Posts on Another Blog

Dear friends,

In case you find yourself itching for something brief and spiritual to read during these Christmas holidays, I'll be posting some of my translations of Christmas sermons from the Church Fathers on my own blog. The first one is here.

ZG

The Hope of Advent

“He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him.”

John 1:7

The Reverend Luther Zeigler

Come, Lord Jesus, open our eyes to your Light, overcome the darkness that sometimes befalls us, and brighten our lives with the Hope that only you can bring; who lives and reigns with the Father and the Holy Spirit, now and forever.  Amen.

           

It is the third Sunday in Advent, a mere two weeks from Christmas, and yet, as we listen to today’s readings, we seem light years from being with young Mary and Joseph in Bethlehem as they expectantly await the birth of their holy child.  If you want your fix of shepherds and angels breathlessly anticipating the birth of a Savior, you’ll have to wait for our service of Lessons and Carols, because today we’re given an Advent message that is distinctly more sober in tone.  Much as we might like to fast-forward to the softly sentimental glow of the nativity scene, the voice of John the Baptist is still crying out to us from the wilderness for another Sunday:  “make straight all the crooked places where the Lord our God may go!”

Messengers play a pivotal role in the gospels.  Indeed, each of the four gospels opens with the appearance of a messenger.  The evangelists differ, however, in who that messenger is and the nature of the message.  In Matthew and Luke, the messenger is the angel Gabriel who comes to Joseph and Mary with the wonderful, if impossibly perplexing, news that Mary will bear a son who will be God himself.  Mark and John, on the other hand, seem utterly disinterested in Jesus’ birth or its circumstances.   The messenger that Mark and John feature in their gospels is John the Baptist, and the Baptist’s message is less about how God becomes one of us than why.  Last week we heard Mark’s account of John the Baptist’s message; this week we hear John’s.

John the Baptist is the first human introduced in John’s gospel and his message is a deceptively simple one:  I am here to be a witness.  I am not the messiah.  I am not a prophet.  I am a mere witness to something remarkable that is happening in the world.  John points not to himself, but to someone else.  He points to Jesus and he tells us that Jesus is the Light of the world.  The world may seem shrouded in darkness, John testifies, but there is a Light that will finally and fully overcome even the darkest forces in this world.  God comes in Jesus to enlighten a world that would otherwise be blinded by darkness.  Jesus is our hope.

That is John’s message.  It sounds straightforward enough.  Yet, it is one thing to hear John’s message of hope; it is another to witness it transform lives.

I was privileged to have that opportunity last February during a visit to Haiti, a visit that forever changed my view of John the Baptist and his message of hope.  I was invited to Haiti by a friend, Roger Bowen, an Episcopal priest whose ministry in his retirement is to establish a network of partnerships between American Episcopal schools and Episcopal schools in Haiti.  Although few people know it, the Diocese of Haiti is the largest diocese in the Episcopal Church.  Amazingly, there are more Episcopalians in Haiti than there are in the diocese of Massachusetts, or Virginia, or New York, or any other single diocese.

At the time of my visit, I was the senior chaplain of an Episcopal school in Maryland, St. Andrew’s.  Roger had persuaded me to make the trip, along with a couple of my faculty colleagues, for the purpose of establishing a partnership between St. Andrew’s and a school in the tiny village of Civol, which lies in a remote hillside region, a few hours north of the capital city, Port-au-Prince.  An impoverished place without electricity, running water, or any of the amenities of modern life, Civol is about as poor and remote a place as one can imagine.   The village is little more than a collection of shacks, at the center of which sits a modest, one-room Episcopal church with mud walls. 

Civol’s school – which serves about 300 children – has no building.  Classes are held outside under a portico adjacent to the church.  The students sit on simple wooden benches.  They have no desks, no supplies, no books.  To say the school is “struggling” fails to do justice to the bleak conditions under which these children are trying to learn. 

Our saintly guide on the trip was Father Jeannot, the Episcopal Archdeacon of the Central Plateau and the Haitian priest who oversees Civol, in addition to fifteen other parishes and schools in the region.  Because Father Jeannot is responsible for so many parishes across such a wide region, he is only able to visit each one a few times a year.  A visit from Father Jeannot is, for this reason, a very big deal for the town, especially when he brings along a foreign guest.

Despite their poverty, the people of Civol welcomed us with great warmth, hospitality, and joy.  During our weekend stay in their village, in addition to meeting the school’s teachers, principal and students, Father Jeannot and I performed a wedding, we sang and danced with our hosts at the wedding reception that went late into the night, and then we baptized 16 town children the next morning during a three-hour Eucharist service punctuated by testimonials and songs from our Haitian hosts.  My faculty colleagues and I were moved to tears when one of the town leaders rose to speak during the service, thanking us profusely for our presence and commitment to a long-term partnership with their school.  “No one has ever visited us before,” he said.  “Even our own government has forgotten us.  You are the first people to care that we exist.” 

As we returned to the airport in Port-au-Prince at the end of our visit, we decided to stop by Holy Trinity Cathedral – or what was left of it after the devastating earthquake of January 2010.  The Cathedral’s sanctuary had been renowned for fourteen glorious interior murals, which had been painted in the early 1950s by some of Haiti’s most respected artists. 

As we arrived, we could see that the once majestic, spiritual home to Haiti’s people was now a heap of rubble.  Only one corner wall of the Cathedral was still standing.  As we approached the wall, we could see the outline of one of the few remaining murals that survived the quake:  a colorful depiction of the Baptism of Christ by the great Haitian painter, Castera Bazile. 

          
At the center of the mural is Jesus, standing ankle deep in the River Jordan.  Next to him, standing on a rock in the middle of the river, is John the Baptist.  In his right hand John has a pitcher of water, which he is pouring over Jesus’ head.  But it is his left hand that catches my eye.  With this hand, John is pointing, pointing directly at Jesus’ face, as if to indicate:  This is the Way, this is the Light, this is the Truth, this is our Hope.

That image of John the Baptist pointing to Jesus has become an iconic prism for me through which I have come to interpret my brief experience with the people of Haiti.  Seared into my memory is the spirit of the people we met in that tiny village:  their joyfulness, their faithfulness, their gratefulness, but most remarkably, their hopefulness in the midst of utter bleakness.  And, as we worshipped together with our Haitian friends, we could see and feel that the hope at the center of their lives is precisely the Christ to whom John the Baptist points.  Their hope is for the coming of a new reality, when, as the prophet Isaiah foresees it, the Lord “shall build up the ancient ruins,” “raise up the former devastations,” and “repair the ruined cities and the devastations of former generations.”  Isa. 61:4.   Their hope is for a resurrected Haiti.

Hope is the enduring theme of Advent.  Hope is what gives meaning and purpose to the expectant waiting we do during this season.  Such hope is more than mere optimism.  The optimist seeks to feel good about his predicament by denying the reality of the darkness around him and by imagining a better world.  The Christian, on the other hand, honestly confronts the darkness of our world, but places her trust in a promised light that she knows eventually will overwhelm it.  To hope does not mean to dream ourselves into a different reality, but to embrace the promise – God’s promise in Christ – that our present reality, suffused with suffering as it sometimes is, will ultimately be transformed into God’s new world. 

As the Yale theologian Miroslav Volf explains:  “For Christian hope to be authentic, we must acknowledge and not deny the darkness; otherwise, we will never be truly redeemed.  But the good news is that those who hope can confess the dark side of their history because the divine promise frees them from captivity to the past.  Authentic Christian hope is about the promise that the wrongs of the past can be set aright and that the future need not be a mere repetition of the past.”

In this sense, Christian hope is not passive, wishful thinking; it is, rather, an activity that sustains and animates at the same time.   Think of hope as a verb, not a noun.  We strive for peace, struggle for justice, comfort the disconsolate, and heal the sick, all because we trust in the person to whom John the Baptist points and because we trust in His promise that these activities are the core realities of the Kingdom to which He calls us. 

To paraphrase the late Peter Gomes:  The activity of Christian hope is to contend with the world as it is in light of the world as it is to be.  We do not despair over the suffering and struggles that confront us because we have some idea of where we are going.  We are headed into the fullness and presence of God’s time.  The hope of Advent rests upon the assurance that the God who formed us out of his love, and lived among us, will not abandon us in that future into which he calls us. 

It warms my heart to report that since we returned from Haiti in February, the students, teachers, and families of my old school, St. Andrew’s, have raised nearly $50,000, with which our friends in the tiny village of Civol are building a new school.  They hope to break ground next month, and St. Andrew’s students will visit for the first time in February.  This small step toward a better future for the children of Civol is not primarily a testament to the goodness of St. Andrew’s students and families, although they certainly are good people.  Nor is it primarily a testament to our wonderful Haitian friends, whose spirit-filled lives provided the catalyst for this generosity.  Rather, this transformative moment in the life of Civol is primarily a testament to the reality of the Christ to whom John points and to the power of His coming. 

My prayer for us all during this season of Advent is that we may rekindle in our own hearts a true hopefulness in the future, not a complacent hopefulness that merely gives us comfort, but a vital hopefulness that propels us forward in struggling for justice, seeking peace, and discovering Christ’s presence in everyone we meet.  Come, Lord Jesus, open our eyes to your Light, overcome the darkness that sometimes befalls us, and brighten our lives with the Hope that only you can bring.  Amen. 

Religious Pluralism 3: Thoughts of the Eminent Philosophers

This post continues our series on religious pluralism by linking to two longer pieces from the thought of two philosophers. One, John Hick, is a noted philosopher of religion often connected with religious inclusivism: that all religions have, in some sense, the same end. He has taught at Claremont, Cambridge, the University of Birmingham, and many other places. He is well-known for his books The Metaphor of God Incarnate and The Myth of Christian Uniqueness.

The other, Alvin Plantinga, is frequently regarded (even by Hick) as the most eloquent philosophical defender of exclusivism (that only one faith is correct and others are incorrect) and, indeed, of the rationality of faith in general. He is the John A. O'Brien Professor of Philosophy (Emeritus) at Notre Dame University. His books include Warranted Christian Belief and Science and Religion (w/Daniel Dennett), among many others.

I'll warn you that Hick's talk "Religious Pluralism and Islam" is really quite long, so you may want to break it up. Unfortunately, though many analytic philosophers are capable of stating their case briefly (i.e. 5 propositions or less), they tend not to.

Similarly, Plantinga's "Pluralism: a Defense of Religious Exclusivism" will take a bit of reading as well (note: there's a bio before the main piece; just scroll down). I really recommend both pieces, however, especially because they each account for the position opposite to their own rather interestingly.

Here's a taste of Plantinga:

...in recent years probably more of us western Christians have become aware of the world's religious diversity; we have probably learned more about people of other religious persuasions, and we have to come see more clearly that they display what looks like real piety, devoutness, and spirituality. What is new, perhaps, is a more widespread sympathy for other religions, a tendency to see them as more valuable, as containing more by way of truth, and a new feeling of solidarity with their practitioners. 

One is to continue to believe what you have all along believed; you learn about this diversity, but continue to believe, i. e., take to be true, such propositions as (1) and (2) above, consequently taking to be false any beliefs, religious or otherwise, that are incompatible with (1) and (2).  Following current practice, I shall call this exclusivism; the exclusivist holds that the tenets or some of the tenets of one religion—Christianity, let's say—are in fact true; he adds, naturally enough, that any propositions, including other religious beliefs, that are incompatible with those tenets are false.  Now there is a fairly widespread belief that there is something seriously wrong with exclusivism.  It is irrational, or egotistical and unjustified (4) or intellectually arrogant, (5) or elitist, (6) or a manifestation of harmful pride, (7) or even oppressive and imperialistic. (8)   The claim is that exclusivism as such is or involves a vice of some sort: it is wrong or deplorable; and it is this claim I want to examine.  I propose to argue that exclusivism need not involve either epistemic or moral failure, and that furthermore something like it is wholly unavoidable, given our human condition.  

And here's one of Hick:

The historical fact is that we inherit, and always have inherited, our religion together with our language and our culture.   And the religion which has formed us from childhood naturally seems to us to be obviously true; it fits us and we fit it as usually none other can.  It is true that there are individual conversions from one faith to another, but these are statistically insignificant in comparison with the massive transmission of faith from generation to generation within the same tradition.

    How then are we to understand this global situation in which, due to the accident of birth, we all start from within what we have traditionally regarded as the one true faith?  To enquire into the relationship between the religions is clearly to ask a difficult but unavoidable question

Have fun!

Zack Guiliano

Kellogg Fellow

Science & Religion: What truth looks like when it hits the ground

Two summers ago, I read a rather rough review of a book called: Never Pure: Historical Studies of Science as if It Was Produced by People With Bodies, Situated in Time, Space, Culture, and Society, and Struggling for Credibility and Authority. It was written by Prof. Steven Shapin, and apparently does precisely what its title says it will do. (The reviewer was disappointed, though, about the lack of info on Hooke’s sex life.) This review and book prodded a portion of my brain and made a connection I hadn’t considered before.

When people find out that I'm "religious" and that I enjoy talking about religion, they say lots of interesting things. Many of these are phrased as questions, accusations, or accusations-posing-as-questions. One of my favorites is, "So how does it feel to be part of a church that started just because Henry VIII wanted to screw a different woman than his wife?" Now, of course this is a gross simplification of the origins of the Church of England (and the Anglican Communion, of which Episcopalians are a part). My quick answer to this question is:  "Henry VIII's divorce was simply the political event which allowed for a structural change to occur; Thomas Cranmer and others had already been working towards and effecting theological, liturgical, and ecclesiological reform; they simply took advantage of this opportunity." So the quick (oversimplified!) answer is that the break with the Roman Catholics had more nuance and depth to it than a lustful monarch.

And what’s my longer answer?

Well, for those who are religious and not interested in history, or for those who are history-lovers but not interested in religion (or even "spirituality"), the discovery that such gritty contexts are the cradle for universe-encompassing beliefs can be upsetting. It can even color the world of "Religion" as a corrupt and fully earth-bound (and therefore worthless) endeavor. I think this is often the feeling of the folks who challenge me about the origins of the Church of England.

Of course, this question—How can you be a part of something that pretends at transcendent truth when it is rooted in the dirty earth?—can be asked of any of the world's major religions, as well as most of its minor ones. And you can ask it of not only specific institutions, but even that amorphous "spirituality" which many claim (e.g. "I'm not really into organized religion, but I'm spiritual"), since the way this spirituality walks and talks is inevitably influenced by the way all the "organized" kinds walk and talk.

The reason I don't find this troubling—in Anglicanism, Protestantism, Roman Catholicism, all the sorts of Islam, all the sorts of Judaism, and all the sorts of Hinduism and of Buddhism—is maybe similar to the reason that scientists don't find Prof. Shapin's book troubling. I don't find this "creatureliness" upsetting because I believe it to be inevitable—a given when it comes to human life and humanity's encounters with transcendent truth.

Truth does not (praise God!) require a perfect human in order to be seen. And simply encountering truth does not (alas!) perfect us to the level of truth's perfection. That is, meeting God does not necessarily make me God-like through and through. Even if truth exists independently of us, when it manifests itself it must do so in our world: our physical surroundings, our embodied beings, our insufficient minds. But the brilliance of these truths (often, occasionally, sometimes) shines past the creatureliness of their embodiment.

As a proverb (taped to the wall in St. John’s Abbey, Minnesota) says: "After enlightenment, the laundry".

Now, the nature of what Science calls “truth” is a bit different from what St. John of the Cross might call “truth.” But the similarity is that there can be value in the things which flawed, skewed, strange, normal, weak or powerful people discover—and that these contexts do not necessarily negate what was discovered.

Figures on the roof of the cathedral in Milan.

Note:  A version of this post was originally published on the blog “Discuss in any manner which you see fit.”

Religious Pluralism 2: the ABC on Christ's Finality

After last week's post, I thought that we might appreciate a slightly different point of view from our own Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams. We're liking to a copy of a lecture he gave, titled "The Finality of Christ in a Pluralist World." You'll see that he attempts to strike a slightly different ground than simple exclusivism (one faith is correct) and inclusivism (all faiths are correct). We'll leave it to all of you to decide how successful he is. Here's a taste:

And so out of these two powerful and heavily-charged texts comes the classic Christian conviction: what we encounter in Jesus Christ is simply the truth. It is the truth about God and the truth about humanity. Not living into that truth and accepting it, has consequences because this is the last word about God and God's creation. So we speak of the finality of Christ. There's nothing more to know. Or we speak of the uniqueness of Christ. No one apart from Jesus of Nazareth expresses the truth like this.

That is what is so problematic for so many people in our world today. It's not just a question about people of other faiths (though it's partly that). It's also a question about how we in general communicate what we believe, and about what we believe God is doing in the world. And in the last forty years or so, the problems around the classical interpretation of these texts have been more and more highlighted. They fall into three broad groups, and in the first part of what I'm going to say I just want to look at the kinds of objection that have been raised to those classical interpretations of the texts.

The first difficulty is moral. What kind of God is it who makes salvation or eternal life dependent on what's always going to be a rather chancy matter? What about all those people who never had a chance of hearing about Jesus? What about all those who have heard about Jesus but have not understood or waited to find out?

A Note on Thanksgiving

Moses said to all Israel: For the LORD your God is bringing you into a good land, a land with flowing streams, with springs and underground waters welling up in valleys and hills, a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive trees and honey, a land where you may eat bread without scarcity, where you will lack nothing, a land whose stones are iron and from whose hills you may mine copper. You shall eat your fill and bless the LORD your God for the good land that he has given you. ---Deut 8:7-10

As the holidays approach, it is increasingly common to hear two notes begin to sound in our culture. One urges us towards expense and enjoyment of all the good things we tend to look forward to at this time of year, as if we deserve some indulgence at the end of another difficult year. The other sounds a note of caution regarding consumerism and materialism, a tendency to focus on worldly goods to the detriment of the spiritual nature of the season, and what sometimes seems to be a kind of selfishness inherent to our festivities, as if the season is about getting what each one of us desires.

Of course, we are probably more likely to hear the latter note in most churches at this time, particularly as we move through the observances of Advent, which seems increasingly countercultural. But I am glad that Thanksgiving precedes Advent and, indeed, that Advent is “bookended” by both Thanksgiving and Christmas, both times of great celebration in our country. For I cannot help but think that we must learn to strike a balance between feast and fast, or gain some better understanding about the celebration of all things. At the very least, even to attempt to balance these two things will teach us much about ourselves and about the proper way to relate to the “goods” of life.

As we enter Advent, in the wake of Thanksgiving, I hope that we may hold in our hearts the vision which we see in the reading above from Deuteronomy 8. God brought his people Israel into a good land, brimming full of food and drink and resources, where they lacked nothing. And, if we read the next section of the chapter, it seems that the problem of which God’s people are warned ahead of time, is not always about over indulgence in the good things set before them, though this is surely true. Rather, it is in receiving these good things and suddenly failing to keep God’s commands, lacking gratitude for the good received, and imagining these goods stem from our own strength. As the passage then reads:

Take care that you do not forget the LORD your God, by failing to keep his commandments, his ordinances, and his statutes... When you have eaten your fill and have built fine houses and live in them, and when your herds and flocks have multiplied, and your silver and gold is multiplied, and all that you have is multiplied, then do not exalt yourself, forgetting the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, who led you through the great and terrible wilderness, an arid wasteland with poisonous snakes and scorpions. He made water flow for you from flint rock, and fed you in the wilderness with manna that your ancestors did not know, to humble you and to test you, and in the end to do you good. Do not say to yourself, "My power and the might of my own hand have gotten me this wealth." Deut 8:11-17.

Let us, then, remember the commandments of God and his grace as we enter our observance of Advent. Let us remember that we have received all good from God’s hand, and let us turn our hands to bringing that good to others, to those who have nothing and who are alone as much as to those whom we know and love. And let us give thanks to God for all things. 

New Series on Religion Pluralism

Every few weeks, we feature a series of posts from other blogs and websites that either focus on one topic or on one group. Given a few conversations and events at the Chaplaincy recently (like the talk given by Miroslav Volf on Christian-Muslim relations), I thought that it might be useful to link to short articles from various Christian standpoints on the different types of pluralism, along with some from other faiths.

This first post is from Relevant Magazine, an evangelical magazine from a theologically conservative, but somewhat progressive standpoint (their motto is God, Life, Progressive Culture). The article is called "It's OK to Say Jesus is the Only Way." Here's a taste:

The claim that all paths lead to the same God actually minimizes other religions by asserting a new religious claim. When someone says all paths lead to the same God, they blunt the distinctives between religions, throwing them all in one pot, saying: “See, they all get us to God so the differences don’t really matter.” This isn’t tolerance; it’s a power play. When asserting all religions lead to God, the distinctive and very different views of God and how to reach Him in Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity and Islam are brushed aside in one powerful swoop. The Eightfold Noble Path of Buddhism, the 5 Pillars of Islam and the Gospel of Christ are not tolerated but told they must submit to a new religious claim—all ways lead to God—despite the fact that this isn’t what those religions teach.

Zack Guiliano

Kellogg Fellow

The Movement

As part of our final post from the SSJE preaching series, I have here a message from Br. Kevin Hackett, titled "The Movement." This post will close our sample from SSJE, and we'll be looking for some more content to highlight in the coming weeks. If there's anything our readers have found particularly interesting, please send it our way.



Here's a sample of the post:


I do not know if you claim a denominational identity, but I think we would do well to ask ourselves a couple of questions at this point. How different is it to say, “I am a member of the Episcopal Church (or use your own denomination of choice),” than to say, “I am a follower of Jesus of Nazareth.”  I do not think the two claims are necessarily mutually exclusive, and while the Episcopal Church, as well many other denominations, have stressed Christian faith and practice as a way of life, I cannot get past the differences of connotation between being a member of an institution (which suggests a kind of stasis and status quo to me) and being a follower of a movement, especially the one which was inaugurated by Jesus of Nazareth (which, from my own experience, suggests some pretty rugged engagement with the unknown).

The Message

As mentioned last week, we will periodically re-post from blogs here and there on the good old Inter-webs. This post continues our coverage of the preaching series at the monastery of SSJE last month: Conversations on the Way. This one is written by Br. Mark Brown, whose picture is below, and is called "The Message".



Here's a sample:

When we say we believe in the Resurrection we usually are thinking of what we might call the Great Resurrection: our entrance into life beyond the gateway of death, our eternal life.  I want to state unambiguously that I believe in that Great Resurrection. But I don’t know much about it and have little to say, just that I’m sure it will be wonderful beyond our imagining.

But resurrection is woven into the texture of life in the world we live in now. 

Numbers 31: a Preface

Numbers 31:7 "And the Israelites killed every male among the Midianites."

Well, dear friends, we only have had one question for the past few weeks, and it is a doozy.

Q: "How should we read and understand Numbers 31?"

A: Often described as the "Massacre of the Midianites," Numbers 31 tends to rank high on anyone's list of difficult Scriptural passages. Due to the complexity of this question, then, we are going to break up the response to it over several weeks. One could practically write a whole book about this passage, which raises all sorts of questions. In this first post, I simply want to note some of the necessary details to consider and note some of the groundwork which must be done before answering anything about this passage. In the next week or so, after we have had some more time to reflect on this passage, we'll roll out a few more posts on the topic.

First off, we want to recommend that anyone reading this post considers the full text of Numbers 31 first, along with Numbers 25 (and, indeed, most of the second half of the book is relevant). The important backstory is this: the Israelites are on the way to the Promised Land, where they will drive out the inhabitants of the land, with God as the warrior leading the charge. Along the way, however, they are beset by a whole range of different peoples and situations which complicate that task, ranging from tribes that attack them first to the Israelites' rebellion against their own cause and against God. From ch. 22 onwards, the Israelites are beset by attacks from the Moabites and Midianites. The attacks by these two groups differ, however, from Israel's battles with other people along the path to the Promised Land. Rather than attack them in direct, hand-to-hand combat, the Moabites and Midianites first hire Balaam, a local seer and (it appears) sorcerer, to try and curse Israel.  However, the conflict between Israel, Moab, and Midian arguably culminates in Numbers 25, with the involvement of the Israelites in worshipping (with the Midianites) another God beside the Lord at a place called Peor, in violation of the first commandment. They worship Baal with both ritual feasting and, it appears, ritual sex, a combination not uncommon in Ancient Near Eastern religions. This is the backstory to Numbers 31, in miniature.

Second, though, we want to note something else about this passage as well: it is not difficult to interpret simply because of the moral issues we've briefly mentioned (e.g. the "massacre"). It also offers some confusing textual details which are difficult to understand on any level. For instance, after the battle, we might note that the spoils of war which the Israelites capture are outrageously large (32:31-47). They seem to seize over half a million sheep, among other massive captures. Now, while we don't have statistics on what was "normal" for animal husbandry in the Ancient Near East, particularly among small, nomadic tribes like the Midianites, this number seems a little overblown. It is only since the population boom and the advent of new farming techniques in the modern period that we have seen such a huge amount of sheep in one place. In other words, it is hard to believe that it was even possible for the Israelites to have captured such a high level of spoils from another tiny nation. We bring up these details only to note some features of the text which must be puzzled over, when we come to answer what's going on in the portrayal of this incident and when we decide "what to do" with this passage. There are several other, similar questions this text raises.

The reason we are puzzling over these features, though, is rather important and leads to the point I want to bring up. Several times in the past few weeks, while chatting with a few of you about this topic, I have mentioned why I think it's fruitful for us to dwell on this for a while. One thing I have tried to note in those conversations is how this passage doesn't do much for most interpreters. For conservatives, it is often viewed as an untroubling example of God's wrath on human sin. The various textual difficulties and moral quandaries generate no commentary. On the other hand, for more liberal interpreters, this passage is often brought up as an example of what we believe we have transcended. It, again, serves little theological purpose. The book of Numbers also doesn't feature largely in the ancient, medieval, and Reformation commentary traditions prior to the modern period. For us then, this passage can be a site for tremendous new theological reflection, if we can but wrap our minds around it. It is, in many ways, largely untrod ground.

So, that is what we will try to do. We're going to have a few different posts, outlining some relevant information and questions related to this passage. Emily, first of all, is going to note some of the relevant moral quandaries this passage raises. I will likely, then, note some ancient and contemporary responses to these quandaries. We'll have a post on the historical-critical approach to the passage. And, hopefully, we plan to cap off our little series on Numbers 31 with a post which synthesizes all the details, questions, and issues, before sketching a theological exploration and response to the whole passage.

Another Feast Day: Richard Hooker

Today is the feast day of Richard Hooker, Anglican priest and theologian. The readings for his day include one of my most favorite Psalms, which says the law of the Lord is more desirable than gold and sweeter than honey. We hear, too, from 1 Corinthians, where Paul says they speak wisdom—“not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age”, but rather “God's wisdom, secret and hidden, which God decreed before the ages for our glory.”

Both of these readings speak of a love of truth and rightness as revealed to us by God in the law and in our hearts—a perfect fit for Richard Hooker.

He was born in 1553. In 1594-7 he wrote what Lesser Feasts and Fasts calls “a comprehensive defense of the Reformation settlement under Queen Elizabeth the First. This work, his masterpiece, was entitled Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity.” This included one of the earliest defenses of The Book of Common Prayer. The prayer for Hooker says he defended Anglicanism “with sound reasoning and great charity,” and asks that we maintain this “middle way” of our church—which is both catholic and reformed—“not as a compromise for the sake of peace, but as a comprehension for the sake of truth.”

I’ve loved Hooker since I first heard of him during my freshman year at Princeton. I was in the (speedy) process of falling in love with the Anglican tradition, and so was bombarding our Episcopal chaplain, Steve White, with every question I could think of. (E.g., What is the purpose of living? Why do you wear robes? Why do people suffer?)

In one of his responses, Steve explained to me the idea of the three-legged stool, an image taken from part of Hooker’s Laws. He said that the three legs upon which we stand are Scripture, reason, and tradition (in particular, the traditions of the Christian church). Archbishop Rowan Williams, in a 2005 speech, explains Hooker’s overall argument thus:

“Put very plainly, the Bible does not give us an alibi for the use of common sense, ordinary discretion, imagination, willingness to learn from experience and whatever else belongs to mature human reflection on behaviour. The 'sufficiency' or perfection of Scripture, argues Hooker, is a matter of its perfect capacity to do what it is meant to do. . . . [I]f we suggest, for example, that nothing except what is commanded in the Bible can be other than sinful, we paralyse a great deal of ordinary human life.”

            What appealed to me most was that Hooker (as Williams says) was “opposing . . . any picture of these things [law and revelation] that refuses the work of interpretation or that pretends that history has come to a halt.” What an idea!

            In my freshman year, I was stunned that there were not only scholars but also priests and parishioners who held this view—and who still prayed before meals, sang hymns, and meant it when they said “Amen”! Raised in fairly conservative Evangelical churches and schools, I had been taught that there was one obvious way to interpret the Scriptures—i.e. in a mostly literal manner—and that this had always been the way of interpreting them. Furthermore, any alternative was not wholly Christian, but a version watered down by extraneous thinking and weak character. (Perhaps it’s better to say that even if my pastors hadn’t meant to teach me this, it’s certainly what I learned.) As I grew older, I had more and more questions, but those who read the Bible in this way couldn’t answer them; this was the beginning of a longer story which finds its end in the Anglican tradition.

I’ve discovered that there have always been many ways of interpreting the texts and traditions of Christianity. I’ve learned that there are many human fingerprints all over the words and ideas of the Christian churches, and that any way we choose to interact with them is an interpretive choice.

And lo and behold, I am still a Christian! I still lean on the grace of God, and still praise his statutes, his law, and his judgments, which are “sweeter far than honey” and dearer to me than gold. There are many reasons to celebrate Richard Hooker; I celebrate especially his ideas which came across the years and showed me a new way of thinking.

The second image is of a gold coin with Queen Elizabeth’s profile, minted in England between 1597 and 1600; you can find more info on the British Museum’s page.

Brief Q/A Announcement and a Link

The Codex Sinaiticus (mid-fourth century): the earliest complete copy of the Bible. 

Hi everyone,

In case you were eagerly awaiting this week's Q/A Round-up, I wanted to announce that we'll be holding off on posting anything related to it until next weekend. We had an absolutely fantastic biblical studies question posed ("How should we read and understand Numbers 31?"), but the nature of the question is actually rather complex, as you may note if you read the passage. We'd rather not answer rashly, as is the tendency of most apologists and interpreters of this passage, because we think a considered exploration of the passage will actually be very fruitful.

So, give us a little patience as we formulate a series of responses to this question, which will not only address Numbes 31 but also, to some degree, the very nature of interpreting the Bible, particularly its difficult passages. Until then, you might enjoy reading this post from the blog Glory to God for All Things. The post is titled "Is the Bible True?", and it deals with some issues related to the question posed above. Here's a taste:

The history of literalism is a checkered affair. Some of the early fathers leaned in a literalist direction for many parts of Scripture, though leaving room for other, more symbolic approaches, where appropriate. The great battles over the historical literalism of Scripture arose in the 18th and 18th centuries in Europe and America (battles over certain scientific matters versus literalism began even earlier).

Part of the tragedy in these battles was that the battlefield itself was a fairly newly-defined area and failed to take into account the full history of Biblical interpretation. For a young believer in the midst of America’s own intellectual religious wars in the late 20th century – my question was whether the choices presented were the only choices available.

I should preface my remaining remarks with the simple affirmation: I believe the Bible is true.

The Man

One of the things we will continue to do on this blog is direct your attention to interesting pieces. Well, for the next few weeks, we'll be posting a sermon a week from the recent preaching series at the Society of St. John the Evangelist, the Anglican monastery in Harvard Square. The series itself took place in September and was called "Conversations on the Way: the Man, the Message, and the Movement."

Here's a link to the first sermon, called "The Man," which considers the life of Jesus, and was delivered by Br. Curtis Almquist.

And, here's a sneak peek:

He was simply called “Jesus,” not an uncommon name, and he was born into virtual obscurity.¹  Through our internal documents – what we call the Gospels and New Testament writings – we know about the shepherds and wise men who came to worship him in infancy; however there’s no reason to think his birth caused much of any other notice.  In the eyes of observant Jews, he was a disappointment at best and a bastard at worst...


...He had these very weird parents with this unbelievable story about his birth and destiny, a destiny which had seemed to have materialized.  Well, it did materialize, but Jesus had spent virtually his entire life, not living up to the prophecy.  Even the people who had not jeered him and his family because of his “birth story” surely would have abandoned believing the Messianic prophecy stuff long ago.  Jesus proved to be quite an ordinary human being who hadn’t found his way in life.⁵

Introduction to Feast Days, and Alfred the Great in Particular

The Episcopal Church (like the Church of England, the Roman Catholic Church, and the Orthodox churches) has a calendar for the year(s) which leads its disciples in remembering people and events which it finds important. Some of these are events in the story of Christ, like Christmas and the Transfiguration; some are events in the story of the Church, like the First Book of Common Prayer; some are people we know by ancient text and legend, like Saints Simon and Jude; and some are people whose faces we have imprinted on coins or photographs, like Alfred the Great, C.S. Lewis, and Evelyn Underhill.

These are called “feast days,” and for each the Church sets out a special prayer (or “Collect”) for the day, as well as particular readings (from the Hebrew Bible, the Psalms, and the Gospels) which it believes speak to the special witness and work of the chosen person.

I was especially interested in the texts chosen for this Wednesday’s Feast of Alfred the Great—a king of England “during a time of distress” and a lover of learning, born in 849. The Collect for Alfred ends with this request:

“Awake in us also a keen desire to increase our understanding while we are in this world, and an eager longing to reach that endless life where all will be made clear . . . Amen.”

            This last phrase actually comes from Alfred’s own words: “He seems to me a very foolish man, and very wretched, who will not increase his understanding while he is in the world, and ever wish and long to reach that endless life where all shall be made clear.” (This is found in the Church’s text, Lesser Feasts and Fasts.)

            As a committed nerd—a lover of words, ideas, and strange new things—I found myself to be an immediate fan of Alfred. It seems intuitive to me to connect a curiosity about the truths of this world (grammar! physics! art history!) to the ultimate truth of reality, contained in God and fully known only when we will be able to fully know him. This is to say—wanting to understand how our hearts pump blood or why a sentences works is a natural path to wanting to understand God.

            However! I was also struck by the readings selected for Alfred’s day, because they take this love of understanding around a more complicated turn. Reading them, I thought about how “understanding” is not just a movement outward from ourselves—a curiosity, a desire—but it is also something we gather up within ourselves.

            The Gospel reading from Luke has two abrupt parables from Jesus, not about curiosity but about sources and outcomes. In the first, Jesus reminds us that “Figs are not gathered from thorns, nor are grapes picked from a bramble bush. The good person out of the good treasure of the heart produces good, and the evil person out of evil treasure produces evil; for it is out of the abundance of the heart that the mouth speaks.” In the second, one man “dug deeply” to lay the foundation of his house on rock; this is someone “who comes to me, hears my words, and acts on them.” But “one who hears and does not act is like a man who built a house on the ground without a foundation”; you can imagine how that turns out.

            Both of these images speak of having a solid center—the treasure of your heart, the foundation of your house. Out of these things come our words and actions—good or evil, a sturdy safe place or a wreck. Jesus calls this center “the abundance of our hearts.” I think part of this abundance includes the many many ways in which we understand our world—the ideas and systems of thought which we nurture, the intellectual and emotional habits we adopt, the styles of thinking which we choose to admire.  

Out of Alfred’s understanding of the world and God came Anglo-Saxon translations of Bede and Augustine, a reformed law code, and an attempt to increase literacy and education in his home. This week I want to ask myself: What understanding am I building, and where are its foundations? What do I believe about the world, and about people? What is the abundance of my heart, and what comes out of it?

The first image is a silver penny with Alfred the Great’s noble face; here is the British Museum’s page on it. The second image is of the Bowleaze Cove Jewel, also found at the BM. (You could also read the excellent kids’ page about it, if you’re too tired for academese.) And the British Monarchy has even more information about Alfred.

Sermon for Proper 24A : "Give to God"

This sermon was given at the chaplaincy last Sunday, 16 October. The readings for this week are here: Isaiah 45:1-7, Psalm 96, 1 Thessalonians 1:1-10, and Matthew 22:15-22.

     What beautiful readings we’ve gotten to listen to tonight! I’m grateful that I have only a few minutes to talk about them, since this should lower your expectations, and remind me that I can only share one tiny piece of what I’ve seen in this collection of voices, and what I have seen is itself a small piece of what is present here.
     Isaiah opens with an outpouring of power, a great rush of power and generosity from God to someone who does not even know God: “I will go before you and level the mountains”—“I will give you the treasures of darkness and riches hidden in secret places”—“I call you by your name, I surname you, though you do not know me”.
     Our Psalm is filled with songs and wonder—the world itself overflows with joy at the holiness and complete kingship of God.
     In Thessalonians, the good news comes to a community “not in word only, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction”; they are so full of this word that the word sounds forth from them.
     In Matthew we also find a great abundance and generosity, but of a slightly different kind.

     In this whole stretch of Matthew, learned men come to Jesus with contrived puzzles and legalistic problems. They set up a world neatly ordered by the little ties of human expectations and human power, and they want him to tiptoe around them and trip. But in each case, Christ slices through these tiny expectations and lifts our eyes instead to a much wider world.
     At the end of Chapter 21, the Pharisees ask Jesus what authority he has to teach; he responds with parables that show the world’s power structure flipped on its head, crushing our expectations. Immediately after tonight’s reading, some men come to ask about brothers, and remarriage, and who gets the widow in the afterlife. Jesus responds by rewriting their idea of the resurrection and saying that God “is God not of the dead, but of the living”. And after this, they get a lawyer to test him, by asking which law is greatest. And Christ responds with a law more bold and broad, perhaps, than they were expecting—that we must love the Lord our God with all our heart, all our soul and all our mind, and love our neighbors as ourselves. Each of these responses suggests that what God has to offer us is something more than what we expected.
     In tonight’s reading! the educated folks hope to trip Christ over his own impartiality for status, so that he’ll slip into a political mess.
     But instead of attending to their concern, Christ dismisses them! In fact, I tend to imagine Christ’s whole attitude in this passage as dismissive, even a little disdainful. I imagine him taking the coin, raising his eyebrow as he asks the question, and then flipping it back to them as he says, “Give to the emperor what is the emperor’s, and give to God what belongs to God.”
     In the same way that he dismissed the other educated men, Christ dismisses this question, and in the same way, he suggests that there is something more abundant and generous than what we would expect from our small-scale ideas of power and rule. Christ takes a question about the boundaries of human authority and opens it up entirely : “Give to God what belongs to God.”
     Which, of course, made me wonder, “What belongs to God?! What am I supposed to give?”

     Christ is dismissive of that shiny coin—flimsy money, and its real but flimsy power. This is what the emperor has—and the emperor can keep it. Christ doesn’t call us to claim and spread this kind of power—the kind that builds empires and levies taxes.
     In Isaiah, God pours out power for someone who doesn’t know him. In the Psalm, the world sings out the power of God. In Thessalonians, the good news of God comes to a community “in power”.
     If God doesn’t want the domain of money and bureaucratic authority, what does God want? Where does all this power go? What is it that belongs to God and that we must give to God?

     I think that what God wants is the whole domain of our lives and our selves.
 This is the space over which God wants power. What does he care about the power to print his face on coins, to plaster his name on temples, to build statues and laws over the landscape of the earth. God’s desire is first for us, and the kingdom that he wants is the broad expanse of our minds, the caverns of our hearts, the straight and crooked paths of our actions. Every square inch, every second, every speck—God wants to fill every space of us with his holiness.
     What’s more, he wants us to give this to him. He’s not going to make it easy and just take our choices from us. He wants us to cede our sovereignty and give to him the rivers of our speech, the valleys of our repose, even the forests of our subconscious. He loves all of this, and he wants all of it.
     And when we give this to God, we open ourselves to that power in Isaiah and the Psalm : this righteousness, the reality far behind all the light and darkness, the source of all that is good, Truth itself, the one whose name is Love—we open ourselves to this.

     Now, don’t worry! The strangeness of giving ourselves to God is that when we give something to him, we don’t lose it. We don’t become automatons, with identical mild personalities and empty heads. Rather, the existing shape of our passions and skills shapes the way the power of God takes form in our lives, even as this power actively shapes them.
     Some things we give to God, and he takes and magnifies them, and through them his light shines and his name is known.
     Some things we give to God, and he takes them, and holds them, and says, “Are you sure you really want this in you?
     And some things we give to God, and I think he sort of chuckles and says “Well, that’s interesting!”
     For example, even as I give my whole life to God, I’m not convinced that I need to give up my addiction to coffee, or give up my writing, or stop sleeping in really, really late whenever I get the chance. I don’t think I need to stamp out my sarcasm, my love of arguing, or my inappropriate sense of humor. In my own life, these habits and spaces haven’t led me or others away from God, I don’t think. Once I’ve given them to God, he has even used some of them to draw me closer to him, in ways I couldn’t have expected.

     But there are spaces in my life which I think God would like to change, and fill more and more fully with his holiness. I believe that God cares about that hidden humming monologue I carry around with me inside my head. God cares about every word I choose to think, as much as every word I choose to say. The emotions and impressions we guard and nurture in our hearts—feelings about that co-worker, thoughts about that guy in our seminar, words to a friend about another friend. God cares about these smallest and biggest choices—how will I respond to this cashier whom I find somewhat irritating? how will I respond to my mother’s annoying habits? what will I do when someone is rude or even just dismissive of me? how will I spend my weekend? how will I spend my life? what do I want to do before I die? God wants all of this, and wants to fill these spaces with his voice, his love, his righteousness.
     I hope you will join me this week in considering anew what spaces of our lives we have and have not given to God. And as we walk in this wild landscape of our selves, may we remember that God is always with us, calling us by our own names, and wanting everything to do with everything about us.
     Amen.

Weekly Q/A Roundup: 1

Q1:  As a fashionable gentleman, I am fond of wearing nice handkerchiefs with my suits. As a spiritual person, I would like my fashion choices to reflect the liturgical season. Thus, I have always wondered where might I obtain handkerchiefs that match the current liturgical season. Can you help?

A1: We're glad you asked and are pleased to support the fashionable and spiritual gentleman of the 21st century! So far as we can tell, no current liturgical supplier makes such handkerchiefs for everyday use, though we suppose you could simply buy a number in the right color and wear them on the appropriate days. A quick visit to Lectionary Page in the morning will let you know the appropriate liturgical color. On the other hand, you might be interested to know that there is a piece of liturgical kit which used to be  standard, called the maniple, and was meant to recall the towel which Jesus used to wash the feet of his disciples (Jn 13:1-17). So, as another option, you could always tie a maniple to your suit in the morning, should you need to remember Jesus' admonition to serve fellow Christians as he served his disciples.  

Q2: Why do we worship on Sunday, if the Ten Commandments tell us to observe the Sabbath (Saturday), and God rested on the seventh day after creation (Saturday)?

A2: Excellent question! We know that this one is confusing to a lot of people. The Old Testament does command observation of the Sabbath on the seventh day of the week , both to commemorate creation (Genesis 2:2-3; Exodus 20:8-11) and to commemorate the deliverance of Israel from slavery (Deuteronomy 5:12-15). It is a perpetual reminder of God's creative and redeeming work on behalf of the world and of Israel in particular. Christians, however, started worshiping on the first day of the week in order to commemorate the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, which happened on the first day of the week (resurrection on first day of week- John 20:1; "The Lord's day": Rev 1:10; the early Christian writing Didache 14:1; first day of the week as day for worship- Acts 20:7). 

The thought is that the resurrection of Christ on Easter Sunday is what delivered humanity from bondage to sin and death. Also, for early Christians, the resurrection of Christ was considered the beginning of a new creation, hence the shift to the first day (there are hints of this view already in John 20). So, we still commemorate creation and redemption, but it's now oriented to the uniqueness of Christ's resurrection in saving us and inaugurating a new world. 

Feast of Luke: Physicians of the Natural Kind

Today is the feast of St. Luke the Evangelist. Luke has been remembered, since the earliest Christian centuries, as “the beloved physician” mentioned by Paul in Colossians 4:14 and is said to have practiced medicine before following Paul in his missionary journeys. Luke’s gospel was beloved by the early church for its countless retellings of miracles by Jesus, who was himself called “the great physician.”

What is rather interesting about these two designations, however, one for Luke himself and the other for his portrayal of our Savior, is that they put forth two rather distinct understandings of a physician. To call Christ “the great physician” is to acknowledge the frequency of healings in his ministry. It seems as if Jesus is constantly healing the lame, the blind, lepers, and many others, being moved by compassion for their situation. However, to acknowledge Luke as “the beloved physician” is quite different. A reading from Ecclesiastes was often read on Luke’s feast day, which we still read today to celebrate his witness.

Honor physicians for their services,

for the Lord created them;

for their gift of healing comes from the Most High,

and they are rewarded by the king.

The skill of physicians makes them distinguished,

and in the presence of the great they are admired.

The Lord created medicines out of the earth,

and the sensible will not despise them.

And he gave skill to human beings

that he might be glorified in his marvelous works.

What I hope we can take from this passage and from the witness of St. Luke and his gospel is the way that our faith includes the supernatural, but is not limited to it. Let me explain what I mean. We certainly affirm and believe that our Lord healed the sick, and I know that I believe God continues to heal the sick today. I wouldn’t pray for my friends and family members otherwise. Our faith, however, also retains respect for more than the supernatural healing that shone forth in the early ministry of our Lord and in the ministry of his apostles and the saints. There is also an affirmation in Christianity of the ability which God has given to human beings to exercise ingenuity. “The Lord created medicines...and the sensible will not despise them. And he gave skill to human beings that he might be glorified in his marvelous works.”

God is certainly glorified in the miraculous. But his marvelous work is also manifested in the skill which he has given to humanity, made in his own image. The work each of us does from day to day, our use of our God-given intellect and talents, are a revelation of God’s glory. So, as we prayed in our collect this past Sunday, that we might see the glory of God displayed in Christ, so also my hope is simply that we might see the glory of God as it is revealed in our own lives and abilities as well. For such is our faith. 

The Year Begins!

In this week's lesson, Jesus tells us that when two or three gather in his name, he will be among us (Matt. 18:20). Come see what he means. Our Opening service of the academic year is Sunday, Sep. 4 at 5:30pm at Christ Church (Zero Garden Street).

Dinner and conversation follow in the Parish Library.

New Episcopal Chaplain Appointed

After a fruitful process of discernment, the Board of the Episcopal Chaplaincy is pleased to announce the end of the search process and the appointment of the Reverend Luther Zeigler as the new Episcopal Chaplain at Harvard University! We are all very glad to welcome Luther, and we look forward to the beginning of his ministry at Harvard.

Luther comes to this position from the Diocese of Washington, where he is currently the senior chaplain at St. Andrew’s Episcopal School in Potomac, Maryland, and where he is Chair of the Philosophy and Religion Department. Luther is also an associate priest at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in College Park, which maintains ties with the Episcopal/Anglican Campus Ministry at the University of Maryland.

Luther graduated with Highest Honors in Religion from Oberlin College, holds a master’s degree in Religious Studies from Stanford University and is also a cum laude graduate of the Stanford Law School, where he served as an associate editor of the Stanford Law Review.  Luther completed his theological training at Virginia Theological Seminary, from which he received his Master of Divinity degree with honors.

For many years prior to his ordination, Luther practiced law at a major Washington law firm, where he was a partner and member of the firm’s Management Board.  At the firm, he had an active public service practice, particularly in the areas of civil rights and advocacy for the homeless.
Luther and his wife, Pat, have two adult daughters, one of whom lives and works in the San Francisco Bay Area and one of whom lives in Boston and works for the Red Sox.  Luther and Pat bring with them to Cambridge a Labradoodle named Grace, who was born six years ago on Easter morning.

Please click here or on the menu above  for more information about Luther.

First 'Summer' Outing

Hi, all!

We will have our first summer outing this coming Wednesday, May 25th at 7pm. Trinity Church in Copley Square has invited pastor and speaker Rob Bell to talk about his new book Love Wins: A Book about Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Has Ever Lived. Depending on numbers and interest, we will be having dinner beforehand as well to talk about fire and brimstone (!) and the place of Hell in Christian theology. Please write to our Kellogg Fellow, Zack Guiliano, if you're interested in coming and if you would like to receive further information about ECH summer activities.

Perceiving the Pierced One: a Good Friday Homily

Christ Church Cambridge/ The Episcopal Chaplaincy at Harvard
Good Friday: Isaiah 52:13-53:12;
Psalm 22; John 18:1-19:42
Friday, April 22, 2011

See, my servant shall prosper;
he shall be exalted and lifted up,
and shall be very high.

…. he shall startle many nations;
kings shall shut their mouths because of him;

for that which had not been told them they shall see,
and that which they had not heard they shall contemplate. (Isaiah 52: 13, 15)

On Wednesday of this week in New Orleans, one year after the explosion at the Deepwater Horizon oil rig that set off an environmental disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, family members of the eleven people who were killed boarded a helicopter. Their destination was the graves of their loved ones. After several minutes, the pilot announced that they were flying over the site where the rig had sunk. Slowly, they circled so people on both sides of the aircraft could see site: a vast, unbroken ocean flowing beneath them. As the Associated Press reported, “the only indication that they were at the site was an announcement from the pilot." After they returned to shore, one family member, Arleen Weise, commented, “It was just a little emotional, seeing where they were,” she said. When “asked what went through her mind when she saw where the rig went down, Weise said, ‘Just rise up. I wanted them to come up, but it didn’t happen.’’’ This site of incalculable loss is like a lacuna, an open space that can only barely make visible the loss of their loved ones. They can only look upon its enormity, as if, as Paul reflects in the fifteenth chapter of First Corinthians, they have been “swallowed up by life.” How can one take in such a scene?

And yet that is precisely what we are called upon to do—or to try to do—on this day. Vast as the ocean, our readings yet bring into startling, unsettling relief the loss that draws us into the central mystery of our faith, lifting before our eyes a spectacle from which we may well want to turn away. For the one on whom we are invited to gaze this day is our beloved Jesus Christ, the one who poured himself out into our midst, becoming subject to appalling injustice and oppression, even unto death. Emptied out like water, he lived as one us and died an excruciating death high upon a cross. To ancient Christians, this most difficult day was paradoxically and quite literally one of up-lift. Thus the words of the prophet Isaiah—“see, my servant shall prosper, shall be exalted and lifted up, and be very high”—could be read incongruously to refer to none other than the crucified One. Our eyes turn to the One whose crucifixion, alone in the Gospel of John, is expressed as a kind of ascension, of being “lifted up” as a strange spectacle and source of healing (John 3: 14, 12:32). Behold the sheer incongruity at the heart of a day that Christians have dared to call “good.”

But there is a reason for this pronouncement. For by crossing the border between Creator and Creation, eternity and time, walking in our midst even to the point of becoming ensnared by the evils of empire, pierced by a Roman soldier’s spear (as only the Passion according to John describes it), Christ broke open what Letter to the Hebrews calls a “new and living way,” a new passage into God’s own heart (Heb. 10:20). The crucified One stands in solidarity with us in struggle and strife, has the ability to, as Hebrews puts it, “sympathize with” — συμ-παθῆσαι, literally to feel together with—“our weaknesses” (Heb. 4:15). Christ has engraved our deepest experiences of grief, rage, abandonment, horror upon the very heart of the divine. In the eleventh and twelfth centuries, Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153) would wonder at this marvel, asking, “why should I not look through these fissures into the heart of the rock? The nails announce to me, the wounds proclaim to me that ‘God is indeed in Christ, reconciling the world to himself’”(61st Sermon on the Song of Songs). What Bernard saw in that heart above all was infinite compassion. Two centuries later Julian of Norwich (1342-1416) would also meditate upon these wounds, perceiving in the side-wound a safe refuge (Revelations of Divine Love, Long Text, ch. 24) and a passage from which human beings were born anew (Revelations, Long Text, ch. 60).

There is something almost unbearably peculiar – or peculiarly unbearable – about this day. It isn’t simply that we are invited to look up at the suffering and death of one whom we love, and who loves us so deeply. It is more even than that. What is beyond the pale is the matrix of meaning we are invited to contemplate, the multiple, layered lenses through which we are invited to view this story. Indeed, we are invited to read it, to perceive the pierced one, in intersection with our own lives and communities, our own pain, our own losses. We are invited to open our deepest struggles to the blinding transformation at the heart of the paschal mystery, knowing that all that we are, all that we have been, all that we will be, “is hidden with Christ in God” (Col 3:3). Amen.

The Rev. Dr. Cameron Partridge