Easier than you think

Prediction is harder than it looks, but I can tell you one thing with some certainty. If past years are any guide, come late February or mid-March, our Archdeacon (who is a stubborn and unrepentant Yankee fan) will invite us clergy and some folks on diocesan staff who love baseball to predict who will win the pennants and the World Series in the upcoming season. I still owe him a lunch because he was, alas, more correct in his prediction than I was. But both Father Stringfellow and I did better than some serious, professional sports prognosticators. I looked back at one respected sports magazine to find out that, according to them, the Tampa Bay Rays were supposed to have beaten the New York Mets four weeks ago in the World Series. (Sorry, Fr. Wayne. Even in a fantasy universe, your team can’t seem to catch a break. What a shame!) But, as I said, prediction is harder than it looks.

Even though we are not so good at interpreting signs and wonders, I think that most of us tend to agree on one thing…whatever happens at “the end” (whenever that is) it will probably be very, very big.

Just this month, there was a new popular television series depicting visitors from outer space whose almost angel-like (but too perfect to be true) appearance reassure us from up in the sky not to be afraid, because they bring peace to the earth. This new series has recycled an idea from 1980’s, which of course is an idea much older that than that.

I remember a time when another sort of visitor appeared at my front door. You would think that when these characters with their newspapers and tracts are greeted at the door by a person wearing a clerical collar they’d just clear their throats and move on to the next house. But, no! I become a personal challenge instead! So they begin to preach to me about the end of the world. Now ever since my first-grade teacher taught me how to “duck and cover” when the whistles go off, I have been dreading this, so I suggested to the visitors that they might consider preaching a different gospel. Maybe one about how much God loves us and forgives us and offers us a new life of grace. They said no; this was their story and they were sticking to it even (especially!) if it means scaring people to death.

Episcopal priest Barbara Brown Taylor says that we should be alert, yes, but "[n]ot so you will know when to grab your crash helmet and head for the basement, but so you will know when the kingdom is near. So you will not miss God when God comes"

The intent of the church on the First Sunday of Advent is not to spoil a perfectly good holiday season with talk of the end of the world while the culture around us is set for weeks of parties, gift-giving, family reunions. The idea to take a moment at the start of this New Year to take the long view, to have an end in mind, so that we have some idea of where we are going on this journey of faith. And it is in fact helpful and comforting to know when and where God’s kingdom is being set-up, so we won’t be caught off guard.

Allow me to offer a hint, maybe in a way more useful that my front-door (and other alien) visitors.

Jesus does tells us that there will be “…signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations….” He says “People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world …”

But he also offers another sign of what God is up to. This pointer is an invitation to step out of the hub-bub and into a daily, practical, attitude of expectation that underscores what Advent means. If you really want to know what God is up to, look to small, everyday things. "Look at the fig tree and all the trees,” Jesus says. “As soon as they sprout leaves you can see for yourselves and know that summer is already near. So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that the kingdom of God is near."

Leo Tolstoy, whom we tend to associate with the epitome of The Great Big Novel, wrote a short story about a cobbler whose hope for a dramatic revelation of God is answered by the everyday sightings of God as love in action, in charity, justice, and compassion toward the people the cobbler meets each day. If one is looking for the kingdom of God, the signs are closer than you think. The real challenge of Advent is not to look for God’s arrival in the big, the dramatic, and the cosmic. It appears that where God shows up most powerfully is right here, right around the corner, maybe right before our eyes.

Christians live in hope. Christians live in faith that looks forward. We live knowing that in Christ God will, and does, draw all people to himself. We know that God made all things, the Holy Spirit animates creation and the risen, ascended Christ fills all things. We Christians believe that God shows up in unexpected places and shakes up the cosmos. But even we Christians are often surprised when we are reminded that this happens in ways we don’t expect. Take Christmas. It is a celebration that the same Word of God that ushered forth creation is born a little baby. God has this way of sending us great big wonderful gifts in wondrous little, everyday packages.

Everyday we see the buds on Christ’s kingdom tree. Look at our Ark Soup Kitchen every Saturday. Look the food pantry that the churches and synagogues of Easton comes together and support at our ProJeCt of Easton. Look at the crew who goes about delivering Meals on Wheels from our parish or who routinely give blood in our name. Look at that Angel Tree covered with tags in the back of church. Look at the volunteer from a church men’s group who rings the bell for the Salvation Army. Look at the woman who drives an elderly person who no longer drives to the store to help her with her Christmas shopping. See God’s reign established around the world with the bikes, soccer balls and solar lanterns we will send to our sisters and brothers in Kajo-Keji this Christmas. See God’s reign being established in the people who visit the homebound and shut in or who bring communion to them as well as those in hospital. And God’s kingdom may just arrive in the mail from the hands of other folks, some homebound, who write birthday, get well and baptismal anniversary cards for our parish.

The signs of God’s merciful kingdom come through the hands and hearts of the many, many faithful Christians who persist in corporal acts of mercy no matter who is in office and even if they happen to disagree with whatever the local city council or state legislature decides. These everyday acts of mercy and kindness show us that God’s kingdom is coming right here, right now, right where we live. We don’t need to wait. We can be ready now.

And it easy to get a front row seat for God’s kingdom arrival. Just go to our Mission Table and pick out a time and a ministry when you can see for yourself how God changes lives and shakes up the cosmos.

Because it turns out that prediction is easier than it looks. It’s easy to see when the kingdom of God comes, if you know where to look. Look for the moments when we choose love and forgiveness and so overcome hatred and fear.

These are the moments when we know that our prayer “Come, Lord Jesus” is never prayed in vain.

1 Advent, Year C - 11/29/09

Stephen Colbert's liturgical dance



I don't know the context for this, but it seemed like a good way to celebrate the Feast of St. Andrew. Why? Why not?

Seeing the face of Christ everyday

Sister Patricia-Michael is a vowed solitary in the Diocese of Bethlehem, a spiritual director and the parish administrator in my parish, Trinity Episcopal Church in Easton, PA.

She has been inspired to start a blog that focuses on the theme of seeing the face of Christ in ordinary people in everyday places. It is called "When did I see you?", which she describes as "the daily intention of seeking and finding Christ in all things, in all places and in all ways." This is an outward expression of part of Patty's rule.

This is a discipline that is close to my heart and I invite you to follow her blog here.


First Sunday of Advent, Year C



The choir of Lichfield Cathedral sing the lovely advent hymn "Lo ! He comes with clouds descending" . Words by Charles Wesley rewritten from the original text by John Cennick . The descant by the choristers during the last verse is absolutely stunning. All pictures are of Lichfield Cathedral.

Lo! He comes with clouds descending,
Once for favoured sinners slain;
Thousand thousand saints attending,
Swell the triumph of His train:
Hallelujah! Hallelujah!
God appears on earth to reign

Every eye shall now behold Him
Robed in dreadful majesty;
Those who set at naught and sold Him,
Pierced and nailed Him to the tree,
Deeply wailing, deeply wailing,
Shall the true Messiah see.

The dear tokens of His passion
Still His dazzling body bears;
Cause of endless exultation
To His ransomed worshippers;
With what rapture, with what rapture
Gaze we on those glorious scars!

Yea, amen; let all adore thee,
High on thine eternal throne;
Saviour, take the power and glory;
Claim the kingdoms for thine own:
Hallelujah! Hallelujah!
Thou shalt reign, and thou alone.

H/T drwestbury and DioBeth newSpin.

To grandmothers house we go....



The Beat Goes On....

Further and better particulars on the Roman Catholic Church's 40 year cover-up of systematic and pervasive child abuse on the part of the Archdiocese of Dublin. The Times (London) has the quick summary:

The Roman Catholic Church in Ireland connived with the authorities in a cover-up spanning decades to shield paedophile priests from prosecution, an official report concluded yesterday. Hundreds of crimes against children were not reported as the four archbishops of the Archdiocese of Dublin remained wedded to the “maintenance of secrecy, the avoidance of scandal, the protection of the reputation of the Church and the preservation of its assets”.

Instead, the church hierarchy shuffled the sex offenders from parish to parish, allowing them to continue to prey on victims. In some cases paedophile priests were even promoted. The 750-page report by the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse on the Dublin archdiocese — the second significant inquiry this year to expose appalling levels of sexual abuse of minors in Ireland under the aegis of the Roman Catholic Church — said that it had uncovered a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy throughout the period that it investigated between 1975 and 2004.

It said that the State had helped to create the culture of cover-up and that senior police officers regarded priests as “outside their remit”.

“The State authorities facilitated that cover-up by not fulfilling their responsibilities to ensure that the law was applied equally to all and allowing the Church institutions to be beyond the reach of the normal law enforcement processes,” it concluded.

When considered in conjunction with the evidence of Vatican condoning of such cover-ups even in papal statements on the issue from John XXIII to Benedict XVI (pre-papacy for him), one must ask finally, what does this tell us about the Roman Catholic Church?

This, I think: That its ecclesiology is fundamentally flawed in it's agoraphobically top-down model, one which prizes the interests of the institution so highly, and which cannot ever admit error or failure--individuals fail the Church, the Church itself cannot err. By identifying itself completely with the Body of Christ, the Church heavily disincentivizes itself from acknowledging systemic problems--the "rogue priest" model is the only one that the Church can bear to recognize, because to do otherwise sets up a cognitive dissonance between its theological claims and its behavior. That gap, perceived outside the Church as the rankest hypocrisy, is in fact denial of the most psychologically necessary kind. To believe it, one must shift the topic from the cover up to the offense itself, perpetrated by a number of priests not much greater than that percentage of abusers in society at large, a defense the Church has made at the highest levels. But it is, of course, the concerted cover up over decades by men widely deemed holy and even heroic within Christendom--John XXIII, a hero to liberal Catholics, and John Paul II, a hero to conservatives, to name but two. Or, one can, as did British MP Ann Widdicombe in the Intelligence Squared Debate I linked previously, de-emphasize the cover up, and the sex abuse, and spin it as overly authoritarian discipline typical of the time, and even (as did Widdicombe) accuse Church critics of a double standard, by unfairly demanding that the RCC know better than the times. (This of course set her up for the deadly riposte of Stephen Fry: if the Church cannot be expected to better than secular institutions, he asked, his voice rising for the first time in the debate, then "What are you for?").

The fact is, having one man, and a small circle of princes, responsible for the preservation of a 2,000 year institution which it believes to be the true incarnation if Christ's Body on Earth is to put an insupportable burden on that man and that circle of men. It cannot be maintained, because it attributes perfection to the necessarily imperfect. And that leads to covering up the gap between the Heavenly Image and the Earthly Reality.

C.S. Lewis and The Four Loves



Today is the anniversary of C.S. Lewis's death, and a good opportunity to remember him. I first encountered his writings in high school, under the tutleage of the Marianist Order. We read The Four Loves, and I knew I was in the presence of great writing--clear thought, fluently expressed, delivering the material in an accessible, but not condescending way. Lewis's work is one of the great treasures of Anglicanism, and The Four Loves is thought-provoking as well as meditative.

But Lewis was above all a superb scholar. Here he is talking about his friend Charles Williams:



His death, on the same day as John F. Kennedy's murder, and the death of Aldous Huxley, received very little coverage. His life and work, however, continue to fascinate.

Gore Redux

A recent comment on an older post reminds me to recommend heartily Charles Gore's two volume commentary on Paul's Letter to the Romans. For those who (like me) have struggled with Paul's more, er, Calvinist overtones, Gore does an exceedingly useful job of putting him in his historical context, and elucidating this rich, sometimes contradictory, and occasionally daunting text. He is particularly good with Romans 8, one of my favorite Biblical texts, but one which springs from the paean to hope, to the introduction into Christian thought of predestination. Gore:
There is, I think, no point on which St. Paul has been more misrepresented than on his teaching about predestination. He teaches plainly that it is God's purpose to ' have mercy upon all': that He 'willeth that all men should be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth....The election of this catholic body to be the heirs of salvation and to bear the name of God in the world was, it would have been held, a selfevident fact. St. Paul reasons not up to this fact but from it. He uses the admitted fact to strengthen its individual members under stress of trial. They must bear earthly troubles because they form the appointed discipline for the individuals who form the select body. Let men but love God, and then all outward things whatsoever work together for good for them. The fact that they love God is the sufficient evidence of their election. Those who love God are also those who are ' called according to His purpose.' But, we ask, Have none received the call and rejected it? were none called, who do not love God? is it not true, that ' Many are called and few chosen' ? St. Paul says not a word to the contrary. But that is not the question he is considering. The members of the Christian Church, devoted to God, to whom he is writing have been called. This call of which they have become the subject is, St. Paul assures them, no afterthought, no momentary act of God, which as it came into being in a moment so may pass away. It is not a being taken up by God and then perhaps dropped again. His gifts and calling are without repentance on His side, because they represent an eternal will.
In other words, Paul is urging boldness and confidence upon the Christian community--be sure that you are loved, and will always be loved--and not claiming that others are excluded from that same love. This brings Paul into consistency with Jesus's declaration, judge not, that ye be not judged.

A first rate work of exposition by one of he finest minds in Anglicanism. Well worth your time.

Mark Twain Tonigh!

Here is Hal Holbrook as Mark Twain on Man: the Reasoning (?) and Religious (?) animal:



And a glimpse of the genuine article:

11-10-09

Speaking of counting down, counting down to the future can be tricky.

My daughter posted this video on Facebook. It is series of AT&T ads from 1993 that were on a CD-Rom that the company paid Newsweek to include as advertising in an issue, to drive home the idea that some day all publication would happen via CD-Rom.



The interesting thing is almost all of this stuff happens now, but the actual engineering is a little different. The ad predicts EZPass (but without the tranponder but using a in-car card reader instead), video conferences (although the graphics and windows management still has not caught up with the projection), smart and remote classrooms, on-demand video, etc.

As far as I can see, they appear to have only missed two developments that at once made the predictions possible but changed the way they happen: they missed was the advent of cell phones and the subsequent development of smart phones. They also missed the idea of digital radio-transmission, which made the cell phone and a whole host of other things possible. I know enough about the latter to tile the dance floor on the head of a pin, but digitizing data transmitted by radio means that much more information can be crammed into a radio frequency. This explains why your car remote doesn't open your garage door and why you garage remote doesn't screw up some kid's remote control airplane, all of which pretty much share the same radio frequencies. And why it is that so many cell-phones can work off the same towers all at once.

There is a third thing the ads missed, and that is the economic constraints that direct how technologies are used (that have nothing to do with the technologies themselves).

The idea of a readable card having or making your medical record available wherever you are is possible but not even close to reality. The very annoying HIPPA law was passed soon after these ads were made. They were supposed to make health-care information portable but confidential in anticipation of future technologies then on the horizon. the technology is here but all of the economic and ethical questions about its use have not been answered. Instead, HIPPA made sure one doesn't stand too close to the check out at the pharmacy, and makes sure that getting called from the waiting room to the examination room uses the same technology as a deli, all in the name of privacy. (HIPPA is also the excuse that hospitals use to never tell pastors that their congregants are in hospital or to where they've been discharged, but don't get me started on that!) And a decade or more later, insurance companies still gather the same info that everyone needs using different forms and separate proprietary software increasing costs and time.

So technology can't by itself fix everything because it is subject to other human endeavors like economics, politics and the only real universal constant: bureaucracy.

One thing they got right is that AT&T is at the heart of it all, although they are now owned by a then-new "baby Bell." They handle a major portion of the world's internet traffic through what they used to call "Long Lines" built when plain-old-telephone-service ruled.

On the whole, these ads do a better job of anticipating the future than 2001: A Space Oddesy or any number of the Popular Science magazines that I read when I was a kid. I was supposed to have flown Pan-Am to the Moon by now. I'm disappointed about that, but they probably would have lost my luggage.

Coffeehouse set of the day



This is a video of Scott Davis, a high school classmate, playing a song by Andy McKee. Scott says: "Andy is an amazing guitarist. This is my first recording of his song." Enjoy.

Ah, to be in England...

when Stephen Fry and Christopher Hitchens team up:



Intellectual demolition derby, with manners.

From Intelligence Squared; hat tip: Andrew Sullivan, himself a Catholic, who writes:
You can forgive the pro-Catholic side for losing the debate in Britain on whether the Catholic church is a force for good in the world. Ann Widdecombe and Archbishop John Onaiyekan were up against Hitch and Fry. What you cannot forgive is the sheer intellectual shallowness of the defense. Just listen to the small speech above, I mean: really, this is the best we've got?

****
The problem with the theoconservative take-over in the Catholic priesthood is not so much its extremism as its mediocrity. And it is mediocre because it has been trained not to think, not to argue, and not to engage the modern world. It has been trained solely for obedience - blind, dumb, unquestioning, intellectually moribund obedience.
Actually, I think the extremism and the mediocrity are both problematic.

God's Work?

The head of Goldman Sachs, Lloyd Blankfein, says that he and his firm are "doing God's work." As Washington's Blog asks, however, is this true?
There have been widespread, credible allegations that Goldman Sachs and other giant banks have broken the law (see this, for example).

Indeed, one of the first things God asks of us is to do justice:

He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God? (Micah 6:8)

While many churches and synagogues have become obsessed with other issues, many have arguably ignored this most important of God’s demands of us. As pointed out by a leading Christian ministry, which rescues underage girls trapped as sex slaves in third world countries:

In Scripture there is a constant call to seek justice. Jesus got upset at the Pharisees because they neglected the weightier matters of the law, which He defined as justice and the love of God . . . Isaiah 58 complains about the fact that while the people of God are praying and praying and praying, they are not doing anything about the injustice.
***

God demands that we do everything in our power to act as “God’s hands” in bringing justice. And as Saint Augustine reminds us, “Charity is no substitute for justice withheld.”

***
Moreover, there have been credible allegations that Goldman Sachs and other giant banks manipulate the currency and other markets....Proverbs 11:1 also provides:

Dishonest scales are an abomination to the LORD, but a just weight is His delight.

So to the extent that the giant banks have engaged in any dishonest acts or the manipulation of currencies, they are violating scripture.

Of course, any bankers who charge usurious interest rates should remember the little story about Jesus turning over the money changers’ tables
The whole essay is worth a read, and a thought. One needn't go all Matt ("Goldman is a giant vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money") Taibbi to ask, as this essay does, what the connection between our faith and our economic system--or, worse, the disconnect between them. How many of us (including me!) can truly claim to be loving justice, doing mercy, and walking humbly with our God?

(Hat tip: Naked Capitalism

Your GOP at Work

Here is Rep. John Shadegg putting his own stupidity into the mouth of a baby, from whom he thinks we should take policy advice:



Here's Shadegg a few years ago, when he had thoughts of higher office:



Some guys never learn...

Cartoon of the day



Pat Oliphant draws an image of the Episcopal Church-of-the-Eastern-establishment that for the most part doesn't exist, but the idea is still amusing.

The Bitter Taste of Kool-Aid

Let me see if I've got this crystal clear:

1. Dede Scozzafava, who lives in the District and has previously served in the State Assembly, wins the Republican nomination for NY's 23rd District, a traditional Republican stronghold.

2. Conservative Republican launch a more conservative candidate against her, denouncing her as a "RINO," a "leftist" and seeking to tie her to ACORN. GOP Celebrities such as Sarah Palin, Fred Thompson and Tim Pawlenty supported her conservative rival, Bill Hoffman. Although nominally supporting her, Meanwhile, the RNC formally supports her, but provides no financial support. Money pours into the district in support of Hoffman. Even Newt Gingrich called it a "purge."

3. Outspent by both Bills, Scozzafava withdrew from the election, a move Steele praised as "unselfish," allowing the NRC to join the roster of its luminaries officially embracing Hoffman.

4. Yesterday, Scozzafava, a lifelong Republican endorses Owen. The GOP's response? State Party Chair Edward Cox:“Dede Scozzafava’s endorsement today represents a betrayal of the people of the North Country and the people of her party." Similarly, Dick Armey (who supported Hoffman, by the way), “She basically put aside any pretensions and threw in with the Democrats.”

Now, isn't this rather like saying that Julius Caesar betrayed Brutus with his dying words?

And isn't this the fate of moderate Republicans in the modern era? To serve as a reassurance to the less extreme elements of the party, to be used by the dominant, increasingly, er, frothy, hard right, and then discarded and dismissed as traitors when they have the temerity to resent being cast aside? (Remember my Whitty Awards? Named after Chriistie "It's My Party, Too" Whitman, it's gone not only to Colin Powell, and Matthew Dowd, but even to George W. Bush).

Like all good cults, conservatism needs its scapegoats.

(Cross-posted)