What's so crazy about peace, love and religion?

Driving home from the hospital where I work this weekend I heard the promo for NPR’s debate show Intelligence Squared which was debating the motion “would the world be better off without religion?”  I didn’t actually get to listen to it, there were weeds to be picked, and little daughters to be played with and steaks to grill, and well… there’s only so much time to go around.

But hearing this promo seemed to fit into a stream of thought I’ve been having lately regarding what exactly does the church do?  Some folks think Church is the embodiment of the Great Commission at the end of Matthew’s gospel.  Some think it’s for living out Jesus’ command to serve the “least of these.”  Others think it’s for marking out the “elect” from the damned.  I like the first two of those, I’m not so into the third.  Let me be clear though, I’m not asking what the church is, I’m asking what it does.  I think Cardinal Dulles’ Models of the Church is the best reflection on the nature of the church I’ve come across, but it can be a little bit abstract.

My suggestion is that what churches are really designed for, their core competency, if you like, is religion.  As the NPR program suggests though, similar to the web-excitement generated by the YouTube video of the guy who loves Jesus but hates religion and all those folks claiming to be “spiritual but not religious,” religion isn’t very popular in America (or Europe, as far as that goes).  Actually, religion hasn’t been very popular for awhile now – too limiting.  It seems to me that a great deal of what church institutions have been engaged in for several decades at least is to try to pass themselves off as places that aren’t bogged down by “religion.”

But I think religion is getting a bad rap.  Religion, at its best is about the inculcation of faith.  Religious practice and religious discipline (think praying – not spanking) create in us deep patterns of behavior and thought that can be very useful in developing a worldview consistent with Christ’s teaching to love God and neighbor.  Mind you, it is possible to lose sight of the purpose of religion, the building and sustaining of faith, and to begin to pursue religion for its own end. 

I don’t think you have to go to church or be religious to be loved by God.  But I do think that church offers a time-tested way to develop faith and to learn how to confidently respond to the broken world around us in knowledge of that love.   So go ahead and get yourself some religion – you might be surprised how it turns out.

Seminary Controversies and Lent

This is a picture of the main worship space, knows as Gloria Dei chapel, here at the seminary.  It is likely that you noticed the gigantic rainbow colored banner strung across the space and over the altar.  This is the decoration put up to mark the first week of Lent.  This comes from the Hebrew Scripture reading for the first Sunday in Lent from Genesis;

And God spoke unto Noah, and to his sons with him, saying:

'As for Me, behold, I establish My covenant with you, and with your seed after you; and with every living creature that is with you, the fowl, the cattle, and every beast of the earth with you; of all that go out of the ark, even every beast of the earth.

And I will establish My covenant with you; neither shall all flesh be cut off any more by the waters of the flood; neither shall there any more be a flood to destroy the earth.'

And God said: 'This is the token of the covenant which I make between Me and you and every living creature that is with you, for perpetual generations:

I have set My bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between Me and the earth.

And it shall come to pass, when I bring clouds over the earth, and the bow is seen in the cloud, that I will remember My covenant, which is between Me and   you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall no more become a flood to destroy all flesh.  And the bow shall be in the cloud; and I will look upon it, that I may remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all  flesh that is upon the earth.'

I’ll be honest and admit that I find the rainbow banner in the worship space discordant with my expectation of the season of Lent, which is usually more of a time of reflection and anticipation.  It has been a source of lots of heated conversation and eye-rolling.   Much of the reaction has been negative, though it has its fans as well.  Just before chapel today, someone was taking pictures and I quipped that I hoped the photos didn’t make it onto the seminary website.  I nearly had my head bitten off in return, and it was implied that my negative reaction was in part due to homophobia.  Unlike the linked blog in the previous sentence, this angle hadn’t really occurred to me.  Rainbow banners in church always remind me of Easter morning at the church where I was baptized, and which used a rainbow colored kite/banner in the procession on Easter morning; rainbow + worship = EASTER.  Lent is not Easter.  But is there more to this than just aesthetics?

What I can discern of the thinking of those who like it is the question, “does Lent have to be depressing?”  Well, I guess if self-reflection or self-denial (the hallmarks of traditional Lenten practice) are depressing to you, then, well, yes Lent has to be depressing.  Actually, I think those things can be liberating.  So I don’t think Lent is supposed to be dark or depressing.  Personally I find a real happiness and satisfaction in this time of intentional simplification and reflection.  But more importantly, I think there is an important formational element in denying ourselves the celebratory and triumphal in this time leading up to Easter, which of course is, in the Christian worldview, is ultimate triumph.

I think one of the geniuses of the liturgical year is that we get to take the same journey as the original disciples, again and again.  Lent is closely linked with Jesus’ retreat into the wilderness after his baptism, where for 40 days he wanders alone and is tempted by Satan.   In Lent, we too are invited to wander into the wilderness of our faith, where we can rub up against our doubts, our beliefs, and our practices and make peace with them or overcome them so that we might inch ever closer to the vision of our lives that God intends for us.

you are dust and to dust you shall return

In case you missed it today was Ash Wednesday, which marks the beginning of the season of Lent. As sacristan at the seminary, I spent this morning preparing for the worship service where the community would remember the fragility of life in the face of the gift of salvation that we will re-remember come Easter. We printed the bulletins on grey paper, I set up the missal, poured the wine into the flagons, took care of all the last minute things that come up and then mixed oil and water with the ashes of burned palms. And then as the serving party gathered and prepared to process into the church, I turned out the lights in the sacristy and left out the back door.

Partly, I was probably taking advantage of the remaining liberty to opt out of a liturgical responsibility while I still can. I've been busy looking for positions for after graduation (with some tentatively positive responses, thank you) and its really beginning to sink in, that someday soon, probably before Christmas, I will be a parish priest somewhere and I won't have the same ability to take a pass anymore. So, maybe the next few months are a kind of Rumspringa for me before fully committing to the life I have been called to and assented to live.


But mostly, I think it's that I don't really need to be reminded of the ever-present reality of death right now. I spend an hour or two nearly every weekend with the dead and dying. A couple of weeks ago, I attended seven deaths and a stillbirth in just under 30 hours and frankly it all kind of piles up emotionally. Now don't fret, I have people to talk to and decompress so my emotional and spiritual health is fine but my experience as a chaplain, even a part-time one, has brought me to a much more tangibly real experience of death than I'd ever known before. In a way, I think I will welcome Ash Wednesday in the future as a reminder to me of the intensity of the past year and a half as a chaplain and to honor the memory of all of those I've been privileged to be with as they die.

Do you feel ready?

I've been back in Oregon this week to meet with the people who control my fate as a priest. I am happy (very happy) to report that I have been approved. Of course, now begins the hard work of finding an opportunity to practice that ministry, though I actually feel pretty hopeful about that. But what's really on my mind is the question of readiness? Do I feel ready to take this on? Have I been adequately prepared?

I've worked at my studies, I know I've learned stuff. I've been involved in the parish, at school and at the hospital practicing and reflecting on the practice of vocational ministry. I know my perspective on the world and the church has shifted, my understanding of God is deeper. I even know how to fix a furnace and write a budget. I feel well prepared. However, I have no doubts I will flounder and make mistakes at the first church I serve as an ordained person.

Being here reminds of where I was ten years ago preparing for baptism. Was I ready? Was I a fully formed Christian? Of course I wasn't. My "faith" largely existed in my head as a philosophical proposition, my perspective was still focused on what God did for me and I felt I could take an a la carte approach, doing only what was good for me. I haven't fully and completely left that behind (I'm still a regular human, it turns out) but on the night I lowered my head over the font and the water flowed down my face I was willing and ready to make the commitment to being faithful even though there was still a long way to go.

Now, as I stand on the threshold of a new sacrament, ordination, I think I feel the same way. I am as prepared as I can be to make the commitment to living into the promises I will make in prayer that they may guide me and form me into whomever it is I am called to be. I hope I am a good priest, or at least not a bad one, but I promise I will try to be open to the movement of the Spirit that drew me in so long ago and that beckons me forward still.

Jesus on line 2

A couple of months ago I made a terrible mistake. I signed up to receive messages from the House of Bishops/House of Deputies email list-serv. Officially, I'm a kibitzer which means I can read the messages but I'm not able to post them. I suppose if I really wanted to add something to the conversation, I could email someone I know who is a deputy and ask them to post it for me. People do that once in awhile. But that's too much trouble really and besides anything interesting that might show up on the listserv is usually already on a blog somewhere and I can just go there and add my two cents if I'm really compelled to do so. But I think what really gets me is why the "leaders" of the Episcopal church have this odd kinda closed/kinda transparent communication medium? Why not just set up a Facebook group or a blog on the (newly updated) Episcopal church website?

So why was it a mistake, you might ask? Well, mostly because it's comprised of the same kind of rapid reaction, entrenched positions that characterize the rest of what passes for communications on the internet these days. Frankly it's not very heartening. I feel really bad saying that. Most of the people I've met who are deputies (and bishops) are really genuinely good people who care deeply about the Church and God's mission. But I know it can be hard to transcend the cultural biases we are surrounded by. I'd really like to see General Convention deputies engaged in substantive, gospel rooted conversations, and I suppose somewhere that's going on with some of them, but it for certain isn't on the list serv. Actually, I'm not really sure our culture knows how to have a substantive dialogue or even a real debate anymore, but its sad to see the Church trapped in that same paradigm.

I read something recently about ways churches might try to appeal to today's frenetic, always connected culture. One of the suggestions was to allow people to comment in between the readings during worship and then try to craft the sermon around what they say. I'll be honest and say that I'm not so sure that spending even less time preparing for sermons and worship will really help. I'm part of a transitional generation. I'm pretty well plugged in, heck I helped create this modern world as an engineer at Intel, but I also remember a life with rotary phones when "long distance" was a big deal. When I spent a year in Australia when I was 17, I only had actual letters to connect me to home. I think in that whole year I had one phone call with my parents. Not to be a curmudgeon, but there was something invaluable about being apart and on my own that I'm sad to see lost.

So while, I'd like to open up the conversation that Church Leaders are having to more of the church members, I don't want to see the Holy Spirit correlated to the latest Twitter Trend. Christ lives within his people, in the Church, maybe we can find the better balance between listening to our own voices and listening for THE voice.

MLK Sermon

This is the text of my sermon delivered this morning at Trinity Lutheran Seminary in honor of Dr King.  Our reading was Ephesians 6:10-20.

icon by Tobias Haller

There is some debate over who wrote Ephesians

as well as debate over whether it was actually meant for the church in Ephesus or not. 

But, whatever the specificity of the original context, it seems clear to me that Ephesians is marking a turning point in the thinking of the early Church.

Christ’s imminent return drove the fervor of the early apostles,

but, in Ephesians, is beginning to be seen as not an event to be looked for on every cloudy day.

Rather, it is something whose occurrence may be in some far future. 

Here, we begin to see the Church settling in for the long haul and

turning its focus away from a kind of ascetic preparation for the eschaton and

towards a sober reflection on the infusion of Christ into the mundane affairs of daily life.

We are reassured that Christians are involved in the unfolding of God’s mystery, God’s plan of reconciliation and

that the vehicle of God’s reconciliation is to be the Church’s witness to Christ’s passion with the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

Two thousand years of waiting later,

I wonder to what extent we can possibly understand the deflation

and doubt

that surely crept its way through the church as the first generation of believers died. 

Surely they wondered,

could Jesus’ promise of return been wrong? 

How much longer Lord, how much longer?

Yesterday was Martin Luther King Day,

and the night before he was murdered,

Dr King gave a speech

where he talked about how he had narrowly avoided death several years before when he was stabbed in the chest in a New York City bookstore. 

He ended that speech by saying this;

Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land!

Just as in Ephesians,

the people whom Dr King was addressing were anxious about promises still unfulfilled.

Today

we remember Dr King as a great man

and a national prophet,

but on the day he was murdered, we should remember that many people were impatient with non-violent protest and civil disobedience. 

Violent Revolution was on the minds of

many who proclaimed

that only bloodshed could cleanse the nation of the sins of racist oppression. 

Their answer to the question, how much longer, was… not much, not tomorrow but today.

Righteous anger and the desire to inflict justice on the corrupted and debased is a natural inclination. 

It is only human to seethe at injustice.

And that it is so, so should be a warning to us.  For as it says in today’s reading;

“our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness”

Ephesians speaks of standing up against the wiles of the devil,

and it may not be especially popular here,

but I want you to know that I believe there is a force loose in the universe,

a power,

a will ……opposed to God. 

And that that power, however you name it,

is deeply insinuated into humanity such that, try as we might,

all our systems

and governments

and organizations,

all of our creations are tainted by it.

The struggle for justice has expanded greatly since Martin Luther King, Jr died. 

Prophetic voices still challenge our self-understanding

and our identity as a people. 

Our churches are mired in conflicts over the inclusion of homosexual persons in the full life of the church,

and more recently,

our churches have struggled to find their voice in the conflict over economic justice.

Those engaged on the front lines of struggle

and those whose lives have been spent in waiting also ask,

how much longer Lord, how much longer? 

People on different sides of these arguments, driven by their own sense of right-ness, withdraw to their own corners,

defying the unity of the body of Christ.

Our impatience,

our need to ask how much longer,

shows both our yearning desire to see God’s reconciliation

and our willingness to forgo God and implement our own solutions.

How much longer?

It is not now and will never be in our power to answer that question. 

We humans are confronted and bedeviled with systemic evils that thwart God’s desires

and God’s will for us, that we would be reconciled to one another

and to God. 

But Ephesians and Dr King remind us that we are in this for the long haul,

that we in the church are participants not only in a struggle here on earth, but also in a cosmic one that transcends our understanding.

What are we to do then?  

Are we to silently accept the injustices of the world and just wait for God?

Not exactly,

because the incarnation means,

I’m pretty sure,

that God intends that we, God and us, should stand against injustice together. 

It is not just the death of Jesus that lays claim to us

but the life of Jesus as well,

the example of Jesus’ ministry and the lessons of Jesus’ teachings. 

And the life of Jesus says that we are not to ignore injustice,

not to ignore oppression

and not to ignore suffering. 

God has solutions for these problems,

for all the problems of the world in fact,

but those solutions can’t be implemented at the point of a sword or with the barrel of a gun. 

Nor can they be implemented with hateful words or vindictive rhetoric.

But only with the armaments that God has given us,

Truth,

Righteousness,

the Gospel,

Faith,

Salvation,

the Holy Spirit

and the Word, which is Christ.

God is delivering God’s people from the powers of fear, death, violence and injustice

and we are to be the witnesses to these things.

Dr King said;

“the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

“I know you are asking today, How long will it take?...

…I come to say to you this afternoon, however difficult the moment, however frustrating the hour, it will not be long, because "truth crushed to earth will rise again." How long? Not long.

Church, state, secularism and religion

While working in the seminary office today I was recycling and came across a recent copy of the magazine from Trinity School for Ministry, which is an Episcopal-(ish) seminary in Pennsylvania. In it there was an article that talked that described the movement of secularism from a kind of ecumenism towards a kind of modern day paganism. I've tried to find a link, but the school seems to be a bit delayed in putting their materials online. I thought it was an interesting observation and thesis. With the Presidential election coming up and many in the Republican nomination contest explicitly forming their policies in religious terms, it seems that the perennial question of American church-state relations is in no danger of going away. Personally, I wish that Congress would've just established the Episcopal Church as the official expression of Christianity in America (hey, we built a national cathedral already!), but I digressJ. The General Ordination Exams I just completed had two questions relating to church-state relations on it as well, so it seems to be in the air around me a lot. So, since I've already written it, here are my thoughts on the issue as prompted by GOE question 5.


In any society, the exercise of power is predicated upon the assumption of authority. That is, society legitimates the inherently oppressive exercise of power over some members of society on behalf of the civitas only if that power is exercised by an entity with properly ordained authority. For example, a police officer may only use force against another member of society when acting in his/her officially sanctioned role, otherwise their acts are considered criminal. The issue of authority then, in our culture, is the backdrop to understanding issues of Church-state relations. At one time, most people assumed that all legitimate authority in our nation was derived from God. Such a notion is enshrined in the Declaration of Independence which speaks of rights as being inalienable because they are given by God.

 
In a society which understood all civic authority as being endowed by God, it made sense to provide a privileged perch to God's representatives, the Church. The Church was understood to have a legitimate claim on the life of the civitas, so that things like establishment and, later, tax exemptions could be justified as the sacrificial offering of the community to the God from whom the civic authority derived.

 
However, that understanding of the source of authority for civic life has been under sustained challenge for quite some time. There isn't a clear consensus on the underlying reasons for this. I would suggest though, that divisiveness of the Church itself, with the ever multiplying diversity of denominations and independent Churches is a significant factor. If one looks to God's proxy, the Church, to offer an authoritative foundation for civic life then what one is likely to find is a confusing series of contradictory pronouncements. An unclear and confused claim to authority is unequal to the task of legitimating the use of power in our complex society.

 
For much of the history of Christianity in the West, its place as an established part of the social structure has meant that western culture(s) are deeply Christianized. The notions of human dignity and human rights as currently understood are the direct inheritors of the Christian tradition. That peace should be the natural state of things, that government should act both justly and mercifully, that the least amongst us should not be oppressed but assisted – all of these are ideas formed and developed in the Christian imagination and ideas that would not be so prevalent had the Church not long enjoyed a privileged place in society.

 
However, the flip side of that is that the Church, having in some sense fulfilled its mission to make a society more aligned with the Gospels, retreated into a place where it has seen its mission as protecting the status quo. The long held place of privilege has lulled the Church into a false sense of its place in society. Like a child whose parents hover and over-protects, our privileged position has insulated us from the consequences of our own self-destructive tendencies. We have not needed to seek out the unity of all people to God and to each other, because there has been little institutional upside in doing so.

 
To really begin to live out our mission and calling as Christians in the world will force us to stop looking at the ways in which we are different and instead focus on what it is that brings us together. If we are ever to once again be an effective voice for God's vision in society, we should be rushing to discard all of the trappings of privilege that have held us back and eagerly embrace the ways in which we can come together with a singular voice. I am under no illusion that this would be busy, but until we can find unity within the body, we will not be able to reclaim our rightful place of authority.