Sheep and death

This Sunday was Good Shepherd Sunday and it was my turn to preach.  As I read the lessons this week though, all I could come up with was sheep and death. I probably should have been trying to develop some really insightful theme that was deep and edifying, but instead I just kept thinking about the time when I considered becoming a sheep farmer.  I used to own a farm in upstate New York and there was a perfect 8 or 10 acre pasture that wasn't being used much that I thought would be ideal for a small flock of sheep.  I even bought a book (this was before google and wikipedia and all that) called Raising Sheep the Modern Way.

It took a little digging but I unearthed my copy this week and starting skimming through it which caused two reactions for me.  The first was that it made me kind of want to be a sheep farmer again, but the second was to cause me to reconsider the line from John's Gospel we read this morning where Jesus says; "I am the good shepherd.  The good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep."  Because as I read through the book I was reminded of how seemingly fraught with peril is the life of a sheep.  The book describes all sorts of parasites and illnesses which can kill a sheep, and the dangers of lambing and how to respond; it has loads (really, loads) of info on fences, fences to keep sheep in and predators out.  It even has a section on sheep dogs.  But it didn't have anything in there about laying down your life.

Set aside for a minute that this is Jesus talking; do we really believe that a good shepherd would die for a bunch of sheep?  Many people say they would give their life for their children, and some people may think they're willing to die for an ideal or a cause - but sheep? That's not how our world works. We're sheep-like enough, our primary concerns are a full belly and keeping the wolves at bay, but unlike sheep (probably) many of us are willing enough to do so at the expense of others. Even the most conscientious of us cannot escape the fact that all of our actions involve some kind of compromise with systems that perpetuate injustice.


Several years ago, after a Good Friday service, a friend said to me; "I just don't understand why he had to die." Many people have built entire theological careers on trying to answer that question. But in the end I think it might boil down to this. Jesus died because God believes in a world where good shepherds lay down their lives for sheep, and we don't.

Remember!

I know we're well into Easter, but I'm still thinking about Maundy Thursday (the Thursday before Good Friday) and what Jesus means when at the last supper he presents the bread and wine as his body and blood and says that whenever we eat and drink these we should do so in remembrance of him.

Earlier that day, my 3 year old daughter's new big-girl bed arrived and part of getting it into her room was taking apart the bed she was using which had originally been her crib.  As I took it apart, my mind was filled witht he images of Nikki and I picking it out at the store, and decorating Zella's room before she was born, picking out bedding and the mobile and getting the sleep sheep from Cathy at church and bringing Zella home and learning how to get a baby to sleep and... an d well all the stuff that goes with having a baby and I was struck by how much of my relationship with Zella was tied up in this bed that I was dismantling to put in the basement.  And I was struck by how funny our memory is.  It's like I couldn't begin to describe how my Grandma White smelled, but on at least two occasions I've encountered that scent and powerful memories, full of emotion and longing sprang forth.

So in the Maundy Thursday scripture readings we encounter instances of God's command to remember.  To remember what God has done for his people enslaved in Egypt and what God is doing in the person of Jesus on the night before his death. "Do this in the remembrance of me," God says.  But it seems to me that this remembrance to which we are called isn't just a recalling of the past, but an invitation to live out what God has done for God's people again today.  God's saving actions aren't mere historical events but the indelible pattern of life, of our life and of life always and everywhere.  We remember what God has done in order to open our eyes to what God is doing.

We are the people being set free from slavery, we are the people witnessing God’s saving arm; God’s grace on our behalf.  In this remembrance God, Father, Son and Spirit are real and present among us and within us.  When we kneel at the communion rail, and partake of the body and blood, we are sitting around the table in the upper room of a house in Jerusalem with our Lord and Teacher.  Jesus isn’t confined to a piece of bread or a sip of wine but is wholly real and fully present in the community gathered in remembrance of God’s acts in the past, in the present and in the future.

what is Caesar's?

I heard on the radio yesterday that the Defense Department is investigating the actions some US military members in the ever-expanding Cartagena prostitution scandal which originated with the actions of some Secret Service agents in advance of a visit to Colombia by President Obama.  Also in the news recently were photos of US soldiers being, to put in charitably, disrespectful of dead Afghan fighters which they had recently killed.  Many voices are expressing a concern about the degradation of American morals or virtue or some such thing exhibited in these episodes.  I share their concern and dismay.  However, I do not think these incidents are indicative of any kind of social decline.  Rather, I am of the opinion that people are remarkably consistent across time and humans today are, by and large, no more virtuous or callous from age to age than they might be at any given point in time.  In the Christian concept, this is what might be construed as the sinfulness of humanity.  In a non-Christian context, perhaps it would be called something like biological determinism.

Now I wouldn't go so far as Calvin's notion of the Total Depravity of humanity.  I do believe that all of the created universe, including people, contains something inherently good that is reflective of the God who lies behind our existence.  That said though, there does certainly seem to be something deep within our beings which causes us to create and re-create over and over again unjust relationships and systems.  I think that an important part of being a faithful person is the need to continually examine our relationship and participation in the human-created systems that define our world.  I'm pretty sure that's what Jesus was on about in his answer to the question about paying taxes; "Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's."  The bigger question for us is; what isn't God's?

So, people continually do bad things because that seems to be at least a part of who we are as humans.  Christ's call to love our neighbors as ourselves is an invitation to turn our narcissism and selfishness on its head; an invitation to put ourselves last.  We need to be mindful of the ways we participate in Caesar's world, the ways in which we put our comforts ahead of justice.  I'm not suggesting we all run off to live in communes - we aren't turning the clock back to be hunter-gatherers.  But it might be helpful to recall that in Genesis, all of the arts of civilization are the fruit of the children of Cain, who was cursed for murdering his brother.

 

Ask A Christian!

A favorite blog (newspaper column really) of mine is ¡Ask a Mexican! which manages to be both funny and insightful. Imagined as a place where people could ask the kind of boneheadedly ignorant questions they would never ask a real live person; its real genius is the way that it subverts prejudice by taking it at face value and responding with truth and humor. Only someone really self-confident in their identity, but also someone who didn't take themselves too seriously could have pulled this off for as long as ¡Ask a Mexican! has been around.


It strikes me that much of Christianity, and especially the strain of Christianity which includes the Episcopal Church, is sadly lacking in such confidence (though I will offer the counter-example of Lent Madness, which seems to embody the same kind of cheeky confidence). So much energy in the Episcopal Church, as well as the wider Anglican Communion, is taken up with deadly earnest, woe-is-me, handwringing. But too many people think that answer to the larger cultural shifts away from religion generally is to abandon everything that makes Christianity, well… Christian. Hospitality isn't about removing the markers of community; it's about explaining the markers and walking with people as they navigate their way through them. We won't bring people along with us if we keep telling them that there is nothing distinctive about Christianity. To do so is to suggest that there is nothing worthwhile about our so-called faith life.


I suspect that the underlying reason is just that lack of confidence within the Church about the claims which Christianity makes. Jesus wasn't just a really swell guy with some good ideas, he is the Son of God, fully human, fully divine whose life is our best understanding of the nature of God, and whose death and resurrection is sure promise of God's redemptive power. If you're going to claim a Christian identity, especially if you're someone who occupies a position of authority, then for heaven's sake take it seriously!


Now to go finish that sermon for Maundy Thursday….

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.