(Ok, I apologize to the Righteous Brothers for the blog entry title...but onward...)
This Sunday, I was a little miffed at myself how one person engaging in a perfectly acceptable form of worship can throw me off my Eucharistic game.
I'll have to explain a little. I have a tendency to intently focus on the altar when I'm kneeling during the Eucharistic prayer. Not focus on the priest, but the altar in its entirety. It wouldn't matter to me if it was Wallace, or Carrol, or Mickey Mouse, or the Archbishop of Canterbury up there. To me, it's the altar.
Now, mostly we use Eucharistic Prayer A but sometimes we use C (Lent, Easter, mostly). So I'll confine my remarks to EP-A although I like all the stuff personally in EP-C with the stars and planets and interstellar space stuff (Hey, I grew up on the original Star Trek.)
But I have a tendency to want to stare at the altar in its totality and grab onto words in the EP and "feel" those words..."to reconcile us to you"..."We celebrate the memorial of our redemption"..."sanctify us"..."at the last day bring us with all your saints into the joy of your eternal kingdom". It is the hearing of the words plus seeing the table that does it for me. One of my senses isn't enough.
Well, and despite the fact one of the wonderful things about being Episcopalian is that you can choose to stand, kneel, or sit, there are just times that the "standers" get in the way of the "kneelers." I'm a kneeler. I admit it and I'm proud of it. I think it is because I like the humility of it in the presence of the Eucharistic table. But this week I had the bad luck to be directly behind a "stander". Again, usually, no problem. I can usually shift around and peek behind most standers. But no, not this week. I had to get behind a stander with a fat butt.
We are talking direct blockage of the entire altar. One big butt cut off my entire cosmic connection to the Eucharist. Somehow, it just doesn't work when you hear those great words and are visually encountering a big pair of butt cheeks.
I want to point out here I tried. I really really really tried. I closed my eyes. I tried to imagine the Eucharistic table in my mind. But even with my eyes firmly shut, I could still feel butt cheek aura.
So, because of my own frailties in terms of breaking my Eucharistic connection, when I got up to Communion, getting the host and the wine just lacked that "spark". (At least it disproved the "altar guild" theory...one of the altar guild crew once claimed, "You know that warm feeling you get at communion? Port. Eighteen percent alcohol. It ain't the Holy Spirit, it's the spirits.") Part of what I live for on Sunday is that little fleeting spark I get at the rail. The feeling that for at least for a few seconds or minutes, until I think my first untoward thought, I am 99 and 44/100% pure. But a pair of butt cheeks cost me the spark.
I was so mad at myself for being so distracted. I am sure if you had watched me come back to my seat, I looked overly rigid. I was thinking at the post-Eucharistic prayer, "...and grant us strength and courage to ignore butt cheeks and love and serve you..." sigh.....
For some reason today, I was thinking about how Jacob wrestled with God in Genesis 32. Jacob wrestled all night with “a man” until his foe dislocated Jacob’s hip. The “man” turned out to be the face of God.
Of course for me, “wrestling” carries a slightly different perspective. Whether it is the present gaudy, slick TV wrestling entertainment of today, or the far campier and lower budget TV wrestling I used to watch as a child, another word pops up: Scripted.
I won’t use the word “fake” in this instance, because it negates the athleticism it takes to be in the wrestling entertainment world. But “scripted” is a great word for it.
When I was a kid, like most kids in NE Missouri, we were all hooked on “All Star Wrestling”, the TV show from the old Central States Wrestling circuit. It was great schmaltz. You had good guys like Handsome Harley Race, Omar Atlas, and Danny Littlebear. You had bad guys like Bulldog Bob Brown, The Interns, and Black Angus. You had stuff that would be terribly politically incorrect now, like Black Angus’ foppish manager Percival A. Friend (who would hit the opponents with his briefcase) and one of my favorites, Rufus R. Jones (a black wrestler whose trademark was a sledgehammer of a head butt…because in those days people didn’t think it was offensive to call attention to how hard a black man’s head allegedly was.)
No matter how much we enjoyed it or how much we rooted for our favorites, even as little kids we knew it was scripted. My dad, when he was laid off from laying brick in the winter, tended bar, and it happened to be the bar that all the wrestlers hung out in when they would come to put on matches in the Macon high school gym. I used to sneak in for their autographs. Mortal enemies were drinking beer together. It wasn’t rocket science to know these matches were already decided for the most part.
But back to my task at hand. When I think of Jacob and his wrestling match, I realize in a way, it too was “scripted.” You know from the onset that Jacob won’t possibly win. Jacob had to realize at least at the point he got his hip dislocated that this was a done deal. As the reader, you know God is going to eventually win even before that moment in the story.
Then the thought crossed my mind: Perhaps MY mental wrestling matches with God are scripted, too. God already knows He is going to win. I may return time and time again for the grudge match, the steel cage match or even a tag-team match, but in my heart at times I can feel God is going to win and I am “pinned”, then exhaustingly submit—but not until I’ve lived through a bunch of rounds in the ring first. The weird part is I don’t feel I’m “losing” when that happens. But I definitely feel myself “giving in”.
I have noticed when praying during times of turmoil, that in the beginning of my praying, I can feel that sense of “wrestling.” It is energy mixed with fight/flight/fright and confusion. It is only over time that I can feel my body and my mind “give” to the pressure of God’s will. It turns from this confusing sense of turmoil to a sense that my shoulder is chafing against the rough canvas and I am lying on my back, looking up, the weight of it all pressing upon me. When that happens, the energy alone is left—warm and radiant, and only then can I bring myself to accept that energy.
Now it would seem one of those “Duh” moments would be, “Why don’t I just accept this gift and go with it?” I think I have figured out why. The gift would make no sense if you don’t wrestle first.
To submit to it would simply be blind obedience, like a dog. To just accept from the get-go means you only get a tiny quick glimpse of the face of God. But the sheer act of wrestling prolongs the encounter. To wrestle with God means you can see Him from all sides, all angles, in many positions. You can feel His sweat soaking through you. If you resist, he presses harder. Jacob’s wrestling match not only got him a dislocated hip, it got him a blessing. He would not have gotten the blessing had he not bothered to wrestle.
One of the things I've learned about clergy over the years is the more you get to know them as people, the more interesting they are and the more you start to see inside their sermons. When I looked at the lectionary readings for this week, I thought, "Uh, oh. The Scripture topics basically center around 'sin'. Wallace doesn't like to do sin."
Wallace has told me many times that sin is his least favorite topic because it's hard to talk about without getting too evangelical if you go too far in one direction, and too academic and impersonal if you go too far in the other direction. I can understand the dilemma. It's hard to think about sin in myself without either thinking, "I'm a horribly flawed being, and I suck," or "Um, I'd rather think about everyone else's sins than mine."
I think when clergy often hit a wall, or hit a topic that they have trouble with, they tend to hide behind their "default sermon". Every minister has one. As one of our congregation once said, "Wallace's is 'Go to your quiet place and connect with God.' Carrol's is, "Jesus died for you. Go do something about it.'"
Well, he hit the money on a topic that I know personally makes him uncomfortable. He used the imagery of "shadows" for our unrecognized sins. I think that is a very accurate representation of his least favorite three letter religious word. Most of the time, I think, our sins are not really in your face. We don’t wake up in the morning and think, “You know, today would be a good time to screw someone out of their money.” “Hey, I think I’m going to belittle someone on purpose today just because I can.” “Today seems like a dandy day to beat my spouse.”
The vast majority of our sins are really little shadowy glimpses in our peripheral vision. If we are focusing on something in front of us, we might not even see them, it’s only when we’re using our wide field of vision that they even are perceptible...and even then, just in the corners of our vision. Then we go, “What was that?”
When I think of those shadows, I like to think of bats, because they are, on occasion, visitors to Trinity (and unwelcome ones at that.) All of Kirksville's "church row" has a bat problem. There are two large old buildings (abandoned school buildings) in the neighborhood that have to be Ground Zero for the bat infestation in that part of town. I'm sure they flock in those two buildings like droves, and terrorize all the neighbors. Especially the churches in that geographic area. Kirksville literally means "City of Churches" (Kirche=church) and if you cruised either Washington St. or Harrison St. you would see it is aptly named.
Trinity's bats have made some interesting appearances. Two of them decided to be the entertainment at Lessons & Carols one year. Sometimes they simply fly in, drop their calling card on the altar or the walls, and disappear. Sometimes they are seen trying to get in by the door. Oh, yeah, and there was the dead bat in the kitchen.
But back to sin.
Those shadows of our sins sort of flit across our vision once in a while like a bat, but I realized something significant--we only notice them if we are sitting in the light. If we’re sitting in the dark we can’t see them. In the light we can see them and take action against them; we know to ask forgiveness for them. When we wallow in our darkness of our self-flagellation and despair and when we choose to keep God at arms’ length, we can’t see those bats flying around and the next thing you know they’re swooping in where you can feel them right on top of you...and you are going to react to that situation differently than if you could see them coming.
I did a little reading on the symbolism of different animals in the times of the early Christians. Back then, bats were thought to be half mouse, half bird. They represented being "stuck" between the darkness and the light, between good and evil. Likewise, we better see those shadows in our peripheral vision if the room is well lit. It creates a situation where we are stuck between the world of pure light and total darkness.
However, this creates a real Catch-22. If we choose to stay in the darkness, we don't have to look at the shadows of our sins...but we will still be existing in a world of darkness. If we choose a path that keeps us in the light of God, we have enough light to see all of our painful dark shadowy figures flitting about. Probably a better choice but a painful one nonetheless. But even with all that pain, we are ultimately forgiven...and can move forward with new, clear eyes.
One of the things I love about our church building is its age. Our present church building was built in 1917. Although it's one of the smaller churches on "church row" in Kirksville, it is one of the more attractive ones, built in the style of an old English church. Outside, it shows its age. It definitely needs tuckpointing. But you can still tell there's something different about it. I've been told it was designed by an architect named Dunbar, who did several churches in Missouri and was one of the more noted architects of the time.
Inside, it's the classic old Anglican style, with the upside down boat shaped ceiling and the timbers running across the sides of the "boat." although the altar, pulpit, and rail are newer, the rest is pretty much what was put in at the time it was built.
Honestly, it's the wood in the church that fascinates me. There's something about wood that allows one to reflect upon life. I like to think about the wood in the pews, the floor, the beams. The pews certainly must have wood in them that are 40 or 50 years older than the church because people still used old growth forest in those days. The beams could be older. It's odd to think about wood in your church that was still around when Americans owned slaves. When those trees were alive, they were most certainly harvested with horse-drawn labor. The sense of connection with history just from the wooden parts of my church can sometimes be an overwhelming feeling.
I would love to see pictures of the construction of the church; I wonder if any exist. The foundation was certainly hand dug with laborers and pickaxes. Most of the workmen must have traveled to their job by wagon or horseback as very few people owned a car in 1916-17. WWI had not yet touched the United States but it was getting very close when they started construction on that church. Kirksville was not yet 20 years out from the devastating tornado that hit it in 1899. Probably very few trees of any size were on Harrison or Mulanix streets, the corner where Trinity sits.
I like to think of how the congregation felt, sitting in their brand new church for the first time, in 1917. It's funny to think about them using the 1892 Book of Common Prayer. (I can barely imagine even sitting through a service with the 1892 BCP and saying all those "thee's", "thou's," and "beeseeches"!) That grand old girl that is my church has seen a lot of change, for sure.
I think about her magic in a world where the fancy, auditorium sized megachurch is the hot ticket. Yet she is alive and well, not a dinosaur at all, in a world of churches made to make her feel like a dinosaur. God dwells in her in a way that may never happen in a lot of church buildings because people will be obsessed with new and shiny. Yet this was not by design. The congregation in 1917 had a shiny new church and they were probably very happy about the new and shiny parts of it. Then somehow, over time, the congregation sees the magic of being in something grand and old. This had to be an imperceptible change. Funny how things like that happen, isn't it?
Lately, I've become fascinated with the rhetoric espoused by both the secular and the religious sector that implies evil can be surgically removed, like a cancer. Much of the talk centered on "winning" in Iraq or Afghanistan hinges around the suggestion that by removing a few key players, almost as if they were tumors, could "cure" the situation. Fundamentalist Christians embody evil in a discrete entity--Satan--and work off the assumption that if you just drive Satan away, well, only good will remain. Good. Evil. It's so simple and easy to grasp--so why muddy the waters by complicating it?
Here's the truth: Even when you surgically remove a cancer, you take good tissue out with it. The surgeon doesn't have microscopic vision. Instead, a rim of normal tissue is always taken out with the cancer. Even then, what grossly looks normal isn't always "normal" when scrutinized under the pathologist's microscope. Occasionally, microscopic foci of tumor extend to the edges of that "normal-looking" margin, and then more good tissue must be re-excised for a surgical cure.
Therein, I believe, lies the true nature of evil. Sure, there is obvious evil. Line up 100 people and they'll tell you Adolph Hitler was evil. But sometimes, evil is more subjective...or not evident until exposed to the frame of passing time...or adjucated by which side you were on in the event. Westward expansion didn't seem evil when Americans felt we had to fulfil our "manifest destiny" but the displacement and massacre of tens of thousands of Native Americans, in retrospect, certainly has elements of evil entertwined within it.
It's interesting that we have a human tendency to stratify sin when all sin is capable of giving a person the feeling of "separation from God." We lump all the things we think of as "really bad sins" in the "evil" category and all the little piddly wrongdoings as "failings" or "shortcomings" or whatnot. Yet, in our times of tribulation, we can feel our self-distancing from God for something small just as acutely as for something big. At the same time, we can be blithely unaware of sins not yet come to light, that turn out to be significant failings on our part.
In my mind, this is why I think the concept of being able to perform an "evil-ectomy" is an impossible task. The margins of the "tumor" are so blurred it can never be fully excised. If the prayer "God, please remove all evil in the world" could be answered, who of us would be left standing? Nobody--and that is our divine paradox. Each of us, made in the Creator's image, has to work our way through this co-mingling of our divine nature and our sin nature. The tumorous portions of our soul are not discrete lesions but more like a miscible pair of liquids. One simply can't be separated from the other. Yet in this murky, opaque mix of two totally opposite entities, we still see the light of God shining in people. Go figure!
I know, I know...I do not like to foray into church politics a whole lot on this blog...but once in a while something comes up that I have to say something. This time it is the proposed Anglican Communion Draft Covenant. The short version is: This appears to me to be a very carefully worded document filled with hidden language that appears innocuous but in reality, is not, and gives power to the primates of the AC that have never been historical aspects of the governance of the American church.
I particularly take issue to two parts of it: One, that in part 2, #5, the 39 Articles of Religion and the 1662 Book of Common Prayer are the guiding bases of our faith; and two, under part 6, #6, it is the primates' call on when "member churches choose not to fulfill the substance of the covenant."
I'll address my last beef first.
Yes, our bishops in the ECUSA have apostolic succession, but our church is self-governed, and has been that way since we broke from the Church of England during the revolutionary period. "We the people" decide through our House of Bishops, House of Deputies, and the General Convention what our church policies are. The wonderful thing is there is lay representation in this process. Frankly, this is what is so "American" about ECUSA. We don't take dictums from higher ups, even in spiritual matters. This is the heart of what the Reformation was all about...that lay people have the power to interpret Scripture. Yes, I defer to a vicar's or a bishop's scholarship, but I don't necessarily defer to his or her view on what Scripture means to ME.
The primates of the Global South wish for a governance more like the church of Rome. This is what the heart of the impairment between the GS and the ECUSA is, but they are conveniently using the issues of ordaining the XX Chromosome Crowd and homosexuality as the whipping boys/girls of their larger agenda.
The AC needs to understand that they are a communion, not a hierarchy.
Now on to my first beef...
Ok, I am going back to the catechism in the 1979 BCP for this (italics mine):
| Under "The Creeds": |
Q: What are the creeds?
A: The creeds are statements of our basic beliefs about God.
Q: How many creeds does this Church use in its worship?
A: This Church uses two creeds: The Apostles' Creed and the Nicene Creed.
Our church is based on a view of Scripture as outlined by the creeds; part of the "Scripture" leg of the classic "3 legged stool of our church--Scripture, Tradition, and Reason". The 39 Articles of Religion and the 1662 BCP are historical documents, part of the "Tradition" leg of the same stool. It seems to me that certain segments of the AC want to merge these legs into one leg, and take the leg of "Reason" away from the laity, give it to the primates, and say, "Here, this is what this leg is supposed to look like. Build your three legged stool however you want, as long as the other legs match this leg."
Meanwhile, I think we have perfectly fine three-legged stool crafters here in the US, and we should be left alone to make them.
I'm having one of those weeks where I'm "thinking heretical thoughts". I get those once in a while. Many of these thoughts I've harbored since childhood, only expanded on them a little as my mind expanded.
We're always told that Jesus was "fully human and fully divine." (We've been "officially" saying that since the adoption of a doctrinal statement created at the Council Chalcedon in 491 C.E., anyway.) Fully human. Fully divine. That is just a really hard concept to wrap one's mind around. Allow me to expound on my heresy:
If we totally bought, hook, line and sinker, the concept of a "sinless Christ" (which seems to be the party line in more fundamental denominations)...Wouldn’t anyone have noticed that Jesus, while growing up, was one weird little kid?
I mean, if you follow the notion of Christ’s deity and sinlessness literally, here’s this kid, who’s God made flesh...who never does anything wrong. Never gets sick. Never beats the crap out of his brother. Never taunts little girls with frogs or snakes. Never got his buns warmed by his parents. Never had a temper tantrum.
That notion creates in my mind this extremely un-endearing, disgustingly perfect little kid that, had I been one of Jesus’ playmates as a child, would have schemed up some way to get his little goody-goody behind in trouble. (Now THERE's another concept to wrap one's mind around--I have to live with the notion that I am flawed to the point I would, as a child, like to have left Jesus "holding the bag" on some scheme to get him in trouble. If there's a great white throne of judgement, I'll certainly be squirming while answering that one.)
Wouldn’t the other kids in town have ragged on Jesus for being such a goody-two-shoes?
Wouldn’t Mary and Joseph had ever thought, “Wait a minute...what’s wrong with this kid????” (Sure, they know the score about who He was, but they would have HAD to have some wild dinner conversations....)
"Joseph, doesn't it ever bother you that Jesus never does anything wrong?"
"Well, yeah, but I've never reared the Son of God before, Mary...what do you want ME to do about it. Besides, really, he's more YOUR kid than mine."
How could a kid like that NOT have attracted attention in town?
"What's up with that Jesus kid anyway? He never steals fruit off my fruit stand like the other kids."
"Yeah, and who does he think he is anyway, talking about 'his father in Heaven' all the time. Everyone knows he's the carpenter's kid."
"Well, maybe he's not REALLY the carpenter's kid. I heard she was already knocked up by someone else--I heard some Roman soldier got to her--and Joseph just didn't want to make a big deal about it. That Joseph is a bigger man than I am, if he could do that."
But then I find I have to reconcile myself to the notion that the human form of Jesus had to have SOME kind of human frailties somehow. I say that b/c of the temple story. Let’s look at what happened:
He took off away from his parents for 5 days. Obviously, his parents would not consider that being “led by the spirit.”
If I had told my dad, “Don’t you know I’m in my Father’s house” after they found me, he wouldn’t have gone, “Oh. Ok.” It would have been more like, “We’ve been looking all over Hell’s Half Acre for you for 3 days, don’t you DARE give me any lip! Whaddy’a mean ‘my father’s house’? I’M your father, you ungrateful little turd!” and would have dragged my sorry smart-mouthed butt out of the temple and whipped it raw.
My mom certainly would not have “treasured” that incident, either. “Look, I know you’re smart, but don’t you be going all prima donna precocious on me here. I didn’t raise you that way. I’m not going to listen to all the mothers in town rag me for you being a precocious, spoiled brat. You need to learn a little more humility. Don’t you ever take off on us like that again, or I’m telling you, there’ll be hell to pay.”
So, really, he did something wrong here. He took off from his parents without their permission and gave them what would have appeared to be a rebellious, smart-alecky answer when they find him after 3 days. So Jesus the human HAD to have some human failings. He may well have been a perfect soul, but he HAD to be an imperfect human or at least had committed some acts that people around him would have deemed “wrong.”
I think where the mental disconnect takes place when one thinks about this problem is we undervalue Christ's humanity and at the same time, undervalue our divinity. We tend to virtually ignore the possibility that Jesus was truly "one of us"--fully human. To be fully human means you make mistakes, or at the very least, commit acts that others perceive as "sin". There are plenty of statements He makes in the Gospels that I think, "Well, gee, that was a little harsh." (Cursing the fig tree comes to mind. That smacks too much of impetuous parlor magic to suit me.) See--there I go again. Curses were considered to be "wrong" in His day, or at the very least, not fit for polite company--but there He is, ragging on the fig tree.
(I won't even begin to go into how Mark has him cursing it BEFORE He entered the temple, and Matthew says it was AFTER he went into the temple--that's a subject for another day.)
I realize this might attract some grief from the more fundamentalist crowd, but I just have one request if I'm going to be nailed for heresy--use wet wood when you burn me at the stake so I die of smoke inhalation first.
