More islands and rivers...

When I was growing up my family spent summers on an island in the Delaware River in Pennsylvania. Although we lived most of the year in Chicago, it always seemed to me that life by the River was our “true” life, and the Island constituted the “real world.” On the Island it seemed that even the trees and rocks were our cousins, and the River a grandmother to us all. The summer days flowed by slowly, like the current that carried us downstream to our favorite fishing holes. On the Island things were as they should be, and people were at their best.   

When Eucharistic Prayer C in the Book of Common Prayer speaks of “this fragile earth, our island home,” I think at once of the Delaware, and “our” Island, except we share this fragile earth with 7 billion of our human cousins, and, in place of the Delaware, we are blasting outward through an ocean of darkness. Is the space around us in any sense a grandmother? Is this earthly hunk of rock in any sense a relative? Given our self-destructive bent, how can human beings hope to restore things “as they should be”? How can we create conditions where “people are at their best”?

At every Eucharist we are invited, and even urgently called to cross the threshold of an Alternate Reality, a Universe Under Construction, a New Creation. To enter, we need not, ought not, go in search of better planets or unspoiled islands, but rather “open our eyes to see [God’s] hand at work in the world around us” (Prayer C again). The “real” world is the one we are already inhabiting, but to perceive it we have to develop our capacity to see with “sacramental eyes.”

In 1955, Hurricane Diane caused the Delaware River to rise in catastrophic flood, inundating our island and washing away the cabin which, a short time earlier, we had evacuated in a rowboat. But, for me, that drowned Island still reassembles itself at every Eucharist, and rocks and trees resume the shape of cousins, and interstellar space wraps our island home in a grandmotherly embrace, and, in that Eucharistic moment, things are as they should be, and people are at their best.    

   Jonathan+

Omitted from last Sunday's sermon for reasons of brevity...

I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. John 13:34

I OMITTED ABOUT 1/3 of what I had intended to say in last Sunday’s sermon. The sermon was plenty long as it was, but I liked what I had prepared, so here it is…

NANCY and I watch network TV shows like NCIS, Hawaii 5/0, and Criminal Minds. The shows are formulaic, violent, and (in the case of Criminal Minds) depict sadistic cruelty to an extent that can’t be healthy to watch. So why do we watch it? In our case it is because we are drawn by the relationships among the principle characters, and in all of these action/crime dramas there is a “team” that routinely places its collective self in harm’s way in defense of the common good. The characters have damaged or nonexistent personal lives, and are living examples of John 15:13, “no one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” When one of the regular cast members leaves a series, it causes us grief, and connects us to the experiences of loss that have marked our own lives.  We miss Ziva and Warrick, and regret (and resent) Gil’s resistance to intimacy.  

OF AN ENTIRELY DIFFERENT SORT is the British drama shown on PBS, “Call the Midwife.”  There is no gun play in this series, but it is more realistic, gritty, and believable than those aforementioned programs. The stories are set in a poor part of London in the 1950’s and 60’s, and involve a community of Anglican nuns and their lay associates. The nuns are devout but flawed: one is plain crazy; another is plain grouchy; and another, their leader, fits my definition of a saint. The many crises, tragedies, and reconciliations that occur are depicted with an accompanying soundtrack of the sisters in their chapel, chanting the (to me) familiar psalms of the monastic office. “Whosoever dwells under the defense of the most high * abides under the shadow of the almighty.”

For these nuns, the “shadow” under which they abide is a love that motivates all they do, and even more all that they find themselves unable to do. Love is the alpha and omega of their lives: love for the innocent and helpless; love for the unloved and unloveable. They are deeply traditional, yet reluctant to judge and open to change. In other words, Anglican, at least in the forms I have encountered in 60 years as an Episcopalian.

Women in the Bible...some new stuff

At clergy conference with colleagues from the Diocese of Michigan...topic is "Bible Women", led by The Rev. Lindsay Hardin Freeman. She points out out that 93 women speak 14,056 words in the Bible. A small fraction of the air time given to men, but still greater than what appears in the source books of other most other world religions, and what women do contribute is essential to the development of Judeo-Christian tradition.
     Here are some of her conclusions:
1. When woman in the Bible do speak, it is with a startling boldness;
2. Biblical women push against patriarchal restraints (a consistent pattern, which I find remarkable given the patriarchal bias prevailing in both Jewish and Christian scriptures...why were these proto-feminist voices not edited out of the tradition by vigilant male scribes? True, they may have been blind to the implications of what they were transcribing...but I see the hand of God at work nonetheless.)
3. Biblical women "climb out over the transom" to serve as God's agents, subverting social norms and outsmarting the duly constituted authorities charged with keeping them in line.
4. Many are unmarried, widows, or in some way outside the structures of social control.
5. They suffer horrible loss and are treated like pawns on a chessboard yet appear in scripture as bright lights in sacred history;
6. Are occasionally found in scripture as occupying positions of power ordinarily assigned to men, without any note of explanation or acknowledgment within the text that this represents anything unusual. What's up with that?
 Lindsay Hardin Freeman and her husband, The Rev. Len Freeman, assert that, as a group, the outspoken women of the Bible functioned as the "social media" of their day, which I take to mean that they carried on a sort of unofficial, grassroots counter-narrative to what the "mainstream" media has passed on to us. In any case, this presentation has demonstrated, once again, that you are never too old to learn something new about the Bible. A fine day.

Easter is Spooky, but not a Ghost Story

Easter is not a ghost story. What the first disciples encountered may have been spooky, but it was not a disembodied spirit wandering around that transformed them. Ghosts are a common feature in human experience, but there was nothing common about the resurrection of the church after the death of Jesus of Nazareth. It was too clumsy to have been a conspiracy, and too obscure to have been a miraculous stunt of some kind. Whatever it was, it was as real as the emptiness of the tomb, and as tangible as the wounds in his hands and feet. And it was most definitely Jesus whom they encountered, not some celestial being, come to reassure them that their friend had not died in vain.   

Nor was it just one event, one definitive flash of revelation where they all came to the same conclusion all at the same time. The New Testament accounts are raggedy, uncoordinated fragments of what is still not a fully coherent story, the upshot of which was that their discipleship had not ended, their Teacher was not finished teaching, their Christ had only just begun to Christify the world.

So it was no ghost, but neither could they (nor would we want them to) produce a resuscitated Jesus to vindicate their cause to superstitious Roman Rulers or paranoid High Priests. The only evidence they had to offer was their transformed selves, their Eucharistic joy, and their subversive stories, just as the only evidence we have to offer now is us.

We have seen no ghosts, and we, too, find ourselves blessedly spooked by the same stories, the same Eucharist, the same seductive joy. Like the apostolic church, our discipleship has not ended, our Teacher has not finished teaching, and our Christ has only just begun to do whatever it is he does that so transforms the world.

The Limits of Empiricism?

In the March 21 issue of The New Yorker magazine, Harvard historian Jill Lepore writes about the traumatic shift in jurisprudence from "trial by combat" to "trial by jury," which occurred at the same time that The Magna Carta was being imposed on King John of England, and "required a new doctrines of evidence and a new method of inquiry...". Trial by combat "place[s] judgment in the hands of God", whereas trial by jury "places judgment in the hands of men."
    This watershed event signaled an empiricist consensus that "between the thirteenth century and the nineteenth...spread from law outward to science, history, and journalism." Lepore observes that "empiricists believed they had deduced a method by which they could discover a universe of truth: impartial, verifiable knowledge."
      "Somewhere in the middle of the twentieth century, fundamentalism and post-modernism, the religious right and the academic left, met up: either the only truth is the truth of the divine or there is no truth; for both, empiricism is an error."
    For Lepore, this shift away from an empiricist consensus contributes to the "epistemological havoc" of the current presidential campaign in the U.S.A. . The debate "has a lot more in common with trial by combat than with trial by jury, which is what people are talking about when they say these debates seem 'childish'; the outcome is the evidence."
     Lepore cites writings by " by Michael P. Lynch, which have "identified three sources of skepticism about reason: the suspicion that all reasoning is rationalization; the idea that science is just another faith; and the notion that objectivity is an illusion." As a result, Lynch believes, " we won't be.able to agree on the facts, let alone values." Both these writers are concerned for the future of American politics, because our system is "wholly dependent on the empiricism of the Enlightenment, as answerable to evidence."
      With regard to the current campaign, Lenore writes that "Trump doesn't reason...he wants combat. Cruz's appeal is to the judgment of God... Rubio's appeal is to Google." Lenore goes on to say, "People who care about civil society have two choices: find some epistemic principles other than empiricism on which every one can agree; or else find some method other than reason with which to defend empiricism... Lynch thinks the best defense of reason is a common practical and ethical commitment."

    Are Lynch and Lenore correct when they say that "reason can't defend itself without resort to reason?" While rational discourse must have a place, it seems to me that science, religion, and politics are all subject to the requirement that their products "work" to enhance the human community in one way or another. Is that not the ultimate test of empirical observations? And are not all scientific discoveries "provisional", and in need of constant revival? In this sense even the most empirical experiments are subject to the test of harsh reality. The problem is that, given the vast power of weapons of mass destruction, we don't have a lot of room for experimentation.
   

AWHEN IT COMES TO EASTER THE EASTER VIGIl SAYS IT ALL...

The earliest Christians followed the Jewish calendar, attending synagogue worship on Saturdays and gathering in people’s homes for the Eucharist on Sundays (which was a work day, so they had to start early, or finish late). The annual observance of Passover very early became the principle day for baptism. The vigil service took all night, and concluded with the First Eucharist of Easter as day was breaking. 

The vigil as most Episcopalians observe it today is nowhere near as rigorous an event, but it still seeks to rehearse the entire drama of salvation through the use of light and dark, fire, water, and the First Eucharist of Easter. Some of the most significant parts of the Hebrew Scriptures are read. When the Gospel of the Resurrection is read, all the lights come on, candles are lit, the organ blasts, and “alleluia” is sung. 

The Easter Vigil, and the celebrative worship of Easter morning, seek to enact and express the profound mystery of Jesus’ death and resurrection. These liturgies arose out of the church’s experience of the Risen Christ, and invite us to enter a place “behind” normal expectations and even beliefs, a world where death no longer has dominion over us, where disciples are transformed, and apostles sent out. “How blessed is this night, when earth and heaven are joined and man is reconciled to God.” Exsultet chant, sung to bless the Paschal Candle during the Easter Vigil.

At ST. Andrew's this year, the Easter Vigil will occur at 8:00pm on Saturday, March 26. Easter morning will be observed with Festival Eucharists at 8 and 10a.m.