If my attempt to beat words into plowshares is going to be tested, I think a prayer for an American civil holiday is one of the better testing grounds.
I was asked as the only pastor in town to give a prayer as an invocation for the town's Memorial Day ceremony. Here is the prayer that I gave:
O God, creator of all, all we have been given has you as its source.
And so we come to you again and again with grateful hearts for your generosity towards us.
We thank you for this beautiful day,
for the green all around us,
for the sun shining bright and warm,
we thank you for the flowers and the vision to enjoy their beauty,
we thank you for beautiful music and we thank you for a day off to enjoy all this.
You created us for life, for joy, for beauty,
but we come to you now remembering those who did not remain with us to enjoy your gift of life.
We come to you remembering our fallen brothers and sisters, fathers and mothers, grandfathers and grandmothers.
We come to you remembering that their lives were cut short in the chaos of conflict.
You have created us for peace, for fellowship with our fellow human beings,
but humanity again and again finds itself embroiled in war.
Many of these men and women were from small towns like Acworth,
and we remember in particular today those who went from this place,
to unknown lands, into unknown destinies.
O God, you have created us as a remembering people,
we remember some things so well and others so poorly,
we remember some things as they really were and others as we would have liked them to be--
our capacity for memory mingles with our capacity for creativity and we create tall tales.
Today we ask, O God, that you would give us the clarity of mind, the grace of thought, to remember truthfully our brothers and sisters fallen in battle.
So often we want to glorify the fallen, but they were human too.
So often we want to transform their war into an event of mythic proportions, but war fought by those close to us is nonetheless destructive and horrifying.
O God save us from too free an imagination.
We pray that we would neither romanticize the fallen, nor forget them and the wars in which they fell. We continually face the temptation to forget history, to live only in our own small worlds of work and amusement. We pray, O God, that you would save us from becoming blind in forgetfulness. May we remember truthfully, neither idealizing nor disdaining the fallen in an attempt to exempt ourselves from the sacrifices and compromises of war. And let us not forget the wars of the past, or ignore the present wars and thus find ourselves doomed for more of the same.
Most of all, save us from abusing the memory of the soldiers for our own agendas.
Politicians have already used and reused the memory of the fallen for their own purposes.
Today we want to remember them truthfully, as individuals.
May our memories not be tainted by a spirit of retaliation -- deliver us from the tendency so ingrained in our minds and hearts to turn one violent act into a longing for another one.
Let not violence breed more violence in us, O God.
Help us to remember them as human beings, as fellow human beings, as those who laughed, ate, drank, slept, cried, who longed for home.
Help us to remember that they were so much more than soldiers, that they were once like us here, gathered together on a beautiful May morning.
Help us to remember that they loved peace, they loved home just as much as we do.
As we decorate their graves, O God, we ask that we would do it as fellow human beings who are grateful for the strength that these men and women showed as they left home to face to horrors of war.
We ask that as we recognize our common humanity with the brothers and sisters that we remember today, that we would realize also our common humanity with those who lost loved ones. So often we get caught up in our own feelings about this day, our own memories, our own stories. We ask, O God, that you would give us grace to step outside of ourselves this day that we might show our love and support grounded in our common humanity. Knowing that our gestures and words only go so far in showing our care, we ask that you would make our love known in a real way to all those for whom this day is especially sorrowful, especially those who have recently lost a loved one in battle.
We ask that you would spur us this day as we remember the fallen, to create here and now in our communities, in our families, the kind of society that would manifest a peace stronger than the temptation to war.
As we breathe in the fresh spring air, we ask that you would inspire us by your beautiful creation and its harmonious order to be agents of that harmony, agents of that beauty in our daily walks.
May this Memorial Day not leave us in the past, but point us to the future. May the stings of death’s arrows produce in us a fervent longing for the fullness of life that we can live by hearts of love through works of love, here and now. May the memory of the fallen be transformed into an inspiration to go out and make peace.
We come with hearts equally full of joy and sorrow, of gratitude and remorse. Give us O God a vision of your beauty, a vision of your design for this planet and may it drive us to depths of appreciation for your goodness and for all of the gifts we have been given in life -- especially by those who have gone before us.
We thank you, O God, for this day. We thank you for our brothers and sisters all across this globe. Inspire us by the peace we enjoy to work for that peace for all people.
We pray this in the name of the one who created all things and called them good,
Amen.
Monday, May 28, 2012
Sunday, May 20, 2012
This Church Is Going to Hell
In a talk he gave at the Annual Gathering of American Baptist Churches of VT and NH Dale Edwards, the new executive minister, told the story of how when he started to make changes in the way the church services were being run he was confronted with a bit of opposition. He told how one day one of the church members came up to him and told him, "this Church is going to hell." He said to us his audience, "I thought we were going to heaven." He said that we have a foot in two worlds.
An old world which is passing away, and a new one which is taking its place. Churches are notoriously slow to change with the times and change can often be met with stiff resistance. Today I announced two small changes in the way the service would go and while I was glad to have made changes, I feel vulnerable to people who will begin to say things like "no one likes you" or "this church is going to hell."
Rev. Jim Brown, a retired baptist minister who is a member of our church has said that we need to have slanted shoulders so that words of criticism and anger can just roll right off. I am looking forward to the possibilities as we go forward as a church and am confident that God will grow us in God's way. And know that there may be anonymous nasty notes or direct confrontations like the one Dale talks of. But I also hear with encouragement that Dale pressed on through that difficulty, that backlash and he tells how when he started the church had 50 regular attenders and there were 250 at his last service.
We can't be afraid of change, we can't let opinions of others dictate the vision for how the church might manifest the kingdom of God. Slow and steady, faith and charity and we will find our way into the new by God's grace.
An old world which is passing away, and a new one which is taking its place. Churches are notoriously slow to change with the times and change can often be met with stiff resistance. Today I announced two small changes in the way the service would go and while I was glad to have made changes, I feel vulnerable to people who will begin to say things like "no one likes you" or "this church is going to hell."
Rev. Jim Brown, a retired baptist minister who is a member of our church has said that we need to have slanted shoulders so that words of criticism and anger can just roll right off. I am looking forward to the possibilities as we go forward as a church and am confident that God will grow us in God's way. And know that there may be anonymous nasty notes or direct confrontations like the one Dale talks of. But I also hear with encouragement that Dale pressed on through that difficulty, that backlash and he tells how when he started the church had 50 regular attenders and there were 250 at his last service.
We can't be afraid of change, we can't let opinions of others dictate the vision for how the church might manifest the kingdom of God. Slow and steady, faith and charity and we will find our way into the new by God's grace.
Thursday, May 17, 2012
Death and Dying
I just got off the phone speaking to a man who will be 96 in July if he is still alive. I spoke to this man because he was unable to speak to me. This man is in hospice care in Florida right now and today is doing very poorly. It may be moments now before his passing but he may make it through this hard spot and see another day. As he said to me, it could be two days, two weeks, two months, two years.
I spoke with him two days ago and had a conversation like the conversations we'd had this Fall when he was still in New Hampshire. I want to share his perspective which he shared with me.
He has been thinking a lot about death and dying and the afterlife over the years since his wife's passing. In conversations this past fall, we spoke about views of the afterlife as having great rewards and young women, etc. He denied all of this afterlife certainty. How can we say we know these things? He was a Geologist and is a man of scientific inquiry and agnostic faith. When I spoke to him two days ago, he shared his perspective and I want to share it here. In Paul's first letter to the Corinthians in chapter 13, near the end we read:
We have faith because of the light given us. We have hope, because of the light given us. But most importantly, we love because of that light given us. And this is the most important part for this man. "And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity." He wants to maintain the word "charity" here and not replace it with "love."
Love has become a sexualized word in our time. It has always been the one English word which depending on context could mean a sensual desire or an affection toward the poor, or an enjoyment of kinship. At least now, if this hasn't always been the case, the sensual (eros) sense of the word love is the most frequently used sense. So this man wants to retain the word "charity." Because charity won't get confused with "free-love." The difference between charity and love might for some, and perhaps for this man, be like the difference between Martin Buber's I and Thou and I and it. Charity is a higher form of love, charity is what God (that great light) shows toward humanity and charity is what humans are called to show to one another. This word allows the word to be lifted from the confusion of sexualized and romanticized love and gives it a higher, consecrated purpose.
And this is important for this 96 year old man. Wars are fought because of certainty without charity. Faith and hope with charity will bring peace. Faith with hope not certainty, charity to all not coercion. We have been given the light that we have and they've been given the light that they have. Charity will guide us forward in the absence of a final top-down conclusion of who's right, who's wrong. Charity is that light which shines refracted through the prism of the universe.
This is the perspective that he communicated to me -- it's at least the best I could make from a phone call with many communication barriers involved. I can learn a lot from his thoughts on faith and his longing for charity in the world.
Light and charity. Throughout 1 John, these two are connected. "Whoever loves a brother or sister lives in the light, and in such a person there is no cause for stumbling" (1 John 2:10, NRSV). As a Christian I believe that the light which my friend talks about was unambiguously revealed in the person of Jesus Christ, who loved with a love than which none is greater -- he laid down his life for his beloved. This is charity and this is light.
I conclude with the words of Aaron Weiss from the song "O Porcupine" who speaks to the certainty of that light when all else is uncertain:
"Sister in our darkness a light shines
and all I ever want to say for the rest of my life
is how that light is God,
and though I've been mistaken on this or that point,
that light is nevertheless God."
I spoke with him two days ago and had a conversation like the conversations we'd had this Fall when he was still in New Hampshire. I want to share his perspective which he shared with me.
He has been thinking a lot about death and dying and the afterlife over the years since his wife's passing. In conversations this past fall, we spoke about views of the afterlife as having great rewards and young women, etc. He denied all of this afterlife certainty. How can we say we know these things? He was a Geologist and is a man of scientific inquiry and agnostic faith. When I spoke to him two days ago, he shared his perspective and I want to share it here. In Paul's first letter to the Corinthians in chapter 13, near the end we read:
When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see through a glass, darkly, but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.We see through a dim crystal ball, he said. I heard this as "a glass, darkly". And he said that that glass is like a prism which refracts one light, one great light. We've all seen refracted waves of this light and we rejoice in the refracted waves. These waves give us a glimpse, however darkly, of that great light.
We have faith because of the light given us. We have hope, because of the light given us. But most importantly, we love because of that light given us. And this is the most important part for this man. "And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity." He wants to maintain the word "charity" here and not replace it with "love."
Love has become a sexualized word in our time. It has always been the one English word which depending on context could mean a sensual desire or an affection toward the poor, or an enjoyment of kinship. At least now, if this hasn't always been the case, the sensual (eros) sense of the word love is the most frequently used sense. So this man wants to retain the word "charity." Because charity won't get confused with "free-love." The difference between charity and love might for some, and perhaps for this man, be like the difference between Martin Buber's I and Thou and I and it. Charity is a higher form of love, charity is what God (that great light) shows toward humanity and charity is what humans are called to show to one another. This word allows the word to be lifted from the confusion of sexualized and romanticized love and gives it a higher, consecrated purpose.
And this is important for this 96 year old man. Wars are fought because of certainty without charity. Faith and hope with charity will bring peace. Faith with hope not certainty, charity to all not coercion. We have been given the light that we have and they've been given the light that they have. Charity will guide us forward in the absence of a final top-down conclusion of who's right, who's wrong. Charity is that light which shines refracted through the prism of the universe.
This is the perspective that he communicated to me -- it's at least the best I could make from a phone call with many communication barriers involved. I can learn a lot from his thoughts on faith and his longing for charity in the world.
Light and charity. Throughout 1 John, these two are connected. "Whoever loves a brother or sister lives in the light, and in such a person there is no cause for stumbling" (1 John 2:10, NRSV). As a Christian I believe that the light which my friend talks about was unambiguously revealed in the person of Jesus Christ, who loved with a love than which none is greater -- he laid down his life for his beloved. This is charity and this is light.
I conclude with the words of Aaron Weiss from the song "O Porcupine" who speaks to the certainty of that light when all else is uncertain:
"Sister in our darkness a light shines
and all I ever want to say for the rest of my life
is how that light is God,
and though I've been mistaken on this or that point,
that light is nevertheless God."
Saturday, May 12, 2012
Stuff I Can't Dream of Reading During the Semester
Year one (of six) at Yale Divinity School is over.
I'm finally getting time to breathe and rest and detox (down to one cup of tea--no coffee).
And characteristically I decided to make myself a reading plan for the 17 weeks of vacation I have from school. Rather than go back to my syllabi and catch up or read the recommended reading -- which I'm sure would help further my understanding and would be prudent in its own way, I've decided to reread a book which I read in 2011, A Secular Age by Charles Taylor.
In addition, I'm making my way through James Wm. McClendon Jr.'s three-volume Systematic Theology. I found McClendon in my search for Baptist theologians this Fall. I had become friends with fellow students who were Episcopalian, Lutheran, Roman Catholic, Calvinist, some traditional, some progressive. So all of our discussions would focus on what a Lutheran should think regarding x, y, or z. Or what an Episcopalian view of a,b, and c is.
I was raised in a biblicist tradition which didn't much care what Calvin or Luther had to say -- if it isn't in the [plain-reading] of the biblical text then it doesn't hold any water. But I've since come to think, through my study of philosophy, that either there is no such thing as a "plain reading" of the text or that the "plain reading" dangerously calls an objective rendering what is really laden with subjective baggage -- e.g. assumptions about the self (phenomenology), the fundamental realities of the world (ontology), and how we know, how we interpret, how we determine truth (epistemology). So discussions about what was true or not just took a lot for granted and mainly focused on proof-text arguments which in reality raise more questions than they answer.
I became fascinated with Radical Orthodoxy six years ago after reading Nietzsche and MacIntyre and and became captivated by a radically Christian ontology (Milbank's ontology of peace), a radically Christian way of knowing, etc. -- but Radical Orthodoxy was through and through Catholic and while I loved it for its encounter with postmodern ideas, I hated it for its (what I later became able to call) Constantinian elements. I was attending an Anglican church at the time and I could never get used to the hierarchical way of thinking. I was too thoroughly free-church evangelical.
So when I found myself called to become pastor of the United Church of Acworth (ABC/UCC) I had mixed feelings intellectually. On the one hand I felt like it was coming home (it literally is my home church -- but I'm thinking more in terms of theological/ecclesiological). On the other hand I felt like there were really good reasons to be suspicious of the kind of language of autonomy presupposed in free-church ecclesiology and soteriology.
So I have obviously come to terms with this tension and rather than try to solve it by become radically one thing or the other, I've let it drive me on to learn, to seek to understand why I can be a person who lives in the world of biblicism while admiring to the point of envy the philosophical-theological worlds of Lutherans and Anglo-Catholics.
Which is the reason I found McClendon. I wanted to find someone who was a baptist and who had encountered the theological other (and read MacIntyre and was friends with Hauerwas) yet was able to still talk about (an obviously theologically nuanced version of) plain reading of the biblical text. McClendon has so far opened up my eyes to the fact that one of the main reasons baptists have suffered in theological debates and often simply poorly parroted Calvinism/Arminianism, etc. is that baptists have never been established in the way that these other (again Constantinian) theologies have. So I'm looking forward to understanding my baptist self and the congregation in which I serve through reading McClendon and others who have followed a similar road as him (like Barry Harvey and Beth Newman).
So discovering McClendon in the shelves of the Divinity library helped me to regain confidence that there is a tradition of understanding in the baptist world which I can go to help better understanding the "baptist vision" as McClendon calls it. And since I've begun reading McClendon, I've been able to helpfully give a dissenting viewpoint to my established church friends -- particularly on the notes of Constantinianism that seem to pervade more theological issues than I previously imagined.
And I think Taylor and McClendon with a little Wendell Berry and Karl Barth here and there will make for a good summer reading. Stuff I can't dream of reading during the semesters.
I'm finally getting time to breathe and rest and detox (down to one cup of tea--no coffee).
And characteristically I decided to make myself a reading plan for the 17 weeks of vacation I have from school. Rather than go back to my syllabi and catch up or read the recommended reading -- which I'm sure would help further my understanding and would be prudent in its own way, I've decided to reread a book which I read in 2011, A Secular Age by Charles Taylor.
In addition, I'm making my way through James Wm. McClendon Jr.'s three-volume Systematic Theology. I found McClendon in my search for Baptist theologians this Fall. I had become friends with fellow students who were Episcopalian, Lutheran, Roman Catholic, Calvinist, some traditional, some progressive. So all of our discussions would focus on what a Lutheran should think regarding x, y, or z. Or what an Episcopalian view of a,b, and c is.
I was raised in a biblicist tradition which didn't much care what Calvin or Luther had to say -- if it isn't in the [plain-reading] of the biblical text then it doesn't hold any water. But I've since come to think, through my study of philosophy, that either there is no such thing as a "plain reading" of the text or that the "plain reading" dangerously calls an objective rendering what is really laden with subjective baggage -- e.g. assumptions about the self (phenomenology), the fundamental realities of the world (ontology), and how we know, how we interpret, how we determine truth (epistemology). So discussions about what was true or not just took a lot for granted and mainly focused on proof-text arguments which in reality raise more questions than they answer.
I became fascinated with Radical Orthodoxy six years ago after reading Nietzsche and MacIntyre and and became captivated by a radically Christian ontology (Milbank's ontology of peace), a radically Christian way of knowing, etc. -- but Radical Orthodoxy was through and through Catholic and while I loved it for its encounter with postmodern ideas, I hated it for its (what I later became able to call) Constantinian elements. I was attending an Anglican church at the time and I could never get used to the hierarchical way of thinking. I was too thoroughly free-church evangelical.
So when I found myself called to become pastor of the United Church of Acworth (ABC/UCC) I had mixed feelings intellectually. On the one hand I felt like it was coming home (it literally is my home church -- but I'm thinking more in terms of theological/ecclesiological). On the other hand I felt like there were really good reasons to be suspicious of the kind of language of autonomy presupposed in free-church ecclesiology and soteriology.
So I have obviously come to terms with this tension and rather than try to solve it by become radically one thing or the other, I've let it drive me on to learn, to seek to understand why I can be a person who lives in the world of biblicism while admiring to the point of envy the philosophical-theological worlds of Lutherans and Anglo-Catholics.
Which is the reason I found McClendon. I wanted to find someone who was a baptist and who had encountered the theological other (and read MacIntyre and was friends with Hauerwas) yet was able to still talk about (an obviously theologically nuanced version of) plain reading of the biblical text. McClendon has so far opened up my eyes to the fact that one of the main reasons baptists have suffered in theological debates and often simply poorly parroted Calvinism/Arminianism, etc. is that baptists have never been established in the way that these other (again Constantinian) theologies have. So I'm looking forward to understanding my baptist self and the congregation in which I serve through reading McClendon and others who have followed a similar road as him (like Barry Harvey and Beth Newman).
So discovering McClendon in the shelves of the Divinity library helped me to regain confidence that there is a tradition of understanding in the baptist world which I can go to help better understanding the "baptist vision" as McClendon calls it. And since I've begun reading McClendon, I've been able to helpfully give a dissenting viewpoint to my established church friends -- particularly on the notes of Constantinianism that seem to pervade more theological issues than I previously imagined.
And I think Taylor and McClendon with a little Wendell Berry and Karl Barth here and there will make for a good summer reading. Stuff I can't dream of reading during the semesters.
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