christ, united with his humanity by grace through faith. This seems elegant to me, but I think we should explore some other modes of presence as well.

We can talk about symbolic presence. This might be closer to Zwingli than anything. One can be present with another when the second person uses authorized symbols of the first. In the Best Picture winner The Artist, the female lead experiences this kind of presence when she puts her arms through the sleeve of the absent Artist's coat and wraps herself in an embrace. Through the coat and her interaction with it (by faith?), the Artist was symbolically present to her. It was a real presence of sorts, though not a local presence.

We can also talk about hyper-presence, when a mediated version of a person is "more real" to us than the person him- or herself. If you have ever attended a conference where the speaker was projected onto a big screen, you've experienced this kind of hyper-presence. The screen is so big, and the person on it is so close, that it is common to experience shock when you turn to look at the person behind the podium. For a moment, the local presence of the person seems less real than the hyper-mediated presence of the person on the screen. Of course, you snap out of it, but that's the way it is.

Then, there is virtual presence. When Monique and I lived in Canada, it was difficult to get home for holidays. One Christmas, Monique's mother and brother came to visit. When they stepped through the opaque sliding doors of the international gates at Toronto's Pearson Airport, a jolt shot through me. I had expected to encounter the feeling of shock that rolls through you when your brain has to combine your old memories of a person to the living, moving, breathing person walking towards you. Instead, the jolt was of perfect recognition. I had the experience of having seen them before. Not only of having seen them, but of having been with them, a sense of their presence. A few days prior we had spoken on Skype. I was recoiling from a shared experience of presence, but a virtual presence instead of a local one.

The thing about virtual presence is that the medium of the presence becomes transparent to the person being made present by it. At Skype's best, I forget that I am talking to a computer screen. I am with the people on the other side. The medium disappears to my conscious experience, even though the entirety of my experience is made up only of the medium itself. We could even say that the medium is instrumentally effecting what it symbolizes; it is an "effectual sign" of the person's presence with me. Video chat made my wife's mother and brother present in a way they could not be otherwise. Even though the medium (video chat) is all my senses are really interacting with, I am truly communing with the people on the other side.

It is no difficult thing to extend this metaphor into the realm of the Eucharistic presence. It preserves the local presence elsewhere of the person with whom I am communing. The presence is mediated by an effectual sign of that person. It even involves a faith of sorts that allows me to treat the screen "as if" it were really the person I was talking to, instead of the zeros and ones that the representation really is. In fact, it would be wrong of me (and counter-productive) to commit the cynical and ultimately Zwinglian error of over-emphasizing that I am not talking to my mother-in-law, just zeros and ones. It would also be an error on the naive and ultimately medieval Catholic side to claim that the zeros and ones somehow have become my mother-in-law in order to mediate her real, personal presence to me.

In the same way, the Eucharistic bread and wine as media of Christ's personal presence preserve his local presence at the right hand of God the Father. The presence is mediated by an effectual sign of that person. It involves faith that looks beyond the "zeros and ones" of the bread and wine to the person whose presence is being mediated. It would be wrong of me to commit the cynical, Zwinglian error of over-emphasizing that the bread and wine are just bread and wine. It would also be an error to commit the credulous and medieval error that says the bread and wine have become, substantially, the Body and Blood. They really do give me, wholly and completely, the presence of Christ, and Christ would not be present in the same way without these forms in place. To focus on the "nature" of the zeros and ones entirely misses the point.

What is elegant about the "virtual presence" metaphor made possible by internet video chat is that it preserves what all sides are seeking to preserve while making it understandable that Christ might be wholly and personally present to us in the Eucharist. Like Calvin, we are present to Christ, just as I am present to my mother-in-law over Skype. Like the Zwinglians, I don't have to say that the medium is anything other than Bread and Wine wrenched to this use by the Spirit. Like the Catholics, I can say that the Lord really is present in his personal humanity with us here and now. Once the door is open, it is open.

And, remarkably, what this allows is for us to get that shock of recognition, of real personal recognition, when Jesus finally comes walking through the opaque glass doors that shut us off from his home in Heaven.

Your Priest is Pilate and Judas (and so are you)

People get up in arms sometimes about the symbols that we use around the Eucharist. That's fair. If people don't know what's going on, then it makes sense to be afraid that they are having the wool pulled over their eyes. And, if they get the sense that the priest doesn't know what's going on either (!), then it makes sense to get very uncomfortable.

The problem is complicated because we are centuries beyond what these forms originally meant. We have layers and layers of accreted meaning on simple acts (like the use of incense for odour control!). What should we do? Should we throw them all out? No, I say. Let's give our fathers and mothers in faith the benefit of the doubt. Let's assume that they had something important to do or say with these forms, and let's open our liturgical and theological imaginations to explore the meaning that might be found there.

Take two quintessentially 'catholic' forms: ritual hand washing and kissing the altar. Priests often have their fingers washed before the beginning of the Great Prayer of Thanksgiving. It seems to represent a washing away of sin and lines up with the Old Testament images of the priests washing themselves in preparation for their priestly service. But, if you haven't seen it before, it can strike you as a little odd. Why is it there?

Also, in some higher church parishes, it is customary to lean down and kiss the altar during the service. This has been seen as a kiss of homage and obedience, as Michael Hunt puts it. It may also be a kiss reverencing the place where the Holy Spirit changes the earthly elements into spiritual food and drink. Either way, it can make many of us uncomfortable.

One of the amazing things about the Eucharistic liturgy is that it retells the story of the Passion. It starts with the "Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord" as Jesus enters Jerusalem. It continues through recounting the events of the Last Supper. It culminates in the breaking of the bread that both represents and re-presents the broken body of Christ. The offer then of the bread and wine is a hopeful sign of Christ's resurrected and living presence among us.

If the 'narrative' of the Eucharist puts us in the story of the Passion, where might hand-washing and a kiss fit in?

It fits with the prototypical rejecters of Christ. Pilate washes his hands. Judas betrays with a kiss.

What would it mean to see these symbols as re-presenting not only the sanctity of the Passion but also the priest's (and our own) complicity in Christ's death? What if we saw every kiss as the kiss of the betrayer as well as the kiss of homage and obedience? What if we saw the hand washing as simultaneously a sign of handing Christ over to the crowd and being made clean by his sacrifice? Might that draw us into the Eucharist differently? Perhaps more faithfully? Would that be enough to salvage these catholic practices for the evangelical proclamation of the Gospel?

Your priest is Pilate and Judas. And so are you.

[Photo by Rick Jernberg]

God's Good News for the Poor

The House of Bishops of the Episcopal Church is meeting 15-20 September in Quito, Ecuador. Many of the sessions have involved giving on-the-ground introductions to liberation theology, "a Christian movement in political theology which interprets the teachings of Jesus Christ in terms of a liberation from unjust economic, political, or social conditions" (Wikipedia).

In the 16 September update from the Episcopal News Service, a curious sentence crept in:

All three speakers spoke of how the principles of liberation theology, which is God’s good news for the poor, can speak to our various church contexts.

Granted, this is part of a press release, prepared by members of the HoB likely at the end of a long day of work. In that context, I would be surprised if I could string together a coherent set of sentences, much less something polished enough to publish with ENS.

However, given that caveat, this still strikes me as a rather odd way to put it. The sentence seems to be saying that liberation theology itself, which only began in any formal way in the 1950's, is itself God's good news for the poor! Can that be right?

Alternatively, we could read it to say that the "principles of liberation theology" are God's good news for the poor. I imagine this is a little better, because the principles of liberation theology, as the next sentence put it, are involved with "authentic biblical witness today." However, even this sounds strange, since even though liberation theology's principal theologian Gustavo Gutierrez articulated God's "preferential option for the poor," he still emphasized praxis over doctrine, which sounds rather like emphasizing practice over principles or at least raising practice to the level of principles.

Liberation theology by itself cannot be God's good news for the poor. If that were true, then the poor received no good news from God before the 1950's. The principles of liberation theology aren't either. At its best, those principles are generalities taken from Scripture. They can be great, but they cannot be God's good news for the poor because the Bible by itself is not that either.

But by grace the Bible does show us the way. It points to God's good news for the poor and that good news is not a set of principles, no matter how faithful, but a Person who lived, died, and was raised again, stripping the authorities and rulers of their oppressive power and calling a people to witness to this reign in the here and now in part by taking the side of the weak against the strong. We do ourselves a disservice when we equate this or that theological movement with God's good news for the poor, whether we do it intentionally or not. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever, and he is the one who fights for us, who pours himself out on the cross for all of us, especially the weak, marginal, and oppressed, and raises us up with him into newness of life.

I suspect, if asked, those three speakers on the 16th would agree substantially with these thoughts. I think we would agree that it would have been better had all three spoken of how the Person of liberation theology, who is God's good news for the poor, could speak to our various church contexts today. He can, and is, we pray, through the speakers' ministry to our bishops in Quito. May the Lord bless them all richly.


[Photo by Dimitri Castrique]

Christianity, a word among the words?

In the Incarnation, the Word becomes a word among words, or so said David Bentley Hart in his The Beauty of the Infinite. This idea came to mind when I read a new blog over at Cranmer's Curate.

There the author quotes a woman overheard on the BBC saying this about the mandatory acts of public worship at her school:

"We are a very multi-cultural school and were we to mention Jesus it would exclude some of our students."

The Curate promises a cool appraisal and then promptly, and very un-coolly, calls the woman a "high priestess of political correctness."

While it is plain that the UK is a post-Christian nation and that it would take a radical shift in culture for it to be at ease again with its Christian orientation, I don't think the best route is fulmination. Perhaps the answer is to let Christianity become, as its Lord did, a word among the words. For too long, Christianity was THE word among words, and it alliance with political power in the UK only problematized the faith's relationship to the Commonwealth.

Perhaps it is time for the church to enter graciously into its own kenosis, not counting equality with God as something to be grasped, but taking upon itself the form of a servant in order to proclaim the true Lordship of Christ in our secular age.

The Response of Faith (Baptismal Covenant, part 3)

(continued from here)

The Book of Common Prayer talks about Covenant as well. The story of Abram and the firepot puts our biblical understanding of covenant in the realm of God's unilateral grace. What understanding does the Prayer Book have?

The BCP makes a distinction between the Covenant God has made and the covenant we make with God and with one another

In response to the question, "What is meant by a covenant with God?" the Catechism responds, "A covenant is a relationship initiated by God, to which a body of people responds in faith" (BCP, 846).

There are two movements in this answer. The first is the relationship initiated by God. This aspect of covenant we have already seen in the story of Abram and the firepot. The second is our response in faith. The first is God's movement towards us. The second is our movement towards God. But, the Catechism does not say that the Covenant is both of these movements. No, "a covenant is a relationship initiated by God." We respond to the gracious, unilateral covenant in faith.

The Catechism distinguishes between the Old and New Covenants, but it maintains God's gracious, unilateral movement in each. Any talk of a Baptismal Covenant falls squarely under the rubric of the New Covenant, however.

Q. What is the New Covenant?

A. The New Covenant is the new relationship with God given by Jesus Christ, the Messiah, to the apostles; and through them, to all who believe in him (BCP, 850).

This gracious, unilateral movement of God towards us in Christ demands a response. The response that Christ requires is summarized in the Catechism by the Summary of the Law (You shall love the Lord your God… and You shall love your neighbor as yourself) and the New Commandment (Love one another as Christ loved us) (BCP, 851).

The New Covenant is God's gracious movement towards us (and our human response towards God) in Christ. Our response in faith  is lived out in the Summary of the Law and the New Commandment. The Baptismal Covenant found in the Book of Common Prayer is nothing more than an exegesis of these two responses to the New Covenant of grace. In other words, the Baptismal Covenant gives us nothing more than can be 'proved' from Holy Scripture. Even if the Episcopal Church did not express the Baptismal Covenant in the way they do, the same ordinances are incumbent upon all Christians. Formalizing a minimum standard of discipleship in this way adds nothing to what Christ our Lord himself demanded of his followers. If anything, it helps us along the way.

The Baptismal Covenant consists of eight questions and answers. The first three comprise the Apostles' Creed. They are "Do you believe?" questions. The remaining five are about the Christian life. They are "Will you do?" questions.

Questions 1-2 outline Christianity's 'portable narrative.' This is the story that Christ followers believe about the past so that they can follow Christ in the present. Following Christ in the present is the theme of the remaining questions, each of which characterizes the baptized life by a different but interrelated aspect. The baptized life is the life of the Spirit (q. 3-4), the life of Proclamation (q. 5-6), and the life of Service (q. 7-8). In abstraction, we might say that the baptized life is the life of Spirit-empowered Witness.

In the next installment, we will discuss articles 1-2.

(image from John Goodwin, et. al.)

The Baptismal Covenant, Part 2

Photo by Billy Alexander

Several weeks ago, I started a series on the Baptismal Covenant, found starting on p. 304 of the 1979 Book of Common Prayer. Today, I want to continue our discussion around the idea of covenant. This week we will explore a biblical image of God's covenant making. Next week, we will talk about the way the Baptismal Covenant is portrayed in the Book of Common Prayer.


Abram and the Firepot

Genesis 15 contains a curious story. In Genesis 12, God called Abram out of Ur of the Chaldeans. Genesis 13 sees Abram parting ways with Lot. In Genesis 14, Abram goes to war to rescue Lot and afterwards is blessed by the enigmatic prophet-king Melchizedek. Genesis 15 sees Abram receiving a vision from the Lord.

God promises Abram many things, including descendants as numerous as the stars. When Abram asks how he will know that he will possess it, the really strange stuff begins.

God asks Abram to bring a heifer, a goat, a ram, a turtledove, and a young pigeon. Abram cuts them in two and places them across from one another; a bloody path lies between. This was a customary way to seal a covenant between two parties. They would walk among the pieces as they made the deal, essentially saying "If I don't hold up my end, let it be to me as it is to these animals."

But God does not let Abram walk through the pieces. Abram falls into a deep sleep, and a firepot and a torch passed between the pieces. "On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, 'To your descendants, I give this land …' (Gen 15:18)." It is as if God says, "You and I are in this covenant, but I take full responsibility for it, both for you and for all generations."

I've heard this called God's 'unconditional' covenant. I don't think this is quite fair. God's expectation is "Walk before me and be perfect," and the OT is full of God threatening through the prophets to remove the covenant from Israel. The covenant carries blessings and curses. It is a dreadful thing to be in covenant with God, as the name "Israel," "the one who struggles with God," attests. But, even if the covenant is not unconditional, it is at least unilateral. It is God's desire to establish covenant with humanity. There is a willing human partner, but God does not meet Abram halfway. God comes all the way to Abram and pitches his tent with the children of Israel. God graciously moves toward humanity, and this movement is unilateral, full of promise and life. It makes a people where there was no people.

If the Baptismal Covenant is meaningful in the broad sweep of the biblical narrative, then it must be meaningful in relationship to this, the establishment of the Old Covenant, as well as the living out of the New Covenant inaugurated in Jesus Christ. Next post, we will explore the way the Book of Common Prayer talks about Covenant, and the relationship of the Baptismal Covenant to the Old and New Covenants attested in Scripture.

I help people talk to God

Photo by Steve Todey

"What do you do?"

"Uhhh…."

Notice that when people ask you what you do, they are asking about an action, not an identity statement.

We all know this awkward conversation:

"So, what do you do?"

"I'm an accountant."

"Oh, ummmm. What do accountants do?"

Claiming an identity in response to a question about activity can shut down a conversation. Conversations are like a friendly match of volleyball. Both sides take turns hitting the ball back and forth over the net. They're not trying to score points, just spending time together. In the situation above, responding with "I'm an accountant" interrupts this friendly game with a surprise spike. It leaves your conversation partner diving and scrambling to return the ball.

In the book, How to Talk to Anyone, the author Leil Lowndes suggests a course of action for this dinner party stock question. She calls it the "Nutshell résumé."

A nutshell résumé is designed to answer the "What do you do?" question straight-on while giving your conversation partner something to latch onto. It deposits information into the conversation and gives the other person a lot of time, space, and options in returning the ball.

"I’m an accountant" could become "I help individuals survive tax day," or "I keep my company financially honest," or even, "I help people hide their money." Any of these are better for small talk than "I'm an accountant."

Turning now to the priesthood. If "I'm an accountant" can maim a conversation, then "I'm a priest" shoves it out an airlock into the cold heart of space. What are some options for nutshell résumés for priests?

Here's a list of possibilities:

• I help people find God
• I introduce people to God

• I help people thrive

• I help people find who they really are
• I help people live in tune with the earth

• I help people live in tune with the world

• I help people live in tune with God

• I introduce people to Jesus Christ

• I'm a spiritual midwife

• I lead people to the throne of God

• I help people discover the secret of the world

Each of these has its own resonances. All of them are true in their own way, and they each provide different options for expanding the conversation.

But, I finally alighted upon something else entirely: "I help people talk to God."

Priests help people talk to God. We do. It's wrongheaded to think that people have to come to us to talk to God. We're coaches. We come alongside our parishioners to equip them to be the royal priests that God has called them to be in their secular vocations.

And think of the ways that a stranger might take that answer. "Oh, how do you do that?" "Which God is that?" "What kind of people can talk to God?" "What set you on that course?" "Can you help me talk to God?" Any direction the conversation goes from there is evangelism of one sort or another. Any conversation that follows is an opportunity to invite a new acquaintance further into your life, which is hidden with Christ in God.

I can hardly wait until my next cocktail party so that I can try it out.

Are you a minister? How do you introduce yourself at parties?

SERMON: Jesus Keeps His Promise, A Sermon for Pentecost

Date: June 12, 2011

Text: Acts 2:1-21

Note: This was the last sermon I preached at St. Matthew's Anglican Church, Riverdale. St. Matthew's was full of wonderful people to serve, and they taught me to love the Church in all of its shapes and sizes. Thanks be to God for them.

I have already admitted to you how big a fan I am of Star Wars. One or two Christmases ago, one of my family members bought me a giant book called, Star Wars: A Pop-Up Guide to the Galaxy. That’s right, a pop-up book. There is a different paper sculpture that springs into being as I turn each page. One page displays the Mos Eisley cantina, complete with an assortment of aliens, droids, and the famous cantina band; the next brings to life the Millenium Falcon, with a look inside its famous hull. Each page brings to life a new world of hidden panels and light-up lightsabers to explore. And if you turn the page slowly, you can see the slow folding of one world and the slow unfolding of the next. If you stop, with the page straight up in the air, the two worlds hang there, one almost gone, the other almost here. And this tension, this excruciating exhilaration of being-in-between, happens each time you turn the page.

[1] 

There is something of that in-between-ness in the air as the gathered crowds fill the Temple in Jerusalem that Pentecost after Jesus was crucified. Jesus’ death and the rumours of his resurrection had been the buzz of the town, but the buzz has dulled over these last 50 days. Many of the city’s visitors, having saved for years to make the long Passover trip to Jerusalem, choose to stay for the Pentecostal feast before they make their way home to the far corners of the Empire. Adding to the number of stayers, many other pilgrims stream into the city for Pentecost, the annual celebration of covenant renewal.

The Temple courts are full. There are people and priests praying, animals lowing and yelling. The commotion is constant, never ceasing. Everyone is there together worshipping God.

It’s easy to overhear what people are saying. One group is animatedly discussing those 50 day old crucifixions. Another cluster claims to have seen Jesus’ followers in these very courts, the Temple courts, blessing God. They’re here so often that it’s a little strange that they are nowhere to be found today.

The crowd continues walking, worshipping, praying.

Then they hear it. It’s loud. It sounds like a tornado has hit Jerusalem, or a giant dust storm, or a violent wind. It is so loud that the Temple courts go quiet. People strain to see where the sound might be coming from; some duck behind friends or run towards the Temple’s inner courts. When the loud rushing sound suddenly ceases, those left standing lean forward to listen.

A smaller sound meets their ears from outside the Temple courts. It sounds like a group of people crying for help! The words are all mixed up together; the crowd is still too far away to hear what’s really going on. The people closest to the Temple gates start to exit first to see what the commotion is about. The rest begin to follow. As they get closer, they hear the voices growing more distinct. They round the corner and see a group of people through the large open window of an upper room. They are standing as though praying, and as people get closer some of the crowd begin to smile and nod in understanding. One particularly vocal member of the group exclaims loudly, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? […] In our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power” (Acts 2:7-11)! All were amazed and perplexed. The whole crowd begins to turn in on itself. The genuinely curious ask, “What does it mean?” The openly skeptical respond, sneering, “They are filled with new wine.”

[2]

The sneering, skeptical response is a temptation that we all face when something radically new enters our lives. This cynicism is a type of self-armouring. We use it to put distance between ourselves and the fantastic opportunity or the call to service. It’s a crossing of the arms, a shaking of the head, a turning down of the mouth. When something dramatically new enters our world, we get cynical just like the Pentecostal sneerers, and we cast about for an easy explanation (“They are filled with new wine”).

A couple of good friends of ours took Monique and me to visit the Black Creek Pioneer Village. It was winter, and a fresh snow blanketed the ground. We visited period homes and shops, each one decorated for Christmas in a different way. The doctor’s home was striking, decorated in a Scottish style. We learned about Christmas traditions and the practice of medicine in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries. The doctor’s office was a room in the house, and our guide showed us the instruments for tooth extractions, amputations, and blood-letting.

We got into a discussion about germs. Our guide told us the story of the first man who proposed that student doctors should wash their hands after they dealt with cadavers and before they delivered babies. He was laughed out, released, and eventually locked away in a mental hospital. It took a long time before the medical profession finally woke up. In fact, the younger physicians first picked up the idea. The older generation refused to adapt. They crossed their arms, shook their heads, and sneered at the young people who thought they needed to wash up before doing surgery. With the benefit of hindsight we wonder why they would resist the growing body of evidence that germs really do have an impact on the success of surgeries. Our guide put it this way: to admit the germ theory was for this older generation of doctors to admit to their communities, to their profession, and (hardest of all) to themselves that they for their entire careers had been killing patients. Their cynicism about the new science was a shield protecting them from the horrible, horrible truth.

And so it continues with us. Often when we find ourselves being cynical and sneering, especially about the things of God, it is because we are trying to protect ourselves. As the page turns and the old world folds up and the new one is revealed, cynicism and sneering cling to the old. It refuses to repent. It refuses to do what is necessary to live in the new day.

[3]

The 12 disciples, Jesus’ mother Mary, and the other women who traveled with them are gathered in the upper room. They can walk into a new day; they can move from one page to the next, because Jesus keeps his promise.

Just a few short days before Pentecost, they had been with Jesus on the Mount of Olives outside Jerusalem. He made them a promise, “You are witnesses of these things,” he said. “And see, I am sending upon you what my Father promised; so stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high” (Luke 24:48-49). Jesus put it another way, “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8). These were the last things Jesus said to his disciples before he ascended into heaven. The disciples followed Jesus’ instructions and went back to Jerusalem. There they were always in the Temple courts praising God. They devoted themselves to constant prayer together. They waited and watched, not with cynicism or fear, but with real hope.

Did they feel the page turning? Could they see the world they knew collapsing and a new one taking its place?

When the day of Pentecost comes, they are all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there comes a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it fills the entire house where they are sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appear among them, and a tongue rests on each of them. All of them are filled with the Holy Spirit and begin to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gives them ability (par. from Acts 2:1-4).

When the gathered crowd streams from the Temple courts to see what is the matter, some sneer, thinking the disciples are drunk. Peter stands up among the disciples, raises his voice, and speaks. And from his place at the Father’s right hand, Jesus gives the Spirit which turns Peter from a fisherman into a witness. The witness begins here in Jerusalem, but soon it will spread to Judea, Samaria, and the ends of the earth. Jesus keeps his promise.

[4]

We set aside this day each year to remember that Jesus, all those years ago, kept his promise to his disciples. And we affirm, with our fathers and mothers in faith, stretching all the way back to the apostles, that Jesus keeps his promises still. That first Pentecost is over, but the Spirit of God that proceeds from the Father and the Son is still at loose in the world. The first Pentecost is over, but each year we remember that the sending of the Spirit at Pentecost still means something to us today.

First, Pentecost means that we are caught up in the same story as the disciples were all those years ago. Just as the apostles’ found themselves at that turning of the page between the old world and the new, so do we find ourselves riding the transition between the present and the end of time. At any moment, we expect that Jesus himself might appear, riding in the clouds, to reclaim the world for himself. We can wait for that time with patience and with hope because of the Holy Spirit’s life among us, shaping us into Christ’s image, feeding us with spiritual food, reminding us not to worry because Jesus keeps his promise.

Second, Pentecost means that we can’t control God. Jesus didn’t give his disciples magic words to summon the presence of God. Yes, we invoke God’s presence in prayer, but our invocation is no guarantee of it. God is not a pet to be trained or an object to be owned. God is the free God. God is the one who loves us precisely in that freedom, which means that we cannot move or force him, but we can know, because of Jesus’ promises, that he is always on the move towards us, and that movement towards us is the Holy Spirit. While we can’t control God, we can put ourselves in God’s way. After the Ascension, the apostles prayed constantly, praising God in the upper room and in the Temple courts. We, too, are called to the life of prayer, both as individuals and as a body of believers. In living the prayerful life, we will put ourselves in the way of the God who in and as the Holy Spirit is on his way towards us even now.

Finally, Pentecost means that we are called to be witnesses. The apostles are given miraculous powers when the Spirit comes, but these powers are not for themselves to have and hold. The power is for witness. The Spirit empowers the apostles to be his witnesses, first in Jerusalem where they were, then in Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. So too, this Pentecost, does the Spirit empower us to be his witnesses here on First Avenue. It is our Jerusalem, our starting point. It is here that we will learn to be a church that is alive both in and for our neighborhood. It is here that we will stand up and find ourselves speaking into people’s lives, even to people with lives much different than our own, because the Spirit is there as our translator, making sense of the Gospel even for them. It is here that we will find brothers and sisters with whom we can share our lives, committed together to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, the breaking of the bread and the prayers. For in so doing, we will find ourselves solidly in the way of the God who loves us in Jesus Christ. We will find ourselves empowered by his Spirit to bear witness to God’s love even here. May it be true of us, by God’s grace. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Welcome to Contra Factum

King's College Chapel, Cambridge
photo by Monique Ingalls

If you're visiting Contra Factum after reading my interview in the July 31 edition of The Living Church, a hearty welcome to you! I hope you'll enjoy the site.

My wife Dr. Monique and I are in the midst of a two-stage international move. The first took place this week, when she and I (with the help of the great folk at Wycliffe College) moved our belongings from Toronto to Arkansas. Vilonia, AR is homebase for our summer of visiting friends and relatives before moving to Cambridge (hopefully) in late August. Monique has been awarded the Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship in Popular Music and Culture there. She will teach courses and pursue her own research as a member of the Faculty of Music and as a Visiting Fellow at Wolfson College.

It's my hope that Contra Factum will come back to life in the next couple of weeks. I want to continue posting on The Episcopal Church's Baptismal Covenant, and there are other avenues I would like to explore, like mining biblical resources for a 'theology of freedom.'

Welcome, and enjoy!

A Spiritual Exegesis of the Baptismal Covenant, Part 1

The Baptismal Covenant. Let's talk about it.

If you've seen the comments sections on Anglican blogs, you'll likely have noticed a basic trend when people talk about the Baptismal Covenant. "Liberals" think the BC is a great thing, something to be celebrated. "Conservatives" think the BC is just one more mistake made by the 1979 Prayer Book committee.

Politically, this divide makes sense. Liberals (henceforth, please imagine the scare quotes) use the BC as a way to justify their liberalizing agenda. The last line of the Covenant contains the promise to "strive for justice and peace among all people, respecting the dignity of every human being." Liberals tend to summarize the whole BC with this promise, a move used to great effect in their ethical arguments.

It's understandable why Conservatives (remember: scare quotes) then want nothing to do with it. In the North American Anglican political and polemical discourse, the BC is the wholly owned subsidiary of the Liberal cause.

In other words, the Baptismal Covenant has become, like so many other shared texts, a source of contention instead of a source of unity.

This is a problem for North American Anglicans (Canadians included) because the BC is part of each and every Baptism we perform. Because of its polemical place in our political struggles, the Covenant has lost its ability to be a shaping influence in our baptizands' lives.

But, what if we tried for a moment to remove the Baptismal Covenant from its polemical setting and let it interpret itself? What if we stood back and in an attitude of prayer performed a spiritual exegesis of that text?

I think we would find something that is not only deeply Anglican but also deeply Christian, biblical, sanctifying, and helpful. I would like to see the BC removed from our political debates and ensconced in the context of the Christian life, in the life of Christians being shaped into the image and likeness of Christ.

We could, as many do, point to the authors (they are still alive) and say we can know the BC's meaning by looking to their intentions in shaping it. But, here's the thing. The BC is part of a conciliar, liturgical document, hallowed now by decades of use. Whatever the authors' original intentions, the BC has a history now, a spiritual effect in people's lives. That effect is informed more by the spiritual world it creates for us than by the BC's polemical context. Its spiritual world is created and nurtured by the deep interconnections of language and practice that hold the Book of Common Prayer together and hold the Prayer Book together with the Bible.

Over the course of the next several weeks, I intend to undertake a spiritual exegesis of the Baptismal Covenant. I will treat the Prayer Book as 'text,' allowing its internal connections to tease out its meaning, in some ways attempting to allow 'it' to explain 'itself' insofar as that is possible. To this layer of meaning we will add the Bible's language, from which the language of much of the Prayer Book (and much of the Baptismal  Covenant) is drawn. To use a post-liberal term, this spiritual exegesis is an exercise in first-order language.

I will begin next time with a brief look at the initiation of God's covenant with Abraham and end with an overview of the 'parts' of the Baptismal Covenant and the order in which I will take this spiritual exegesis.

SERMON: Jesus the Cornerstone

Date: May 22, 2010
Text: 1 Peter 2:2-10

When I was young, my uncle introduced me to quartz crystal. In our backyard, he pointed out some rocks, took us over to them, and showed us the smoky translucent crystals hidden within. He said that they had probably been spit out of a volcano some million or two years ago, something quite unbelievable in flat Houston, TX. It opened a whole new world to me, and soon I was taking my dad’s sledgehammer and breaking rocks all over our yard. Some were small; others were quite large. Of the crystals discovered, I kept a collection. Over the course of a summer, what once were just rocks suddenly became things of beauty and discovery.

[1]

Our second lesson is taken from St. Peter’s first letter. He writes to a group of people who made that same type of discovery. Peter says that their life before was one of darkness, aloneness, and the absence of God’s mercy. But now, because of their discovery, something has changed. Though they were once dwelling in darkness, they have come into God’s marvelous light. Though they were once alone, they now have a people they can call their own. Though they were once outside of God’s mercy, they now have experienced it firsthand.

And here’s where rocks enter the picture: Peter admonishes his hearers to draw near to what he calls the ‘living stone,’ a stone that was chosen by God and precious, intended to be used as the cornerstone of God’s new Temple on earth. The believers themselves will become stones in this building. But first Peter tells them a story, a story about this chosen and precious living stone.

When God put the cornerstone down, there were builders in Zion, hired by God to build his Temple. They were intimately familiar with all of God’s ways and works; God had been working with them for a long time. They knew his designs. When God found the cornerstone to start his new building, he gave it to the builders he trusted.

But instead of proving trustworthy, they did the unthinkable. They rejected this living stone, the cornerstone. It was as if they had said, “We know what the building is supposed to look like, and this doesn’t fit in with how we see it.” They set it aside and began to build on their own.

But that cornerstone, chosen and precious of God, could not be used for anything other than its purpose. They thought it would work better as part of the wall, but they couldn’t budge it, couldn’t make it fit into place. They thought they might break it and divide its pieces among them for various projects, but the stone just rang as their chisels broke against it. And when they tried to ignore the stone, they found it always in their way. They stumbled over it. They fell. They could not finish their work because the cornerstone had become a rock of stumbling. In other words, they could not finish because they would not start where God wanted them to start. The builders had rejected the cornerstone.

[2]

Tobias Fünke

It would be hard for us to blame them. We live in a society here in North America where we are constantly advised to build our lives on nothing save our desires, our passions, and our dreams. We, the builders of our lives, are told that we need no touchstones, no cornerstones. All we need is to be true to who we really are. We don’t want to build our lives on anything but ourselves.

A good example of this comes from the odd and off-color TV comedy Arrested Development. All of the characters in the show are baseless. They are wealthy and so are not constrained by anything. They can do whatever they want; they can follow any dream. One of the characters is named Tobias Fünke.

Tobias is tall and mostly bald. Gangly. Strange and a little ugly. He is a difficult character to watch because he has, well, no life. He began his professional career as a successful psychological analyst and therapist, helping people to look deep inside themselves to discover the root of their problems. But then, he looked deep inside himself. There he discovered that he was an Actor, with a capital “A.” This revelation turned his world upside down. He quit his job and started pursuing roles anywhere that he could, living off his wife’s family’s wealth as he pursued his dream. The problem? Arrested Development takes delight in showing its audience, again and again, how irredeemably bad an actor Tobias actually is. The darkly funny part of the whole thing is Tobias’ obliviousness. He thinks he has talent, and whenever he comes face-to-face with his weakness, he refuses to see it. He shuts it out. He tries to build his house around a dream instead of the solid rock of his professional training or his family or the reality of his own strengths and weaknesses.

Am I right to think that you and I are often tempted to live this way? I think so. We find ourselves refusing to build our houses around the solid things of our lives. Instead, we build them around our egos, our dreams, our passions. We learn to shield ourselves from criticism. We learn to pretend that the world is like we want it to be instead of the way it really is. Now, we might try to take reality and fit it into a wall we’re building or to break it up for other parts of our house, but we can’t. Reality sits there ready to be built upon. But as we ignore it, we find ourselves tripping over it, falling, breaking. We find ourselves building on the sand until one day everything we build comes tumbling down.

[3]

But the good news that Peter proclaims to his hearers is this: in the midst of a world in which God’s builders had started building their houses on sand, God set a stone in Zion, and this stone was Jesus Christ.

Jesus, God’s own Son, was chosen and precious in God’s sight. God set Jesus in Zion as a cornerstone. He was the one upon which God’s Kingdom would be built. He was the one that if people would only believe in him, they would never be put to shame. But, as we know, the builders rejected the cornerstone and tried to build on their own. To them, Jesus became a ‘stone that makes them stumble, and a rock that makes them fall.’ Their rejection saw Jesus hung upon a cross.

But, God’s love for Jesus, his precious cornerstone, meant that God would not let his chosen one see decay; the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ raised him from the dead. The Living Stone still stands, and it is upon this stone that Peter calls his hearers to be built. “Let yourselves be built into a spiritual house,” he instructs, “to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.” Later, he adds, “you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.”

For the people who first heard this letter read in their churches, they received a great gift. Even though they were not Jewish, even though they did not inherit the promises of God by virtue of their birth, they have received the promises through Jesus Christ. While they once dwelt in darkness, they have come into the marvelous light of God’s love. Though they were once not a people, now they are God’s people. Though they had once not received God’s mercy, now they have. They have a new start, a new beginning. They have the opportunity to let themselves be built up into God’s new Temple on earth, the Church. [They can build their lives on the solid rock of Jesus Christ, God’s chosen and precious cornerstone.]

[4]

Every week, close to the end of our service, immediately after the post-Communion prayer and before the Blessing, we say in unison a small passage from Scripture: “Glory to God, whose power, working in us, can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine. Glory to God from generation to generation, in the Church and in Christ Jesus, for ever and ever. Amen” (BAS, 214).

“Infinitely more than we can ask or imagine.” We were meant to live for so much more than what our passions or our dreams or our desires can give us. We can live our lives like Tobias Fünke, constantly grasping after a baseless dream, or we can let ourselves be built on the rock of reality, a rock that St. Peter says is no one other than Jesus Christ himself. Now this treads very close to a central mystery of our faith that is expressed beautifully in the collects for Morning Prayer: “O God, who art the author of peace and lover of concord, in knowledge of whom standing our eternal life, whose service is perfect freedom…” (BCP, 11). For Christians, the limitation of obedience (and obedience is nothing more than being conformed to the reality of Jesus Christ) is not ultimately a restriction but a freedom. Disobedience, or building on the shifting sand of our own desires or passions, is slavery. It is slavery to a limited humanity. Obedience, on the other hand, is openness to God’s “infinitely more than we can ask or imagine.”

What is this infinitely more that human beings are called to? Human beings are called to stand at the boundary-line of heaven and earth, to be, as St. Peter calls us, God’s holy and royal priests, priests that offer spiritual sacrifices that God is delighted to accept. As Christ’s royal priests, we represent the world to God, offering God the things of the earth in our prayers. As Christ’s royal priests, we represent God to the world, as we read the Scripture, listen to the Word preached, and share our faith with others. In all cases, in our lives we offer spiritual sacrifices to God, sacrifices of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self control.

And all of this happens right here at St. Matthew’s. Being built up into God’s spiritual house, learning to be royal priests, this is the work of the Christian life. It is the reason we gather for worship. It is the reason we join together to serve our community. It is the reason we gather in small groups to learn how to offer the world to God in prayer and offer God to the world in witness. And so I commend our small groups to you again (there’s an announcement in the back of your bulletin). These are lively training grounds for the royal priesthood, where we learn to live our lives together, being built on the cornerstone that is Jesus Christ himself.

As we live quiet and peaceable lives together, praying for all and bearing witness to Christ’s love, we are built up together into God’s new Temple on earth. In the quiet, in the peaceable, in our faithful prayer and witness, built upon the solid cornerstone of Jesus Christ, God’s power, working in us, will do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine. Through us, our worship, and our service, God will be glorified from generation to generation, in the Church and in Christ Jesus, the chosen, precious, and everliving cornerstone, for ever and ever. Amen.