Our children arrive tomorrow for the holiday. I'm happy about that....I haven't seen them in six months. Their coming has caused me here in late mid life, in the waning light of Fall, to take stock of things that make this earth heaven:...their gracious friendship...my wife who loves me more than I deserve...my mother who believes in me...the work I get to do, and this fine parish within which I get to do it...the beauty of this city by the bay...the rusting sedge of the delta...the Spanish moss...the glide of the pelican...I could go on... but also there is grief in this season...I miss my father...friends dead and gone...unresolved family quarrels...our own coming death...joy and pain held together in a sweet mystery indissoluble.
Ambiguity is the rhythm of life...the light and the dark, necessary for each other...artful contrast at the heart of our knowing, and our being...we are not whole without the whole of it: controversy and resolution; regret and joy; anguish and restoration; love and death.
Our culture would tell us otherwise, that life is supposed to be all bright, all happiness, but where is the art in that? Ours is to own the ambiguous beauty of life in earth, for such is the way of heaven: beauty made manifest among the light and the dark textures of existence. beauty, not just at the surface, but beauty that has the resonance to transform and create...the ambivalent shadow-side of life mere birth pangs of the new. So I give thanks for the whole of it...the whole of life's experience...the whole that God calls and celebrates as very good.
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Of Building Jerusalem
The principal aim of Hebrew Scripture is to tell the story of a people loved and chosen by God, a people sent in mission to build Jerusalem, the holy city envisioned by God through the patriarchs, the judges and kings and sages and prophets. And once built, scripture tells us, this same Jerusalem is in urgent need of restoration...an eschatological irony to be sure: We arrive and yet we are not yet there...an emblem of the life of faith. The people of Israel are rescued from slavery in Egypt and sent out to build the city of God, a city in which the lowly and abased are raised up, a city that protects the orphan and widow, a city in which self interest is cast out for the sake of the whole. Throughout the Biblical narratives there is a dynamic tension between that which is, and that which might be; between the reality of despair and poverty, violence and disease, and the way of hope and healing, justice and abundance and peace...the people of God the tipping point.
New Testament literature continues the theme and names this enlightened and intentional way of life, the Way of Christ: the way that is predisposed to sacrifice, living our collective lives for the outcast, the least and the lost; this the the way of vulnerability. We are told by our spiritual forebears that such a way engenders abundant living, a life in the heart of God, a life of true joy; to build and tend a city, a gracious commonweal, within whose bounds the truth is spoken in love, and enacted with courage and grace; in which creativity governs instead of fear.The bounds of this city are no bounds at all, but portals of welcome and hospitality...portals to life and light.
To build this city in our own time is our life's work, and this work can and will be complicated, controversial and unsettling at times, but such is the way of the cross, that symbol of our life and labor, offered in unyielding sacrifice....and with humility and a good sense of humor. The new Jerusalem, the new heaven and the new earth waits to be born at the hands of the human community, worn hands that bear God's very life; the ropey veins and arteries a map of the world....Hands called into a labor of love.
The purpose of the church is to nurture, and encourage and celebrate such a vocation; a place of refreshment and empowerment for the way ahead; enabling our place in the way upon which many have already walked and given courageously their life and labor. We are heirs of their craftsmanship, of their enlightened industry...the new builders of this city to be...this city whose portals open as we speak to all who would come and build...and there we will find welcome and rest...and it is marvelous in our eyes, this peaceable and glittering city of God...We are not yet there and yet we arrive.
New Testament literature continues the theme and names this enlightened and intentional way of life, the Way of Christ: the way that is predisposed to sacrifice, living our collective lives for the outcast, the least and the lost; this the the way of vulnerability. We are told by our spiritual forebears that such a way engenders abundant living, a life in the heart of God, a life of true joy; to build and tend a city, a gracious commonweal, within whose bounds the truth is spoken in love, and enacted with courage and grace; in which creativity governs instead of fear.The bounds of this city are no bounds at all, but portals of welcome and hospitality...portals to life and light.
To build this city in our own time is our life's work, and this work can and will be complicated, controversial and unsettling at times, but such is the way of the cross, that symbol of our life and labor, offered in unyielding sacrifice....and with humility and a good sense of humor. The new Jerusalem, the new heaven and the new earth waits to be born at the hands of the human community, worn hands that bear God's very life; the ropey veins and arteries a map of the world....Hands called into a labor of love.
The purpose of the church is to nurture, and encourage and celebrate such a vocation; a place of refreshment and empowerment for the way ahead; enabling our place in the way upon which many have already walked and given courageously their life and labor. We are heirs of their craftsmanship, of their enlightened industry...the new builders of this city to be...this city whose portals open as we speak to all who would come and build...and there we will find welcome and rest...and it is marvelous in our eyes, this peaceable and glittering city of God...We are not yet there and yet we arrive.
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Of Song and Seasons
Every season has its song. The music of Fall is decidedly different from the music of Summer, Spring and Winter. Vivaldi thought as much. So did Keats and Byron and Eliot. The changing of seasons has inspired artists since time immemorial. The earth acts differently depending on the season: In the summer one won't see yellow leaves scuttling down city streets; or feel the brace of a cool morning; nor would one behold the ambiguous sunlight glittering on the water at a slant. Those phenomena belong to the Fall of the year, when the ways of earth mature and ripen and slow down to take account...of the harvest...of mutability...of waning light...the coming cold...of our dead....the music now in a minor key.
The liturgical life of the church is emblematic of the way we live according to season. We begin Advent soon. We leave off reading about the life, teaching and ministry of Jesus, and we recount again the prophecies of renewal and restoration, and we remember the promise and hope of a new birth that bears profound possibility as to the way ahead. We do this as the light lessens. The service music will be different, the hymnody, the vestments change, the procession changes...All pointing to the reality that the earth and our lives in earth participate in a mysterious and beautiful transience, divine process set to song, that animates the universe entire... the becoming that is and is to come.
Pay attention to the truth of the season...for seasons sing of truth...pay attention, for this season of "mists and mellow fruitfulness" won't last...seasons beget new seasons that sing their version of truth too; but for now the earth begins sacred rest, accounting for what is gleaned and what is lost...and begins preparation for sleep...sleep in hope of season come round again, as if for the first time.
The liturgical life of the church is emblematic of the way we live according to season. We begin Advent soon. We leave off reading about the life, teaching and ministry of Jesus, and we recount again the prophecies of renewal and restoration, and we remember the promise and hope of a new birth that bears profound possibility as to the way ahead. We do this as the light lessens. The service music will be different, the hymnody, the vestments change, the procession changes...All pointing to the reality that the earth and our lives in earth participate in a mysterious and beautiful transience, divine process set to song, that animates the universe entire... the becoming that is and is to come.
Pay attention to the truth of the season...for seasons sing of truth...pay attention, for this season of "mists and mellow fruitfulness" won't last...seasons beget new seasons that sing their version of truth too; but for now the earth begins sacred rest, accounting for what is gleaned and what is lost...and begins preparation for sleep...sleep in hope of season come round again, as if for the first time.
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Of All the Saints
This past Sunday, All Saints Day, we beheld the outward and visible evidence of the vitality of this venerable place and of its faithful people. The music and the liturgy and our joyful participation in it were emblematic of a church that matters. Over the past one hundred years parishioners have gathered here for nurture and empowerment and rest in order to live lives of integrity for the good of the community we serve. All Saints has the reputation of being a welcoming community; a community of gracious hospitality; a place to which the stranger is invited; a place in which there are no outcasts; an informed people who care for their neighbor and the least fortunate and least dignified among us....these the characteristics and demands of the Gospels. There is not a week that goes by in which I am not thanked for the work you do in Mobile and beyond. I am proud to be part of such a community.
The challenges and demands of the next one hundred years for All Saints will be many. I see the role of the church as compassionate advocacy; a predisposition of profound relevancy and action. As people of conscience, people of faith, people of the way of Christ, we are duty bound to call for justice and peacemaking; duty bound to be advocates for healing, duty bound to be enlightened critics... duty bound to enact compassion and dignity where there is despair and dishonor. Churches that sit impassively on the sidelines on the matters that face us as world citizens will cease to be. The Gospels require us to be advocates for, and bearers of, goodness wherever the potential for such transformation exists. The Gospels require us to live a life for the good of the whole, the sustainable and mutual commonweal that our God, as recounted by our wise forbears, envisions... God's coming kingdom but a collaborative communion of equals, and to bring it to birth is our life's work.
In this century we will as a people of faith have to address intelligently the shocking realities of a world grown small and intensely interrelated. As people of faith we have to address the truth about climate change and its disproportionate harm to the poor. Why? Because we are named in scripture as stewards of Creation and friend of the least....We will have to address the fast growing disparity of wealth. Why? Because the Gospels teach us that we are to live in God's abundance through self-giving and sacrifice for the other...We will be duty bound to heal the sick and feed the hungry, and give water to the thirsty and stop the violence of our world...The Gospels demand that our faith lives and moves in the public sphere as God's transforming love...love incarnate in the world in our very hands, hearts, minds and bodies. And we will for another hundred years continue to gather as often as we can to praise our God who calls us into such a high vocation...We will as a liturgical community gather and name as beautiful this life of faith that changes our world for the better. What gracious responsibility and honor God bestows upon us...something worth celebrating...Rise up you saints of God...there is much yet to do....and so little time...even if a hundred years.
The challenges and demands of the next one hundred years for All Saints will be many. I see the role of the church as compassionate advocacy; a predisposition of profound relevancy and action. As people of conscience, people of faith, people of the way of Christ, we are duty bound to call for justice and peacemaking; duty bound to be advocates for healing, duty bound to be enlightened critics... duty bound to enact compassion and dignity where there is despair and dishonor. Churches that sit impassively on the sidelines on the matters that face us as world citizens will cease to be. The Gospels require us to be advocates for, and bearers of, goodness wherever the potential for such transformation exists. The Gospels require us to live a life for the good of the whole, the sustainable and mutual commonweal that our God, as recounted by our wise forbears, envisions... God's coming kingdom but a collaborative communion of equals, and to bring it to birth is our life's work.
In this century we will as a people of faith have to address intelligently the shocking realities of a world grown small and intensely interrelated. As people of faith we have to address the truth about climate change and its disproportionate harm to the poor. Why? Because we are named in scripture as stewards of Creation and friend of the least....We will have to address the fast growing disparity of wealth. Why? Because the Gospels teach us that we are to live in God's abundance through self-giving and sacrifice for the other...We will be duty bound to heal the sick and feed the hungry, and give water to the thirsty and stop the violence of our world...The Gospels demand that our faith lives and moves in the public sphere as God's transforming love...love incarnate in the world in our very hands, hearts, minds and bodies. And we will for another hundred years continue to gather as often as we can to praise our God who calls us into such a high vocation...We will as a liturgical community gather and name as beautiful this life of faith that changes our world for the better. What gracious responsibility and honor God bestows upon us...something worth celebrating...Rise up you saints of God...there is much yet to do....and so little time...even if a hundred years.
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