Ash Wednesday

Nestled in between the various buildings of the World Trade Tower was the little chapel of St. Paul, a chapel of the much more well-known Trinity Church, Wall Street—the bastion of the Episcopal economic might and prowess. When the towers of the World Trade Center came down, debris was sent everywhere, but somehow the Chapel of St. Paul was miraculously spared. The ancient graveyard that abutted the church was not so lucky. Feet of debris and ash fell into that cemetery.

St. Paul’s Chapel became the staging area for rescue workers and then became the place of ministration to those who were working on recovery for over a year following the disaster. That Lent, St. Paul’s put out a card of remembrance. On the face was a picture of the cemetery the day after the attack with the subscription: “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” It is still the most sobering image I have of that event and it will stay with me the rest of my life.

On Ash Wednesday we begin the period of the Church Year that reminds us of our mortality. Lent was originally a way for the Church to mark the days before Easter that those waiting to be baptized had to prepare themselves for that event. It was a time of being at one with those who were surrendering themselves to Christ for the first time. It was a time of fasting, studying, praying and alms giving in solidarity with those who were doing the same.

It became a remembrance of Jesus’ time of temptation and retreat in the desert following his baptism. It became a time of preparing one’s self for Easter. But most of all it became a time of doing penance together—recognizing that there is spiritual power in doing spiritual discipline together even if in silence.

It was a time to think upon one’s sinfulness, not to grovel before God. But as a reminder of how easily it is to ignore sin, how easy it is to justify our sinfulness with our rationality, and how easy it is to dupe ourselves into believing that we are not sinful. So it is no small thing for us to have ashes place upon our foreheads as a reminder of our tendency to cut ourselves off from God.

In the times before Jesus, the sign of mourning was to sit upon the ash heap and tear one’s clothing. Even in observant Jewish homes today, loved ones tear a bit of their clothing at the event of a death in the family.

Christians sign their mourning at their failure to live up to the calling of Christ by acknowledging their faithlessness with ashes upon their faces. I never make a cross on people's heads. This is not a blessing we mark ourselves with. We need to mourn our lack of consideration for others who have been created by God. We need to wail at our blithe ignoring of God’s events in our lives. We need to fast and abstain from that which gives joy simply because we have failed to respond to the grace that God has lovingly heaped upon us. It is a sign of failure and yet it is the sign of our hope too. It is the sign that it is grace alone that makes us worthy before God and our fellow human beings.

Lent is not a time for scruples either—that overly pious denial of God’s goodness. This is not a time for rigidity. It is a time of discipline that is filled with the humble joy of being able to start anew. It is a time that reminds us that we are dust and to dust we shall return. But it also reminds us that God’s grace provides us with resurrection even in our most dismal abjection.

May the marks upon our foreheads be a reminder to us that God is not finished with us yet—not a badge of honor that we have been to church on a Wednesday

I couldn't resist

Thank you, Madpriest!

Thoughts abed

I have been catching up on my mail and blogging while I have been nursing bronchitis. It is sometimes hard to keep a laptop on one’s lap while coughing. And with the server dumping me off with some regularity… add writing block and it ends up being a thankless effort.

That said, I have been reading about the move by the national church to assist those in San Joachin Diocese to claim their independence from the bishop who has been inhibited for trying to take the diocese out of the Church. I then went to blog of Via Media Ft. Worth. My good friend Tom Woodard+ has done some good work in that diocese by providing members of the Diocese of Ft. Worth some correction to
+Iker’s rhetoric about the Episcopal Church (TEC).

The thing that is so poignant about Ft. Worth is that no matter what you tell some people, they won’t believe it. You can tell them that TEC is not demonic, but they have been fighting for so long, they don’t know how to stop. And as a diocese, they have been in opposition to whatever the national church says since their inception. There is no way that they can ever trust outsiders to tell them what the truth is. When John the Baptist pointed at Jesus and said “There is the Lamb of God”, obviously some of his followers said, “No, he’s not.” We can only be thankful that St. Andrew followed Jesus.

One of the most obvious things that Ft. Worthians have to learn is that the bishop is not the lord of the universe. This is hard when for years you have been told that only the bishop and HIS clergy are able to articulate what the Church is. Now, this worked in Ft. Worth before northern businesses began to relocate in the sunny south. But the move of many folks from different regions of the US has brought varying understandings of Church to the diocese of FTW. And these folks ‘have seen Parii.’ They know what it means to be a part of a Church with clergy, lay and episcopal voices speaking differently and coming to compromise respectfully.

The myth taught by Iker and his ilk is that this whole thing about democracy in the Church was an experiment that failed. Now wiser and voices from higher up should prevail. Is this not what the Archbishop of Canterbury believes? Is this not what the Primates believe? Is that what the Pope has said? Obviously we Episcopalians are wrong. All these checks and balances on the power of bishops are wrong; the Holy Spirit doesn’t happen by election!

The sad part of what is happening in the Church is that +Iker, and +Schofield and the like will be gone, but the myth they have taught has spread. All too often I hear—“We must listen to the wisdom of our bishop,” or “I know that OUR bishop must understand this better than I.” or “Whatever MY bishop says, I will obey” come as a cop-out for being competent about the events of our Church. It is a way to abrogate our duties as clergy and laity to govern ourselves. It is the same phenomenon that has been going on in our national government since the Boomers came into their own. “Let the other guy do it as long as my ox is not getting gored.”

The Diocese of Central New York is becoming like Ft. Worth in my youth. We are becoming a bit of a backwater. The Southern Tier is not so because escape from NYC still filters over the southern border. But new blood is not coming into our area. The majority of new clergy is coming from our own in-diocese training programs. This means that we do not have images of the Church by those who have seen it work in other places, in cities, in small towns, in rural areas. We cannot depend up on a sole voice to speak the needs of the people of Central NY. It must be the voices of us all speaking—often disagreeing with one another, but at least speaking, to hear the voice of the Spirit in our midst.

The Episcopal Church is not an experiment. It is the only mainline, catholic-minded church in which difference can be tolerated. May it always be so.

Writer's Cramp

I have been suffering with an annoying case of Writer’s Cramp. This is a prelude to the much more serious ailment of Writer’s Block. I have been trying to compose in my head rather than writing it down. I have tried letting the thinking aspect of writing go fallow for a few weeks thinking that perhaps something might relax and allow the Cramp to loosen. But now comes the time when I have to do the hard work of just banging out words, often a bloody task filled with bad spelling, ungrammatical green squiggles and tortured concepts until the blockage finally gets unclogged. This is hard and unrewarding work. And it is calls forth some tortured reading and critique too.

I have just joined a chat on Ecunet call Wither ELCA? It just started today and it sounds like many of the Episcopal Church (TEC) chats that I have been a part of over the past 7 years. There are those who are “against” everything that I have thought was Christian, there are those who are ready to uphold everything that I think is Christian and there are those who are ready to get up and leave and those who think that everyone who doesn’t think the way they do should leave. (Sigh!) “It sounds like déjà vu all over again!”

Part of me wants to say: “Damnit, look at what TEC has done and don’t do it that way.” Part of me wants to say, “Each denomination has to address what it is on its own.” And part of me wants to say, “Do I have to go through this AGAIN?”

Do we have to fight out the liberal/conservative ideology in the ELCA as we did in TEC? How long will it take before we self-destruct in ELCA as TEC has done it? TEC is much longer established than ELCA has been. Is there any way to address the issues without throwing the baby out with the bath water as TEC has done? I am not sure. But I do know that no matter what we do, Christ must be proclaimed and kept before the people of God in the parishes.

Does that mean that I ignore the war waging around me? Do I not take up for the LGBT community when derogatory remarks are made? No, but it does call me to demand from myself a kind of behavior that is hard to maintain—calm, centered on Christ and a refusal to respond to the anger and spite of those who would say that I am wrong, evil or perverted. This is what I learned from TEC—this is what I couldn’t do in TEC. I guess because it came from "family" in TEC that it had so much more power.

Will others learn from me? Perhaps some, but most will have to do their own experiential falling flat on their faces. I hope some will understand what they are doing is sinful, but I doubt that too. Will some go away mad? Yes, because they have put their faith in ideology rather than in Christ himself. Will the Church change? Yes, despite all the efforts to keep it from doing so and despite all the efforts to make it what it once wasn’t.

The Church will change no matter what we do. Just like we change no matter how much we would like to stay the same. We get old and crotchety, and vital mechanics in our bodies fail. So too, it is with the Church, and the new never feels the same. Deo Voluntatis!

In the night Love settled among the throngs of us all.
Whether in hay of country stall
or on the concrete streets of loveless cities,
It mattered not.

Touched by Divinity, humanity is wakened
to possibility never known.
And the Holy One, sparked by humanity takes in
common emotions of mortal life.

Divine and mortal intertwined in marvel of the other.
Hodie Cristus natus est.



Merry Christmas, Everyone.

The Sermon I Wished I had Preached

There are some Mondays when I realize that I really didn’t like what I said in the Sunday sermon and wish that I could revise or edit after the fact. It wasn’t anything that I said, that I regret. It is all the things that I didn’t say about Advent.

The first Sunday of Advent is about being prepared, it is about waking up to the fact that Christ is coming into our lives at any moment and are we prepared for his coming? Bach’s Wachet Auf , “Sleeper’s Wake” is the cantata for the first week of Advent. It reminds us that the Christian’s life is not one that can be lived in a stupefied state. The Christian life must be lived in anticipation of Christ’s appearance at each moment.

Now, Monday is my day to sleep in. It is a day that I would like to forget that there is a world out there. But faith reminds me that I may be able to sleep in but I am never allowed to forget that God has created a world in which I live, move and have my being. I have an obligation to God to live in that world with responsibility. Advent reminds me of this obligation.

In his little book Jewish Spirituality for the Christian, Harold Kushner tells of the Jewish understanding of spiritual responsibility. He says that God made the world good. If it gets messed up by human sin, it is our responsibility to clean it up. It is a different look at what salvation means from the Christian’s sense that Christ has done all the cleaning up after us. It isn’t quite Pelagian but it does put the responsibility on humanity to clean up after ourselves. I like it. It seems much more consistent with good mental health than the kind of paternalistic salvation that has been articulated by some since the 4th century.

God has given humanity all that it needs to exist. I have been given all that I need: intellect, responsibility and will to be about not only providing for myself, but providing for others. My salvation is not dependant upon it, but it is my responsibility to interact with God’s creation. I may not be a hermit. (This does not negate the call of one to be a hermit; it just means that “I” may not be a hermit for the sake of the kingdom.) Few of us are called to that ministry.

The world needs my attention. It needs my being awake to those around me and to my God for the health of society. It has needed the sounds I have made to remind people of their obligation to one another, the Church and God. It is the Watchman’s obligation to call out alarm to the community when danger approaches. This is not the ministry of just those who see themselves as prophet. It is the call of all who are called to the ordained ministry.

The schism that is facing the Episcopal Church may just be the call from God that says that danger is near. It may be the Watchman who stands at the gate to wake us to a kind of clerical solemnence that says that we can move on without recognizing our sinfulness in how we have dealt with colleagues. We as clergy have also ignored the needs of the laity of our churches because we would rather be asleep to their needs. We have often been willing to snooze while fellow clergy are swept away rather than help colleagues with problems in their parishes. Clergy have been deaf to the cries of those having to deal with the failure of modernity simply because it is easier to teach quaint myths rather than expand on the abiding truths of our faith.

If there is a failure in the Episcopal Church it has been with the well-educated clergy being unwilling to address the historical-critical method of biblical scholarship with their flock, or even with themselves, so that their faith can address the post-modern era. If anything, we as clergy are being considered irrelevant simply because we are not willing to help folks adjust their faith from that of believing in facts to having a relationship with the God who provides all that is needed.

Advent is the time to Wake Up. It used to be a time of penitence. The purple colors in our churches called for a fast. But whatever our practice for the Advent season, it is time to repent from our mistakes and a call to right our wrong-doing for the sake of the Kingdom. Now is the time, the night is far spent. Wake Up, Church.

Our Jewish Heritage

I have been reading Jewish Spirituality for the Christian by Harold Kushner. I picked it up on the book table at Convention. I have always appreciated his books. He writes of a spirituality that is simple and integrated as most Jewish theology does. He seems to take argument in faith as a given. It is almost as if instead of “where there are two or more of you…there is always a fifth” which Episcopalians often say, it is “where there are two or more of you, there is always an argument” for Jews. It is not something that scandalizes; argument is of the nature of Judaism. I guess that is why there are so many “Jewish lawyer” jokes. It is because arguing is part of the development of their faith.

Such debate is healthy. As Episcopalians we have always debated in my experience. I always was interested in the debates of conventions. They made me think. Sometimes they were a little uncomfortable, but when ideas are challenged, it does take us out of our comfort zones.

But of late arguments have not been debates. The present difficulties in our Church have been ruined by those who do not debate but who harangue. Mudslinging seems to be the order of the day by many in the Blogosphere. I keep marveling at why we are concerned with Stand Firm in Faith when their writers have already made it known that they have left the Church. I have been saying for almost 6 years now that those who refuse to live by the Constitution and Canons of the Church should find a church where they can be at home. Being ordained under the Canons of the Episcopal Church when one cannot support them is disingenuous at best and a base lie at worst. But what this world-wide fight over who has power has done to faith is by far sadder. We have become unable to debate, unable to discuss the merits of legislation. It has become a matter of win/lose, not a matter of discussion and our witness to Christ is diminished because of it.

What I saw at Diocesan Convention this weekend is a church that cannot tolerate argument. It has come to understand debate as a bad thing. Rather than discuss the significant issues that face the Church we would rather be hyped up by games and forms of “prayer?” that are neither part of our tradition or satisfying to those who have spent time and money to be inspired by the commonality that is called Church. It is as if we have become afraid to allow anything that does not exalt episcopal leadership to be discussed. And even sadder it was a display of a younger group of clergy who do not understand the basic premises of our Episcopal Constitution and Canons.

The diocese is not a safe place for clergy these days. If one does not toe the party line, one can be called into the bishop’s office and warned that you are under suspicion of all kinds of things. They don’t even have to be true. I have had such a warning and have refused to buckle under it. It is also the reason why I am not working in the Episcopal Church these days. I miss my denomination dearly. And while I work in other churches, I will not abandon my faith simply because a young bishop or young clergy who have not fought the fight for women’s ordination or for African-Americans to vote, or for gay folk to live boldly in the Church do not understand the nature of a debated faith. I am trying very hard to not let priests run members out of a parish, or a bishop run me out of the diocese that called me to ordained ministry.

I noticed few retired clergy attended this Convention. I wonder if I too will fall to that temptation. I commented that there were few retired or senior clergy attend Clergy Conference earlier on this blog. I did notice that there were many retired clergy who came to the August Clergy Day which was supposed to be about the issues facing the church. That meeting ended in a major argument simply because the Bishop cannot or will not engage the issues addressed to him by the senior clergy.

Should I retire to obscurity until some future generation understands how to respect their elders and wants to report on what it was like ‘back when’? I don’t think so. I will continue to bring the issues that are facing our church to the forefront. It is a lonely existence but I have faith in a God that taught his people to argue. The time will come when we will once again be able to challenge one another in the Church to address the truth—a truth that goes beyond one opinion or another and embraces all in all.