Moriah (Proper 8A)

Moriah

Proper 8 Year A

27 June 2014 8 a.m. Said and 10:00 a.m. Sung Holy Eucharist

Parish Church of Trinity Ashland (Oregon)

Genesis 22:1-14; Psalm 13; Romans 6:12-23; Matthew 10:40-42

God, take away our hearts of stone, and give us hearts of flesh.  Amen

“God said, ‘Take your son Isaac, your only son, the one whom you love, ... and kill him … for me.’” This is a sentence of horror.  This is a text of terror. This story from the Book of Genesis is without a doubt one of the most troubling and disturbing stories of the Bible.  

Many commentators discuss it.  Eric Auerbach, in his great tour of Western literature, Mimesis, uses the story to show how Biblical narrative reaches out to the listener and demands acceptance or rejection, submission or revolt.   It demands that you react.  This narrative element is, I believe, why many universities are uncomfortable in teaching the Bible, even “as literature.”  The Bible, and this story most of all, does not want to be taken as mere literature.

Danish existentialist theologian Soren Kirkegaard gives several different versions of the story, each showing how not to understand faith.  To be a “knight of faith” like Abraham, you must make a leap of faith into the dark, absolutely unwilling to sacrifice your child, but absolutely willing to follow God’s command to do so nonetheless. 

Episcopalian writer Madeleine l’Engle tells the story with a twist: God puts Abraham to the test as in Genesis, but then expresses to the angels disappointment in how Abraham did.  God says that Abraham has failed the test that She has given him. 

The fact is, people who follow a God who tells them to sacrifice their children often do not find an angel holding them back from the horrible moment or a ram caught in the bush.  Many people who on the basis of religious faith refuse any medical care for their children find their children dead from common and easily cured ailments.  Visionaries who hear and follow voices like the one heard by Abraham in this story usually end up in wards for the criminally insane, having actually slaughtered their loved little ones. 

The rabbis saw the problem in the story. Talmudic and Midrashic treatments of this text often note that Sarah dies just after this story, “probably from a broken heart” at Abraham’s cruelty.  Others observe that the phrase “Abraham walked with God” never again occurs in the Biblical narrative after this story. 

Jewish, Christian, and Muslim understandings of the story have differed wildly, another indication of how uncomfortable the story makes us. 

Christians traditionally have seen Abraham as a model of deep faith, who trusts God so much that he gives up all his hopes for the future.  We usually call the story “the sacrifice of Isaac,” and liturgically read it, as today, during ordinary time, when readings focus on day-to-day living and growing in the faith.  Christians often see in Isaac the beloved son as a hint of Jesus’ dying for our sins on the cross. 

Jews call the story “the Binding (of Isaac)” and usually see it through his eyes.  They identify with Isaac, seeing themselves as the chosen but suffering nation, blessed and at times afflicted by a demanding Deity.  Like Isaac bound on the altar, they are miraculously saved, again and again, through God’s loving kindness.  They read the story on the Rosh ha-shanah, the first day of the Jewish year, and the beginning of the High Holiday season in the fall, which culminates in the Day of Atonement.   The high point of the service is the blowing of the shofar, a ram’s horn trumpet that brings to mind the ram caught in the thicket that serves as a substitute for Isaac at the end of the story. 

Muslims tell the story somewhat differently. The festival Eid ul-Adha, the Feast of the Sacrifice, commemorates the story.   Elena and I lived in West Africa a few years ago.  We remember very vividly the days before Adha, called "Tabaski" in that part of the world, Muslim shepherds would drive large herds of sheep to the beach and then wash them in the sea before buyers would take them home, slaughter and roast them stuffed with rice and raisins or dates, and them serve them as the main dish in their holiday meal.

The Quran says that when Ibrahim's only son reaches the age of adolescence, Ibrahim tells him that in a dream he has been commanded to sacrifice him (Surah as-Saffat 37.102-03).   The son, as devoted to Allah as his father, readily accepts. Ibrahim lays his son face down for the sacrificial slicing of the throat, but a voice calls out telling him that he has fulfilled the vision and passed the test.  Ibrahim is then rewarded with a large feast, in oral tradition said variously to have been a ram, a goat, or a sheep.  Though the Quran does not name the son, Muslims have always understood that it is not Ishaq or Isaac, the ancestor of the Jews, but rather his older half-brother Ismail or Ishmael, the ancestor of the Arabs. 

When we read such a troubling text we must remember its original context. We moderns tend to forget that human sacrifice was a fact of life in most cultures of antiquity.   Israel defined itself against such traditions slowly, and only gradually renounced the practice.   This story, part of that process, is riddled with contradiction as a result.   

In Hebrew, different names are used for God in the story at different parts of the story.  “God” or Elohim at the beginning of the passage demands the sacrifice from Abraham.  At the story’s end, it is Yahweh, or the LORD who stops Abraham.  The impression is that Abraham is listening to a different god at different parts of the story, or at least sorting his gods out. 

Repeatedly in the story, Abraham says “Hinneni,”  “Here I am.”  When God first speaks to Abraham, Abraham replies “Here I am.”  When Isaac asks him what in the hell is going on, he answers “Here I am.   When the angel stops the murder, Abraham says, “Here I am.”   Abraham is open-eyed, open-eared and open-hearted.  Abraham is present.  Hinneni.  Here I am.  And so he hears the other voice of God at the end of the story. 

It looks like Abraham does not want to do what he thinks God is demanding.  He takes two slave boys with him, ahead of Isaac on this deadly trip.  Is he hoping maybe for a substitute?  He takes his time on the way, and the narrative progresses slowly.   Some rabbis thinks that Abraham never intends to sacrifice Isaac.  Abraham is putting God to the test, deliberately stalling and stringing out the process to see whether God would back off from such an evil thing. 

Yet Abraham, however slowly, keeps taking the next step of what is in front of him.  Just as he left Ur “not knowing where he was going,” he heads for Moriah without any clear idea of how things will turn out.  

And so God does a new thing (at least from the point of view of that age).  He does not demand human sacrifice.   Redemptive violence is questioned, and undermined, and in the end remains only in as something directed at an animal, the ram.

The deep conflicts in the story are seen clearest when we note that God blesses Abraham in the end because Abraham had been willing to do precisely the thing that God eventually prevents him from doing.   This contradiction may have not seemed unusual for people in antiquity accustomed to the idea of human sacrifice as something demanded by the gods.  But it should strike us as outright strange.  We, after all, have benefited from the religious shift embodied in texts as this and believe that God does not demand any such thing.   

Those earlier people may have been justified in praising Abraham’s faith shown by the fact that he almost did the very thing that he didn't end up having to do.  But we must praise his faith shown by the fact that he ultimately did not end up doing what he originally had felt he had to do. 

Abraham’s openness and presence, within the context of a developing covenantal relationship with God, meant that his understanding of himself and of God would, in time, change.  Originally, his relationship with God had started by his trusting God and rejecting the idolatry around him.  Ultimately, his fidelity to the God was expressed in rejecting the demands and expectations of the religion and society around him that had found their way into his own heart and mind. 

There are still those who claim that there is redemptive value in violence.  In popular culture, we have a cult of not getting mad, but of getting even.  Most action films praise violence.  Many of our nations’ international policies are steeped in exerting our will on others through force of arms.   Within the Church, there are those whose only understanding of the death of our Lord on the cross for us is one of substituted penal torture. And in all three of the Abrahamic religions, there are those who say that the ultimate sign of faith is willingness not only to die for, but also to kill for one’s God.  Redemptive violence is alive and well in the theologies of our age. 

For me, the true faith of Abraham is expressed in ultimately rejecting these voices.  Openness to God, being present and responsive to a living God with whom we are in covenant—this means that we must question those parts of our faith and our habits of the heart that would have us metaphorically or literally slice the throats of others, whether gladly or mourning, in pious devotion to some voice we think is God’s.  

So who was being tested here?  Abraham or God?  Did Abraham pass or fail the test?  Did God?   Given that the truth of Moriah, the Mountain of the Vision of the LORD depends on where we stand in the story, I think that it is we who are being tested. 

May we during this week reflect on it, and make it connect to our own relationship with God. 

In the name of Christ, Amen. 

James Weldon Johnson on Death (Mid-week Message)

Fr. Tony’s Mid-week Message

June 25, 2014

James Weldon Johnson on Death

Eternal God, we give thanks for the gifts that you gave your servant James Weldon Johnson: a heart and voice to praise your Name in verse. As he gave us powerful words to glorify you, may we also speak with joy and boldness to banish hatred from your creation, in the Name of Jesus Christ; who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, for ever and ever.  Amen.

Today is the feast day of James Weldon Johnson in the Holy Women, Holy Men cycle of commemorations.   One of the founders of the NAACP, the lyricist of “Lift Every Voice and Sing” (the unofficial African-American national anthem), early African-American U.S. diplomat, and prolific author, Johnson was one of the great poets who helped the African-American people find their voice.  His memoirs from his consular assignment in Central America in 1906-12, with their pointed description of craven and venal Congressional delegation visits and hopeless and helpless poverty-stricken expatriate U.S. citizens, ring as true today as when they were written.  

Last year, I shared “The Creation,” one of Johnson’s poems in the style of traditional Black preaching in his Harlem Renaissance masterpiece, God’s Trombones.  Here is another poem from the collection:    

 

A Funeral Sermon

(James Weldon Johnson, from God’s Trombones

Weep not, weep not,
            She is not dead;
            She's resting in the bosom of Jesus.
            Heart-broken husband -- weep no more;
            Grief-stricken son -- weep no more;
            Left-lonesome daughter -- weep no more;
            She's only just gone home.

                         Day before yesterday morning,
                         God was looking down from his great,

high heaven

Looking down on all his children,
And his eye fell on Sister Caroline,
Tossing on her bed of pain.

                        And God's big heart was touched with pity,
                        With the everlasting pity.

                         And God sat back on his throne,
                         And he commanded that tall, bright angel

                                     standing at his right hand:
                         Call me Death!
                         And that tall, bright angel cried in a voice
                         That broke like a clap of thunder:
                         Call Death! -- Call Death!
                         And the echo sounded down the

                                      streets of heaven
                         Till it reached away back to that

                                      shadowy place,
                         Where Death waits with his pale,

                                     white horses.

                         And Death heard the summons,
                         And he leaped on his fastest horse,
                         Pale as a sheet in the moonlight.
                         Up the golden street Death galloped,
                         And the hoofs of his horse struck

                                     fire from the gold,
                         But they didn't make no sound.
                         Up Death rode to the Great White Throne,
                         And waited for God's command.

                         And God said: Go down, Death, go down,
                         Go down to Savannah, Georgia,
                         Down in Yamacraw,
                         And find Sister Caroline.
                         She's borne the burden and heat of the day,
                         She's labored long in my vineyard,
                         And she's tired --
                         She's weary --
                         Go down, Death, and bring her to me.

                         And Death didn't say a word,
                         But he loosed the reins on his

                                         pale, white horse,
                         And he clamped the spurs to

                                         his bloodless sides,
                         And out and down he rode,
                         Through heaven's pearly gates,
                         Past suns and moons and stars;
                         On Death rode,
                         And the foam from his horse was

                                       like a comet in the sky;
                         On Death rode,
                         Leaving the lightning's flash behind;
                         Straight on down he came.

                         While we were watching round her bed,
                         She turned her eyes and looked away,
                         She saw what we couldn't see;
                         She saw Old Death. She saw Old Death
                         Coming like a falling star.
                         But Death didn't frighten Sister Caroline;
                         He looked to her like a welcome friend.
                         And she whispered to us: I'm going home,
                         And she smiled and closed her eyes.

                         And Death took her up like a baby,
                         And she lay in his icy arms,
                         But she didn't feel no chill.
                         And Death began to ride again --
                         Up beyond the evening star,
                         Out beyond the morning star,
                         Into the glittering light of glory,
                         On to the Great White Throne.

                         And there he laid Sister Caroline
                         On the loving breast of Jesus.

                         And Jesus took his own hand and

                                          wiped away her tears,
                         And he smoothed the furrows

                                           from her face,
                         And the angels sang a little song,
                         And Jesus rocked her in his arms,
                         And kept a-saying: Take your rest,
                         Take your rest, take your rest.

                         Weep not -- weep not,
                         She is not dead;
                         She's resting in the bosom of Jesus.

Grace and Peace.  –Fr. Tony+

No Secrets (Proper 7A)

No Secrets

Second Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 7 A)
June 22, 2014  
The Rev. Fr. Anthony Hutchinson, Ph.D., SCP

Trinity Parish Church

Ashland, Oregon

8:00 a.m. Said, 10:00 a.m. Choral Mass

Jeremiah 20:7-13 Psalm 69: 8-11, (12-17), 18-20 Romans 6:1b-11 Matthew 10:24-39

           
God, take away our hearts of stone
 and give us hearts of flesh. Amen.

The last two weeks, Elena and I have been traveling around the West visiting family members, attending a wedding and long-schedule events, and generally reconnecting.  Last Sunday, we found ourselves at St. Mary’s, a small historic Episcopal Church in Provo, Utah, home of the LDS Church’s Brigham Young University.  A liberal church island in a sea of red state conservatism, the small congregation bills itself as “nourishing souls and saving lives in Provo since 1892.”

In this beautiful little gem of a church, not unlike Ashland’s Trinity, but smaller, I saw on the hallway outside the Priest-in-Charge’s office a small framed calligraphic sign.  Its gothic black lettering had the air of an authoritative dictum from the wisdom of the ages, if not an oracle of God.  Its words?  “Thou shalt not …   whine!” 

Today’s scripture readings seem to have a whining tone to them:  Jeremiah complains,

“O LORD, you have enticed me,

and I was enticed;

you have overpowered me,

and you have prevailed.

I have become a laughingstock all day long;

everyone mocks me…

If I say, "I will not mention [God],

or speak any more in his name,"

then within me there is something like a burning fire

shut up in my bones;

I am weary with holding it in,

and I cannot.

For I hear many whispering…

"Denounce him! Let us denounce him!"

All my close friends

are watching for me to stumble.

"Perhaps … we can prevail against him,

and take our revenge on him."

The idea is that Yahweh’s word has possessed Jeremiah, taken him over, and made him the object of ridicule and persecution of all about him.  Jeremiah, despite himself, simply must speak God’s word in what we have come to call a Jeremiad, a non-ending stream of condemnation and woe, and simply accept the rejection of others and violent persecution.  So along with his prophetic woes, Jeremiah often violates the Commandment I saw last week, “Thou shalt not whine!”

Jesus in today’s Gospel reading seems to take Jeremiah as the model prophet:  if you follow God, and say God’s word, you must expect rejection and persecution.   The disciple is no better than the teacher:  Jesus is rejected and killed; so will his disciples be.  But, he says, do not fear.  God will care for you.  But following the truth will bring conflict: I bring not peace, but a sword, not family unity, but family division.  So you better get your priorities straight: you will at times appear to hate your families if you really love me.  That is part of being Christian—take up a cross, just as I did.  This may not be whining, but certainly is a negative view toward life and family, one that sounds to us vaguely paranoid and extreme. 

So too today’s Psalm:  “Surely, for your sake, [God,] have I suffered reproach, and shame has covered my face.  I have become a stranger to my own kindred, an alien to my mother's children.”  And why?  “Zeal for [God’s] house has eaten me up; the scorn of those who scorn [God] has fallen upon me.”  Acts of righteousness are turned on their heads and become things with which to taunt:  fasting triggers reproach; properly mourning the dead by putting on sack-cloth just brings on further curses.  The righteous person becomes the grist for common gossip at the city gates, and the butt of lewd songs by drunks. 

This sense of persecution despite—no make that because—of one’s religious faithfulness is a theme you see throughout the Psalter.  “God, I am faithful to you, but the bad guys around me lie in wait for me.”  “God, I love you, but they are coming after me with knives and dogs!”  “Save me, God, from my wicked enemies!”

After Jesus’ unjust torture and death, early Christians saw these laments in the Psalms as some kind of prophetic description of Jesus.  But such a use ignores the fact that at times the Psalmist really does end up whining, and demands the most vicious sort of vengeance for the persecutors.  The Psalmist cries, “Don’t’ listen to his prayers!  Make his wife a widow, and his children orphans, with no one to help them!” Elsewhere, “Happy the ones who smash your little babies’ brains against the wall!”  This is far, far removed from “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do!”

The basic idea behind the image of the persecuted prophet is profound:  this world is full of people and societal structures that are based on lies:  the lie that violence will set things right, that might makes right, that the dignity of a human being depends on such things as lineage, race, color, gender, religion, or class;  the lie that ends justify means, that everything is O.K. as long as you get away with it, that appearance is all that matters. 

Humanity on its good days can bear only so much truth, and on its bad ones cannot bear the truth at all.  A person living in the truth, however feebly, is bound to  be an affront to the world of lies, and attract the enmity of people of the lie.  Thus arises the persecuted prophet, the martyred righteous.   Encouraging those who seek the truth to not fear, and to anticipate problems, as Jesus does in today’s Gospel, is a grace rooted simply in acknowledging the hard facts of life in a world of lies.   

But the idea that the righteous will be rejected and persecuted has become a commonplace all too often abused.   “I am being persecuted on account of my religion” is a plaint often heard when law and government in a pluralistic society ends up prohibiting retrograde actions like discrimination or hate crimes motivated by bigotry that may happen to have the endorsement of some religion or another.   It is also heard when the government requires businesses to provide basic conditions for work and standard-of-care health coverage for workers.   Such whining—and whining it is—abounds even when the law provides for exemptions on grounds of religion or conscience, even in the absence of a legal requirement to operate the specific kind of business at issue.   

Beyond this, we see occasionally in churches, both traditional and progressive, a sick twisting of the image of the persecuted prophet.  Since true prophets are persecuted in this world of lies, so goes the reasoning, then I should act in ways will bring about my persecution.  Martyrdom for the true way thus becomes a way to reassure oneself of the rightness of one’s cause. 

There is a great difference between this and real persecution.  I know that people are suffering for their faith in this day and age.  I once saw neat little rows of cigarette burns up and down the back of a man who was questioned by his country’s security forces because he had attended church with me.   Confusing real religious persecution with not having one’s way in public policy cheapens the idea of religious freedom and makes it harder to see it when persecution actually occurs. 

There is a difference between cultivating or provoking martyrdom and the Satyagraha, or Truth Force, of the non-violent activist seeking rightness and justice.  One is sectarian and partisan; the other aimed at applying universal truth to all of us equally. 

This difference is hinted at in today’s Gospel reading. 

We are called to companionship with each other, sharing with each other (“companionship” comes from Latin cum panis, sharing bread with).  We are called to walk the way with others, not stand in opposition to them.  Sectarian concern, partisan interest, an “us vs. them” mentality works against this.  If we claim to have the truth against someone else’s lie, and actively try to fix them and convince them of the error of their ways, to turn them from being one of them to one of us, this is not only bad psychology and poor salesmanship, it turns us into opponents, as antagonists, not comrades walking the path together.  It is the difference between cold hearted sectarian propaganda and authentic, heart-felt sharing of good news, evangelism.

 

This is why in today’s Gospel, after saying not to fear the persecution that is sure to come, Jesus tells us to not keep secrets or hidden doctrines, plans, and teachings, and to tell publicly what he taught us privately.  No special knowledge, privileged doctrine, or insiders’ path for Jesus’ disciples! No special class of initiated, “in-the-know,” true believers over against the great unwashed, the uninitiated, the unenlightened outside the ambit of some hidden truth.   

It is not about us vs. them.  We are all in this together.  And living in the truth means accepting sharing that truth with all, without fear or favor.  If they cannot bear the truth, and turn against it and us, then it is they who have drawn lines and stood in opposition.  But we must always continue to consider them as in this together with us.  “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing!”   “Forgive them seventy seven times, not just seven.”  “Be perfect in compassion and grace like our father in heaven, who gives the blessing of rain and sunshine equally on the righteous and the wicked.” 

Sisters and brothers, we are only as sick as the secrets we keep.  We are only as sectarian and partisan as the exclusions we impose on those who differ from us.  Faith in a loving God, gracious and kind to all, demands that we live in truth without fear.  While expecting rejection and meanness from those who cannot bear quite as much truth as God has graced us to bear, we must never feel smug in having a special secret truth that marks us as special, as ones apart.  We must continue to welcome, love, and let our lights shine.  No secrets, no sects.

“Thou shalt not whine.”  This week I invite each of us to look at the things where we believe we may be better informed, or more truthful, or closer to God than those about us, both in and outside the Church.   Let us ask whether we are walking beside these others, or setting ourselves in opposition, however benign, to them.  In the process of this reflection, let us find ways to better connect with those about us, to walk with them and share bread with them, and not judge or stand in opposition with them, even if this is as a teacher.  Let us seek ways to be channels of God’s love and grace to all. 

In the name of Christ,  Amen.

Corpus Christi (Midweek Message)

 

Fr. Tony’s Midweek Message

Corpus Christi

June 19, 2014

Today is the Thursday after Trinity Sunday.  In the Calendar of the Church of England, it is the Day of Thanksgiving for the Institution of Holy Communion, commonly called Corpus Christi, (Body of Christ in Latin).  The feast is widely celebrated in many Roman Catholic, Anglican, and Lutheran churches.  It honors Christ’s institution of the Sacrament of Holy Communion in his Last Supper.  While Maundy Thursday is the actual commemoration of this event, the solemnity of Holy Week and its focus on Christ’s Passion on Good Friday overshadows Maundy Thursday as an occasion to celebrate and give thanks for the Sacrament itself.  In order to provide for a joyful commemoration of the sacrament, Pope Urban IV established the Feast of Corpus Christi in 1264.   As the cycle of Lent, Holy Week, the Great Fifty Days of Easter, Pentecost, and Trinity Sunday draws to a close and we enter into ordinary time, we celebrate the Holy Eucharist as the place in our ordinary lives where the veil between us and the unseen world is the thinnest.

A common way Episcopalians have celebrated Corpus Christi is a Festal Evensong, with the devotional ceremony known as the Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament, where the congregation meditates upon and reverences a consecrated host placed upon the altar, which the priest then uses to bless the faithful (whence comes the service’s name, Benediction).

Here at Trinity, we will celebrate a simple healing Eucharist as we normally do on Thursdays, with special Eucharistic readings and hymns for the Feast. 

The Eucharist was intended by Jesus as a sign of openness and inclusion to all.  It is clear that he practiced open table fellowship in his ministry as a sign of God’s love.  I wonder how Jesus feels when he sees that the Eucharist has become a sign of division among his people.  Some, stressing his words “this is my body, this is my blood,” take the elements as holy and divine, and have sought to protect them from “blasphemy” or “misuse” by the “wicked” or “unworthy.”  Others, stressing the idea that the gathered community celebrating the meal is his body, tend to belittle the devotions of the former group.  “Hoc est corpus meum” (“This is my body”) becomes “hocus-pocus.”   Eucharistic adoration is characterized as “cookie-worship.”  Again, I wonder how such things feel in the heart of our Savior, who meant the sacrament as a sign of universal inclusion, not exclusion or division. 

Grace and Peace. 

--Fr. Tony+

The Spirit and the Web of our Lives (mid-week)

Fr. Tony’s Midweek Message

June 11, 2014

The Spirit and the Web of our Lives

I am starting my second week of vacation with Elena, starting today from Seattle the trip to Utah for the wedding of a niece in Utah.  We will be back Tuesday of next week. 

In my vacation reading, I came across a wonderful passage about the Holy Spirit and wanted to share it with you, since this is the week of Pentecost: 

“In the imagination of God and the vast potential of the Spirit is all possibility.  From our earliest and most intricate beginnings, we are God’s beloved offspring.  Our ever-emerging lives are cradled in the Maker’s hands.  In every unfolding occasion, in each shaping moment, at every level of ou becoming, the Spirit of God creates the day’s horizon’s and offers to us a range of relevant possibilities.  The Spirit does not impose an agenda upon us, but invites our growth and well-being, in body, mind, soul, and community.  The Spirit does not dictate each step or outcome, but graces every emerging moment with the treasure of love and freedom.

“We are constantly being born out of the past with its undeniable set of realities, and the Spirit works with those realities.  The Spirit also understands the influences pressing upon us in the present.  The Spirit honors our capacity for choices and decisions, our struggle to make connections, to assess and interpret, to act with feeling and thoughtfulness in the world with others. 

“The Spirit holds the web of relationships that supports our lives.” 

(--Craig Rennebohm, Souls in the Hands of a Tender God: Stories of the Search for Home and Healing on the Streets [Boston: Beacon, 2008], pp. 70-71.)

Grace and Peace,

Fr. Tony+

Honesty and Reconciliation (Mid-week Message)

Fr. Tony’s Mid-week Message

Honesty and Reconciliation

June 4, 2014

Twenty-five years ago today, the Chinese government sent the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) into central Beijing to reclaim the city from unarmed protesters against official corruption and in favor of greater democratic life in China and their popular supporters.   In the process, several hundred, if not a couple thousand, people were killed by gunfire and being run over by armed personnel carriers.  To this day, the subject of “6-4” (June the 4^th) is forbidden for public discussion in China, as it raises troubling questions about the Chinese Communist Party’s rule and the axiom that “the PLA and the people are united.” 

I suffered for several years nightmares and other symptoms of post-traumatic stress syndrome because of simply witnessing some of these events.  I cannot imagine the grief and pain of the families who lost children or parents, including the families of PLA soldiers killed by enraged crowds in some of the rougher neighborhoods of Beijing after the violence started. 

Sometimes, it is necessary to be silent and act as if things were better than they are, in the hope that things will improve.   It certainly is better than vengeance and an ever-growing cycle of violence and retribution.  But denial is always an obstacle in remedying past wrongs. The ideal is reconciliation based in truth and taking responsibility for what one has done.  The success of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission in helping to build a multi-racial society after the end of Apartheit demonstrates this, I believe. 

I do not know whether such a thing might be possible in China anytime soon, but I remain optimistic that people of good will everywhere of whatever political persuasion always are drawn to honesty, transparency, and treating others well.    I am reluctant to say that the Chinese government, or the Chinese people, should do this or that, knowing how complex their situation is, and how great the risk they run if they do not maintain a unified and orderly country. 

But all this tells me the importance of honesty, taking responsibility, and careful attention to the medical axiom “first, do no harm” in remedying any past wrongs  and bringing reconciliation in any of our relationships. 

And I believe that is what Jesus calls each us to. 

Grace and Peace,  Fr. Tony+ 

Priesthood Voice, Authenticity, and Liturgy (Trinitarian article)

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Fr. Tony’s Letter to the Trinitarians

June 2014

 “Priesthood Voice,” Authenticity, and Liturgy

I had a somewhat troubling moment of clarity a few years ago while living in West Africa.  As a cultural counselor at a U.S. Embassy, I worked with traditional healers and faith leaders in a newly democratic country. Once, when the “Pope of Voodoo” was a guest in my home, I noticed something very familiar in the tone of voice he used in his local language:  a quiet, calm, soothing voice, slightly lower-pitched than normal discourse, exuding authority, kindness, and humility at the same time, and demanding respect.  It was the same tone I had learned to call a “priesthood voice” in dealing with hierarchs in the church of my youth as well as Evangelical leaders and Roman Catholic bishops.  This made me realize that the “voice” was not, as I had thought for years, so much a sign of a particular “spirituality,” but rather a kind of affectation and way of manipulating others.

 

The non-liturgical church in which I was raised stressed community and how we felt in our hearts about God and community. Sunday services were comprised mainly of accessible emotional hymns and the spoken word aimed at building in each person a firm faith and resolution to work harder and follow “the commandments,” all within a context of a loving, family-like community.  It was only much later that I realized that, for me at least, there was something missing in what they called “worship”:  the act of worship itself, where the focus is speaking and listening to God rather than each other, and where we praise God and make an offering out of love, awe, and gratitude.

I came to realize that Community Religion is a package deal:  if being in the community is the main point of community gathering, then defining who belongs to the community, and more importantly, who does not belong, is part and parcel of that gathering.  Close, family-like religion comes at a cost:  the marginalization of those who do not fit the mold, who are on the edges or outside of the boundaries by which the community defines itself.

This eventually led me to the Episcopal Church.  Members of warmer, more community-focused churches with more spontaneous worship styles may make fun of us as “the frozen chosen,” but Prayer Book liturgy has this one great strength:  by its intentionality and form, it tends to limit the occasions for the minister to manipulate their flock.   Homilies must be kept short when you have prayers, confessions, creeds, and Eucharistic rites to get through.    Using the rich treasury of BCP written prayers limits the opportunity for the glib to show off their “prayin’ skills.”   When liturgy is chanted, the minister loses most of the chance to use a well-turned dramatic voice to produce an intended effect. 

Now, the church of my youth works for some people.  And sincere faith on the one hand, and manipulation on the other, can be found in all denominations, whether spontaneous or liturgical, or focused on God or on each other.    I am sharing this simply to explain some of my own tendencies given my background and experience of having been beaten up as a young person by a “just plain folks” approach to Church.   I am not saying that fervency, spontaneity, and open emotion are in and of themselves manipulative.  On the contrary, we need these things if our worship is to be authentic. 

The variety of forms and styles in our Prayer Book allow each worshiping community and worshiper to find their own real voice.   Our dear Trinity Church, with its fine family-like character and blended worship styles has found over the years an authentic voice all its own.  But, still, there are occasionally those who come to me expressing a sense of having been marginalized and excluded.  Again, community religion seems to be a package deal, and we need to be vigilant in maintaining welcome.  

Regardless of whether we use more traditional rites and music, or a more free-wheeling style with “Praise” songs, we must focus our worship on God, while being accessible and as inclusive as possible. The variety, structure and format of Prayer Book rites call us to a more authentic worship and community interaction than if we were simply to focus on community itself and our own artifice and skill. 

Grace and peace. 

Fr. Tony+