Sacraments are defined in the Catechism of the Episcopal Church as outward and visible signs of inward and spiritual grace. Our particular sacraments we name are Baptism, Eucharist, Unction (anointing of the sick), Marriage, Confirmation, The Reconciliation of a Penitent and Ordination. There are seven of these signs of the holy in the church, but we of course remember that the number seven in scripture takes on symbolic significance. The disciples asked Jesus, "How many times must we forgive....as many as seven?" Jesus answered, "Not seven but seventy times seven." So the seven "official" sacraments are the mere tip of the iceberg. All things point to the essence of who God is...all things, animate and inanimate, (physicists tell us now that there is no difference)...all things living sacraments drawing us into the beauty of the divine...beauty not found in the aloof ethereal void....but beauty found in the common things of earth. "The world is charged with the grandeur of God," Gerard Manley Hopkins writes. The liturgical life of the church is a procession of signs that tell us who God is and therefore who we are. The two are profoundly and intimately related.
I was told by my priest when I was growing up that the Eucharist was the principal sacrament: A family meal in which all partake as equals, in which all are nurtured for the way ahead, in which all are empowered for God's work in the world. And then after the publishing of the 1979 Book of Common Prayer, Baptism rose to a central place in our liturgical life: Death to self by water (I'm reminded of the opening scene in Shakespeare's Tempest: a profound image of the transforming power of such a common thing as water); and then new life that water brings, indeed there is no life without water....Baptism, a transformation by water into a new life of sacrifice for the good of the whole.
These are indeed central to our lives as people of faith; because we have to see the truth to believe it: sacraments the outward and visible signs of truth; but I want to suggest perhaps one more among the infinite number of sacraments in our world that is at the heart of the spiritual matter: The Church....the Church, the community gathered in the faith, the people of God outward and visible signs of God's very life in earth....the people of God, living sacraments bearing God's transforming and saving life in earth....the people of God, called by the ancients ecclesia, the assembly gathered, strong together, the whole greater than the sum of its parts, bearing the mundane elements of the kingdom to a world needing to see and believe that there is yet hope...mundane elements of the kingdom like mercy and compassion; food and water and shelter for the dispossessed; and healing care for the diseased; things like justice and dignity in equal portion...these the rudiments of God's kingdom transforming our world, recreating the world into the way God imagines it to be. Let us be as the people of God outward and visible sign enough for the world, beginning here at the corner of Ann and Government streets, outward and visible sign of God's saving love now and among us. That would be something to see.
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Of Faith and the Imagination
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the great English romantic poet and incisive apologist on matters religious and spiritual, suggested in a defense of Christian orthodoxy against the puritans, the fundamentalists of his day, a radical premise. He wrote that in order to understand scripture one must employ the imagination; that it is the imagination that inspires scripture and not the reverse. It is the imagination that breathes life into the words of scripture and gives them renewed and perhaps new meaning. The ancient words of scripture are reconstituted, indeed transfigured and given new life through the imaginative process...God, in an intimate collaboration with the human imagination enabled, invited to speak in present tense.
Moreover, Coleridge would further say that the collective human imagination is synonymous with the Holy Spirit, the Spirit that moved over creation in the beginning; the Spirit that indwells a people. The imagination now spelled with a capital "I." His most famous poem, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is a veritable hymn to the transforming and saving power of the imagination. You will recall in the poem that the ship is becalmed and the crew is near certain death when the moon, a consummate symbol of the imagination, appears and an unlikely breeze picks up, fills the torpid sails and the ship is brought safely home. This idea of the power of the imagination is re-articulated in various ways by poets with neo-romantic sensibilities of the modern era: Hopkins and Yeats of England and Ireland, Stevens and Frost of the U.S., Borges of Argentina to name a few. The mystics of all faiths have forever known the truth of this. The alchemists' quest to turn mundane elements into gold, yet another symbol of the transformative power of the imagination.
What does this mean for us, as people of faith? As we are made in God's image, we are made to create. Through the sacred power of the imagination, by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, we like the One who created us are called to speak the world into being. "In the beginning was the Word," the Gospel of John begins. Words are artifice....from the realm of the beautiful...creations sprung from the imagination set loose in the world as means of saving change, means of the new creation, the means of a primordial sacred order breaking into our world now and not yet. We are forever "in the beginning" speaking the Word, shimmering artifice, words of the Word that take on the flesh of the new creation.
And words inform deeds...deeds also sacred artifice that will save and transform, and order the world to which we have been given. And imaginative deeds beget new words in a cosmic dance whirling to a humming rhythm that governs the very stars themselves. Every word, every action comes from the Spirit, the enlivened imagination, and exists solely for the good of the whole. The art is not for the artist to possess, but for the apprehension of the many. As pilgrims on the way, ours is to speak and act into being such fruits of the imagination as goodness and truth, kindness and mercy, compassion and forgiveness, and saving justice made manifest in infinite possibilities; components of the beautiful... Let us speak into being a sustainable dignity for our dispossessed sisters and brothers who share the common blood of our humanity. We are made for this, and this alone. Imagine God's kingdom for the world until we wake and find our alchemical dreams to be true....that things in earth are as they are in heaven.
Moreover, Coleridge would further say that the collective human imagination is synonymous with the Holy Spirit, the Spirit that moved over creation in the beginning; the Spirit that indwells a people. The imagination now spelled with a capital "I." His most famous poem, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is a veritable hymn to the transforming and saving power of the imagination. You will recall in the poem that the ship is becalmed and the crew is near certain death when the moon, a consummate symbol of the imagination, appears and an unlikely breeze picks up, fills the torpid sails and the ship is brought safely home. This idea of the power of the imagination is re-articulated in various ways by poets with neo-romantic sensibilities of the modern era: Hopkins and Yeats of England and Ireland, Stevens and Frost of the U.S., Borges of Argentina to name a few. The mystics of all faiths have forever known the truth of this. The alchemists' quest to turn mundane elements into gold, yet another symbol of the transformative power of the imagination.
What does this mean for us, as people of faith? As we are made in God's image, we are made to create. Through the sacred power of the imagination, by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, we like the One who created us are called to speak the world into being. "In the beginning was the Word," the Gospel of John begins. Words are artifice....from the realm of the beautiful...creations sprung from the imagination set loose in the world as means of saving change, means of the new creation, the means of a primordial sacred order breaking into our world now and not yet. We are forever "in the beginning" speaking the Word, shimmering artifice, words of the Word that take on the flesh of the new creation.
And words inform deeds...deeds also sacred artifice that will save and transform, and order the world to which we have been given. And imaginative deeds beget new words in a cosmic dance whirling to a humming rhythm that governs the very stars themselves. Every word, every action comes from the Spirit, the enlivened imagination, and exists solely for the good of the whole. The art is not for the artist to possess, but for the apprehension of the many. As pilgrims on the way, ours is to speak and act into being such fruits of the imagination as goodness and truth, kindness and mercy, compassion and forgiveness, and saving justice made manifest in infinite possibilities; components of the beautiful... Let us speak into being a sustainable dignity for our dispossessed sisters and brothers who share the common blood of our humanity. We are made for this, and this alone. Imagine God's kingdom for the world until we wake and find our alchemical dreams to be true....that things in earth are as they are in heaven.
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Of Martyrs and Pilgrims
This past Saturday a few of us from All Saints joined others from the diocese of the Central Gulf Coast and the diocese of Alabama in pilgrimage to Hayneville, Al., a small hamlet some thirty miles southwest of Montgomery. August 14 is the feast day on the Episcopal calendar of saints of Jonathan Myrick Daniels who on this very day in 1965 was gunned down by a part-time Lowndes County sheriff’s deputy.
Daniels was an Episcopal seminarian from Boston. He and some colleagues postponed their seminary studies to help with voter registration in Alabama which was (and some now argue still is) bitterly divided along racial lines in the social turbulence of the sixties. While working in Hayneville, he and his companions were abruptly arrested and jailed. The conditions of the Lowndes County jail were squalid: no working plumbing and no air conditioning. After three days they were mysteriously released. They walked together in the August heat around the corner to a country store for a soda. They were met at the door by a man weilding a shotgun. The killer pointed the gun at an eighteen year old college student from Tuskegee named Ruby Sales. Daniels pushed her to the ground and stepped in front of the barrel. The killer pulled the trigger at point blank range and Daniels bled to death there on the front porch of the store. The killer despite eye witnesses was acquitted in the nearby Lowndes County courthouse.
The liturgy of the pilgrimage had us process behind the Cross to each site: the jail, the store, and the monument on the town square. At each station we sang songs, read the account of Jonathan Daniels martyrdom, and we prayed. The procession ended in the courthouse for a closing Eucharist, the judge’s bench from which the killer was acquitted years ago now made into an altar. There startlingly the bread and wine in our midst, old and young, rich and poor, black and white, male and female, gay and straight, all gathered for a family meal. There justice breaking out in a place where a great injustice was done.
Indeed the Eucharist is a cardinal symbol of justice. It is a meal to which all are invited, all are fed in equal portion and all are empowered for the way ahead….a meal does that: reconstitutes our bodies for renewed life; sacred nurture coursing in our blood; sacred power for the good of the whole. May our life blood be at one with the blood shed by our brother, and all who gave their life’s blood for a just and better way….all those who bore to their world the Salvation of Christ. Blessed Jonathan, pray for us. Pray for us as we sojourn in earth; pray that by our own blood God’s sacred and reconciling justice will be manifested in earth, once and for all.
Daniels was an Episcopal seminarian from Boston. He and some colleagues postponed their seminary studies to help with voter registration in Alabama which was (and some now argue still is) bitterly divided along racial lines in the social turbulence of the sixties. While working in Hayneville, he and his companions were abruptly arrested and jailed. The conditions of the Lowndes County jail were squalid: no working plumbing and no air conditioning. After three days they were mysteriously released. They walked together in the August heat around the corner to a country store for a soda. They were met at the door by a man weilding a shotgun. The killer pointed the gun at an eighteen year old college student from Tuskegee named Ruby Sales. Daniels pushed her to the ground and stepped in front of the barrel. The killer pulled the trigger at point blank range and Daniels bled to death there on the front porch of the store. The killer despite eye witnesses was acquitted in the nearby Lowndes County courthouse.
The liturgy of the pilgrimage had us process behind the Cross to each site: the jail, the store, and the monument on the town square. At each station we sang songs, read the account of Jonathan Daniels martyrdom, and we prayed. The procession ended in the courthouse for a closing Eucharist, the judge’s bench from which the killer was acquitted years ago now made into an altar. There startlingly the bread and wine in our midst, old and young, rich and poor, black and white, male and female, gay and straight, all gathered for a family meal. There justice breaking out in a place where a great injustice was done.
Indeed the Eucharist is a cardinal symbol of justice. It is a meal to which all are invited, all are fed in equal portion and all are empowered for the way ahead….a meal does that: reconstitutes our bodies for renewed life; sacred nurture coursing in our blood; sacred power for the good of the whole. May our life blood be at one with the blood shed by our brother, and all who gave their life’s blood for a just and better way….all those who bore to their world the Salvation of Christ. Blessed Jonathan, pray for us. Pray for us as we sojourn in earth; pray that by our own blood God’s sacred and reconciling justice will be manifested in earth, once and for all.
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
Of Prayer and Hurricanes
I was talking to a priest friend of mine whose parish is on the Florida Gulf Coast. He recently went to the annual blessing of the fleet. Each year a different clergy person from the denominational diversity of the area is asked by the mayor to lead the prayers. My friend's turn comes up next year. This year a pastor of a local protestant church was asked to pray, and at one point in his litany amid the plea for a good catch, real estate sales and the increase in tourism income, he then addressed the possibility of hurricanes, everyone at the gathering of course keenly aware of the approaching season. He asked God: "to please send said potential approaching hurricane to their beloved city's east or west." (At least they gave God an option)That wouldn't necessarily bode well for us here in Mobile, or for those in the eastern parts of the diocese. So I guess our job at the approach of a hurricane is to out-pray our neighbors, a spiritual tug-of war for God's capricious favor. We even heard church folks and government officials after Ivan and Katrina talk about how God had blessed us that we avoided the brunt of those storms. One person's blessing another one's curse, I suppose.
All of this absurdity has caused me to reflect on the nature of prayer. Walter Brueggemann, noted theologian and Biblical scholar, defines prayer as the conscious act of aligning our collective will with God's will. That's helpful, because we are given many clues in scripture as to what God's will is. God wills mercy; God wills that God's people are fed sheltered and clothed; God wills the welcome of stranger in sacred hospitality;God wills the healing of God's people; God wills us to forgive; God wills nonviolence; God wills saving justice and dignity for all of God's people. So our prayers should be predisposed for the good of our neighbor. In prayer we remind ourselves of who we are as God's people; and we remind ourselves that we are the means of God's will in earth. And yes we pray for our own needs, but always, always in the context of our neighbor and the community of which we are a part. In prayer we are also commended to give thanks for and exult in the beauty of creation. Prayer is a decidedly communal act; and prayer, at its heart is an articulation of sacrifice, as God's will is sacrifice. As a church we are, in short, a community of sacrifice called to enact God's will as we discern it through the practice and prayers of the faith.
Indeed as the people of God we become prayer for our world, living, incarnate words of God's love bearing God's will to the brokeness of our world. This takes work, I believe. Prayer is not sentimentality, but an imaginative and enlightened exercise in apprehending God's will alive among us amid the beautiful and dangerous intricacies of every day living. This is prayer that works, literally; this is real power, the very power of God set loose in the world transforming, recreating the world for the better.....real power found in sacrifice....more powerful than hurricanes. God's will be done, and let us pray that God's will is done sooner than later.
All of this absurdity has caused me to reflect on the nature of prayer. Walter Brueggemann, noted theologian and Biblical scholar, defines prayer as the conscious act of aligning our collective will with God's will. That's helpful, because we are given many clues in scripture as to what God's will is. God wills mercy; God wills that God's people are fed sheltered and clothed; God wills the welcome of stranger in sacred hospitality;God wills the healing of God's people; God wills us to forgive; God wills nonviolence; God wills saving justice and dignity for all of God's people. So our prayers should be predisposed for the good of our neighbor. In prayer we remind ourselves of who we are as God's people; and we remind ourselves that we are the means of God's will in earth. And yes we pray for our own needs, but always, always in the context of our neighbor and the community of which we are a part. In prayer we are also commended to give thanks for and exult in the beauty of creation. Prayer is a decidedly communal act; and prayer, at its heart is an articulation of sacrifice, as God's will is sacrifice. As a church we are, in short, a community of sacrifice called to enact God's will as we discern it through the practice and prayers of the faith.
Indeed as the people of God we become prayer for our world, living, incarnate words of God's love bearing God's will to the brokeness of our world. This takes work, I believe. Prayer is not sentimentality, but an imaginative and enlightened exercise in apprehending God's will alive among us amid the beautiful and dangerous intricacies of every day living. This is prayer that works, literally; this is real power, the very power of God set loose in the world transforming, recreating the world for the better.....real power found in sacrifice....more powerful than hurricanes. God's will be done, and let us pray that God's will is done sooner than later.
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