A re-telling of Matthew 9:9-13 and 18-26: by Imogen Nay
Jesus was walking in Bishopsgate*, City of London, he saw an investment banker and said ‘come and follow me’. The investment banker got up and followed him. Jesus went and sat with bankers dining in a City restaurant, eating rich and expensive food and wine, with other mega-rich business people. Others said ‘why does he eat with bankers and sinners?’ He replied, ‘those who are well do not need a physician, but those who are sick’. Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice. For I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.’
Then a Canon of St Paul’s Cathedral came and knelt before him saying ‘My daughter has just died, but come and lay your hands on her and she will be made well’. Jesus got up and followed him and walked through the City to St. Paul’s. On his way a woman who was suffering from HIV saw him and thought to herself ‘if I could only reach him and touch him I will be made well’. Jesus turned, and seeing her he said ‘Take heart, daughter; your faith has made you well’. And instantly the woman was made well. When Jesus came to the Canon’s home and entered and saw all the people gathered, despairing, he said ‘Go away; for the girl is not dead but sleeping’. They all laughed at him, but when they had been put outside, he went into her room and took her by the hand, and the girl got up. And the report of this spread throughout the City.
*Heart of the financial district, London, UK.
What kinds of responses does such a re-setting draw from you? Does it make you feel that it’s wrong to label the rich and investment bankers, sinners? Does it make you wonder about the nature of miracles and what it might mean to proclaim that Jesus physically heals someone suffering from HIV? Does it emphasise the extraordinary nature of Jesus’ actions: bringing a daughter back to life? I don’t know what your reactions to this re-telling are, positive or negative. But the actual text of Matthew brings out for me challenging and rich questions. Who should the Gospel be preached to? What does healing mean in the Gospels? Is the gender of the two people healed in this passage significant?
The passage indicates some dualisms: faith and law, mercy and sacrifice, sinners and the righteous, disease and healing, death and life. It presents Jesus as physically challenging the boundaries of his culture. He is in the midst of the world, touching, speaking, eating and walking. He calls a tax collect, he eats with sinners, he touches a woman who is ill, and he heals the daughter of a leader of the synagogue. Jesus doesn’t just side with the poor and needy, but calls all sinners, asks for mercy, cures the sick and brings the dead to life. In the context of the other passages set for today (Genesis 12:1-9 and Romans 4:13-25) the theme of faith is at the forefront: Abraham’s faith that led him to believe in the God who promised him a new land and to be the Father of a great nation; a faith that Paul establishes to be the inheritance of all people, in Christ. In the Gospel passage Jesus says to the woman suffering from a haemorrhage: ‘Take heart daughter; your faith has made you well’.
The Genesis and Romans passages set for today tell the traditional patriarchal story of fathers as the founders of nations and from whom we inherit the faith. Jesus altogether expands the vista however, bringing into the picture a broader array of people. In the inclusion of a ‘daughter’ as one who has faith, it can be argued that it is therefore accredited to her also as righteousness, as Paul argues it was for Abraham. Paul’s inclusive vision of Jewish faith that in Christ invites Gentiles to its altar is one that this Gospel tells us establishes women as equal inheritors of that faith too. It is not only the gender divide that is trampled by Jesus however; he also tramples on the divide between the rich and poor, the ill and the well, the dead and the alive. In him the suggestion is that all who have faith, no matter who or what they are, no matter how society views and typecasts them, they too are inheritors of the faith and the faith brings healing and eternal life.
Liberation and feminist theologies respond to real and urgent need for certain people in society who are suffering, oppressed, forgotten and abused. These theologies also need however to be constantly renewed and re-challenged by the Gospel, to keep thinking, ‘yes, but who are we still excluding?’ Jesus didn’t come just for the poor, just for the Jews, just for men, just for anyone. He came proclaiming forgiveness of sins for all people. This, for me, is the theological foundation for ‘inclusiveness’ - a word that is used often today in Britain in relation to describing generally liberal Churches and theologies. Inclusiveness in this context however often becomes exclusiveness: ‘you are included here, if you believe this and this not that and that’. It is extraordinarily challenging to hold together the needs of the marginalised and to prioritise them and to proclaim the Gospel to all. It is hard too to proclaim a Gospel of forgiveness to all, for that means pointing out what my sins are and helping others to see theirs. And the difficulty with this is that ethics is complicated and there is huge debate in the Church regarding what is really sinful. There is no consensus about sex, marriage, what are right relationships what are wrong ones, and the relevant status of women and men. In the Church of England and in the worldwide Anglican communion what causes argument and debate is gay priests and women bishops.
There isn’t an easy message to take from the New Testament to solve these dilemmas. The sexual ethic and gender relations of Jesus’ time are fundamentally different from our own in the West. Those who are against women priests wouldn’t necessarily refute my reading, ‘of course women are inheritors of the faith, but that doesn’t mean they should be priests’, they may argue. The trauma of modernity has meant trauma to established ideas about how men and women relate to one another, particularly in terms of sexual relations, but also in terms of gender roles in society.
What can this Gospel passage tell us that can help with these issues? I think that the specific values we can take are that: Christ brings mercy, a new ethic that challenges the old, a reformed religion that challenges the old, a new understanding of Tradition and a new relationship with God based on old but re-interpreted and forgotten understandings. Christ challenges the boundaries and established norms of a culture and he always brings healing and new life. He is not afraid to mix with anyone. He re-defines righteousness and sin and ultimately redefines God. If we are to meet the ethical and theological challenges of our day we need to try together to do some of these things to be faithful to the Gospel we proclaim.
Imogen Nay
I am currently training to be a priest in the Church of England. Prior to entering ordination training I worked in the voluntary sector. My last job was developing and running services for disadvantaged women for Providence Row Charity, London. I ran drop-in groups, advice and support sessions and developed outreach services for women involved in prostitution and women sleeping rough. I was also involved in campaigning for a change in the way women involved in prostitution are treated in the legal system. I studied English Literature at Univeristy, followed by an MA in Renaissance Studies.
I am now completing a degree in Theology and Religious Studies at Cambridge University. I have a particular interest in feminist liberation theologies.
Wednesday, June 4, 2008
Saturday, May 31, 2008
The Foundation
A reflection on Matthew 7:21-29 for Proper 4A by the Rev. Terri C. Pilarski
Jan Richardson from The Painted Prayerbook offers this reflection:
“ When a friend of mine was ready to build a house on the land he had purchased in eastern Kentucky, he sent out a request to some friends. Scott invited us to offer an object, a tangible blessing that he would bury in the ground upon which he would build the house. He recalls that “Folks were amazingly thoughtful—some of the items included tea, Legos and puzzle pieces from my childhood sent by my mother, guitar strings, a bit of climbing rope, a bit of granite from my home town (Lithonia meaning roughly “rock place”), a wine chalice from my potter friends, shells from our childhood vacation spot, herbs, bits of plants and dirt from various parts of the country, and chocolate.” After all the gifts arrived, Scott gathered with some friends for a ceremony on his property. Placing the gifts in the ground, they offered a blessing for what would take root in that place. Married now and with young children, Scott and his family flourish in the house built atop the buried blessings.”
Think about it. Building a house on the foundation of gifts of others including prayers and many blessings. When I read this I thought immediately of our churches. Our churches are built on the generosity of others – the people who have gone before us and the gifts they have given the church in leadership and financial support.
Of course having a solid foundation for our finances and buildings is only part of the foundation that Jesus is speaking of in our Gospel. He’s pointing us to see that it isn’t enough to shore ourselves up, there is more to be done. There is more to be done than just hearing the word of God, which is like shoring ourselves up… What Jesus is saying in this conclusion to the Sermon on the Mount reminds us that hearing the word of God is good. Building solid stable finances is good. But it isn’t everything. There’s more…we have to do something.
In my ministry I have served two churches as the rector. In both cases I have followed strong male leaders who built up the church and left a lasting impression. These male rectors were focused, by and large, on building the foundation for financial support and church buildings. They led from a bureaucratic style that was common for that generation. But, like the world around us, the way of the church is changing and the leadership style of the past is not as effective now.
In their book, “The Web of Women’s Leadership” Susan Willhauk and Jacqulyn Thorpe discuss the impact of women’s leadership in the world and in the church. They surmise that although women’s leadership in church remains relatively low (they cite 12.3 % in 1996, and I think its now about 20%) women have had a big influence on leadership style. They use the image of a web to convey this impact. “Who has not marveled at the hair-like thinness, as well as the tremendous strength, of the strands of a web? We want to dispel the myth of the spider as an evil conniving creature. Spiders are, in fact, graceful, diligent, determined, industrious, creative, artistic, consistent and persistent creatures. Their webs can teach us about and be symbols of new, far-reaching, and inclusive ministries.”
The web as a metaphor for leadership describes a system that replaces a hierarchy with a circular system that includes concentric circles “bound together by….axial and radial lines that criss-crossed the structure in a kind of filigree.” The web as a model gives us an image for leadership from the center rather than leadership from the top down. The web also provides an image for leadership from the edge, from the margins. In essence leadership can flow in and out from the margins to the center, and from the center to the margins. This has been a distinctive mark of women’s leadership which focuses on relationships, collaboration, and a shared vision that rises up from the group rather than the leader.
In both my calls as rector I have found a congregation yearning for this style. People who no longer want the bureaucratic, highly structured style of years past, but want an open shared ministry. I think this may be why women are becoming leaders in the church. It’s partially the times we live in. But I also think it is a movement of the Spirit calling forth the gifts of women. Obviously I believe that God remains active in this world and is influencing the times we live in. Therefore the Spirit is calling the Church into a new way of being with the influence of women’s leadership paving the way.
Now of course the ability to lead as a web is not limited to women. Men are growing into this style of leadership too. And the church will benefit from this new round of leaders be they clergy or lay. The outcome for the church, I think, will be a renewed focus on ministry to the world. We see this in the importance of the Millennium Development Goals and the many other ways churches are responding the needs of this broken world. As we do this we will move from a focus on building finances and church buildings to a focus on seeing the Other in our community and world.
We need to have a solid foundation, stable finances, and relatively comfortable buildings. But Jesus reminds us that it is not enough to hear the word, it is also not enough to just build for ourselves. In my experience churches that are struggling financially benefit when they put their energy into helping others in the world, even in a small but consistent way. Each of us, small church or large, needs to do something that impacts the world around us. This kind of work, moving out from ourselves and into the world, also needs a strong foundation. It needs to be grounded in the belief, that no matter how little we have we can still be a generous people. The foundation for this work needs to be grounded in prayer and collaboration and innovation. Perhaps it is a foundation that looks less like the concrete slabs we build our homes on and more like a spiders web. Perhaps its strength needs to come less from its hardness and solidity and more from its flexibility and roundness.
Like the creative foundation upon which Scott built his house in the Jan Richardson reflection may the foundations we build be a blessing to us and all we meet.
The Rev. Terri C. Pilarski serves as rector at St. Francis-in-the-Valley Episcopal Church in Green Valley, Arizona.
Jan Richardson from The Painted Prayerbook offers this reflection:
“ When a friend of mine was ready to build a house on the land he had purchased in eastern Kentucky, he sent out a request to some friends. Scott invited us to offer an object, a tangible blessing that he would bury in the ground upon which he would build the house. He recalls that “Folks were amazingly thoughtful—some of the items included tea, Legos and puzzle pieces from my childhood sent by my mother, guitar strings, a bit of climbing rope, a bit of granite from my home town (Lithonia meaning roughly “rock place”), a wine chalice from my potter friends, shells from our childhood vacation spot, herbs, bits of plants and dirt from various parts of the country, and chocolate.” After all the gifts arrived, Scott gathered with some friends for a ceremony on his property. Placing the gifts in the ground, they offered a blessing for what would take root in that place. Married now and with young children, Scott and his family flourish in the house built atop the buried blessings.”
Think about it. Building a house on the foundation of gifts of others including prayers and many blessings. When I read this I thought immediately of our churches. Our churches are built on the generosity of others – the people who have gone before us and the gifts they have given the church in leadership and financial support.
Of course having a solid foundation for our finances and buildings is only part of the foundation that Jesus is speaking of in our Gospel. He’s pointing us to see that it isn’t enough to shore ourselves up, there is more to be done. There is more to be done than just hearing the word of God, which is like shoring ourselves up… What Jesus is saying in this conclusion to the Sermon on the Mount reminds us that hearing the word of God is good. Building solid stable finances is good. But it isn’t everything. There’s more…we have to do something.
In my ministry I have served two churches as the rector. In both cases I have followed strong male leaders who built up the church and left a lasting impression. These male rectors were focused, by and large, on building the foundation for financial support and church buildings. They led from a bureaucratic style that was common for that generation. But, like the world around us, the way of the church is changing and the leadership style of the past is not as effective now.
In their book, “The Web of Women’s Leadership” Susan Willhauk and Jacqulyn Thorpe discuss the impact of women’s leadership in the world and in the church. They surmise that although women’s leadership in church remains relatively low (they cite 12.3 % in 1996, and I think its now about 20%) women have had a big influence on leadership style. They use the image of a web to convey this impact. “Who has not marveled at the hair-like thinness, as well as the tremendous strength, of the strands of a web? We want to dispel the myth of the spider as an evil conniving creature. Spiders are, in fact, graceful, diligent, determined, industrious, creative, artistic, consistent and persistent creatures. Their webs can teach us about and be symbols of new, far-reaching, and inclusive ministries.”
The web as a metaphor for leadership describes a system that replaces a hierarchy with a circular system that includes concentric circles “bound together by….axial and radial lines that criss-crossed the structure in a kind of filigree.” The web as a model gives us an image for leadership from the center rather than leadership from the top down. The web also provides an image for leadership from the edge, from the margins. In essence leadership can flow in and out from the margins to the center, and from the center to the margins. This has been a distinctive mark of women’s leadership which focuses on relationships, collaboration, and a shared vision that rises up from the group rather than the leader.
In both my calls as rector I have found a congregation yearning for this style. People who no longer want the bureaucratic, highly structured style of years past, but want an open shared ministry. I think this may be why women are becoming leaders in the church. It’s partially the times we live in. But I also think it is a movement of the Spirit calling forth the gifts of women. Obviously I believe that God remains active in this world and is influencing the times we live in. Therefore the Spirit is calling the Church into a new way of being with the influence of women’s leadership paving the way.
Now of course the ability to lead as a web is not limited to women. Men are growing into this style of leadership too. And the church will benefit from this new round of leaders be they clergy or lay. The outcome for the church, I think, will be a renewed focus on ministry to the world. We see this in the importance of the Millennium Development Goals and the many other ways churches are responding the needs of this broken world. As we do this we will move from a focus on building finances and church buildings to a focus on seeing the Other in our community and world.
We need to have a solid foundation, stable finances, and relatively comfortable buildings. But Jesus reminds us that it is not enough to hear the word, it is also not enough to just build for ourselves. In my experience churches that are struggling financially benefit when they put their energy into helping others in the world, even in a small but consistent way. Each of us, small church or large, needs to do something that impacts the world around us. This kind of work, moving out from ourselves and into the world, also needs a strong foundation. It needs to be grounded in the belief, that no matter how little we have we can still be a generous people. The foundation for this work needs to be grounded in prayer and collaboration and innovation. Perhaps it is a foundation that looks less like the concrete slabs we build our homes on and more like a spiders web. Perhaps its strength needs to come less from its hardness and solidity and more from its flexibility and roundness.
Like the creative foundation upon which Scott built his house in the Jan Richardson reflection may the foundations we build be a blessing to us and all we meet.
The Rev. Terri C. Pilarski serves as rector at St. Francis-in-the-Valley Episcopal Church in Green Valley, Arizona.
Thursday, May 22, 2008
Pentecost 2, Proper 3
A Reflection on the Matthew 6:24-34 by The Rev. Dr. Kate Hennessy
In the Gospel for this Sunday, Jesus repeatedly says “Do not worry, do not worry do not worry.” Have no anxiety. Not about your money or your life, or your food or drink, not about your clothing or even your tomorrows. You cannot accomplish anything with worry, we are reminded. It does not give us control over anything, and worry and anxiety can only make us slaves to the false gods we think will give us the fast fix. As a therapist I am intimately acquainted with the wages of anxiety. Worry and stress, allowed to run rampant through our bodies narrows our arteries, swells our waistlines and shortens our lifespan. It is hard to quell those anxious thoughts, especially when they come calling in the wee hours, taunting us with worry about life, finances, health, and the future. All things that seem so very important. All things that we can do nothing about by worrying over. All things that we am sometimes tempted to evade by doing what one of my therapist friends calls the “spinning behaviors” of things like spending or gambling or drinking or working to exhaustion. All things that can easily become our masters if we allow them to.
I am a worrier by nature. I was raised to be one by the combination of an anxious mother who, in striving to protect me from all things that might possibly harm me, completely unintentionally gave me the message that the world is a really scary place and my religious upbringing and it’s metaphors for God. When I think back on the God-metaphors of my very strict Roman Catholic upbringing, they are much more related to the idea of a God as judge who kept track of sins. The God of my upbringing who was not a God of comfort but one of judgment. If there was a “father” God, he was a stern and exacting father, not a gentle one, and certainly no “mother” metaphors for God himself would ever have crossed my mind. Fortunately for my tender soul, I did have Mary for that. She was the one who nurtured me, the one to whom I took my fears, cried my childish tears, begged intercession with her son Jesus and even with God on my behalf. If there was any soft place to land in those days, it was with the God-bearer, who was also the bearer of most of the religious warmth I experienced as a child. “God is love” was a term I had heard, but at best it was a corporate kind of concept, and had no bearing on me personally. I had no sense of myself being beloved of this stern and distant God. And unlike my Protestant friends, I lacked the mitigating influence of “Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so.” Our Catechism studies were focused more on the knowledge of making sure we did not disobey God’s laws by sinning. The metaphors were less about a loving relationship than they were about pleasing an exacting taskmaster. Learn the rules, do things right and He will be pleased. Mess up and you have to do things to earn your way back into favor. When we did pray for God to intercede in our lives it was from the mindset of a God that was outside of time and space and nature.
There were spatial-relational metaphors as well Humans were “down here” on earth and God was “up there” in heaven, a vast distance away, not only in time and space, but in the sense of interrelationship. God that “swooped in and swooped out” arranging things to His purposes. God was in charge, giving or not giving you what “He saw fit.” Like the master of the machine, He could alter your little life at any moment by throwing a new switch. If we complained too much that things were not going well, we were reminded that this world was really not to be our focus, because everything that mattered was going to take place in the next, anyway. Suffering here, our own, and others, was for some greater good, “earning our crown in heaven” and thus could be offered up to this God who “counted our sufferings as stars in our crowns.” It seemed there was a vast gap between man (sic) and God. Those who breached that gap were special, set apart, saints and martyrs, certainly not ordinary mortals like me. Other than the lives of those saints and a few Bible stories, I was not exposed to a lot of Scripture growing up, so I didn’t really get to hear the rest of the story until a whole lot later. Given that I felt that God was far from me, judging me and or moving impersonally in and out of my life to arrange things to His own almighty purposes (missing the almighty grounding in love factor) is it any wonder there was a rather significant amount of spiritual anxiety! Of course we know that those limited metaphors for God that I was raised with are not in tune with the biblical view of the divine nature. The idea that God is in complete control of everything, with creation having no power, plays into the idea that God is outside creation and misses the point of just about everything that we learn in scripture about the dynamic, loving and absolutely relational nature of God.
This view of God that I grew up with is problematic far beyond the production of spiritual anxiety in small in Catholic girls. As the Rev. Rick Marshall writes, “If God is omnipotent, and the nature of that divine power is coercive, it leads to metaphors of a unilateral “strong” God, a Dictator, a Warrior, an Emperor, one who uses force, even violence, as a means to divine ends. If one is called to represent and emulate this God in the world, it then means to embody this kind of coercive power that leads to wars and rumors of wars. An ultimate religious act can then be often an act of violence. Waging a war in God’s name, or harming another in God’s name is often justified as an act in tune with God’s nature. Of course this is a caricature of male power. The traditional theology view of God has become part of the problem of our world. Bullets and missiles and phalanxes of troops “inserting’ themselves, “dominating” the enemy, “penetrating” into hostile land; “Shock and Awe” is the measure of success. It is a patriarchal world where domination is the rule. Male over female, master over slave, adult over child, rich over poor, human over creation, Father God over the world. It creates a world filled with fear and anxiety.”
These stories and the emotions they engender can become our masters. We can so easily become their slaves. The metaphors we live by, the stories of our lives are what feeds them. So very far back in time God was telling a story of love and faithfulness, of covenant and relationship. Not a God who is far from the Beloved people, but of one who has “inscribed you on the palms of my hands.” Not a God who is outside of human life, distant and detached but who holds us closer than a mother. A God who is intimately connected to us in love, “closer to us than we are to ourselves.” These metaphors change things! These metaphors make it possible to consider the lilies and the birds and the grasses. They make it possible to consider that I, that we, are beloved, are called, not in spite of some sinful human nature, but because our humanness is so wonderful that God in Jesus desired to become part of it, into relationship with a God who has loved us from all eternity. The one Isaiah knew, and Moses and David. The one known by Ruth and Naomi, Rebecca and Leah. And Mary, my own comfort in the scary years, all along, she knew too, that the other story was the real one. This is the story that Jesus, too, knew, the God with whom he was intimately joined and could tell with unique authority. As for us, sometimes we need to remember, to take time to stop and remember to breathe and heed the wisdom in Jesus’ words to us today. It’s healthier that way for our bodies, our minds and our spirits.
Marshall, Rick, Process and Faith Lectionary Commentary, Proper 3, 2008
The Rev. Dr. Kate Hennessy serves as one of three priests (all women) on a Total Ministry Team in a small congregation in rural Minnesota, where she also works as a clinical psychologist at the community mental health center. She has taught as an adjunct faculty member in the Psychology department at the local University. She enjoys being active in the Diocese, serving on the Commission on Ministry, as Secretary for her Region and as Communications Coordinator for the Diocesan MDG Team. She is a self-defined “liberal, evangelical, feminist, mystical, mindful, slightly Anglo-Catholic leaning Episcopalian-by-grace.”
In the Gospel for this Sunday, Jesus repeatedly says “Do not worry, do not worry do not worry.” Have no anxiety. Not about your money or your life, or your food or drink, not about your clothing or even your tomorrows. You cannot accomplish anything with worry, we are reminded. It does not give us control over anything, and worry and anxiety can only make us slaves to the false gods we think will give us the fast fix. As a therapist I am intimately acquainted with the wages of anxiety. Worry and stress, allowed to run rampant through our bodies narrows our arteries, swells our waistlines and shortens our lifespan. It is hard to quell those anxious thoughts, especially when they come calling in the wee hours, taunting us with worry about life, finances, health, and the future. All things that seem so very important. All things that we can do nothing about by worrying over. All things that we am sometimes tempted to evade by doing what one of my therapist friends calls the “spinning behaviors” of things like spending or gambling or drinking or working to exhaustion. All things that can easily become our masters if we allow them to.
I am a worrier by nature. I was raised to be one by the combination of an anxious mother who, in striving to protect me from all things that might possibly harm me, completely unintentionally gave me the message that the world is a really scary place and my religious upbringing and it’s metaphors for God. When I think back on the God-metaphors of my very strict Roman Catholic upbringing, they are much more related to the idea of a God as judge who kept track of sins. The God of my upbringing who was not a God of comfort but one of judgment. If there was a “father” God, he was a stern and exacting father, not a gentle one, and certainly no “mother” metaphors for God himself would ever have crossed my mind. Fortunately for my tender soul, I did have Mary for that. She was the one who nurtured me, the one to whom I took my fears, cried my childish tears, begged intercession with her son Jesus and even with God on my behalf. If there was any soft place to land in those days, it was with the God-bearer, who was also the bearer of most of the religious warmth I experienced as a child. “God is love” was a term I had heard, but at best it was a corporate kind of concept, and had no bearing on me personally. I had no sense of myself being beloved of this stern and distant God. And unlike my Protestant friends, I lacked the mitigating influence of “Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so.” Our Catechism studies were focused more on the knowledge of making sure we did not disobey God’s laws by sinning. The metaphors were less about a loving relationship than they were about pleasing an exacting taskmaster. Learn the rules, do things right and He will be pleased. Mess up and you have to do things to earn your way back into favor. When we did pray for God to intercede in our lives it was from the mindset of a God that was outside of time and space and nature.
There were spatial-relational metaphors as well Humans were “down here” on earth and God was “up there” in heaven, a vast distance away, not only in time and space, but in the sense of interrelationship. God that “swooped in and swooped out” arranging things to His purposes. God was in charge, giving or not giving you what “He saw fit.” Like the master of the machine, He could alter your little life at any moment by throwing a new switch. If we complained too much that things were not going well, we were reminded that this world was really not to be our focus, because everything that mattered was going to take place in the next, anyway. Suffering here, our own, and others, was for some greater good, “earning our crown in heaven” and thus could be offered up to this God who “counted our sufferings as stars in our crowns.” It seemed there was a vast gap between man (sic) and God. Those who breached that gap were special, set apart, saints and martyrs, certainly not ordinary mortals like me. Other than the lives of those saints and a few Bible stories, I was not exposed to a lot of Scripture growing up, so I didn’t really get to hear the rest of the story until a whole lot later. Given that I felt that God was far from me, judging me and or moving impersonally in and out of my life to arrange things to His own almighty purposes (missing the almighty grounding in love factor) is it any wonder there was a rather significant amount of spiritual anxiety! Of course we know that those limited metaphors for God that I was raised with are not in tune with the biblical view of the divine nature. The idea that God is in complete control of everything, with creation having no power, plays into the idea that God is outside creation and misses the point of just about everything that we learn in scripture about the dynamic, loving and absolutely relational nature of God.
This view of God that I grew up with is problematic far beyond the production of spiritual anxiety in small in Catholic girls. As the Rev. Rick Marshall writes, “If God is omnipotent, and the nature of that divine power is coercive, it leads to metaphors of a unilateral “strong” God, a Dictator, a Warrior, an Emperor, one who uses force, even violence, as a means to divine ends. If one is called to represent and emulate this God in the world, it then means to embody this kind of coercive power that leads to wars and rumors of wars. An ultimate religious act can then be often an act of violence. Waging a war in God’s name, or harming another in God’s name is often justified as an act in tune with God’s nature. Of course this is a caricature of male power. The traditional theology view of God has become part of the problem of our world. Bullets and missiles and phalanxes of troops “inserting’ themselves, “dominating” the enemy, “penetrating” into hostile land; “Shock and Awe” is the measure of success. It is a patriarchal world where domination is the rule. Male over female, master over slave, adult over child, rich over poor, human over creation, Father God over the world. It creates a world filled with fear and anxiety.”
These stories and the emotions they engender can become our masters. We can so easily become their slaves. The metaphors we live by, the stories of our lives are what feeds them. So very far back in time God was telling a story of love and faithfulness, of covenant and relationship. Not a God who is far from the Beloved people, but of one who has “inscribed you on the palms of my hands.” Not a God who is outside of human life, distant and detached but who holds us closer than a mother. A God who is intimately connected to us in love, “closer to us than we are to ourselves.” These metaphors change things! These metaphors make it possible to consider the lilies and the birds and the grasses. They make it possible to consider that I, that we, are beloved, are called, not in spite of some sinful human nature, but because our humanness is so wonderful that God in Jesus desired to become part of it, into relationship with a God who has loved us from all eternity. The one Isaiah knew, and Moses and David. The one known by Ruth and Naomi, Rebecca and Leah. And Mary, my own comfort in the scary years, all along, she knew too, that the other story was the real one. This is the story that Jesus, too, knew, the God with whom he was intimately joined and could tell with unique authority. As for us, sometimes we need to remember, to take time to stop and remember to breathe and heed the wisdom in Jesus’ words to us today. It’s healthier that way for our bodies, our minds and our spirits.
Marshall, Rick, Process and Faith Lectionary Commentary, Proper 3, 2008
The Rev. Dr. Kate Hennessy serves as one of three priests (all women) on a Total Ministry Team in a small congregation in rural Minnesota, where she also works as a clinical psychologist at the community mental health center. She has taught as an adjunct faculty member in the Psychology department at the local University. She enjoys being active in the Diocese, serving on the Commission on Ministry, as Secretary for her Region and as Communications Coordinator for the Diocesan MDG Team. She is a self-defined “liberal, evangelical, feminist, mystical, mindful, slightly Anglo-Catholic leaning Episcopalian-by-grace.”
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Trinity Sunday Reflection
A Reflection on the lessons for Trinity Sunday by Janine Goodwin
Over the last eight months or so, I’ve done some of my best praying while looking at pictures on www.GalaxyZoo.com, a remarkable effort started by astronomers who work on images from deep space. They have discovered the best possible instrument for the task of distinguishing galaxies from other celestial phenomena, and for distinguishing spiral and elliptical galaxies from each other, is the human brain. Building on that discovery, the scientists put up a website and invited volunteers to look at galaxies. A web forum began, and a community emerged, as communities do any time there is something for people to share. There are threads where people can post especially beautiful objects and puzzle together over what the strange ones might be. There are now social scientists who are doing research on the GalaxyZoo phenomenon. When I log on to GalaxyZoo under my pseudonym, I am part of a galaxy of minds moving around a task as stars move around a galactic core. We are all connected.
I always begin a galaxy-classifying session with the opening sentence from Evening Prayer on page of the Book of Common Prayer, modified for inclusive language: “Seek the one who made the Pleiades and Orion, and turns deep darkness into morning, and darkens the day into night; who calls for the waters of the sea and pours them out upon the surface of the earth.” When a particularly beautiful object flashes onto the screen, I am amazed by the glory and the immensity of the universe. I am astounded at the creativity of the one who made the Pleiades and Orion. It doesn’t surprise me that I can tell a spiral from an elliptical better than a computer can, even in fuzzy images from deep space, but it delights me. God made us both. As St. Francis might say, the galaxy is my sister. It is a joy beyond measure to remember that anything we can perceive is only a fraction of the greatness of God, the God who has become known to me, as to Paul, as a God of grace, love, and communion, a God who creates lavishly. That God is both personal and beyond my comprehension: personal because I am part of creation and thus a recipient of grace, love, and communion, and incomprehensible because the more I learn, the less I can be certain I know exactly what God is doing. I am more inclined to praise, to trust, and to listen, less inclined to insist that I can speak for the Creator. Is the spectacularly beautiful collision of two galaxies a tragedy for worlds we will never know? What is God doing? How are we connected?
In today’s readings, we find the same insistence on the connection between the cosmic and the human. The first reading is the story of creation, one of the two stories that were chosen to be passed down as authoritative in our tradition, one of the many creation stories in our world. We human beings have a talent for making such stories, just as we have a talent for identifying galaxies. Creation stories always link the cosmic and the human, and the Creator is always in touch with human creatures in these stories. It is worth remembering that our tradition has chosen to put more than one story into the anthology of God stories that we call the Bible. There may be more than one right way to tell any given story, and our tradition tells the stories of God in a wide variety of voices, in stories told more than once and with differing emphases. The Bible is not a monolith, but a conversation made up of centuries of individual and group voices, and when we read it, we join that conversation. We are connected, through time and space, with the others who have shared our faith. We must listen with respect, study with care, and beware of making those voices sound too much like our own.
The psalm puts the human and the cosmic together, asking who we are and where we belong in creation. We have been given the power to change the earth. The psalmist, living in a world that did not yet bear the scars of large-scale human destructiveness, can celebrate human dominion; we may not have that ability anymore. When we confront what our dominion has done to the earth, we are more likely to lament than to rejoice. Our increased knowledge of how the world works and of what our heedless actions have done gives us an increased responsibility to do better. Many of us are beginning to believe that the God who made us as part of a good world is calling us out of our wasteful ways and toward repentance and change of direction in the ways we deal with the earth. Our connection with the fruitful earth has not always brought forth good fruit.
The way God deals with us is the way we should deal with each other. In an early example of Trinitarian thinking, Paul invokes “the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit.” God contains grace, love, and communion. God is a conversation, a phrase I first found in the works of Martin Smith. God wants to include us in that holy conversation. This passage comes at the end of a tough letter, and contains words of challenge and warning. The life of faith is not easy, and the way to live it is not self-evident. It is not always easy to find the grace to show love, the way to live in communion. When we fail to see how we are connected, or when our connections become unhealthy, we begin to lose the presence of the Christ who refuses to break connection with any of us. Are we showing grace, love, and communion to each other?
Finally, there is the Gospel. Here, again, is the formula that the Church later recognized and developed as our understanding of the Trinity grew. Here, also, is the beginning of a mixed and painful history. The Gospel of Matthew ends with this charge to “make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” This is a passage that breaks my heart because of what Christians have done with it. Too many times (and once would be one time too many), Christians have used this passage to betray the Jesus who said, “Come and see,” the Jesus who questioned and listened, the Jesus who was always willing to look outside his own group and his own tradition for evidence of the reign of God. Those who claimed to act in his name have often replaced conversation with coercion, respect with contempt, openness with violence. This is a passage that has been used by empires to justify the conquest and destruction of cultures. Jesus, who would not allow his disciples to use violence to defend him from death, has seen his name used falsely to make war seem holy; used for the destruction of lives in inquisitions and witch hunts; used to justify slavery and oppression.
Christians in history, and Christians now, have too often gone forth with the loving intention of spreading the Good News and then tried to coerce rather than to converse. Some missionaries (not all) have assumed that the culture in which they learned the Good News and the way that news was given to them is the only way that Good News can be told. They have not entered into conversation with the cultures they encountered, seeing what God has done there, but have tried to impose their ways. They have confused the medium of their particular culture with the message of Jesus, and the results of that confusion have caused tremendous destruction.
This is true in everyday life as well. We can all name instances in which “gospels” of hatred and exclusion have replaced the Good News of inclusive love. “Christian” has become a word that turns people off because they see it as synonymous with bigotry and hostility. I have friends who cannot discuss their faith with me because of the damage done to them by Christians who tried to force them to believe, or, worse, who acted abusively toward them and used faith as a tool for that abuse. I have learned to wait in silence until they ask a question, and then to answer briefly and listen to their stories. Some of them may never be able to ask and talk. I pray that God’s love will find them, and I must accept that that may happen in ways I cannot understand and might not recognize. Loving relationships cannot be forced or manipulated, and the very people who thought they were bringing others to faith have brought about distrust, anger, and fear.
The God of grace, communion, and love has been obscured by the actions of those who would dominate, and so end, the conversations of faith. Too often, evangelization has not produced disciples who follow willingly and with creative joy, but subjects of a reign that is not God’s wild and vivid creation. Once again, there is repentance and repair work to do before we can recognize our connection to each other and reach out to each other in grace, in love, and in communion. The damage runs deep; sometimes is so great that it would be easy to despair, but the God who made the Pleiades and Orion waits to bring us all back into the loving conversation that is the beginning and end of creation, the basis of all that is.
Janine Goodwin is a freelance writer, editor, and proofreader who lives with her husband, dogs, and cats. She holds a B. Mus. and an M.S. Ed. in Special Education from the University of Oregon and an M.A. in Theology from Barry University in Miami Shores, Florida. When she is not working with words, she makes jewelry and rosaries.
Over the last eight months or so, I’ve done some of my best praying while looking at pictures on www.GalaxyZoo.com, a remarkable effort started by astronomers who work on images from deep space. They have discovered the best possible instrument for the task of distinguishing galaxies from other celestial phenomena, and for distinguishing spiral and elliptical galaxies from each other, is the human brain. Building on that discovery, the scientists put up a website and invited volunteers to look at galaxies. A web forum began, and a community emerged, as communities do any time there is something for people to share. There are threads where people can post especially beautiful objects and puzzle together over what the strange ones might be. There are now social scientists who are doing research on the GalaxyZoo phenomenon. When I log on to GalaxyZoo under my pseudonym, I am part of a galaxy of minds moving around a task as stars move around a galactic core. We are all connected.
I always begin a galaxy-classifying session with the opening sentence from Evening Prayer on page of the Book of Common Prayer, modified for inclusive language: “Seek the one who made the Pleiades and Orion, and turns deep darkness into morning, and darkens the day into night; who calls for the waters of the sea and pours them out upon the surface of the earth.” When a particularly beautiful object flashes onto the screen, I am amazed by the glory and the immensity of the universe. I am astounded at the creativity of the one who made the Pleiades and Orion. It doesn’t surprise me that I can tell a spiral from an elliptical better than a computer can, even in fuzzy images from deep space, but it delights me. God made us both. As St. Francis might say, the galaxy is my sister. It is a joy beyond measure to remember that anything we can perceive is only a fraction of the greatness of God, the God who has become known to me, as to Paul, as a God of grace, love, and communion, a God who creates lavishly. That God is both personal and beyond my comprehension: personal because I am part of creation and thus a recipient of grace, love, and communion, and incomprehensible because the more I learn, the less I can be certain I know exactly what God is doing. I am more inclined to praise, to trust, and to listen, less inclined to insist that I can speak for the Creator. Is the spectacularly beautiful collision of two galaxies a tragedy for worlds we will never know? What is God doing? How are we connected?
In today’s readings, we find the same insistence on the connection between the cosmic and the human. The first reading is the story of creation, one of the two stories that were chosen to be passed down as authoritative in our tradition, one of the many creation stories in our world. We human beings have a talent for making such stories, just as we have a talent for identifying galaxies. Creation stories always link the cosmic and the human, and the Creator is always in touch with human creatures in these stories. It is worth remembering that our tradition has chosen to put more than one story into the anthology of God stories that we call the Bible. There may be more than one right way to tell any given story, and our tradition tells the stories of God in a wide variety of voices, in stories told more than once and with differing emphases. The Bible is not a monolith, but a conversation made up of centuries of individual and group voices, and when we read it, we join that conversation. We are connected, through time and space, with the others who have shared our faith. We must listen with respect, study with care, and beware of making those voices sound too much like our own.
The psalm puts the human and the cosmic together, asking who we are and where we belong in creation. We have been given the power to change the earth. The psalmist, living in a world that did not yet bear the scars of large-scale human destructiveness, can celebrate human dominion; we may not have that ability anymore. When we confront what our dominion has done to the earth, we are more likely to lament than to rejoice. Our increased knowledge of how the world works and of what our heedless actions have done gives us an increased responsibility to do better. Many of us are beginning to believe that the God who made us as part of a good world is calling us out of our wasteful ways and toward repentance and change of direction in the ways we deal with the earth. Our connection with the fruitful earth has not always brought forth good fruit.
The way God deals with us is the way we should deal with each other. In an early example of Trinitarian thinking, Paul invokes “the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit.” God contains grace, love, and communion. God is a conversation, a phrase I first found in the works of Martin Smith. God wants to include us in that holy conversation. This passage comes at the end of a tough letter, and contains words of challenge and warning. The life of faith is not easy, and the way to live it is not self-evident. It is not always easy to find the grace to show love, the way to live in communion. When we fail to see how we are connected, or when our connections become unhealthy, we begin to lose the presence of the Christ who refuses to break connection with any of us. Are we showing grace, love, and communion to each other?
Finally, there is the Gospel. Here, again, is the formula that the Church later recognized and developed as our understanding of the Trinity grew. Here, also, is the beginning of a mixed and painful history. The Gospel of Matthew ends with this charge to “make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” This is a passage that breaks my heart because of what Christians have done with it. Too many times (and once would be one time too many), Christians have used this passage to betray the Jesus who said, “Come and see,” the Jesus who questioned and listened, the Jesus who was always willing to look outside his own group and his own tradition for evidence of the reign of God. Those who claimed to act in his name have often replaced conversation with coercion, respect with contempt, openness with violence. This is a passage that has been used by empires to justify the conquest and destruction of cultures. Jesus, who would not allow his disciples to use violence to defend him from death, has seen his name used falsely to make war seem holy; used for the destruction of lives in inquisitions and witch hunts; used to justify slavery and oppression.
Christians in history, and Christians now, have too often gone forth with the loving intention of spreading the Good News and then tried to coerce rather than to converse. Some missionaries (not all) have assumed that the culture in which they learned the Good News and the way that news was given to them is the only way that Good News can be told. They have not entered into conversation with the cultures they encountered, seeing what God has done there, but have tried to impose their ways. They have confused the medium of their particular culture with the message of Jesus, and the results of that confusion have caused tremendous destruction.
This is true in everyday life as well. We can all name instances in which “gospels” of hatred and exclusion have replaced the Good News of inclusive love. “Christian” has become a word that turns people off because they see it as synonymous with bigotry and hostility. I have friends who cannot discuss their faith with me because of the damage done to them by Christians who tried to force them to believe, or, worse, who acted abusively toward them and used faith as a tool for that abuse. I have learned to wait in silence until they ask a question, and then to answer briefly and listen to their stories. Some of them may never be able to ask and talk. I pray that God’s love will find them, and I must accept that that may happen in ways I cannot understand and might not recognize. Loving relationships cannot be forced or manipulated, and the very people who thought they were bringing others to faith have brought about distrust, anger, and fear.
The God of grace, communion, and love has been obscured by the actions of those who would dominate, and so end, the conversations of faith. Too often, evangelization has not produced disciples who follow willingly and with creative joy, but subjects of a reign that is not God’s wild and vivid creation. Once again, there is repentance and repair work to do before we can recognize our connection to each other and reach out to each other in grace, in love, and in communion. The damage runs deep; sometimes is so great that it would be easy to despair, but the God who made the Pleiades and Orion waits to bring us all back into the loving conversation that is the beginning and end of creation, the basis of all that is.
Janine Goodwin is a freelance writer, editor, and proofreader who lives with her husband, dogs, and cats. She holds a B. Mus. and an M.S. Ed. in Special Education from the University of Oregon and an M.A. in Theology from Barry University in Miami Shores, Florida. When she is not working with words, she makes jewelry and rosaries.
Saturday, May 10, 2008
Reflections for Pentecost - Mothers Day Year A
I like preaching on Mother’s Day. And even better that it falls on Pentecost. The combination of these two celebrations meet in an incredibly Gospel (dare I say Holy Spirit) moment.
Pentecost happened when peoples of many different nationalities who might well have been at war were able to understand one language as if it were their own and were able to receive together the gift of the Holy Spirit. Mother’s Day ( beyond Hallmark and a nice brunch) was born out of a deep yearning for peace in a war filled world or perhaps in theological language for a great desire to return to a place of Holy Spirit and common language of peace.
Pentecost and Mother’s Day also have in common that they each often suffer from the kind of sentimentality that hides the real message. We are encouraged to wear red—like the tongues of fire and celebrate the birthday of the church with Happy Birthday and and giant sheet cake. I like red and depending on the amount of butter, sheet cake can be pretty tasty too!
But the deep underneath of Pentecost is about the hard work of reconciliation and what my friend Melanie May calls “Bonds of Difference”.
Pentecost, it has been said is the reversal of the tower of Babel--- that time when the one language of all was confused and different peoples could no longer understand each other. The story told in Acts, of Parthians and Medes and Elamites among others coming together, all understanding the Gospel message in their native tongue, while it was a reversal of the confusion of Babel, it was not a return to the one language. The wonder of that day was that the differences remained yet each had the ability to speak and understand the language of the other. The tongues of fire and the spirit which descended upon those gathered was not the creation of some celestial and inunderstandable word , or a new Esperanto, spirit which allowed the those in the marketplace to hear the Gospel in their own tongue.
If this day was the birthday of the church-- God’ Spirit made real not only to that small band who had followed Jesus but to the diverse crowd, then the picture of the Church of Parthians, Mesopotamians, Judeans, Phyrigians, Cappodocians, Egyptians, Libyans, all worshipping together is certainly a place for The Episcopal Church in the US ( and indeed most mainline churches) in its Sunday morning segregation, to return to.
The writers of the Gospels understood multi-culturalism before it became an overused word, lived the diversity of gifts and the unity of the one spirit before it was fashionable, knew that it takes many voices, many different sounds to create the harmony we continue to seek today. The Church when it became the Church contained the variety of human beings which made up the world the disciples knew. It went from being a small band of homogenous disciples into the marketplace, into the midst of daily life, full of the differences and similarities that culture and language can bring.
The church (and this country! I would say) was not meant to be a melting pot but a place where all human nature and creation is sought and celebrated. Paul, for once, gets it. In speaking of unity of the Body of Christ he understood well: There are many gifts, the same spirit, many parts, one body. There is no unity, he implies, unless the diverse parts are present. The groundwork of our unity or our common life in Christ is neither conformity nor uniformity but the richness of difference coming together for a common purpose. Our differences are not overcome but rather celebrated even as we do the hard work of truly trying to understand the language of the other. We are not all alike under the skin or on top. Thank heavens. The gift of Pentecost on that day, and I hope on this day is that of reconciliation.
We have a long way to go of course. Which is why each year we remember these texts. And today, beyond Hallmark, we are reminded of the yearning for peace by Julia Ward Howe ( of Battle Hymn of the Republic Fame). As Jone Johnson Lewis in About. Com wrote: “Seeing war again on the horizon, Howe called in 1870 for women to rise up and oppose war in all its forms. Hoping to get a formal recognition of a Mother’s Day for peace, she issued a Declaration to gather women in a congress of action:
Arise then...women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts!
Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!
Say firmly:
"We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage,
For caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, the women of one country,
Will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."
From the voice of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with
Our own. It says: "Disarm! Disarm!
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice."
Blood does not wipe our dishonor,
Nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil
At the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace...
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God -
In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality,
May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
And the earliest period consistent with its objects,
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions,
The great and general interests of peace.
We know that Anna Jarvis, remembering her own mother’s work for peace during the Civil War, is the one who later was successful in celebrating a day for mothers in churches and finally in 1912 the day was declared a national day by President Woodrow Wilson.
Lost throughout the years, as Hallmark and sentimentality have ruled, has been the activist origin of this day of remembrance. Many however have not forgotten. And even among those who have, the language of mothers whose sons and now daughters are sent increasingly to war has been to seek another way. And this year more than ever we repeat the call of Julia Ward Howe to Arise and seek peace.
I wonder, could not that Holy Spirit somehow be returning to us. I see my own young adult daughters uninterested in the racial and cultural divisions which so divided us in the past. We have only to look at the current Presidential political campaign to know that a new language and public discourse is attempting, however slowly and with many bumps, to emerge. Perhaps this is what Easter or indeed Pentecost hope is all about: One more time: Let us heed the call of the spirit to understand the language of the other, to celebrate the Gospel calling us together to seek peace and pursue it!
Margaret Rose
Mission Leadership Center
The Episcopal Church
.
Pentecost happened when peoples of many different nationalities who might well have been at war were able to understand one language as if it were their own and were able to receive together the gift of the Holy Spirit. Mother’s Day ( beyond Hallmark and a nice brunch) was born out of a deep yearning for peace in a war filled world or perhaps in theological language for a great desire to return to a place of Holy Spirit and common language of peace.
Pentecost and Mother’s Day also have in common that they each often suffer from the kind of sentimentality that hides the real message. We are encouraged to wear red—like the tongues of fire and celebrate the birthday of the church with Happy Birthday and and giant sheet cake. I like red and depending on the amount of butter, sheet cake can be pretty tasty too!
But the deep underneath of Pentecost is about the hard work of reconciliation and what my friend Melanie May calls “Bonds of Difference”.
Pentecost, it has been said is the reversal of the tower of Babel--- that time when the one language of all was confused and different peoples could no longer understand each other. The story told in Acts, of Parthians and Medes and Elamites among others coming together, all understanding the Gospel message in their native tongue, while it was a reversal of the confusion of Babel, it was not a return to the one language. The wonder of that day was that the differences remained yet each had the ability to speak and understand the language of the other. The tongues of fire and the spirit which descended upon those gathered was not the creation of some celestial and inunderstandable word , or a new Esperanto, spirit which allowed the those in the marketplace to hear the Gospel in their own tongue.
If this day was the birthday of the church-- God’ Spirit made real not only to that small band who had followed Jesus but to the diverse crowd, then the picture of the Church of Parthians, Mesopotamians, Judeans, Phyrigians, Cappodocians, Egyptians, Libyans, all worshipping together is certainly a place for The Episcopal Church in the US ( and indeed most mainline churches) in its Sunday morning segregation, to return to.
The writers of the Gospels understood multi-culturalism before it became an overused word, lived the diversity of gifts and the unity of the one spirit before it was fashionable, knew that it takes many voices, many different sounds to create the harmony we continue to seek today. The Church when it became the Church contained the variety of human beings which made up the world the disciples knew. It went from being a small band of homogenous disciples into the marketplace, into the midst of daily life, full of the differences and similarities that culture and language can bring.
The church (and this country! I would say) was not meant to be a melting pot but a place where all human nature and creation is sought and celebrated. Paul, for once, gets it. In speaking of unity of the Body of Christ he understood well: There are many gifts, the same spirit, many parts, one body. There is no unity, he implies, unless the diverse parts are present. The groundwork of our unity or our common life in Christ is neither conformity nor uniformity but the richness of difference coming together for a common purpose. Our differences are not overcome but rather celebrated even as we do the hard work of truly trying to understand the language of the other. We are not all alike under the skin or on top. Thank heavens. The gift of Pentecost on that day, and I hope on this day is that of reconciliation.
We have a long way to go of course. Which is why each year we remember these texts. And today, beyond Hallmark, we are reminded of the yearning for peace by Julia Ward Howe ( of Battle Hymn of the Republic Fame). As Jone Johnson Lewis in About. Com wrote: “Seeing war again on the horizon, Howe called in 1870 for women to rise up and oppose war in all its forms. Hoping to get a formal recognition of a Mother’s Day for peace, she issued a Declaration to gather women in a congress of action:
Arise then...women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts!
Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!
Say firmly:
"We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage,
For caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, the women of one country,
Will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."
From the voice of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with
Our own. It says: "Disarm! Disarm!
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice."
Blood does not wipe our dishonor,
Nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil
At the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace...
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God -
In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality,
May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
And the earliest period consistent with its objects,
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions,
The great and general interests of peace.
We know that Anna Jarvis, remembering her own mother’s work for peace during the Civil War, is the one who later was successful in celebrating a day for mothers in churches and finally in 1912 the day was declared a national day by President Woodrow Wilson.
Lost throughout the years, as Hallmark and sentimentality have ruled, has been the activist origin of this day of remembrance. Many however have not forgotten. And even among those who have, the language of mothers whose sons and now daughters are sent increasingly to war has been to seek another way. And this year more than ever we repeat the call of Julia Ward Howe to Arise and seek peace.
I wonder, could not that Holy Spirit somehow be returning to us. I see my own young adult daughters uninterested in the racial and cultural divisions which so divided us in the past. We have only to look at the current Presidential political campaign to know that a new language and public discourse is attempting, however slowly and with many bumps, to emerge. Perhaps this is what Easter or indeed Pentecost hope is all about: One more time: Let us heed the call of the spirit to understand the language of the other, to celebrate the Gospel calling us together to seek peace and pursue it!
Margaret Rose
Mission Leadership Center
The Episcopal Church
.
Saturday, May 3, 2008
The Lion of the Deep Magic
A reflection on Easter 7 by The Rev. Jacqueline Schmitt
Year after year, the church sets a stage for us to act out the great drama of creation, sin and redemption. Now this drama moves at a snail’s pace, so you might have missed the flow along the way.
We’re coming to the end of the second act, which began with our acknowledging on Ash Wednesday just how far we have gone from God. Dust we are and to dust we return. The climactic scene was, of course, the crucifixion and resurrection – was it because of our sin and complicity, or was it the cosmic struggle between good and evil? (That depends on which Gospel you read.) And now we approach the end of this act: Jesus has ascended into heaven. Gone back to God. Turned the corner and out of sight. Forty days from Ash Wednesday to Easter, 40 days from Easter to Ascension. This story that began badly, and got worse, now ends in triumph.
One could read the Easter story – this second act of the great Christian drama – in a personal way. I, and my sin, die with Jesus, and I am raised with Jesus. But I think this drama is really about the bigger picture. This is not just about righting individual wrongs, but righting the whole world.
On the Feast of the Ascension, we celebrate who won. Do you remember Aslan? The Lion, of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe? This is what he says to Lucy and Susan after they see that he has come back to life:
It means, said Aslan, that though the Witch knew the Deep Magic, there is a magic deeper still which she did not know. Her knowledge goes back only to the dawn of Time. But if she could have looked a little further back, into the stillness and the darkness before Time dawned, she would have read there a different incantation. She would have known that when a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor’s stead, the Table would crack and Death itself would start working backwards.
What Aslan then set about doing was righting all the wrongs of Narnia, and establishing his righteous rule. If one temptation with the Easter/Ascension story is to get too personalistic, the other temptation is to get too triumphalistic. Both interpretations tend to downplay free will and responsibility. Either Jesus died for my sins and so I’m saved, or through Jesus’ death, evil is vanquished and darkness put to flight, and so there is nothing left for me to do.
You can imagine, then, where I come out: the Anglican middle, and the Doctrine of the Incarnation. It’s really both. Jesus died for my sins, and Jesus is on the throne establishing a new reign of justice and mercy. Our welfare is now inextricably wound up with what God has in store for creation. William Temple, 20th century archbishop, urged Christians to live our lives in a way that our “self-interest prompts what justice demands.” This is what our good friend and historian, Fredrica Thompsett, says about how William Temple furthered our understanding of the Incarnation:
We are, in other words, truest to “Christ within us” when we perceive all of daily life – at work, at home, at church, in the public sphere – as means of expressing God’s will. “Christianity,” Temple … noted, “is the most materialistic of all the world’s great religions.
Aslan can conquer the White Witch, the Lion of Judah can sit upon the throne of God, the Force can defeat the Dark Side, but it is still up to us to take this truth into the world. It is up to us to live as though we really believed that good triumphs over evil and love is stronger than death. It is up to us to conform our wills to God’s will, to shape our lives to the way we know God wants the world to be.
Year after year, the church sets a stage for us to act out the great drama of creation, sin and redemption. Now this drama moves at a snail’s pace, so you might have missed the flow along the way.
We’re coming to the end of the second act, which began with our acknowledging on Ash Wednesday just how far we have gone from God. Dust we are and to dust we return. The climactic scene was, of course, the crucifixion and resurrection – was it because of our sin and complicity, or was it the cosmic struggle between good and evil? (That depends on which Gospel you read.) And now we approach the end of this act: Jesus has ascended into heaven. Gone back to God. Turned the corner and out of sight. Forty days from Ash Wednesday to Easter, 40 days from Easter to Ascension. This story that began badly, and got worse, now ends in triumph.
One could read the Easter story – this second act of the great Christian drama – in a personal way. I, and my sin, die with Jesus, and I am raised with Jesus. But I think this drama is really about the bigger picture. This is not just about righting individual wrongs, but righting the whole world.
On the Feast of the Ascension, we celebrate who won. Do you remember Aslan? The Lion, of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe? This is what he says to Lucy and Susan after they see that he has come back to life:
It means, said Aslan, that though the Witch knew the Deep Magic, there is a magic deeper still which she did not know. Her knowledge goes back only to the dawn of Time. But if she could have looked a little further back, into the stillness and the darkness before Time dawned, she would have read there a different incantation. She would have known that when a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor’s stead, the Table would crack and Death itself would start working backwards.
What Aslan then set about doing was righting all the wrongs of Narnia, and establishing his righteous rule. If one temptation with the Easter/Ascension story is to get too personalistic, the other temptation is to get too triumphalistic. Both interpretations tend to downplay free will and responsibility. Either Jesus died for my sins and so I’m saved, or through Jesus’ death, evil is vanquished and darkness put to flight, and so there is nothing left for me to do.
You can imagine, then, where I come out: the Anglican middle, and the Doctrine of the Incarnation. It’s really both. Jesus died for my sins, and Jesus is on the throne establishing a new reign of justice and mercy. Our welfare is now inextricably wound up with what God has in store for creation. William Temple, 20th century archbishop, urged Christians to live our lives in a way that our “self-interest prompts what justice demands.” This is what our good friend and historian, Fredrica Thompsett, says about how William Temple furthered our understanding of the Incarnation:
We are, in other words, truest to “Christ within us” when we perceive all of daily life – at work, at home, at church, in the public sphere – as means of expressing God’s will. “Christianity,” Temple … noted, “is the most materialistic of all the world’s great religions.
Aslan can conquer the White Witch, the Lion of Judah can sit upon the throne of God, the Force can defeat the Dark Side, but it is still up to us to take this truth into the world. It is up to us to live as though we really believed that good triumphs over evil and love is stronger than death. It is up to us to conform our wills to God’s will, to shape our lives to the way we know God wants the world to be.
Thursday, April 24, 2008
Easter 6
A reflection of Acts 17:22-31, 1 Peter 3:13-22, and John 14:15-21
When I was a little girl I used to walk myself to church every week for Sunday school and then again on Tuesday for Christian formation. The rest of my immediately family had no desire to go to church and I apparently was content to walk there myself. I was born into the church; my ancestors for generations back had been active members. It was the only church I knew. This denomination had very clear ideas of who could belong and who could not. It was also a denomination that centered its entire being on the idea that its members were the only people who were going to be admitted into the kingdom of heaven. They taught that it was the one and only true church of God.
One morning in Sunday school the teacher was giving us a lesson on this rule. Apparently, according to this teacher and this church, God made this rule; God decided that this Church was the one and true expression of faithfulness and the only way to salvation. But, even as a young girl I had an active prayer life and knew God’s presence in my life. So. When the teacher expounded on this lesson I couldn’t resist the urge to raise my hand and ask a question to the contrary. “What,” I asked, “Happens to the little babies in Africa who have never heard of this church?” Now, I’m fairly certain that I chose Africa because it was the continent furthest away from my small town and filled with people who probably had no idea our church even existed. I had no idea, really of what had transpired in Africa over the last 300 years. But clearly I thought God was big enough, expansive enough, to not limit people from heaven if they’d never even heard of the possibility of salvation through this church. The teacher however responded, “That’s why we need missionaries, to go over and convert these people and save them.”
I don’t know why it is that random conversations stick with me. I don’t know why I remember this particular conversation so well, although I think the Holy Spirit has something to do with it. I remember the classroom, and the kids, and the teacher. No, not their names, per se, but that we were sitting in a circle facing the teacher, that most of the kids were giggly and throwing spit wads, but that I was listening and thinking, and disagreeing with the teaching of my church. It simply did not fit my experience of God. And I’ve been thinking about it ever since, some 40 years later.
Eventually I left that church and went on an exploration of faith. I wasn’t looking for God; rather I was looking for a means to worship God in community. I was looking for a church that could hold my expansive experience of God and help shape and form me in my life of faith.
In our reading from Acts Paul is standing in front of a crowd at the Areopagus, where he has been brought to defend his teachings. He faces a crowd of Romans steeped in another belief system, a people who are angry and skeptical of his teachings. First he honors the beliefs of the people before him saying, “I see how extremely religious you are in every way.” He even speaks of their altar to an unknown god. He then clarifies the particular points that believers of his Christian faith adhere too which differ from their beliefs. He says: there is God who is known by the people; This God created all that is, including humanity; In this God we live and move and have our being; and This God cannot be found in gold or silver or stone, there is no image that can fully express who this God is, for this God is beyond the imagination of mortals.
1 Peter picks up on this theme, although not explicitly. I am not sure what the author of 1 Peter intended in the writing of this Epistle. It is tragic that this Epistle has been used by the church to encourage abuse and violence. Over the centuries Christians have used portions of 1 Peter to argue for slavery and for the abuse of slaves at the hands of their owners. It has also been used to argue for domestic abuse telling wives to silently tolerate abusive husbands. Like I said, I’m not sure what the author intended but I do know that modern commentators on the Bible are finding new insight into this reading that reframes the suffering. From this perspective it does not support abuse nor does it endorse one human being inflicting violence on another. It says instead that when we defend our faith with integrity we will face skepticism and hostility. According to 1 Peter defending our faith means to live with gentleness, reverence, and integrity - these are the qualities that 1 Peter defines as conveying the nature of God. This passage reminds us to commit ourselves to God by living as Christ teaches us – not by hiding our faith but living it in a public way. Living our faith in a public way means that the grace of God that is working within us is public and obvious to others.
In our gospel reading we learn more about what it means to commit ourselves to God and to live as Christ teaches us. This passage begins and ends with this point – we are to love. Jesus gives us only one commandment, and we hear it over and over – we are to love God, love our selves, and love others. We learn this first from Jesus himself. Later when Jesus has departed this world and ascended to heaven, Jesus leaves with us the Holy Spirit, who continues to teach us about love. The Holy Spirit is that expression of God that remains active in the world and enables us to love as God loves – in an expansive, generous way.
I do think that my Sunday school teacher was on to something important. We do need missionaries in this world. But not the way she and the church of my childhood intended; not missionaries who proclaim a narrow view of salvation and an exclusive view of who God will embrace. And we don’t need missionaries just in Africa. We need missionaries everywhere, missionaries who are able and willing to live lives of faith. We need missionaries who are willing and able to love people just as they are. We need missionaries who meet people wherever they are in their lives and love them. Living as Christ has taught us enables a grace-filled love of God to pour through us. This grace-filled love of God will change lives. We need missionaries who love the broken people and shattered pieces of this world. We need missionaries that move us out and away from violence into the gentleness of God. We need missionaries with an expansive vision of God’s love; a vision that lives with open arms rather than tight fists. Each of us, when we live our lives with gentleness and reverence, become missionaries for God. But as Christian missionaries for God we are also called to live lives of integrity and that means that we love as Christ loves; for it is in this way that Christ will be in us and we will be in him. When Christ is in us and we are in Christ we are close to understanding the nature of God. Still, I think it is helpful to remember, as Paul says, that ultimately God is beyond the imagination of mortals. Let’s not get stuck on, or limited by, some image of who we think God is. Instead let’s embrace God as Jesus did, let us embrace self as Jesus did, let us embrace others as Jesus did, as visions of love.
The Rev. Terri C. Pilarski is the rector at St. Francis-in-the-Valley, Green Valley, Arizona. She holds a Masters of Divinity and a Masters of Social Work. In addition to parish ministry Terri enjoys time with her husband of 23 years, her children 19 and 16, their two dogs and two cats. When life is slow she also knits, reads, and does yoga.
When I was a little girl I used to walk myself to church every week for Sunday school and then again on Tuesday for Christian formation. The rest of my immediately family had no desire to go to church and I apparently was content to walk there myself. I was born into the church; my ancestors for generations back had been active members. It was the only church I knew. This denomination had very clear ideas of who could belong and who could not. It was also a denomination that centered its entire being on the idea that its members were the only people who were going to be admitted into the kingdom of heaven. They taught that it was the one and only true church of God.
One morning in Sunday school the teacher was giving us a lesson on this rule. Apparently, according to this teacher and this church, God made this rule; God decided that this Church was the one and true expression of faithfulness and the only way to salvation. But, even as a young girl I had an active prayer life and knew God’s presence in my life. So. When the teacher expounded on this lesson I couldn’t resist the urge to raise my hand and ask a question to the contrary. “What,” I asked, “Happens to the little babies in Africa who have never heard of this church?” Now, I’m fairly certain that I chose Africa because it was the continent furthest away from my small town and filled with people who probably had no idea our church even existed. I had no idea, really of what had transpired in Africa over the last 300 years. But clearly I thought God was big enough, expansive enough, to not limit people from heaven if they’d never even heard of the possibility of salvation through this church. The teacher however responded, “That’s why we need missionaries, to go over and convert these people and save them.”
I don’t know why it is that random conversations stick with me. I don’t know why I remember this particular conversation so well, although I think the Holy Spirit has something to do with it. I remember the classroom, and the kids, and the teacher. No, not their names, per se, but that we were sitting in a circle facing the teacher, that most of the kids were giggly and throwing spit wads, but that I was listening and thinking, and disagreeing with the teaching of my church. It simply did not fit my experience of God. And I’ve been thinking about it ever since, some 40 years later.
Eventually I left that church and went on an exploration of faith. I wasn’t looking for God; rather I was looking for a means to worship God in community. I was looking for a church that could hold my expansive experience of God and help shape and form me in my life of faith.
In our reading from Acts Paul is standing in front of a crowd at the Areopagus, where he has been brought to defend his teachings. He faces a crowd of Romans steeped in another belief system, a people who are angry and skeptical of his teachings. First he honors the beliefs of the people before him saying, “I see how extremely religious you are in every way.” He even speaks of their altar to an unknown god. He then clarifies the particular points that believers of his Christian faith adhere too which differ from their beliefs. He says: there is God who is known by the people; This God created all that is, including humanity; In this God we live and move and have our being; and This God cannot be found in gold or silver or stone, there is no image that can fully express who this God is, for this God is beyond the imagination of mortals.
1 Peter picks up on this theme, although not explicitly. I am not sure what the author of 1 Peter intended in the writing of this Epistle. It is tragic that this Epistle has been used by the church to encourage abuse and violence. Over the centuries Christians have used portions of 1 Peter to argue for slavery and for the abuse of slaves at the hands of their owners. It has also been used to argue for domestic abuse telling wives to silently tolerate abusive husbands. Like I said, I’m not sure what the author intended but I do know that modern commentators on the Bible are finding new insight into this reading that reframes the suffering. From this perspective it does not support abuse nor does it endorse one human being inflicting violence on another. It says instead that when we defend our faith with integrity we will face skepticism and hostility. According to 1 Peter defending our faith means to live with gentleness, reverence, and integrity - these are the qualities that 1 Peter defines as conveying the nature of God. This passage reminds us to commit ourselves to God by living as Christ teaches us – not by hiding our faith but living it in a public way. Living our faith in a public way means that the grace of God that is working within us is public and obvious to others.
In our gospel reading we learn more about what it means to commit ourselves to God and to live as Christ teaches us. This passage begins and ends with this point – we are to love. Jesus gives us only one commandment, and we hear it over and over – we are to love God, love our selves, and love others. We learn this first from Jesus himself. Later when Jesus has departed this world and ascended to heaven, Jesus leaves with us the Holy Spirit, who continues to teach us about love. The Holy Spirit is that expression of God that remains active in the world and enables us to love as God loves – in an expansive, generous way.
I do think that my Sunday school teacher was on to something important. We do need missionaries in this world. But not the way she and the church of my childhood intended; not missionaries who proclaim a narrow view of salvation and an exclusive view of who God will embrace. And we don’t need missionaries just in Africa. We need missionaries everywhere, missionaries who are able and willing to live lives of faith. We need missionaries who are willing and able to love people just as they are. We need missionaries who meet people wherever they are in their lives and love them. Living as Christ has taught us enables a grace-filled love of God to pour through us. This grace-filled love of God will change lives. We need missionaries who love the broken people and shattered pieces of this world. We need missionaries that move us out and away from violence into the gentleness of God. We need missionaries with an expansive vision of God’s love; a vision that lives with open arms rather than tight fists. Each of us, when we live our lives with gentleness and reverence, become missionaries for God. But as Christian missionaries for God we are also called to live lives of integrity and that means that we love as Christ loves; for it is in this way that Christ will be in us and we will be in him. When Christ is in us and we are in Christ we are close to understanding the nature of God. Still, I think it is helpful to remember, as Paul says, that ultimately God is beyond the imagination of mortals. Let’s not get stuck on, or limited by, some image of who we think God is. Instead let’s embrace God as Jesus did, let us embrace self as Jesus did, let us embrace others as Jesus did, as visions of love.
The Rev. Terri C. Pilarski is the rector at St. Francis-in-the-Valley, Green Valley, Arizona. She holds a Masters of Divinity and a Masters of Social Work. In addition to parish ministry Terri enjoys time with her husband of 23 years, her children 19 and 16, their two dogs and two cats. When life is slow she also knits, reads, and does yoga.
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