a prayer book family tree

A little random maybe, but good history, and a visual map of communion (in at least one sense). A picture of interdependence, the faithful proclamation of the Gospel, and the centrality of worship to the People of God.

Scripture and Christians

I've recently been reading a book called "The Art of Reading Scripture," which is a collection of essays about, you guessed it, how to read Scripture. As I read the first chapter, I remembered a story (maybe true) about how a young Billy Graham visited the famous theologian Karl Barth on Barth's deathbed in Germany. Barth thanked Graham for his visit and indicated that he had heard the young preacher on the radio the day before. "You really mastered the text," he said to Graham. A flattered Graham responded, "Thank you, sir," to which Barth replied, "No. I had hoped you would let the text master you." I confess that allowing myself to be mastered by the text is a hard thing for me to know how to do. But I'm grateful for those moments when it happens. In that spirit, here are a few highlights from my reading on how to read Scripture.

Peace to you.
Jonathan+

From The Art of Reading Scripture, ed. Ellen Davis:

A cartoon in the New Yorker shows a man making inquiry at the information counter of a large bookstore. The clerk, tapping on his keyboard and peering intently into the computer screen, replies, "The Bible?...That would be under self-help."

As the cartoon suggests, in postmodern culture the Bible has no definite place, and citizens in a pluralistic, secular culture have trouble knowing what to make of it. If they pay any attention to it at all, they treat it as a consumer product, one more therapeutic option for rootless selves engaged in an endless quest of self-invention and self-improvement. Not surprisingly, this approach does not yield a very satisfactory reading of the Bible, for the Bible is not, in fact, about 'self-help'; it is about God's action to rescue a lost and broken world.

***

The Bible confronts us with facts that are peculiar in this way: the better we understand them, the more we wonder about them. So teaching the Bible confessionally means enabling people to wonder wisely and deeply. Wondering is the business of scholars and preachers, just as it is of Sunday school children.

***

Whenever we pick up the Bible, read it, put it down, and say, "That's just what I thought," we are probably in trouble. The technical term for that kind of reading is "proof-texting." Using the text to confirm our presuppositions is sinful; it is an act of resistance against God's fresh speaking to us, an effective denial that the Bible is the word of the living God. The only alternative to proof-texting is reading with a view of what the New Testament calls metanoia, "repentance" -- literally, "change of mind."

***

We have been saved through grace -- this is often the first affirmation we make as Christians awakening to the wonder of the life we share in God. But if the fruits of salvation are to be evidenced in the world, then the affirmation of salvation needs to be followed by the question, What form of obedience does Christian discipleship now require?

abundant life

*From Horizons, the weekly snippets of what I'm reading, finding helpful, shared with St. C's Vestry and leaders.*

Grace and peace! My shared learnings this week come from the Trinity News, a magazine of Trinity Wall Street. This particular article (viewable here, at Abundant Life) examines a farming project of the Episcopal Church, which seeks "to engage young people in caring for the earth, making a meaning contribution to the community, and listening to God in the midst of all of it." Specifically, young people enroll in year-round internships.

Here are some highlights from the article:

Q: Katerina, when your friends from college or your friends from childhood say, "So what are you doing now?" what do you tell them?

Katerina Friesen: I tell them that I am working on a farm, living in an intentional community, learning about agriculture in the United States, and a little bit about the food systems from a different way of growing food.

Q: What made you join?

KF: I think that what brought me to this place was its focus on the transformation of itself, of myself, and of the surrounding community. It's really a project about forming connections where there are disconnects.

This community was really about thinking about where our food comes from, having a sense of gratitude for the hands that have worked to prepare it, and forming new relationships with the ground and with the people who are going to consume it.

Q: What have you learned about compassion, what does that word mean to you, in light of this experience?

KF: I started going to a church in Oxnard, to a Spanish service so that I could actually know and share communion with people who don't have enough to eat on a day-to-day basis. And I think some of that desire has come out of this project. Gratitude for our abundance has made me long to be in community and share Christ's supper with people who don't have that kind of abundance, who are living out of scarcity.

Q: You mentioned gratitude as a reason for being here. What has the Abundant Table Project taught you about gratitude?

KF: What the land gives you is such a joy and a surprise. It's like a miracle in a way. Part of the gratitude I think is for our own ability to work and to see the fruits of our labor right before us. Everything that comes out of here is a gift. We came here and we didn't really didn't know much about farming. It was obviously something beyond us: the good soil, the sun, all these things that come together and are really all gifts of God.


Peace.
Jonathan+

Can you sue your pastor for malpractice?

This Thursday, April 22, 7 - 8 p.m, St. Christopher's by-the-Sea is hosting a conversation around the first of three weeks' questions. This week, we ask the question, 'Can you sue your pastor for malpractice?' The conversation that comes with this question considers why our expectations are (generally) much higher for our doctors than they are for our clergy.

My prayer is that everyone in the congregation would make at least one of these evening conversations. These sessions are opportunities for you (and me) to be challenged and encouraged by voices from within the Christian Church, especially as we consider what it means to live in our lives the things we profess on our lips.

I pray this finds you well. See you Thursday night.

Peace.
Jonathan+

a Good Friday meditation

Once upon a time there was a forest full of trees, and it wasn’t so much the trees but the one tree that caused the trouble. You know the story. The woman; the fruit; and the man. Serpentine transgressions. Was it gluttony, lust, or pride, I wonder. Peek a boo with God. Selective hearing, maybe. Exile, swords of fire.

A friend of mine said, “avocado.” Avocado? Yes, he said, the fruit that marked the sin. He was probably projecting, but I wonder sometimes what fruit would be shiny enough, just ripe enough, enticing enough that I would dismiss God’s voice to me.

Before too long, the man and the woman were fruitful, found with child, but that had long stopped being an obvious good thing. And it’s fruit again, the parent’s sin, the cry of Abel’s blood. And Abel’s blood’s still crying. Good God, is Abel’s blood still crying.

And every night on channels one through nine, you can see him, hear him, they call him different names, but you can still hear Abel’s blood.

And it’s Abram and Sarai, Moses, Elijah, David, Elisha, Jonah, God bless him, and Nahum and all of God’s prophets, his judges and kings, the high priests of the people, trying to give God back his blood.

Sometimes I pray when I hear it, and sometimes I laugh when I hear it; other times, when I hear it, I sink into my sofa and drip through to the ground, the weight of the sadness slaying my tears and as heavy -- oh, as heavy -- as the flickering light is blue against the wall.

They sprinkled blood, not Abel’s, on their beaten, wooden, doorposts that first, black night called Passover; that first last night in Egypt, just as God commanded. Prefigured Lamb of God. The Egyptians were howling; God, he was faithful, and the Hebrews walked out on dry land. Pillars of cloud. Columns of fire. And the Hebrews walked out on dry land.

But college freshman everywhere will tell you, when they’re talking to you at all, that unexpected freedoms are the hardest kind to handle. And the people who walked free from their mud bricks in Egypt had a hard time believing that the One who had freed them from their mud bricks in Egypt, would keep them, could keep them, from their mud bricks in Egypt. That they would be cared for. That God would bring them home.

And so, in an ironic twist, somewhere along the wandering road, somewhere among the endless, numbered, days that followed, the people who wandered and followed griped one time too many, and God brought back the snake. You know, the one that started the whole mess in the first place. He brought him back. With friends. Satan had been busy. Snakes to bite their heels. Some were even dying.

Moses said, “What the heck, God?” and God had Moses fashion a separate snake, this one made of bronze, and put it on a pole; the people were told to look on the pole in order to be saved. And the ones who did were saved. And some millennia later, the disciple Jesus loved, the one called John, he saw that snake, and called it Christ.

Which brings me to a second tree that caused the trouble. One tree from the forest. You know the story. A man. With some women. And some men. They found him in a garden, with their torches, flaming swords. Sound familiar? Exiled Son of God. Or at least that was the goal.

The disciples had swords, too, but there would be no battle here. No second spill of Abel’s blood. The cup first drunk at Passover, now come before the Lamb. And Peter, who would have fought for him, would not, will not, die with him, and the cock crow names the hour.

They gave the man a trial, the people did. Or close enough to one for their intentions on that day. And they dressed him like a king, and pranced before the powers, and the powers lost their power to the madness of the night. The night as dark as blood. The day that looked like night. And they crucified our Lord.

Once upon a time, this mother, she could smile. But darkness knows no friend.

Two trees by which to see the grief, to hear the cries and taste the blood of wars that will not cease. The rivers flowing blood. Infernal blue light flickering. But eyes to see and ears to hear pick out a pin-prick hope against the darkness, amidst the blood, if faint, if far off, flickering. And this is the pin-prick hope -- God’s own happy sadness -- the moment despair loses hope, becomes futile -- this is God’s secret: the two trees are one tree and his wounds heal the first.

The flaming sword extinguished now, Life’s tree holds high its fruit; and Christ himself, pressed, crushed, for us, becomes the very wine of heaven.

And heaven prepares the song.

Amen.

the God we didn't want

This article appears in the March edition of St. Christopher's Chronicles...

This is all God’s doing: it is he who has

reconciled us to himself through Christ.

- St. Paul, to the Corinthians

Easter is such good news that we sometimes forget that the particular occasion our Lord had for rising was that we killed him, presumably because we wanted a different-looking god. That’s the story of Palm Sunday. He didn’t appear cut out for it. We wanted a proud king with a strong hand, and by strong, we meant violent. We didn’t want to overthrow the corrupted powers of this world, so much as we wanted to have them be for us -- that is, to have them at our disposal. He got so close to us. And to all the wrong people. He changed the rules. We wanted a warrior and what we got was a mute (forgetting God’s promise to speak through the “still, small voice”). He went out so softly. So we cry out, “Crucify,” even if we think that we, had we been there, might have acted differently, and we prepare our “Alleluias,” and we stuff our Easter eggs, and only if we’re lucky will we discover that we still want other gods.

Stanley Hauerwas reminds us that the earliest Christians were accused of being atheists because the declaration, “Jesus is Lord,” was judgment on all the other lords -- the other gods -- in Rome. “Jesus is Lord” leaves little room for bunkmates.

So Holy Week is here, and I didn’t get the Jesus that I wanted. If I took the time to think about this, I could name my frustration at the difference between the god that I wanted and the Jesus I got as the sin for which I need God’s forgiveness. The Good News of the Jesus I got is that this Jesus, this God, is rich in forgiveness.

Thank God, he is rich in forgiveness.

We’re told that after the resurrection, the disciples were locked behind closed doors, for fear of the Jews. They probably weren’t less afraid to see a risen Savior. If love lives in that space wherein one person says to another, “I’m glad that you exist,” they had betrayed their love of him in the most fundamental way: “We wish you were dead.” “We have other things to be doing just now.” And then, by the hand of a friend, he was dead. The disciples may have been sad, but also relieved. And so when they see the risen Savior, it is not obvious Good News for them. What will this mean for them?

But as it turns out, it is still the Good News. Glory to God, it is such very Good News! That the love of God is not undone by them -- or by us; by their failings -- or ours; even by our wanting other gods.

The baptismal liturgy begins with these words: There is one Body and one Spirit; There is one hope in God’s call to us; One Lord, one Faith, one Baptism; One God and Father of all. There is one God. What’s more, he is risen! Best of all, this risen God -- Jesus Christ -- he’s come back! Come back even for us.

*Spoiler alert*

Alleluia!

"Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ."

Courtesy resolution present on the Council theme at the 106th Diocesan Council of West Texas.

Right Reverend Sirs, Friends in Christ of this 106th Diocesan Council:

WHEREAS, the Committee on Reconciliation has helpfully called to this Council’s attention guidelines and methods for the development of mutual understanding and careful listening; and

WHEREAS, the bishops of this diocese have commended to this Council’s practice said methods of mutual understanding and listening;

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that this Council affirm those good things which we by careful listening have heard and received from one another, including and most centrally the Scriptural admonition, so often here cited, to relieve the burdens of bears, in this and every land: grizzly bears; polar bears; black bears; koala bears; teddy bears; and particularly those bears in the state of Hawaii; and

(the bartender said, bear, why the big pause?)

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the careful listening of this Diocese affirm the bishops’ commendations to empty the pews and shoot our horses in conjunction with the recently unveiled one hundred and nineteen year mission development plan advanced by strategic officer John Rayls and the Diocese, and modeled in the parish of Trinity, Junction, and

BE IT FINALLY RESOLVED that even the least careful listening hears and recognizes the constant laughter of the Spirit so present in this People, who, sharing in God’s joy, affirm here their delight in their joy as God’s Church for the life of the world --

Oh, I almost forgot. I can see God’s House from here.

Right Reverend Sirs, we so move.