Lent Class

All the info is one the poster, the website, and on an e-mail we're sending out. Anyone who's interested is free to come! It's an excellent opportunity for a form of Lenten meditation, coming to terms with the Christian faith.

In-gathering Memoriam

As you no doubt have heard by now, the Reverend Professor Peter Gomes, a veritable institution at Harvard's Memorial Church, the Divinity School, and the broader University, died Monday evening from complications of a stroke he suffered last December. As tributes have poured in, story after story written, the sheer magnitude of his life and legacy overwhelms.

In this seismic moment for the University more broadly, and for religious life on campus in particular, the loss is keen for members of the Episcopal Chaplaincy because of our longstanding connection with both Memorial Church and with Reverend Gomes. A statement from Bishop Shaw of the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts in this morning's Boston Globe says it well: “I always liked to call Peter the bishop of Harvard...I’m so grateful for his ministry, particularly to the Episcopal Church, and the way he encouraged so many in their vocations. He was a singular man, and I’ll miss the example of his deep commitment to the Gospel, his keen mind, and his outrageous sense of humor.’’

Meanwhile, as we wrestle with this loss, I am mindful that the Harvard community also recently lost senior Ilya Chalik, a History and Science concentrator and leader in the Hillel community who was also known to and mourned by members of the Episcopal Chaplaincy. It has only been two weeks since Ilya's death, and now this.

If you are wondering how to make sense of it all, you are certainly not alone. And at times like this, one of the most important things we can do is to bring our grief, our bewilderment, our numbness-- whatever it may be-- into community, particularly into spaces of worship, where it can be gathered together with that of others, collected and offered up. There is a moment in Thomas Cranmer's Eucharistic prayer that reads, "and here we offer and present unto you, O Lord, our selves, our souls and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy and living sacrifice." That self-offering is an invitation to bring forward and lift up to God all of ourselves, all of the burdens we bring, our sorrows, our anxieties well as our triumphs and joys. All the complexities of who we are in the intensity of moments like this.

That kind of self-offering is certainly a major part of Peter Gomes's legacy. Article after article stresses not only his learning and articulateness, his courage and integrity-- particularly at coming out as a gay man in 1991 as the Harvard community grappled with a spate of homophobic harassment-- but especially his complexity, his uniqueness as a human being. As Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. put it on the New Yorker blog, "Gomes was a large, warm, and mischievous soul, who contained a multitude of identities, each worn with a certain roguish sense of irony....In an era of sometimes confining identity politics, Gomes continued to insist on his own freedom. Cape Verdean and Jewish; Virginia and Massachusetts; gay and Baptist; slave and free; a counselor to the powerful and to the powerless: Peter Gomes smoothly navigated his own Mayflower through this sea of identities, because he anchored himself to none." Or as Reverend Gomes himself put it, as quoted by the New York Times, , "“The oddest thing about being an oddity is that there are very few oddities like you.’’

So bring yourself-- all of yourself, however you feel-- forward, take your place alongside one another as we grapple and grieve together.

Tomorrow the Memorial Church gives us that opportunity with a vigil in memory of Reverend Gomes. After morning prayers at 8:45 a.m., the vigil will take place from 9am to 10pm. Throughout the day, the University Chaplains of all faith traditions will take turns keeping watch, carrying out this ancient tradition of presence. My turn will be at noon. The day will end at 10pm with a service of Compline: a peaceful night, and a perfect end.

Mid-Week Prayer: Compline

We'll be holding our first mid-week prayer service this evening at 7pm in Christ Church. We will be using the traditional form of Compline, which is found in the Book of Common Prayer.

For any of you who have never taken part in a Compline service, it is one of the oldest forms of prayer in the Christian Church. It was originally an adaptation of one of the monastic offices (times of prayer) and has always consisted mainly of Psalms and readings from Scripture, with some short written prayers and opportunity for silent reflection. You can find a short little description in this article from Wikipedia.

We will have a very simple format; no experience required! One of the main points of the service is to become familiar with this style of prayer, to get it in your heart and mind and under your tongue. As the semester goes on, we may add to the service some simple music or chant and different liturgical actions (using icons and prayer candles, for instance, or different forms of prayer). But our first several meetings will be very simple.

We'll look forward to seeing you there.

Zack Guiliano

Kellogg Fellow

On Vocation—Jesus Was a Carpenter First

During this season of Epiphany we celebrate the manifestation of Christ on Earth, and in particular the visit of the foreign Magi with their three—mostly impractical—gifts to the infant Jesus. Also during this time, Eastern churches celebrate Jesus’ baptism. Both of these moments mark the manifestation, or “epiphany,” of the second person of the Trinity as a human being in Jesus Christ.

But together, these two moments also mark a significant gap in what the Gospels tell us about the life of Jesus. John and Mark both entirely leave out any mention of a young Jesus, beginning their narrative just prior to his adult baptism. Matthew describes King Herod’s “Massacre of the Innocents” and the family’s flight to Egypt, but says nothing specifically about Jesus between the Magi and the River Jordan. Only Luke offers us any glimpse into the post-infant Jesus, relating how as a twelve-year-old he spent three days at a temple in in Jerusalem, listening and questioning the teachers, who were very impressed with his grasp of the material (Luke 2:41-50).

Also according to Luke, “Jesus was about thirty years old when he began his work” (Luke 3:23). That means that for thirty years of his life on Earth, the Word made flesh was doing something other than “his work,” or as the English Standard Version translates it, “his ministry.” So what the heck was he doing?

Mark 6:3 tells us that Jesus was a carpenter: “Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary…?” (The Greek, “τέκτων,” can mean a craftsman of many different sorts, but whatever his craft, it doesn’t seem to have been, at that point, the saving of souls.) This explains the bumper sticker I saw the other day in a church parking lot, “My boss is a Jewish carpenter.” It doesn’t explain, though, why Jesus waited thirty years before beginning his ministry—his true vocation.

Last summer I conducted a number of interviews with political, business, and community leaders, asking them about the role faith played in their leadership and their lives. Many of the people I interviewed, and especially the people that seemed the most comfortable and the most “at home” in their jobs, hadn’t started out in their current profession. Instead, they pursued their first career on the basis of social pressure and a sense of what they felt they ought to do. In contrast, their second career fulfilled an inner spiritual obligation, and provided a sense of fulfillment missing from the first career—even though, in many cases, the sacrifices were far greater and the material rewards far smaller.

In my own life, I spent roughly ten years working in politics, mostly on campaigns. I found the work challenging and interesting—and it certainly paid well—but it sucked the soul right out of me. I ended up working as a hired gun for candidates I had little interest in and, occasionally, didn’t even think should win. Now, here at age 30, I find myself at divinity school, looking to find my own true vocation.

Ultimately, why Jesus waited until age 30 to begin his ministry may simply be one in a series of unanswerable questions. Of course, when compared with the many other great mysteries of God, this particular question seems somewhat insignificant. But as we consider our own lives, and the ways in we manifest our faith through how we live, it may help to remember that even our Lord didn’t get started right away.

If we find ourselves lost in a career that doesn’t fulfill us, one that doesn’t answer the voice of God calling us to be and do something more, we may still have time to answer that call. After all, even Jesus had a career before his calling.

Jeff Bridges worked for ten years in Democratic politics and is currently a graduate student at Harvard University's School of Divinity, where he also serves on the leadership team for Hope in Action Cambridge, a project of the Massachusetts Episcopal Diocese. Check out his website at jeffbridges.net

The Words of Our Teacher

Living as a Christian can be a difficult task. Our calling to live as “the light of the world” offers a number of challenges which often seem insurmountable. Just look again at a few of the Beatitudes which we considered this past Sunday:

Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled.

Blessed are the pure in spirit, for they shall see God.

In a recent sermon, I tried to gesture towards the difficulty and tension that we can feel anytime we try to “live up” to the Beatitudes. We are immediately faced with questions for ourselves (Am I meek? Hungry for righteousness? Pure?). I also suggested that some of these tensions can be overcome when we accept our initial vocation, which is to become students of Jesus Christ, our Teacher. We must take our first steps on the road before we can “run the race” which is the Christian spiritual life.

Yet what promise do we have of finishing that race? Is it all difficulty, or do we have some relief?

One of the readings our Church offers today for meditation and prayer is Isaiah 55:1-13. It’s really quite a remarkable passage, and I would suggest reading it, slowly and carefully, if you find yourself in need of encouragement and refreshment today.  But let me break off a few pieces of it here, pieces of spiritual bread which I think pertain to our concerns about the spiritual life.

What this passage can remind us is that our teacher, the Lord himself, does not give us words or direction which are powerless. What we learn from our Teacher has an effect. As the passage says,

As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, 

and do not return there until they have watered the earth, 

bring forth life and giving growth, seed for the sower and bread for the eater, 

so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; 

it shall not return to me empty, 

but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.

Isaiah 55:10-11

You see, God wishes us to live our Christian lives as much (indeed, far more) than we do. When we face the struggle, we should remember that we are not alone. The words which we hear from the mouth of our Teacher have great effect, and we are promised that they will bring about their purpose in us. The newly formed life we are trying to lead will come because God is the one bringing about the new creation in us. And God cannot fail. The word shall bring forth new life, no matter how tentative, and the new life will remain.

To end with the words of Scripture, which vividly portray this promise:

You shall go out in joy, and be led back in peace; 

the mountains and the hills before you shall burst into song, 

and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. 

Instead of the thorn shall come up the cypress; 

instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle;

and it shall a sign of the Lord, 

an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off.

Isaiah 55:12-13

The Face of God

Two things we have begun to talk about in the Chaplaincy during this season of Epiphany are the ideas of revelation and vocation. On the one hand, we are asking what God has revealed to us and is continuing to reveal to us in Jesus Christ. On the other, we are asking the question, "To what is God calling us?"

In one sense, it's very clear why these things go together. Jesus often reveals himself to his disciples as a teacher, as in our Gospel reading last Sunday and the one coming this Sunday. But there's another way in which these things go together, as Cameron spoke of in his sermon this past week. Sometimes, the call to be a follower of Jesus means to proclaim the Good News. Our vocation is to continue the revelation, particularly in the shape of our lives.

I've always found this image of the Christian life compelling, and one of the passages which has most informed my thinking on this idea comes from 2 Corinthians 3. The passage contains a number of mysterious sayings, but one image which comes through is the idea of the individual Christian as "a letter of Christ...written by the Spirit of the Living God." Through the impact which the Good News announced in Jesus has on us, our own lives can be a message to those around us. The revelation of Jesus transforms us, and we are able to demonstrate that transformation and continue the revelation to others.

Paul also speaks of "seeing the glory of the Lord as if reflected in a mirror." This seeing is clearly a form of revelation. But how does one see? What is the mirror in this passage which we can look on? The idea I believe Paul is drawing on recurs in a variety of ancient writings, but had been made fairly well-known after the Platonic dialogue Phaedrus, in which Socrates speaks of seeing the glory and face of God reflected in the face of one you love and with whom you are pursuing the ultimate Good and ultimate Beauty, God. The mirror through which one sees God is found in the face of the beloved companion.

The twist here, of course, is that Paul is applying this image to the Christian community. Each one of us is (or is called to be) a letter of Christ, written by the Spirit. Each one of us is and can be the mirror through which another might see the glory of the Lord. As I said, this calling, or vocation, to become a revelation ourselves is one of the most compelling images of the Christian life which I have ever encountered. Our calling is quite high; we are able to image God to others and are to look at others also to see that image. By being transformed through the Gospel message, we may also reveal that message, for the transformation of those around us.

The key passage I'd like to close with from 2 Cor. 3 has this idea in mind, which might best be translated as:

"All of us, with faces revealed, looking to one another and seeing the glory of the Lord as in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image of God, passing from glory to glory, just as if it is from the Lord, the Spirit."

Zack Guiliano 

Kellogg Fellow

Service This Sunday!

The Episcopal Chaplaincy will be resuming services on January 23rd at 5:30pm (that's this Sunday!). Please join us for worship, followed by dinner and discussion.

---Zack Guiliano

Kellogg Fellow