Question of the Week: Does Orthodoxy Matter?

This is not a yes or no question, but one which invites discussion. First, what is orthodoxy? The word itself means “right opinion.” Christianity historically defines orthodoxy by means of the seven ecumenical councils that stretch from the fourth through the eighth centuries of the Christian era. The Bible itself is not the standard of orthodoxy. Rather, the Church first established the canonical tests of what in fact belonged in the Bible. Nor is the Bible self-authenticating, despite what many biblicists argue to the contrary.

We live in an age where it is commonly held to be true that each individual is free to come up with his or her own religious understandings, and that one person’s is as good as another’s. Is this true? And if it is, how do you know? If it is not, how are you sure?

Is the Church–St. Stephen’s, for example–responsible for teaching Christian orthodoxy, the received faith as found in the Prayer Book Catechism, for instance? Or are we responsible for encouraging people to find their own faith regardless of how well or not it accords with Christian teaching?

Every day is Earth Day

We are given so much grace to help us on our Way.

Svalbard
Photo by P. Conrad

While there is no question that I’d rather be at St. Stephen’s on a Sunday morning than anywhere else, today I was in the Mojave Desert. I looked at the beautiful pink sandstone at our field site and I thought about some of the other breathtaking places I’ve been privileged to see. Some of them are struggling: the arctic, for example.

For political or economic reasons, people might argue about whether or not they believe in global warming, but after seven arctic field seasons, I can tell you that I have seen the glaciers retreating from year to year with my own eyes. The ice is melting. Our planet has a voice, and if we listen we can hear it.  Not listening to its voice should be as unthinkable to a Christian as not reading the Bible.

So back to the Mojave– we were in the midst of beautiful rocky splendor, and it reminded me of a desert tomb with its stone seal mysteriously displaced. I am trying to spend every day of Easter thinking about resurrection and its implications. So for today, when it comes to resurrection, what gets in the way of resurrecting this amazing garden where we live? God has placed the responsibility for this planet in our hands, so its particular resurrection must be delivered by us.  We have the tools. Do we have the will to use them?

Veni Sancte Spiritus: Sermon for the Second Sunday in Easter by Rev. Linda Kaufman

Veni Sancte Spiritus.

Come Holy Spirit

Jesus appeared among them and said,

o   Peace be with you

o   He showed them his hands and his side

o   Peace be with you

o   Breathed on them

o   Receive the Holy Spirit

And then what?

World peace?  No

Give up everything?  No

Take up your cross and follow me?  No!

Only this:  forgive the sins of any and they are forgiven.

If you retain the sins of any, they are retained.

What is this about?

The first appearance to the gathered community;

No fireworks, no theatrics,

Just: receive the holy spirit and FORGIVE

You are probably tired of hearing about this but my life changed with the coming of our new bishop.

When I decided to get serious about my life as a Christian and prepared to preach at the consecration.

What, I wondered, is the first act of the new Bishop.  Leading us in the confession of faith, leading us in the Nicene Creed.

One of the things I spent time with, in the preparation, was the Creed.

And I wondered, why would the Council at Nicaea put forgiveness in the top 7:

1.     God

2.     Jesus

3.     Holy Spirit

4.     Church

5.     Baptism for the forgiveness of sins

6.     Resurrection of the dead

7.     Life of the world to come

Why is forgiveness in the top 7 hit parade of faith?

Every morning in my quiet time, I have a very informal litany I use.  It changes. I don’t even really plan the changes; I just notice it.

I used to say, I believe in God.

Now I say, having learned from Marcus Borg,

I give my heart to you, O God.

I give my whole heart to you, Jesus

I give my heart to the church.

I give my heart to forgiveness.

I give my whole heart to forgiveness.

What would life be like if I could do this?

o   What if I could truly forgive my father for the ways he damaged me

o   What if I could forgive my son for the ways he has hurt me and disappointed me

o   What if I could ask and give forgiveness to Liane.  Yesterday we had a corker of a fight about whether to serve sliders or hamburgers.  When we went to pick up the bread, we got in the fight again and had to leave the store.  Where would we be if I could not say to her, “I am sorry.  Will you forgive me?”  We could not maintain a relationship without forgiveness.

What if we as a country could be a Christian nation in this aspect?

o   What if we had forgiven Osama bin Laden

o   Acknowledged our sin and

o   Humbly asked for forgiveness

o   What if we asked for forgiveness of those

o   This country enslaved

o   For the native population we tried to erase

What would our country be if we acknowledged that we do so many things to gain political points?

And decided to do what is right, regardless of politics?  When I was an activist in Alexandria, I asked Jim Moran, who was then the mayor of Alexandria, why he would not do what we all knew was the right thing to do.  “If I did that,” he said, “I would never get re-elected.”

What if we offered forgiveness to our enemies?

What if we humbly asked forgiveness when we sinned?

What if we believed that forgiveness is not just a nicety, not just courtesy, but CENTRAL to our faith?

Jesus appeared to the gathered community.

He offered his peace to them

Breathed on them

They received the Holy Spirit

And then he told them to forgive.

———–

My first experience of the Episcopal Church was

Charismatic

Evangelical

Bible-believing

And although I don’t agree with everything I learned then,

I am very grateful for what I learned.

I learned the Bible – in song and study

I learned to receive the Holy Spirit

I learned to have a personal relationship to God

I learned to tithe

And I learned about the personal and powerful manifestation of the Holy Spirit.

In 1977, I asked for a received the baptism in the Holy Spirit

And spoke in tongues

And in my arrogant innocence, I believed that my way was the only way.

That all persons must experience Pentecost as I had:

With a mighty wind and a speaking in tongues

And I am grateful for that experience.

Every morning as I prepare to preach

I stop, kneel down

And ask for God’s presence in my preaching

And I pray in tongues to open my heart.

But now I have come to realize that there are some who have a Pentecost experience

Which is wild and crazy – like a mighty wind and tongues of fire!!!  I am, after all, the one who brings party poppers and bomb bags to trainings, who shouts and cries from the pulpit.  It is probably no surprise that I would receive the Spirit with the same wildness.

And there are also those who receive the Holy Spirit as the gathered community did 2,000 years ago

As quietly as breath

With no visible and outward signs

With quiet receptiveness

In the gloom of the evening

In fear

Behind closed doors

Last night at dinner with friends, Perry said, “I have never doubted my faith”

In the quietness of his gathered community he knew.

Perry has no moment of conversion; he always knew.

———————–

Jesus appeared among them

And breathed on them

Receive the Holy Spirit

———————–

For the past month, I have had an ear worm

You know, the song that plays over and over in your head

It’s a Taize chant:

Veni Sancte Spiritus (sung)  Come Holy Spirit

Over and over

Walking down the street:                         Veni Sancte Spiritus (sung) 

 Going to sleep                                            Veni Sancte Spiritus (sung) 

 Driving                                                        Veni Sancte Spiritus (sung) 

 

As we begin this new spirit of Easter,

I invite you to sing into Easter.

Veni Sancte Spiritus (sung) 

 

            I invite you to sing into forgiveness

 

                        Veni Sancte Spiritus (sung)

 

For forgiveness is not something to be demanded or grasped,

But opened to

And received like breath

 

Veni Sancte Spiritus (sung by all for a while)

Question of the Week: What is the Greatest Challenge to Your Faith?

The Second Sunday of Easter always focuses on Jesus’ appearances to the disciples.  The story of Thomas is always read.  Thomas has virtually become synonymous with “Doubt,” perhaps not a bad thing, as we perhaps need a patron saint of doubters.  Yet frequently the story is missed that he is, in John’s gospel at least, the first among the disciples actually to confess Jesus as “My Lord and My God.”  It is clear in  John’s gospel that Thomas is in many ways the symbol of all those who, like us, experience the challenge to believe–to give our heart and soul and all–even when we do not “see.” 

Draw back a bit from that and ask yourself the question of what gets in the way of your believing, that impedes your faith, that stands as an obstacle between what you might like to affirm and what you are able honestly to embrace.  At what point do you feel left out of the band of disciples who all seem to be affirming a faith that you can’t quite endorse?  And what keeps you hanging in with such a faith?

Good Friday by Laura Moye

Lenten Cross at St. Stephen's and the Incarnation

I’ve thought about the fact that Jesus was a victim of the death penalty many times, but this year I experienced something different.  During the Good Friday service at St. Stephen’s, the choir sang a beautiful Taizé chant, “Crucem Tuam,” and then we all joined in singing a couple other hymns.  Valentin walked around with a primitive-looking crucifix made with rope, screws and branches.  It was time to venerate the cross.  I was suddenly overcome by emotion.  I could not stop tears from rolling down my face.  I wanted nothing to do with this ritual.

My mind went back to the terrible night when almost a thousand of us stood outside Georgia’s maximum security prison to protest the impending execution of Troy Davis and the dozens of times I stood with far fewer numbers of people to protest the executions of many other prisoners.  Many of those nights, we stood in a meditative circle along with family members of the person about to be killed by medical professionals and technicians hired by the state.

It is a very strange and terrible experience to bear witness, to pray, to sing, to stand peacefully in silence, surrounded by guards who are mundanely doing their jobs.  I often imagined the sterile execution chamber that looks like a hospital room, except no one is put there to be healed.  It is strange and terrible to know that a horrible act will be carried out in your name and under the guise of justice and civility to right the wrong of a killing.  It is terrible to stand in solemnity when it feels more appropriate to scream, shout and insist with every fiber in your being that the calculated homicide be stopped.

Perhaps I was disturbed in the Holy Week service because I felt we were not disturbed by this symbol of state violence.  Perhaps we’re not able to connect with what the cross really is all these centuries after Jesus’ execution.  What would it be like to have someone walk around the sanctuary holding out a syringe full of poison for people to touch, to kiss or bow to?  How could anyone feel comfortable doing that?  Would people feel too repulsed to venerate such an object?

I think we’ve got it all wrong in having the cross be the central symbol of Christianity.  This execution devise represents the most serious power ceded to government, the power over life.  It is in direct contradiction of human rights and the very heart of God’s nature.  God sent Jesus, a human model, to show us how to experience and live out his ethic of love and grace.  In the face of evil, he modeled redemption and a restorative justice, burying a primitive and destructive philosophy of a vengeful justice.  To me, the cross symbolizes humanity’s attempt to sabotage that ethic, but not that ethic itself.

Jesus died for our sins?  Did he?  That ties up the story of the worst act committed by humanity too neatly for me.  I believe Jesus lived for the benefit of our souls and to enrich our lives on earth and beyond.  But his message of how to live from the spirit of God’s transformative love was too radical.  It demands we orient our thinking and our behaviors to question injustice and suffering and treat all people, even those beyond our own tribal group, as sisters and brothers.  His message contradicted the status quo and started to attract followers.  It was so threatening to the power of the religious elite and state government that he would not be tolerated.

The death penalty has always been about control.  Control over slaves, hung for trying to escape or stage rebellions, control over those who would dare to kill white people or those in positions of authority, control over communities of color as part of a larger criminal justice system that controls the lives of a huge number of the poor and people of color in many ways, reserving the power even over their lives.

I have heard others view of the cross and what folks bring to the ritual of its veneration.  I am not ready to go there, but maybe that viewpoint will evolve.  For now, though, I would like for the cross to be brought in ceremoniously on Good Friday for congregants to dismantle and reconstruct as something beautiful for even useful.  Perhaps we could lay out a set of tools, hammers, saws, crowbars, paint and anything else that stirs our creativity.  I don’t mind remembering the cross and what humanity did to Jesus.  But I want to be clear that we remember it because we must remember that God is calling us to a radical vision of love that often crosses the authority of those in power.  He was willing to cross that line; therefore, we must be willing to as well.  I think it is right for Christians to connect with the suffering of Christ, but I am deeply uncomfortable with the Mel Gibson gore-fest way of doing it.  I am uncomfortable connecting with the passion as a way to feel deeply horrible about having a rotten nature or to motivate Christians to feel like superior truth holders who must “save” the world.  I am comfortable having Jesus’ suffering in my understanding of God; but, I want it to be connected to the central focus of God’s vision and commandment to live a life rooted in a radical and life affirming ethic of love.  For me, the message of Easter is that evil did not and still does not hold more power than God’s indestructable love.

I know that Holy Week usually stirs powerful experiences.  Perhaps you have a different view of the cross.  Perhaps other services struck you deeply.  I hope you will add to the comments below to create a rich discussion!

What (or Was It Who) Spoke to You in Holy Week?

We in the Church say a lot of words during Holy Week. Two long Passion stories are read, one on Palm Sunday and the other on Good Friday. A dozen or so psalms are read during Tenebrae, in addition to readings and canticles. Sermons are preached, collects are prayed, hymns are sung, in addition to all of those non-verbal things that we do such as wash feet on Maundy Thursday, adore the Blessed Sacrament before the morning of Good Friday, and Venerate the Cross on Good Friday. Count the Great Vigil, and there is still more to the richness of language and action. What in all this spoke to you? And what was the Word that you heard, whether silently or out loud? And if you could pass on whatever that message was, how and what might that be?

Question of the Week: “Stay here with me”—How?

The gospels of Matthew and Mark tell us that Jesus requested his disciples to watch and pray during his agony in the garden. In a variety of ways the Church endeavors to keep that request during Holy Week, sometimes providing opportunities for worshipers to come for an hour or more during the night of Maundy Thursday to Good Friday to stay with the Body of Christ and pray. (We invite you to do that following the Maundy Thursday Liturgy, the Blessed Sacrament having been placed in the font, symbolic of the tomb of Christ). In what ways does it make sense to you to “stay with Jesus”—now or ever? What devotional practices help you do that? What Christian action do you feel or believe keeps you “with Jesus” in the world? And, if you relate to it at all, what does “Watch with me” mean in your own life?