July 22, 2012, 8th Sunday after Pentecost

July 22, 2012

The 8^th Sunday after Pentecost

The Rev. Josh Griffin

An Entirely Different Episcopal Critique of Liberal Christianity

 

This past week, in the wake of The Episcopal Church’s 77^th General Convention in Indianapolis, the internet has been abuzz with opinion pieces (and opinionated rebuttals to these opinion pieces) about the future of mainline Christianity in the United States. As our Church prayerfully approved liturgy for same-sex blessings, conservative pundits decried a Church which had become unmoored from its “traditional” foundations.

In a culture such as ours, where quantitative growth is a god, church health is also very often reduced to raw data. It is true that over the last decade, for many mainline denominations, average Sunday attendance has declined considerably throughout the country. (23% in the Episcopal Church.) But The New York Times provoked some controversy last Sunday with Ross Douthat’s piece “Can Liberal Christianity Be Saved?” in which Douthat ties declining Sunday attendance in the Episcopal Church to the erosion of traditional Christianity, as evidenced by our recognition of gay and lesbian people as people.

Showing little understanding of historical Anglicanism, Douthat writes that the Episcopal Church “still has priests and bishops, altars and stained-glass windows. But it is flexible to the point of indifference on dogma, friendly to sexual liberation in almost every form, willing to blend Christianity with other faiths, and eager to downplay theology entirely in favor of secular political causes.” 

The problems with Douthat’s analysis range from false causal assumptions and factual inaccuracies, to a total lack of understanding about just what Anglicanism is—a non-dogmatic tradition of common prayer. Writing in the Huffington Post, the Rev. Winnie Varghese, of New York City, penned one of the best replies to the Times piece, writing that “liberal and progressive Christians believe…[that] those liberation movements from the 1960s on… were right, and [that] our church should change in response to that revelation.”  

Varghese goes on to write, “If our increased thoughtfulness in understanding the human condition causes us to be open minded in a way that offends your prejudices, yes, the Episcopal Church might not be for you. I hope I'm being clear,” she continues, “I believe our decline is a sloughing off of the baggage of [the] establishment and [the] American Empire and [from] not quickly enough embracing an expansive view of humanity within our Eucharistic communities.” 

Many of those who are upset with our affirmation of queer sexuality are very concerned that the Episcopal Church has turned away from the Bible, which is funny, because we actually take the Bible very seriously. We take it so seriously that we cycle through (most of) it every three years and some of us, myself included, are quite committed to lectionary preaching. (As a mentor of mine likes to point out we read more than a few hand picked verses from Paul, the Old Testament, and John’s Gospel.) Not surprisingly today’s readings are well suited to address the debates currently circulating in electron-land. 

The question of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered persons and the Church is another example of the old insider/outsider problem which affects all human communities no matter how small—and it’s certainly nothing new. It is precisely the pastoral problem to which Paul is dealing with in his letter to the Church at Ephesus. (Ephesians 2:11-22) Addressing non-Jewish followers of Jesus, who, being uncircumcised Gentiles, he writes, were once “aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.”  

That was then, but “now in Christ Jesus you who were once far off have been brought near…in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall…” Jesus, teaches Paul, “has abolished” all religious logic that elevated Jews above Gentiles, “creat[ing]… in himself one new humanity in place of the two” and reconciling “both groups to God in one body through the cross.” 

Rev. Varghese is right.  The movement of God is towards the elimination of social domination and toward a leveling of hierarchical categories of human identity—that much is clear in the arc of the Biblical narrative. God’s Spirit, we believe, erodes all formulations that hold some people at the margins so as to benefit the few. 

Following Paul, we Episcopalians understand the work of Christ to be the work of reconciliation.  But to the chagrin of some observers, we als take human difference seriously.  Paul’s universalism should not be misinterpreted, as it was and is by many missionaries; it is not a call to remake all people into the “universal,” white-European, landowning man of the Enlightenment.  The mission of the Church today is not the obliteration of difference, but rather the compassionate embrace of all Creation, and the work of building and sustaining beloved communities among, within, and between all manners of people. 

Rev. Varghase is right to see the living, active, and restless Spirit of God at work in social movements. This morning’s first lesson (2 Samuel 7:1-14a) is a testament to the uncontainability, irreducibility and unpredictability of that which we call “God”.  King David says to the prophet Nathan, “You know, it really isn’t fair. I live in a great big house of the finest cedar, but the ark of God lives in a measly tent out back.” Nathan says, “Do what you’ve got to do, man, sounds good, I’m sure God won’t mind.”

But later that night, the word of the Lord came to Nathan, “Go ask David if he really thinks he is ‘the one to build me a house to live in?’  Remind him that ‘I have not lived in a house since the day I brought up the people of Israel from Egypt to this day, but I have been moving about in a tent and a tabernacle.’ In fact,” God says, “I don’t remember asking anybody to build me a house. David’s got it backwards. Nathan, go tell David that the Lord will build him a house.”

We would do far better, wouldn’t we, if we thought of the Church as movement, not an institution or even a non-profit organization. God just won’t be pinned down like that. God has other plans: to build the Kingdom of God, a divine kingdom, a kingdom for humans becoming divine, not becoming gods, but becoming like God, and learning to love with an open hand.

We don’t always recognize it when the Spirit moves to challenge and overturn daemonic hierarchies of domination.  Many have seen God’s spirit at work in the aspirations of Occupy Wall Street—a radical democratic movement which seeks to establish autonomous zones of communitarian democracy outside the reach of the corporate capitalism and it’s politicians. Almost overnight the Occupy Movement changed the political discourse in this country, reinvigorated progressive politics, and unlocked the mental, emotional, and affective blockages, which have long cramped our collective social imagination. 

But one notable parish, Trinity Wall Street missed a great opportunity.  As Occupy encampments all across the country were being suppressed by local governments, often violently, Occupy Wall Street (OWS) thoughtfully and respectfully turned to Trinity for political sanctuary, asking to relocate it’s camp to a piece of Church owned property. When Trinity Wall Street refused, many were disappointed, including Archbishop Desmond Tutu.  Several local priests and the Rt. Rev. George Packard, retired Bishop of the Armed Services were arrested and prosecuted for civil disobedience after joining OWS members in nonviolently laying claim to the vacant parcel.

The Episcopal Church has a long way to go. As Varghase writes, “We have been a denomination of privilege, but we are working on that.” The Times editorial was right about one thing: there is an affinity between “liberal Christianity” and a host of secular liberal institutions.  If, as Douthat claims, “the Episcopal Church and similar bodies… don’t seem to be offering anything you can’t already get from a purely secular liberalism,” then we have a huge problem on our hands.  It’s just an entirely different problem than he has in mind.

In his stunning 2010 book, The Death of the Liberal Class, the seminary-trained journalist, Chris Hedges observes that for the most part, the institutions which have been pillars of liberalism, including the media, the university, the arts, the unions, the Democratic party, and the mainline churches have bought into the neoliberal ideology of corporate-capitalism, which revolves around the mythology of abstract growth at the expense of human and nonhuman wellbeing, thriving, and increasingly, life itself. 

In a word, political liberals talk a good talk but have sold out people at the bottom.  A splintering of “causes” and the reduction of politics to “issues” has left the liberal class “obsolete” and clinging “to its positions of privilege within liberal institutions.” And “[l]iberal religious institutions,” writes Hedges, “which should concern themselves with justice, embrace a cloying personal piety… and small, self-righteous acts of publicly conspicuous charity.” 

If Hedges is correct, and on balance I believe he is, then Douthat is also correct about one thing:  the Church should split from the secular liberal class.  We should split from those who talk a good game but make peace with all manner of corporations whose time has frankly come. We might start by challenging the power of coal, oil, and gas industries and the big banks that fund them, as has been prophetically suggested by Bill McKibben, a lay-Methodist, in a disturbing new piece in Rolling Stone.

This type of resistance is thankfully now official Church policy, after the Resolution B023 on climate justice was adopted by this year’s General Convention.  (Locally, in our region, at the very moment when our atmosphere really cannot afford to absorb very much more carbon, the coal companies are desperately seeking to export coal to Asia from West Coast ports. You might google the group: “No Coal Eugene” to get involved.)

Rather than continuing to vie for the recognition of the power elite and their politicians, Christians might do better to conceive of ourselves as communities on the move, communities tasked with, what the Italian theorist, Bifo Berardi, in The Soul at Work, calls, “the creation of social zones of human resistance, zones of therapeutic contagion.”  How’s that for a mission statement?  “Our Church is a zone of human resistance to social evil and we offer a contagious form of therapeutic personal and social transformation!”  

In theological terms, we are tasked with affirming life in this moment of planetary exhaustion and pervasive social death. Ours are the works of resistance and restoration, of resurrection and reconciliation, and such works require us, always, to undertake some risk.

In today’s gospel (Mark 6:30-34, 53-56), Jesus just can’t beat the crowds. He tries to get away, to take the disciples away for a break, for a little rest, just to breathe, but his compassionate healing love was Jesus was too recognizable, “When they got out of the boat,” we are told, “people at once recognized him.” They “rushed about that whole region and began to bring the sick on mats to wherever thy heard he was.  And wherever he went, into villages of cities or farms, they laid the sick in the marketplaces, and begged him that they might touch even the fringe of his cloak; and all who touched it were healed.”

To whom are we recognizable? For what are we recognized? Are we recognizable to those who have been oppressed, dispossessed and kicked to the curb? Are we recognizable to the Earth? Are we recognizable to God?

(Sermon given on July 22, 2012 at the Episcopal Church of the Resurrection, Eugene, OR

July 15, 2012, The 7th Sunday After Pentecost

July 15, 2012, the 6^th Sunday after Pentecost

Year B, Proper 10

The Rev. Dr. Brent Was

            Who here has been to the Oregon Country Fair?  What are some words that you would use to describe it? _____  Windy the girls and I made our first journey to the Fair on Friday. I must say, I was a little hesitant going into it.  There are all the stories; the crowds, the drugs, I had heard something about mud people, and of course, all that nakedness… And then there is the gospel this week, the beheading of John the Baptist.  I was not worried about beheadings at the Fair, but the context of the beheading, Herod’s birthday feast, with courtiers and officers, too much drinking, too many dancing girls and goodness knows what else, the consequences of too much were on my mind.  Honestly, I wasn’t sure that that was not going to be the case at the Fair.  But the Fair is an iconic part of the culture of Eugene and some people that I trust are active out there, so I went trying to be wide open and non-judgmental. I want to offer a few reflections on the Fair because my experience there did not match my presuppositions.  It was much better than that and there are some great things to learn from that community. 

            One of the things that Jesus did time and time again is to turn everything upside down.  To take whatever social convention that was at hand and do the opposite, like the woman with hemorrhages getting priority over Jairus the leader of the synagogue that we spoke about a couple of weeks ago.  Often Jesus seemed to go into situations and just shake it all up just to give everyone a different set of eyes with which to see the world through.

            Wandering through the winding paths of the Fair, I saw a whole lot of turning things upside down, and not just acrobats.  Priests notwithstanding, most men won’t wear dresses out in public.  Many do at the Fair.  Most grownups don’t dress as flowers or fairies or steam-punk gladiator knight magician princesses, or as dragons, even.  Most of us don’t do that in our regular lives, but maybe we should.  The girl’s whole world changes when they put on the persona of a princess, or Laura Ingalls Wilder, or a cat, and the fancier the costume they concoct, the deeper they fit into the character and the deeper the change in perspective they experience.  I would love to imagine seeing the world through the eyes of a dragon or a dandelion and not just because that sounds fun.  If I could truly walk for an afternoon in the leafy shoes of a dandelion I know that I would look at them differently next time I was mowing the lawn.  Being in a place like the Fair, perspectives on right and wrong, good and evil, even possible and impossible are subject to change.  This is a very, very good thing.

            Bucking convention also has a lot to do changing everyone’s standard of normativity.  Normative means basically what is expected, a standard or norm.  I did not see many conventional norms in play, other than the big ones – everyone I ran into was friendly, kind, happy to be there, was very polite and helpful.  I have rarely seen parents of young children or disabled or even elders treated systemically with more compassion.  Twice folks offered to let us advance in the potty line with the little ones.  You won’t see that at Autzen Stadium.  Turning the normative on its head.  And you know what, so much of we do consider normative in our world needs to be turned upside down.  The Fair culture is founded in this providing a space to be what most of us cannot be in day to day life.  It is the carnival impulse that has been with Christianity since Roman times.  Everything needs to look different sometimes, if only for a long weekend.

The Fair was also an amazing portal into a world of extreme creativity.   The amount of time and effort that goes into the booths and all of the crafts for sale, the costumes, the parades, the music and drama and juggling and sword swallowing and storytelling and stilt walking and dancing and everything else… the whole place is this amazing vortex of creativity, of beauty, of dreams made manifest in copper and wood, fabric and steel, movement and vibrations.  Anytime you find yourself in a place of deep creative movement you are approaching God.  

            Then, there is the simple fun of it.  Hannah Maeve was getting a very fancy bird painted on her arm when I looked up and there above me was a nose. It was a very large nose puppet worn by someone on stilts accompanied by 6 or 7 other very large noses on stilts with a moustache and a large finger in tow.  All of a sudden the nose above me leaned back and sneezed a few blasts of a spray bottle while saying, “You wanna pick a winner?”  If that is not fun, then I do not know what is.  Seriously, what fun.  All of that creativity, all done together resulted in great fun.  I experienced better group laughing yesterday than I have had in memory.  I guess being dressed as a lime green butterfly you sort of have to laugh a lot, but truly fun, honest, non-consumptive, self-generated fun for the sake of fun is pathologically lacking in our society.  It is a shame that it is reserved for one long weekend a year, but the theme that you take a bit of fair home with you, if it is the fun part, I am fully in favor of it.  Just speaking for myself, you’ll know how well my spiritual practice is going if I show up to Mass dressed as a lime green bumble bee.

            It is a tragedy of the Christian Bible that the writers of the Gospels did not record Jesus having fun.  They did not record Jesus laughing.   A human being in perfect relationship with God and neighbor must have a brilliant sense of humor. There must have been laughter in the boat before the storm, laughter on the road to everywhere except maybe Jerusalem.  My guess is that the evangelists, the writers of the gospels, they did not have much to laugh about because in the wake of the desolating sacrilege of the Temple things seemed very bleak.  Sadly, when things seem bleak to humans we usually follow that path, the path of darkness.  

But there are other ways, laughter is good medicine, and the likes of Patch Adams, the pediatrician who clowns with his young patients (a speaker at the Fair) demonstrates its efficacy.  Dark times require fun more than easy times.  Having fun can very much be a way of being the change in the world that we need.  If nothing else, it is a lot better to be actively having fun and not helping out than moping around, doing nothing and also not helping out.

            If there is one thing true about the Fair it is that most everyone has some feelings about it.  From what I have discerned, the feelings, particularly the negative feelings, that people express are around the presence of drugs and the absence of clothing.  (By that I mean I have not heard anyone say they love the Fair for the drugs or the nakedness only that people do not like it for those things, but I do realize my social contacts are churchy-er than most).   I only saw one person smoking anything besides tobacco, but unless the trees in Veneta smell funny, there was a fair amount of marijuana being smoked.  I do not advocate that.  All I can say is that I felt more comfortable being there with the girls there than I would being with them at a concert or sporting event in a crowd that had been drinking as heavily as folks seemed to be smoking. The whole scene was entirely non-threatening, a little odd at times, but totally peaceable.  You certainly can’t say that about West Broadway when the bars close.

And of course there was all of that nakedness. I do not think it is nakedness that people are nervous about but about the sexuality implied in nakedness occurring in unexpected times, places or ways. There is nothing dirty or lewd about the human body, it is just that our cultural convention says that certain body parts are to be hidden outside of the home. When body parts are exposed that are usually concealed, our American minds go right to sex.  The vast majority of the nakedness I saw was not sexualized, but felt more like a conscious de-sexualization of the human body.  All of the amazing body paint, henna and costumes held up the human form as something beautiful, something to be admired and enjoyed, and not soley (if at all) sexually.  The nakedness I saw was not sexuality being bought or sold like the commercialized nakedness that is ubiquitous our conventional economy. What I saw seemed to be people having fun with their bodies in ways that they usually can’t because exposed breasts and buttocks’ are illegal in most places, and other’s who seemed pretty unconcerned with what anyone thought about them one way or another. Really the only thing I was concerned about nakedness-wise was how the naked guy kept his very precise fig-leaf from falling off.  I did not get up the courage to ask him.

I offer these thoughts on the Fair because so much of the purpose of church is to help us keep things in perspective, to consider other ways of hearing stories, of seeing the face of God in places we otherwise might have missed.  The Oregon Country Fair is not for everyone, but some of the impulses in that community are very positive if not downright Christian, and reminds us, as the bumper sticker says, that not all who wander are lost.  AMEN

July 8, 2012, The 6th Sunday after Pentecost

July 8, 2012, The 6^th Sunday After Pentecost

Year B, Proper 9

The Rev. Dr. Brent Was

            “Prophets are not without honor, except in their hometown…”

            One of the most frequent pieces of feedback that I get here from people at Resurrection is that you all are happy with my preaching.  I appreciate that feedback.  It is important that we understand a bit more about that part of our relationship, the preaching part.  I am going to lift the curtain a little bit, talk a little of the process of homiletics, because we do have a very curious relationship in this regards.  I hope they don’t take my priest guild card away for revealing any trade secrets… A preacher-congregation relationship can only happen, well, can only happen in an authentic or even sustainable way, if there are some assumptions about each other.  The problem is, that these assumptions, the conditions that make for a good homiletic relationship usually remain nameless.  So with the occasion of Jesus’ rejection in his hometown, I want to talk a little bit about what it is that we are actually doing here.

            What is it that we are doing here?  What is the purpose of the sermon as an element of the Mass?  ___________.  

-          Reflection on the gospel, fleshing out the story so we might understand some of different perspectives we can bring to bear on it.  This is called hermeneutics.  “Why might this have been written this way, and for whom?”  

-          Opening it up, unpacking it, translating it, even. 

-          Contextualizing the gospel:  How does this matter to us?  (Or to be truly radical, “Does this matter to us now, and how?”)

-          Teaching: Passing on information, teaching doctrine, relating the facts (sic.) of history.  

-          Then of course there is the real-time revelation of the Word of God.  

How do these things happen?  Well, some of it comes from this side of the pulpit.  What the preacher brings to the table matters.  Some of this comes through training.  In this church, the Anglican church, we have what is called a learned clergy.  You can always tell how learned a clergy person is by the size of their student debt; I am rather extremely learned it would seem.  Priests are educated in seminary or divinity school in theology, Bible, history and ethics, even world religions, giving us (hopefully) enough information if not knowledge to have something intelligible to say.  We are also, most of us, trained in the practice of preaching.  How to pray, study for and prepare a sermon as well as oratory practices for clear delivery.  (I skipped the class on talking slowly).   

So part of it is training, but part of it is distinctly not.  Part of it is not even about the preacher at all, though it does flow from this side of the pulpit.  I am talking about the revelation of the Word stuff.  A big part of the homiletic process, in the world of liturgical theology at least, is that the Word that is static within the pages of Holy Scripture is illuminated, enlivened, made manifest, brought to fruition by the direct movement of the Holy Spirit in the homily.  Through prayer and preparation, the preacher tries to get out of the way of the process.  He or she tries to get out of the way of the movement, the energy that flows in the homiletic process.  You try to get out of the way and let God’s light shine, which certainly doesn’t need the preacher’s seal of approval or even consent.  The less and less it is about the preacher, the more and more it might be about the Spirit.  This really is the goal.  Think about it, how do I start sermons?  “In the name of God…”  That is kind of a big statement, to be saying something on behalf of God.  My primary priest mentor began with, “May God’s Word be spoken and God’s Word be heard.”  Sometimes it feels presumptuous to even imagine speaking in the name of God, but other times, when the stars are aligned, and the moon is in the appropriate house, when the heart is cracked open enough… something can happen.

The thing is that the preacher part of all of this is only half, if even half of the equation.  This is where our gospel comes in today.  There is Jesus, whose journey so far has been marked by large crowds and miracles of healing and casting out demons, and he lands on the doorstep of his home town.  And there, “a prophet is not without honor except in his home town.”  

This is new to me.  Not preaching, I’ve been preaching regularly since for more than 10 years, but what is new to me is to be preaching every week, to the same congregation, as a priest serving that congregation.  What we are experiencing is just the opposite of what Jesus experienced in his hometown.  Jesus was known there, of course, but not as a wise man, not as a rabbi, certainly not as a prophet or Son of God, but as the son of Mary, brother of James, Joseph and Judas.  No one expected him to say anything worth hearing, so they didn’t.  In that context, he was powerless, His healing didn’t take, His words were not heard.

What I have experienced here is just the opposite.  The power that has come through in this preaching ministry has very little to do with me, and has not much to do with what is said, but it has mostly to do with your all’s expectation, your openness, how willing and able you are to place yourself into a posture of receptivity.  Human beings are predisposed to trust, or believe people who we want to trust or believe.  And folks we don’t expect to trust or believe, folks we have not granted that inner authority too, we are not going to take their words in nearly so deeply.

I have been preaching for years, and yes, my technique has gotten tighter with experience, but the reception I have received here has been better than anywhere else before, and that has everything to do with your expectations, your willingness to hear, your ability to put personalities aside and perceive what may very well be the movement of the Holy Spirit.  It is all about what we expect from someone.  As I said at the beginning, it is about assumptions.

I was in a gallery in New York a few weeks ago.  One of the security guards was helping us navigate our way through an installation piece and he was just full of jokes; kind of annoying jokes.  I said something like, “you must be a comedian?” and he said, “I’m trying, not supporting myself with it yet, but here’s a flyer to a show I am doing tomorrow.”  You know what, his annoying jokes instantly became funnier to me. He did not get funnier, but I was willing or able or something to take what he heard as being funny.  His statured changed somehow within me and he got the benefit of the doubt from me.  The same thing happens here.

You expect all these great things from this pulpit, and truly, now that this relationship has begun, and my preaching is well received, basically no matter what I say, truth will be revealed, relationships to God and neighbor will be deepened.  The kingdom of God will be nearer, and really.  This has nothing to do with me; it has everything to do with our relationship and the assumption that God is at work here.  And the truth that is revealed is not my truth, not my doing, but is the movement of the Holy Spirit that allows God’s word to be heard through morass of me being a clanging gong up here.  Jesus’ neighbors had no reason to believe a word he said, so they didn’t.  Their loss.  I seem to be getting the benefit of the doubt here; hopefully not your loss, particularly in the long run.

            All of what has been said above is true.  The hows and whys laid out about preaching, but a big piece is missing.  What is another purpose of the whole Liturgy of the Word? _____  What are we being set up for?  The Mass.  The Eucharist.  All of this work, all of this intention and attention is designed to lead us to this table in front of us all here.  Holy Scripture, present moment interpretation and reflection, the prayers and Creeds, all of these things, contained within the cadence of our liturgical heritage, carried by the hymnody and other sacred music forms, this whole shape of the liturgy leads us to this very place where the words and thoughts and feelings, our companions, friends and community, our ancestors, contemporaries and descendants gather to commune with the real spiritual presence of the living God.  This is the Eucharist.  It is the center of our church’s life, and the liturgy of the Word is part of the path that leads us their.  This path brings us together so we can present ourselves before God, worshipfully, together, about as spiritually, intellectually and emotionally joined as a group of people this size can get.  It is a glorious path that leads right to this table.

            Except for today, we have a quite wonderful detour through the other sacrament our Lord Himself instituted.  Master Calvin Cabeza, the second youngest member of our community will be welcomed and marked as one of Christ’s own here in our midst in just a minute.  Where we experience the eternal and actual presence of Christ in the form of bread/body – wine/blood in the celebration of the Eucharist, in the sacrament of Baptism, we experience the eternal and actual presence of God in the transformation of a little boy into a little boy in an indelible relationship not only with God in Christ and the Holy Spirit but with two thousand years of Christian ancestors, a billion brothers and sisters alive right now and God alone knows how many generations to follow, and all of us.  So Calvin, as we approach this important moment in your life, I hope this homily has prepared you for what is to come, at least in the next five minutes.  Or at least I hope these words lulled you into grogginess before we get down to business at hand.  AMEN