Status Check

It’s not like Anglicanland is no longer interesting, but it does seem a good bit less dramatic than it has been at most times during the years I have been watching events play out. And my choice of words—not carefully considered in the moment--is a telling reflection of how things are: events are playing out. Most of us no longer expect to be shocked or surprised by anything. Events are playing out. It’s as if they’re following a script leading to a foregone conclusion. We may not have a clear view of just what that conclusion looks like, so there’s still a whole lot to be curious about, but it feels like a conclusion that is nonetheless foregone, inexorable. The bold moves have mostly been made, or so it seems, at any rate. All the sabers that are going to get rattled have been rattled. All the triggers that are going to get pulled have been pulled.

We are not bereft of mystery: How will the various courts decide the pending litigation? Which provinces will adopt the Covenant? At what rate will the Episcopal Church’s financial and numerical decline increase? Will the ACNA become regularized as part of the Anglican Communion? (Indeed, will they be able to form a cohesive provincial church out of their quite disparate elements?) There are probably some I’m forgetting. But more significantly, it seems like all the high cards have been played. The strategic weapons have been fired; only tactical ordnance is left. And while we may not know the precise outcome, there’s not much for most of us to do but watch the hand play out.

I find in all this cause for both consternation and relief. And then some more consternation. Let me explain.

The first wave of consternation is basically withdrawal from the adrenaline rush of sustained drama: constantly “breaking” news, a flurry of press conferences, news releases, dueling blog posts, and always the next meeting of [fill in the blank] to look forward to. It’s a heady atmosphere to which one can easily become addicted. I haven’t exactly had to go into rehab, but there are moments when I miss the drama.

Then comes the relief. I didn’t make a commitment to become a disciple of Jesus in order to fight with other disciples of Jesus. I didn’t embrace (more like yield to the seduction of) Anglican Christianity more than 35 years ago because I thought it would have more exciting conflicts than the Grace Brethren or the Assyrian Orthodox. It is the joy of my life to do what I do as a pastor and priest—to lead God’s people in worship, to serve as a conduit of sacramental grace, to break open the word of God to them, to share their joys and sorrows as we grow together into the image of Christ. So, if the reduction in macro-drama allows me to be more present to the micro-drama of my ordinary life, I’m not going to whine about it.

But the reduction in intensity of conflict is itself cause for concern. If it’s nice to have a break from the clamor of battle, it also means we are no longer engaging our opponents. A few days ago, a former student of mine in my former diocese (now part of the ACNA) emailed me with a technical question about liturgy. In trying to answer, I was struck by the reality that, absent the context of presumed accountability to the constitution and canons of the same church, it’s difficult to talk about faithfulness to Prayer Book texts and rubrics. I felt a divide between me and this person of a sort that I have not felt before, and it was not a feeling I enjoyed. At the same time, while I still subscribe to the HoB/D, I’m feeling more and more disconnected to the people who post there and the things they’re interested in (most recently, the dismissal of nine workers in New York because their employer’s cleaning contract with the Episcopal Church Center was not renewed). We’re supposedly in the same church, but it doesn’t feel like it, and I can’t even muster the energy to tell them that and hope they care enough to ask why. Throughout our conflicts, I have repeatedly urged all parties to “walk apart together,” to burn no bridges, and, when possible, to hold hands even across the divide. Binding ties that can be broken in an instant of passion can take centuries and more to re-grow. Ironically, the very absence of drama enables us to slowly forget about one another, to think in terms of “them” rather than “us,” to let our binding ties atrophy and dissolve from lack of use.

Quick. Somebody pick a fight. We’re family, and if we can still fight, it means we can still love. God help us if we stop caring enough to fight, because it will mean we’ve stopped caring enough to love.

Trying to Get Back in the Saddle

This has not been a planned hiatus from blogging. I'm tempted to say something trite like "It just happened," but I think I'm smart enough to realize that nothing "just happens." It just seems that way because we're rarely aware of all the myriad influences on our behavior.

To my conscious perception, it appears that the immediate instrumental cause of my absence from this corner of cyberspace is found in the demands of "real" life. Parish ministry is demanding, and certainly "outranks" my blogging activity. I have a wife, and three grown children (two of whom live a mere 120 miles away with their spouses), and a 14-month old granddaughter who provides more than ample incentive to escape to Chicago during the day-and-a-half of time each week which I can in some sense consider "free." I'm also aware that I've growth slothful in the intellectual and spiritual discipline of reading. Sure, I guess you could say I get a lot of reading done by "surfing the 'net," and much of that reading is quite valuable. But I need to read ... you know ... actual books, if I don't want to stagnate and become all self-absorbed--indeed, if I want to have anything of substance to post on places like this blog. And for those reasons, I've been devoting more time to reading lately.

When people perfunctorily ask me, "How are you?", I often respond along the lines of "There's nothing wrong in my life that about eight more hours in a day wouldn't fix." I really do envy those who can get by on just a token amount of sleep each night. I'm just not one of them. And so part of my absence from blogging can be explained by decisions I make about spending time in ministry, spending time with family, and spending time just resting and "re-creating." It's foolish to demand so many golden eggs that you kills the goose that lays them.

So ... I will be back, and sooner than later, I think. Just last week I attended a conference at which I was reminded by many that what I do here really is a ministry, indeed, a calling. I have not lost my sense of vocation. An unplanned abandonment of a discretionary activity always raises the question whether that particularly activity has just run its course, had its day. I don't have that sense about my blogging. There may come a time to move on. It's happened to others much more prominent than I am. But I don't think that time is here yet.

Stay tuned.

A Christmas Gem

This is one of my Christmas favorites, from

the 1959 cantata Hodie by Ralph Vaughan

Williams. Here's the text (the first verse is

anonymous; the second is by the composer's

wife, Ursula Wood Vaughan Williams):

No sad thought his soul affright
Sleep it is that maketh night;’
Let no murmur nor rude wind
To his slumbers prove unkind:
But a quire of angels make
His dreams of heaven, and let him wake
To as many joys as can
In this world befall a man.

Promise fills the sky with light,
Stars and angels dance in flight;
Joy of heaven shall now unbind
Chains of evil from mankind,
Love and joy their power shall break,
And for a new born prince’s sake;
Never since the world began
Such a light such dark did span.

O Emmanuel

… and finally:

O Emmanuel, our King and our Lawgiver, the Desire of all nations and their Salvation: Come and save us, O Lord our God.

…and the very familiar:

O come, O come, Emmanuel,
and ransom captive Israel,
that mourns in lonely exile here
until the Son of God appear.

It’s been 23 years, but I remember enough of my seminary Hebrew to be able to see each part precisely: “with – us – God”, customarily (and more felicitously) rendered, “God with us.”

For the first time since 1988, I’m not preaching on Christmas (or the eve thereof) this year. I have a homiletically competent (and then some) Assistant who needs the experience, so it just seemed the right thing to do. In thinking back over the preparation and delivery of twenty Christmas sermons, I’m aware that I’ve never taken my cue from the actual gospel reading for Christmas Eve—the familiar account from Luke (that still sounds not-quite-right in anything but the King James translation), with its decree going out from Caesar Augustus and its full-up inn, and its shepherds keeping watch, and its manger and swaddling clothes. This is where the narrative poetry is, and I love poking around in it.

But for preaching? For preaching, I’ve always been inevitably drawn to the cosmically mystical (mystically cosmic?) poetry of the prologue to John’s gospel, which is appointed for the Mass of Christmas morning, and for the following Sunday. At Lessons & Carols this past Sunday night, I read it, and could barely keep my composure. This is the gospel, not of a nativity, but of an incarnation. It doesn’t run the risk of ever being thought of as cute, and I can’t imagine how anyone could ever work it into a children’s pageant. But it is as shattering a piece of literature as has ever been penned. “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt (literally, “pitched his tent”) among us.”

In what seems like a previous lifetime, in the early-to-mid 1970s, I was a graduate student in musicology. I wrote a 200-page thesis on twentieth century musical settings (unaccompanied) of the texts of the Latin Mass. In the roughly 500-year history of the Latin Mass as a musical form, certain stylistic conventions became virtually de rigueur for composers of different nationalities and different eras. The strongest of these conventions concerned the section of the Credo (Nicene Creed) that speak of the Incarnation. From et incarnatus est (“and he became incarnate”) through et homo factus est (“and was made Man”), the most complicated polyphony would suddenly slow down and become crystal clear, as if to say, “Listen to this. This is the really important part!”

So, in the years when it falls to me to seek a homiletical Muse for Christmas Eve, I invariably end up asking myself, “How can I explain the Incarnation in some fresh way? What image or metaphor can I use that will get through to somebody who’s maybe never thought about Christmas in this way? What can I say that will at least evoke the shocking enormity of the scandal—the scandal of the infinite becoming finite, the eternal becoming time-bound, the omnipresent occupying a quite definable set of coordinates on somebody’s GPS system, the scandal of the God who made us becoming one of us?"

Emmanuel. With us … God.

Maranatha. Come, Lord Jesus.

O Rex Gentium

The penultimate of the Great O Antiphons:

O King of the nations, and their Desire, you are the cornerstone who makes us both one: Come and save us all, the creature whom you have fashioned from clay.

…and its metrical paraphrase twin:

O come, Desire of nations, bind
in one the hearts of all mankind;
bid thou our sad divisions cease,
and be thyself our King of Peace.

The Magnificat, to which the seven antiphons are attached in their native environment, is one of the most political texts in all of holy scripture. It speaks of the powerful being cast down and the humble being raised up, of the sated being deprived and the hungry being filled. And of the seven antiphons, this one is perhaps the closest match to the canticle in its political overtones.

To the ears of a 21st century American, steeped since childhood in the values of democracy and egalitarianism, any political system that involves a King (“Rex”) is suspect from the get-go. And if that monarch purports to rule over “the nations,” the problem is only compounded. We are fond of peace, but fonder still of liberty, having witnessed the character of peace that is purchased by the acceptance of despotism.

That said, we’ve got some serious problems, and perhaps ought not to be picky about the form in which help arrives, even if it takes the form of a King. We are, in the words of the collect from four Sundays ago, “divided and enslaved by sin.” We experience this division and slavery in every dimension of our lives. We witnessed it last week in the enmity between developed and developing nations at the climate change summit in Copenhagen. We witness it when an estranged mother and father square off in a courtroom over custody of the child whose parents they are. It’s a pervasive fact of our lives. It’s a political problem, and a political problem needs a political solution.

We need to be “freed and brought together.” And in the providence of God, the vehicle of our liberation and reconciliation is the “gracious rule” of Christ our King. Whatever our political conditioning may be, in our heart of hearts, we know this to be true. Indeed, we yearn for it. As many of us sang two days ago, we know Jesus to be the “dear desire of every nation” and the “joy of every longing heart.” (Hymnal 1982, #66) Unlike the iron grip of tyranny that established the Pax Romana in the first century, which established peace by means of rule, Christ establishes his rule by means of peace. Reconciliation is his calling card (“the cornerstone who makes us both one”), which explains why he is the “Desire of nations.”

Maranatha. Come, Lord Jesus.

O Oriens

And now we come to number five of seven:

O Dayspring, brightness of light eternal, and Sun of Righeousness: Come and enlighten those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death.

Or, in the familiar parlance of the hymn version:

O come, thou Dayspring from on high,
and cheer us by thy drawing nigh;
disperse the gloomy clouds of night,
and death’s dark shadow put to flight.

I’m not a morning person. Truth to tell, the most difficult decision I make on any given day is to get out of bed. Still, there’s something compelling about a sunrise. Living on the western edge of the eastern time zone, it’s not hard for even a slacker like me to be up at the crack of dawn. I snapped the picture above out the bedroom window with my iPhone a few days ago at about 7:30 AM, realizing that it was a fragile fleeting moment.

Sunrise is not only luminous, but also numinous. To our primordial forebears, every evening must have been traumatic. They eventually learned that what goes around comes around, but that initial panic over the onset of darkness attached itself to an unsuspecting strand in our communal psychic DNA. So we have a subliminal squeamishness, at least (for some it’s an abject fear), about darkness, and a corresponding relief when that darkness disappears.

One of the skills that one develops in the practice of Christian prayer is to hallow the cycles of time. If every sunset is a trifle annoying because—who knows?—maybe this time it’s permanent, then every time we lay our heads on a pillow and allow ourselves to fall asleep, it’s a risky move, because—who knows?—maybe this time it will be permanent. Every act of falling asleep is, in effect, a rehearsal for the Big Sleep. Since, barring an imminent parousia, it’s an inescapable eventuality, we could probably do with the practice.

But if that much is true for every sunset, then there is a parallel truth in every sunrise. The Monday collect for Morning Prayer cuts to the chase:

O God, the King eternal, whose light divides the day from the night, and turns the shadow of death into morning …

Every sunrise is a foretaste of “that great gettin’-up mornin’” (I’m obviously married to a choir director). Every time we entrust ourselves to sleep at night and, in fact, do wake up the next morning, it's an anticipation of the resurrection of the body that we proclaim in the creeds. Every time my feet hit the floor as I roll out of bed (always reluctantly), I’ve conditioned myself to sign myself with the cross and recollect my identity as one who has been baptized into the dying the rising of Christ. A little while later, during the Morning Office, these words from the Song of Zechariah cross my lips:

In the tender compassion of our God * the dawn from on high shall break upon us, To shine on those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death, * and to guide our feet into the way of peace.

Cranmer’s original Anglicization of this text rendered “dawn” as “dayspring.” In the conventional sense, I’m still not a morning person, and that isn’t likely to change. But scratch the surface, and morning is my favorite time ever, because I have been claimed by the Dayspring from on high who has broken in upon us.

Maranatha. Come, Lord Jesus.

O Clavis David

The fourth of the seven Big O’s:

O Key of David, and Scepter of the house of Israel, you open and no one can shut, you shut and no one can open: Come and bring the captives out of the prison house, those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death.

…and the same thing paraphrased for rhyme and meter:

O come, thou Key of David, come,
and open wide our heavenly home;
make safe the way that leads on high,
and close the path to misery.

In the summer of 1987, after my first year in seminary, I spent the better part of three months as a chaplain intern at the Mendota State Hospital in Madison, Wisconsin. (It was part of wretched exercise called Clinical Pastoral Education, still required of most seminarians across denominational lines.) The patients on my unit were there because they were deemed to be a danger either to themselves or to others. In other words, they were real nut cases: schizophrenia, bipolarity, paranoia, multiple personality, various delusions, and some stuff I’m probably forgetting.

As crazy as they were, however, most of them were able, at any given moment, to interact with one another and with staff members in ways that seemed quite … well … normal. Now, combine that with the fact that some of the staff were pretty crazy themselves, and the situation gets very “interesting.” A neutral third-party observer might have been sometimes hard pressed to distinguish the patients from the staff! The only way to tell for sure was to watch and see who was able to pull a key out of his or her pocket and exit the building.

I, of course, had a key. And I have to say, every time I used that key and left the building, I did so with conscious gratitude. During those three (long) months, it never got routine. I was always aware of how privileged I was to be able to leave the surreal world of the mental hospital unit behind me for a few hours. Ironically, it was in the act of leaving them that I felt the most compassion for the patients, none of whom had asked to be paranoid or suicidal or sociopathic. But there they were, locked in. And there I was, holding a key.

On a more cosmic scale, however, I’m just as much a captive as those mental patients, and the key I used to separate myself from them would be of no avail to me, or to anyone else, in the captivity we all share as human beings. The “prison house” in which we are held is built of pride, anger, lust, envy, gluttony, avarice (greed), and sloth. Its walls are lined with deceit, theft, adultery, and murder, and reinforced with resentment, bitterness, exploitation, and oppression.

There is only one key that can unlock its door—the Key of David, the Lion of the Tribe of Judah, the Anointed One of God, the Messiah. We who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death eagerly—no, anxiously—await the arrival of that Key, the Key who will both liberate us from our captivity and permanently “close the path the misery.”

Maranatha. Come, Lord Jesus.