Sermon delivered Sunday, June 28, 2015, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Franklin, TN. 5th Sunday After Pentecost, Proper 8, Year B (2 Samuel 1:1, 17-27)
If you listen to the video, listen all the way to what I said at the announcements after the end of the sermon.
In our readings from the Hebrew Bible over the past few weeks, we have been hearing stories from the life of David. Last week we heard the story of David’s defeat of Goliath and his first introduction to King Saul and his son, Jonathan. Today we read the story of David’s mourning over Saul and Jonathan’s death.
It may come as a surprise to some of you, but readers of 1 and 2 Samuel have long debated whether the relationship between David and Jonathan was more than just friendship. In light of the Supreme Court’s decision on Friday to legalize same-sex marriage throughout the country and the fact that General Convention will be considering changing the canons – that is, our church law – to allow clergy to perform same-sex marriages in states where it is legal – which is now all states – I felt like I couldn’t ignore the “elephant in the room” in our scriptures this Sunday and not address David and Jonathan’s relationship.
Now, I sincerely apologize if this makes some of you uncomfortable or angry. My intention is not to be inflammatory or disrespectful of scripture in any way. I truly believe that the Spirit is speaking through this uncanny series of events – this passage coming up in the lectionary at the exact time as this issue is being considered by both church and state. You all know from hearing me preach for three years that I am a very lectionary-based preacher, as all our clergy are. I always base my sermons on the scriptures for the day, and nothing bothers me more than hearing a preacher get up and preach a sermon that has no connection at all to the scriptures that were just read. So I certainly hope that you do not perceive this sermon in that way. This is truly an attempt to delve more deeply into the scriptures and relate them to our context today, which is what I attempt to do with every sermon I preach.
If you have ever experienced same-sex attraction and are familiar with the story of David and Jonathan, you are likely already aware of the idea that their relationship was romantic. It has been read that way in gay circles for years. But if you have never fallen in love with someone of the same sex, you probably never would have thought to think that David and Jonathan were anything more than close friends. So let me highlight for you the parts of their story that lead some people to think this:
In last week’s reading, we heard this passage about David and Jonathan’s first meeting:
“When David had finished speaking to Saul, the soul of Jonathan was bound to the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul. Saul took him that day and would not let him return to his father. Then Jonathan made a covenant with David, because he loved him as his own soul. Jonathan stripped himself of the robe that he was wearing, and gave it to David, and his armor, and even his sword and bow and his belt” (1 Samuel 18:1-4).
This passage is actually one of the scripture options given for use in the liturgy for blessing same-sex unions that General Convention approved in 2012. The intense language in this passage about David and Jonathan’s souls being “bound together” at their first meeting, their making a covenant with one another, Jonathan giving David all his prized possessions, and David moving into Jonathan’s house, are seen by some as an indication that there was more going on here than mere friendship, especially since, as rivals for the throne, David and Jonathan would have had every reason to hate one another.
And in fact, Jonathan’s father Saul does come to hate David. He sees in David a threat to his lineage and is aware that God’s favor has moved from him to David, and he is angry that his son Jonathan will not become king, so he spends the rest of his life trying to kill David. And through it all, Jonathan sticks by David, against the will of his father. He warns David about his father’s murderous plans and reaffirms his covenant with him. In chapter 20 of 1 Samuel, Jonathan says to David:
“‘If I am still alive, show me the faithful love of the Lord; but if I die, never cut off your faithful love from my house, even if the Lord were to cut off every one of the enemies of David from the face of the earth.’” (1 Samuel 20:14-15).
David remains true to this covenant, even taking Jonathan’s son into his own home after Jonathan’s death and giving him all the rights of the royal family that he would have if he were David’s own son.
The scripture tells us that in reiterating and reaffirming this covenant, “Jonathan made David swear again by his love for him; for he loved him as he loved his own life.” (1 Samuel 20:17)
After Jonathan returns home and his father Saul realizes Jonathan is defending David, Saul becomes enraged. The scripture says:
“Then Saul’s anger was kindled against Jonathan. He said to him, ‘You son of a perverse, rebellious woman! Do I not know that you have chosen the son of Jesse to your own shame and to the shame of your mother’s nakedness?’” (1 Samuel 20:30)
As one commentary on this text said, “Many gay men have experienced dinner conversations that sounded very similar to this one.” Although it’s probably not fair to make this direct comparison, since it’s not good scholarship to read modern-day experiences into ancient texts, Saul’s outburst does seem to indicate that there was something physical about David and Jonathan’s relationship, with his reference to the “shame of your mother’s nakedness,” since phrases like this often had sexual connotations in the Hebrew scriptures.
And then, in today’s passage from the Hebrew Bible, David says this as he mourns over the loss of Jonathan:
“I am distressed for you, my brother Jonathan;
greatly beloved were you to me;
your love to me was wonderful,
passing the love of women.” (2 Samuel 1:26)
Given all the other pieces of the puzzle, many have concluded that David’s assertion that Jonathan’s love was better to him than the love of women was not simply an ancient Near Eastern way of saying “Bros before hos, man,” but an expression of the fact that their love was of the same sort as his love for women, but yet of a deeper or more intense nature. (As an aside, if you’re not familiar with the phrase “Bros before hos,” it’s a saying used often by straight men in my generation or younger to express the sentiment that a man’s male friends (bros) should take priority over whatever woman or women he happens to be in relationship with at the moment (who are, not very flatteringly, referred to as “hos” in this expression), since the male friends will always be there for him, while romantic relationships will come and go.)
Ok, so for every scripture passage I’ve quoted here, there are arguments from the other perspective as to why these passages do NOT indicate that David and Jonathan’s relationship was anything more than a friendship. I’ve read the arguments on both sides and I’ve read the entire section of scripture that deals with their relationship myself (if you want to read the whole thing for yourself too, it begins in 1 Samuel, chapter 17 and continues through the first chapter of 2 Samuel). After taking all perspectives into consideration, I find that I can’t deny that there seems to be something more than friendship going on here, but perhaps that’s because I know the difference between a close friendship with someone of the same sex and something more.
I have many close female friends who are dear to me, but a number of years ago, I began to realize that my feelings for one particular friend were different from my feelings for my other friends. Our friendship was particularly close and intense, and I realized that the way I talked about her and behaved toward her was more like the way I’d talked about and behaved toward the guy I dated in high school, the only romantic relationship I’d had so far in my life. Although I was already supportive of my friends who were gay and lesbian, I never thought that I was in that category, until these feelings started emerging. Nothing ever came of them, because she was already in a committed relationship, and I never told her how I felt. And a few years later, God brought my husband into my life and I fell in love with him and we married. Since I take seriously the lifelong, exclusive commitment of marriage, I know I will never be in a romantic relationship with a woman at this point. But I’ve always wondered how my life would have been different if God had given me a woman to love instead of a man.
I’ve never shared this with anyone outside of a few of my closest friends. Most of my family have never heard this story. I’m choosing to share it publicly with you today because unlike our brothers and sisters who are exclusively attracted to members of the same sex, those of us who have discovered we are able to be attracted to members of both sexes are able to “hide,” so to speak. If we happen to fall in love with someone of the opposite sex, we never have to tell anyone that we once felt that way about someone of the same sex. Kenji Yoshino, a civil rights lawyer at Yale, calls this phenomenon “covering” – anything we do to downplay the “different” aspects of ourselves to fit into the mainstream. For me, it was easier to “cover” than it was to be open. But by doing that, I betrayed my brothers and sisters who cannot “cover,” whose differences are a matter of physical appearance or other qualities they cannot otherwise change or hide.
I am by no means trying to make an argument that there were same-sex marriages in biblical times. Our modern-day understanding of same-sex marriage simply did not exist during that time and it is dishonest scholarship to try to read our current social context into ancient times. And we have no way of really knowing whether the relationship between David and Jonathan was more than friendship or not. But on this historic weekend, I wanted to at least open the conversation about the fact that people who deeply love God and seek to honor and follow him with their lives can and do fall in love with people of the same sex, a love that binds their souls to one another.
The Episcopal Church’s Task Force on the Study of Marriage, which has met for the past three years to study the history, theology, and biblical framework surrounding marriage, has concluded that what distinguishes marriage from other more casual forms of relationship is “the commitment to a lifelong, loving, faithful relationship,” and what makes a marriage Christian is the fact that the members of the couple seek to pattern their lives toward each other and toward the community around them as a reflection of the self-giving love of Christ for the church. What makes a marriage holy is that the two people “see in each other the image of God.”
Now, I understand that some of you will insist that the two people in a marriage should be a man and a woman, and I want you to know that my respect for you is not and will not be lessened if that is your view. I was recently talking with my husband, who has mixed and uncertain feelings about same-sex marriage, and we tried very hard to listen to one another and understand why this issue is so emotionally charged for both of us. The light bulb finally went on for me when my husband said, “It’s like suddenly being told all the rules have changed. Everything you thought you knew and understood, everything you’d always been taught was wrong, is suddenly ok.” I could relate to how disorienting and disturbing that feeling is, and that conversation helped me to understand where he was coming from. In a committed relationship, diversity of opinion is what keeps the relationship growing and alive.
It is my hope that we can have these kinds of open conversations with one another in the coming weeks, in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision and whatever General Convention will decide. I hope you will share your stories honestly and from your hearts. I hope you feel safe enough with the community here to have those conversations. And I hope that we all remember that no matter how different our feelings and opinions are on this issue, we are still brothers and sisters in Christ. We still share a common table and a common faith. We all gather here each week because we love and seek to follow Jesus. And after all, our baptism is the most important “marriage” in any of our lives – when we are “made one” not with any human partner, but with Christ. Each week when we come forward to receive the Eucharist, we reaffirm our commitment to that “love divine, all loves excelling,” that is only found in God. May the foundation of all our relationships, romantic and platonic, be always rooted and grounded in God and God’s infinite love for us.
Showing posts with label sacraments. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sacraments. Show all posts
Sunday, June 28, 2015
Sunday, July 6, 2014
Incarnational theology: everything is holy
Sermon delivered Sunday, July 6, 2014 (Fourth Sunday After Pentecost (Year A, Proper 9)) at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Franklin, TN.
Song of Solomon 2:8-13, Romans 7:15-25a
You may have noticed that we read a canticle instead of a psalm as one of the readings today. The word “canticle” comes from the Latin word for “song,” and means just that, a song. The canticles that we say or sing during Morning Prayer, Evening Prayer, and sometimes in the Sunday lectionary are songs from parts of the Bible other than the book of psalms.
Today’s canticle comes from the book of the Song of Solomon, or the Song of Songs, as you may have heard it called. Since we don’t often read from the Song of Solomon in our Sunday lectionary, the only place many of us hear it read is at weddings, which is certainly an appropriate place for it, since the whole book is an extended love poem between two lovers.
The Song of Solomon is one of only two books in the Bible where God is not mentioned. This fact, and the fact that its sole focus is romantic, erotic love, has led to much controversy over its inclusion in the Bible. Why is this book, which is focused exclusively on physical, earthly love and does not mention God, considered one of our sacred texts?
From a very early time, both Jewish and Christian readers of this book have argued that the text is meant to be read allegorical or metaphorically, where the two lovers in the poem are not two human beings in love, but either God and the Jewish people, or Christ and the church. When the speaker talks about “my beloved,” she is not speaking of a literal man, but of God or Christ. The message they then glean from this book is that we should direct the passions we feel for love from other people toward God, that only God can truly fulfill the desires for intimacy that we often look to be filled from our human relationships.
This interpretation is not out of keeping with other parts of the scriptures, where God’s relationship with the people of Israel is described using the metaphor of a marriage or romantic relationship, particularly the Hebrew prophets. But the thing that has made some readers of the text skeptical about that interpretation is the fact that the Song of Solomon does not clearly make that comparison, unlike other books of the Hebrew Bible that do. The book of Hosea, for example, makes a very clear and explicit comparison between an unfaithful wife and the people of Israel’s unfaithfulness in their relationship to God. If you actually read the text of the Song of Solomon carefully, though, it never claims to be about God or anybody’s relationship with God, but about romantic love between two people. And for some reason, both the Jewish and Christian traditions have insisted that it must be about more than just that for it to be considered sacred.
But why must it? Why can’t we accept that this book is simply a love poem celebrating the beauty of romantic love, and that in and of itself makes it holy? As we reflected on this passage earlier this week in our Tuesday morning Bible study, someone in the group observed that even if this passage does not talk about God specifically, it is very “God-like.” They were recognizing a certain sacred quality to the text that is there even if the word “God” is not specifically mentioned, and we talked about how all kinds of things can be sacred or holy even if they do not explicitly have to do with God or church. In this conversation, perhaps without knowing it, the group was exploring the realm of incarnational theology.
What do I mean by that? Well, the school of thought known as “incarnational theology” affirms the goodness of the material world and all things in it as mediators of God’s presence to us. In contrast to a dualistic theology that sees “the material” as bad and “the spiritual” as good and the two in competition and conflict with one another, incarnational theology affirms that this world, this material place of physical stuff, is good and holy, and that we can find the spiritual in and through the material. It is called “incarnational theology” because it affirms that the material world is good because of the incarnation – God’s choice to become human in Jesus Christ and experience this physical world is seen as an affirmation of the inherent goodness in this world. Incarnational theology also affirms that the incarnation was more than just God’s presence coming to dwell in the person of Jesus Christ – through the mystery of the incarnation, the whole world is infused with the presence of God, and all creation is sacred.
Although this view has always been the view of the Eastern Orthodox churches, Western Christianity, in both Roman Catholic and Protestant forms, has tended to see “the world” as something negative or even evil, something Christians should try to avoid at all costs. We see this kind of thinking in the writings of the Apostle Paul, and today’s passage from Romans is a perfect example. In this passage, Paul writes about his struggles to do what is right, and says that it is his body, his flesh, the things of this material world, that prevent him from achieving his spiritual goals. Rather than seeing his body as a gift from God to be celebrated and appreciated, Paul calls it a “body of death”! What a contrast to the joyful celebration of the body that we find in the Song of Solomon, where every aspect of the beloved’s body is described in loving detail, with rich metaphors to the beauties of nature.
This notion of a division between the material and spiritual worlds can be found even in the meaning of the word “holy” in the Hebrew language. While the Merriam-Webster dictionary defines the English word “holy” as “having to do with a god or religion” or “religiously and morally good,” the Hebrew definition of the word “holy” means “set apart,” something that is separate and distinguished from regular, ordinary, mundane or “secular” life. In churches that have a high view of the sacraments, as the Episcopal Church does, we tend to think in terms of that Hebrew definition of holiness. Holy water is holy because it is different from other kinds of water, and because a priest or bishop has said a blessing over it to “set it apart” for sacramental use. The bread and wine become holy after the Eucharistic prayer has been said over them and afterwards they are “set apart” from regular bread and wine and treated differently, with more reverence, than regular food. But in terms of our common usage of the word “holy,” we tend to think more in terms of the modern English definition, as something religiously or morally good, something that connects us to God in some way. In that sense, was the bread and wine not already holy in some way before we said the prayers over them? Isn’t all water in some sense holy? Incarnational theology invites us to see sacraments not only in the seven traditional forms that the church has given to us, but everywhere around us, in the most mundane and secular parts of our lives, even in the places where God is not mentioned.
There is a song by folk singer Peter Mayer that illustrates this notion perfectly, and since poetry is so often better than prose at communicating an idea, let me share the lyrics of that song with you. It goes like this:
When I was a boy, each week
On Sunday we would go to church
And pay attention to the priest
And he would read the holy word
And consecrate the holy bread
And everyone would kneel and bow
Today the only difference is
Everything is holy now
When I was in Sunday school
We would learn about the time
Moses split the sea in two
And Jesus made the water wine
And I remember feeling sad
Miracles don't happen still
But now I can't keep track
'Cause everything's a miracle
Wine from water is not so small
But an even better magic trick
Is that anything is here at all
So the challenging thing becomes
Not to look for miracles
But finding where there isn't one
When holy water was rare at best
It barely wet my fingertips
But now I have to hold my breath
Like I'm swimming in a sea of it
It used to be a world half there
Heaven's second rate hand-me-down
But I walk it with a reverent air
'Cause everything is holy now
Peter Mayer was raised Catholic and eventually left the church, so in his assertion that “everything is holy now,” by “now,” he means since he left the Catholic Church and came to a broader understanding of how and where God acts and is present in the world. But he didn’t need to have left the church to come to that realization. Within Christian theology, there is strong support for just the sentiments that Mayer expresses in this song – that “everything is holy,” that “the world is charged with the grandeur of God,” as English poet Gerard Manley Hopkins put it, or, as we say each week in the sanctus, the great song of the church that we sing during the Eucharistic liturgy, “Holy, holy, holy Lord God of power and might, heaven and earth are full of your glory!”
The catechism in the back of the Book of Common Prayer specifically affirms that God’s activity is not limited to the seven traditional sacramental rites as defined by the church. In response to the question, “Is God’s activity limited to these rites?”, the Catechism’s answer is, “God does not limit himself to these rites; they are patterns of countless ways by which God uses material things to reach out to us” (BCP 861).
So we’re in full agreement with Mayer when he says in the concluding verses to his song,
Read a questioning child's face
And say it's not a testament
That'd be very hard to say
See another new morning come
And say it's not a sacrament
I tell you that it can't be done
This morning, outside I stood
And saw a little red-winged bird
Shining like a burning bush
And singing like a scripture verse
It made me want to bow my head
I remember when church let out
How things have changed since then
Everything is holy now
So, from this perspective, we can read something like the Song of Solomon, a love poem that doesn’t specifically mention God, just as it is and still call it holy, without needing to spiritualize it or read into it a metaphor about the “marriage” between God and God’s people.
What things are sacraments and testaments to you in the big wide world out there? Outside of this building, where does God speak to you? What things have you experienced in life that made you want to bow your head in reverence? What are the songs or poems that you would include in your own personal “Bible” of readings that are sacred to you? This week, I invite you to notice the ways that God is present in the world around you and give thanks for them, whether they are traditional places where you expect to meet God or not. It’s all about paying attention, one of the great spiritual disciplines, and as you do so, remember the words of the English poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning, who expressed her own incarnational theology this way:
Earth’s crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God;
But only he who sees takes off his shoes.
Song of Solomon 2:8-13, Romans 7:15-25a
You may have noticed that we read a canticle instead of a psalm as one of the readings today. The word “canticle” comes from the Latin word for “song,” and means just that, a song. The canticles that we say or sing during Morning Prayer, Evening Prayer, and sometimes in the Sunday lectionary are songs from parts of the Bible other than the book of psalms.
Today’s canticle comes from the book of the Song of Solomon, or the Song of Songs, as you may have heard it called. Since we don’t often read from the Song of Solomon in our Sunday lectionary, the only place many of us hear it read is at weddings, which is certainly an appropriate place for it, since the whole book is an extended love poem between two lovers.
The Song of Solomon is one of only two books in the Bible where God is not mentioned. This fact, and the fact that its sole focus is romantic, erotic love, has led to much controversy over its inclusion in the Bible. Why is this book, which is focused exclusively on physical, earthly love and does not mention God, considered one of our sacred texts?
From a very early time, both Jewish and Christian readers of this book have argued that the text is meant to be read allegorical or metaphorically, where the two lovers in the poem are not two human beings in love, but either God and the Jewish people, or Christ and the church. When the speaker talks about “my beloved,” she is not speaking of a literal man, but of God or Christ. The message they then glean from this book is that we should direct the passions we feel for love from other people toward God, that only God can truly fulfill the desires for intimacy that we often look to be filled from our human relationships.
This interpretation is not out of keeping with other parts of the scriptures, where God’s relationship with the people of Israel is described using the metaphor of a marriage or romantic relationship, particularly the Hebrew prophets. But the thing that has made some readers of the text skeptical about that interpretation is the fact that the Song of Solomon does not clearly make that comparison, unlike other books of the Hebrew Bible that do. The book of Hosea, for example, makes a very clear and explicit comparison between an unfaithful wife and the people of Israel’s unfaithfulness in their relationship to God. If you actually read the text of the Song of Solomon carefully, though, it never claims to be about God or anybody’s relationship with God, but about romantic love between two people. And for some reason, both the Jewish and Christian traditions have insisted that it must be about more than just that for it to be considered sacred.
But why must it? Why can’t we accept that this book is simply a love poem celebrating the beauty of romantic love, and that in and of itself makes it holy? As we reflected on this passage earlier this week in our Tuesday morning Bible study, someone in the group observed that even if this passage does not talk about God specifically, it is very “God-like.” They were recognizing a certain sacred quality to the text that is there even if the word “God” is not specifically mentioned, and we talked about how all kinds of things can be sacred or holy even if they do not explicitly have to do with God or church. In this conversation, perhaps without knowing it, the group was exploring the realm of incarnational theology.
What do I mean by that? Well, the school of thought known as “incarnational theology” affirms the goodness of the material world and all things in it as mediators of God’s presence to us. In contrast to a dualistic theology that sees “the material” as bad and “the spiritual” as good and the two in competition and conflict with one another, incarnational theology affirms that this world, this material place of physical stuff, is good and holy, and that we can find the spiritual in and through the material. It is called “incarnational theology” because it affirms that the material world is good because of the incarnation – God’s choice to become human in Jesus Christ and experience this physical world is seen as an affirmation of the inherent goodness in this world. Incarnational theology also affirms that the incarnation was more than just God’s presence coming to dwell in the person of Jesus Christ – through the mystery of the incarnation, the whole world is infused with the presence of God, and all creation is sacred.
Although this view has always been the view of the Eastern Orthodox churches, Western Christianity, in both Roman Catholic and Protestant forms, has tended to see “the world” as something negative or even evil, something Christians should try to avoid at all costs. We see this kind of thinking in the writings of the Apostle Paul, and today’s passage from Romans is a perfect example. In this passage, Paul writes about his struggles to do what is right, and says that it is his body, his flesh, the things of this material world, that prevent him from achieving his spiritual goals. Rather than seeing his body as a gift from God to be celebrated and appreciated, Paul calls it a “body of death”! What a contrast to the joyful celebration of the body that we find in the Song of Solomon, where every aspect of the beloved’s body is described in loving detail, with rich metaphors to the beauties of nature.
This notion of a division between the material and spiritual worlds can be found even in the meaning of the word “holy” in the Hebrew language. While the Merriam-Webster dictionary defines the English word “holy” as “having to do with a god or religion” or “religiously and morally good,” the Hebrew definition of the word “holy” means “set apart,” something that is separate and distinguished from regular, ordinary, mundane or “secular” life. In churches that have a high view of the sacraments, as the Episcopal Church does, we tend to think in terms of that Hebrew definition of holiness. Holy water is holy because it is different from other kinds of water, and because a priest or bishop has said a blessing over it to “set it apart” for sacramental use. The bread and wine become holy after the Eucharistic prayer has been said over them and afterwards they are “set apart” from regular bread and wine and treated differently, with more reverence, than regular food. But in terms of our common usage of the word “holy,” we tend to think more in terms of the modern English definition, as something religiously or morally good, something that connects us to God in some way. In that sense, was the bread and wine not already holy in some way before we said the prayers over them? Isn’t all water in some sense holy? Incarnational theology invites us to see sacraments not only in the seven traditional forms that the church has given to us, but everywhere around us, in the most mundane and secular parts of our lives, even in the places where God is not mentioned.
There is a song by folk singer Peter Mayer that illustrates this notion perfectly, and since poetry is so often better than prose at communicating an idea, let me share the lyrics of that song with you. It goes like this:
When I was a boy, each week
On Sunday we would go to church
And pay attention to the priest
And he would read the holy word
And consecrate the holy bread
And everyone would kneel and bow
Today the only difference is
Everything is holy now
When I was in Sunday school
We would learn about the time
Moses split the sea in two
And Jesus made the water wine
And I remember feeling sad
Miracles don't happen still
But now I can't keep track
'Cause everything's a miracle
Wine from water is not so small
But an even better magic trick
Is that anything is here at all
So the challenging thing becomes
Not to look for miracles
But finding where there isn't one
When holy water was rare at best
It barely wet my fingertips
But now I have to hold my breath
Like I'm swimming in a sea of it
It used to be a world half there
Heaven's second rate hand-me-down
But I walk it with a reverent air
'Cause everything is holy now
Peter Mayer was raised Catholic and eventually left the church, so in his assertion that “everything is holy now,” by “now,” he means since he left the Catholic Church and came to a broader understanding of how and where God acts and is present in the world. But he didn’t need to have left the church to come to that realization. Within Christian theology, there is strong support for just the sentiments that Mayer expresses in this song – that “everything is holy,” that “the world is charged with the grandeur of God,” as English poet Gerard Manley Hopkins put it, or, as we say each week in the sanctus, the great song of the church that we sing during the Eucharistic liturgy, “Holy, holy, holy Lord God of power and might, heaven and earth are full of your glory!”
The catechism in the back of the Book of Common Prayer specifically affirms that God’s activity is not limited to the seven traditional sacramental rites as defined by the church. In response to the question, “Is God’s activity limited to these rites?”, the Catechism’s answer is, “God does not limit himself to these rites; they are patterns of countless ways by which God uses material things to reach out to us” (BCP 861).
So we’re in full agreement with Mayer when he says in the concluding verses to his song,
Read a questioning child's face
And say it's not a testament
That'd be very hard to say
See another new morning come
And say it's not a sacrament
I tell you that it can't be done
This morning, outside I stood
And saw a little red-winged bird
Shining like a burning bush
And singing like a scripture verse
It made me want to bow my head
I remember when church let out
How things have changed since then
Everything is holy now
So, from this perspective, we can read something like the Song of Solomon, a love poem that doesn’t specifically mention God, just as it is and still call it holy, without needing to spiritualize it or read into it a metaphor about the “marriage” between God and God’s people.
What things are sacraments and testaments to you in the big wide world out there? Outside of this building, where does God speak to you? What things have you experienced in life that made you want to bow your head in reverence? What are the songs or poems that you would include in your own personal “Bible” of readings that are sacred to you? This week, I invite you to notice the ways that God is present in the world around you and give thanks for them, whether they are traditional places where you expect to meet God or not. It’s all about paying attention, one of the great spiritual disciplines, and as you do so, remember the words of the English poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning, who expressed her own incarnational theology this way:
Earth’s crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God;
But only he who sees takes off his shoes.
Friday, December 16, 2011
Saying "Yes" to God's call
In my baby book, my mother writes about my baptism when I was sixteen months old:
“Pastor Sims baptized you. When he poured the water over your head, you shook your head and said, ‘No!’”
Tomorrow, I will say yes. Twenty-nine years after my baptism, I will be ordained a deacon in Christ’s church and say “yes” to God’s call on my life.
Although in my adult life I became a critic of infant baptism and delighted in the baby book witness that even as a one-year-old, I was against having something chosen for me that I did not choose for myself, I later discovered that the date of my baptism – February 27 – was the same date that I had an evangelical “conversion experience” in high school and the same date that I first started volunteering with the Outdoor Church in Cambridge, Mass., the homeless ministry out of which my calling to the priesthood emerged. So I can’t deny that something must have happened at my baptism, however much I did not choose it for myself at the time.
And as I approach the eve of my ordination, which marks my transition from being a lay person to being a member of the clergy, a transition in identity which can never truly be reversed – an ontological change, if you will – I am reminded of all the ways in which I did not choose this call for myself. Yes, I am assenting to it of my own free will, but it was not simply an individual, personal choice. The Episcopal Church does not allow people to take on ordination solely of their own choosing – the community has to affirm that they see the call as well.
The authority that will be given to me at my ordination is not mine to take, but the church’s to give, and I accept it with a measure of humility and honor and gratitude. The priest who led our pre-ordination Quiet Day told us a story of how the priest in her home congregation used to always have members of the congregation put his vestments on him before the Eucharistic liturgy, symbolizing that he could only be vested and serving them as priest by virtue of their assent and their choosing him as their representative leader. I like the metaphor that we cannot vest ourselves, just as we cannot celebrate Eucharist alone – there must be a community present to assent to the words that the priest offers on their behalf.
There have been times during the formal discernment process and my seminary career when I have wanted to shake my head and say, “No!” to this “odd and wondrous calling,” as UCC pastors Lillian Daniels and Martin Copenhaver refer to it. But after giving the matter serious thought and prayer, tomorrow, I will choose to say yes even to something that I have not entirely chosen for myself. And as a reminder of that, at the ordination tomorrow, under my collar and out of sight from everyone else, I will be wearing a tiny gold cross with a thin, short chain that barely fits around my neck. It is a delicate necklace made for a baby: my baptismal cross, the cross that was chosen for me by parents I did not choose as a keepsake for a sacrament that I did not choose – but that somehow has transformed my life, even without my consent.
“Pastor Sims baptized you. When he poured the water over your head, you shook your head and said, ‘No!’”
Tomorrow, I will say yes. Twenty-nine years after my baptism, I will be ordained a deacon in Christ’s church and say “yes” to God’s call on my life.
Although in my adult life I became a critic of infant baptism and delighted in the baby book witness that even as a one-year-old, I was against having something chosen for me that I did not choose for myself, I later discovered that the date of my baptism – February 27 – was the same date that I had an evangelical “conversion experience” in high school and the same date that I first started volunteering with the Outdoor Church in Cambridge, Mass., the homeless ministry out of which my calling to the priesthood emerged. So I can’t deny that something must have happened at my baptism, however much I did not choose it for myself at the time.
And as I approach the eve of my ordination, which marks my transition from being a lay person to being a member of the clergy, a transition in identity which can never truly be reversed – an ontological change, if you will – I am reminded of all the ways in which I did not choose this call for myself. Yes, I am assenting to it of my own free will, but it was not simply an individual, personal choice. The Episcopal Church does not allow people to take on ordination solely of their own choosing – the community has to affirm that they see the call as well.
The authority that will be given to me at my ordination is not mine to take, but the church’s to give, and I accept it with a measure of humility and honor and gratitude. The priest who led our pre-ordination Quiet Day told us a story of how the priest in her home congregation used to always have members of the congregation put his vestments on him before the Eucharistic liturgy, symbolizing that he could only be vested and serving them as priest by virtue of their assent and their choosing him as their representative leader. I like the metaphor that we cannot vest ourselves, just as we cannot celebrate Eucharist alone – there must be a community present to assent to the words that the priest offers on their behalf.
There have been times during the formal discernment process and my seminary career when I have wanted to shake my head and say, “No!” to this “odd and wondrous calling,” as UCC pastors Lillian Daniels and Martin Copenhaver refer to it. But after giving the matter serious thought and prayer, tomorrow, I will choose to say yes even to something that I have not entirely chosen for myself. And as a reminder of that, at the ordination tomorrow, under my collar and out of sight from everyone else, I will be wearing a tiny gold cross with a thin, short chain that barely fits around my neck. It is a delicate necklace made for a baby: my baptismal cross, the cross that was chosen for me by parents I did not choose as a keepsake for a sacrament that I did not choose – but that somehow has transformed my life, even without my consent.
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
Thank you, John Macquarrie
"There is validity in the sight of God, and there is validity in the sight of the church. It cannot be assumed that these are always necessarily the same. ... [I]t must be assumed that sometimes what is deemed invalid in the churches is valid in God's sight, especially if there is evidence of holiness of life. Likewise, Christians believe that the sacraments of Christ are 'doors to the sacred' in a very special sense, but they cannot and should not deny that there may be other doors to the sacred, even in non-Christian religions."
- John Macquarrie, A Guide to the Sacraments
- John Macquarrie, A Guide to the Sacraments
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