The Day I Turned Old

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I’ve put off the visit for too long
they tell me. I don’t have a good reason
just money and time and perfection
or procrastination.

She asks me the usual questions
about diet and exercise
whether I drink or smoke;
this time I find the questions funny:
Have you had a drink in the last year?
I chortle, audibly. Is she serious?
Yes, I tell her.
And she asks about cancer.
Anyone in the family?
Yes, I say. On my Mom’s side. My Mom.
What kind?
Breast and colon.
When did she have it? Particularly the colon.

I pause

Mid-forties, I tell her.

She looks at me with patient eyes.
Well, then it is time to get a colonoscopy.

Shit.

She tries to comfort me; she says
We like to test ten years before the confirmed onset.

It should comfort me to know that.
If my Mom had gotten cancer in her 30′s,
I would have been screened a decade ago.

But she didn’t
and the word colonoscopy
is just another synonym for old.

 

[hat tip to Deborah Bryan, whose post "So this is middle age!" inspired this reflection]

Not Gatekeepers, but Gateopeners

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There, squirming in such a comfortable chair, made to feel prickly by the moment and its intensity and not the leather or the cushion, it is not my ass, but my brain that is jittery.

As a priest, interviews are a whole different beast.

This moment, as I recall was the most agonizing for what it did to my weak mind and strong heart. Crippled by conviction. Angered by intention. And my adversary doesn’t cut the imposing figure. I have nearly a foot on her and easily outweigh her by 100 pounds. But it is her logic, her sharpness, that carves me up and serves me in seconds.

She takes my resume, my writings, and she picks out words that clearly hint at my theological leanings. Words like “prophetic” and “transformation” reveal to her what container to place me in. And she swiftly dispatches with my protests, as she closes the lid, having so easily stuffed my body into so small a box.

My arguments are weak. I am unprepared. My need to defend my convictions atrophied from lack of use.

Then the humiliation turns, and I realize she isn’t intending to eviscerate me, but open me. Reveal me. Perhaps to her curious brain as a sort of dissection. Perhaps more so to the room itself, that the true me might by psychically revealed, disembodied, so that the two of us might examine my theology, my practice, my very faith.

I recall the sudden rush of joy as the truth of her new line of questioning becomes clear: I will leave here changed.

It seemed simple enough, a question about confirmation preparation, I think. She asks, not so much the specifics of what I do, but the character and expectation. I am riding high from the discerning process for confirmation in Western Michigan and was convinced that we needed more training and conviction around the sacrament.

Then she asks

“What about baptism?”

She pauses.

“If the Spirit brings someone in to be baptized, I say we baptize them on the spot.”

My heart rescued my poor brain, as she introduced a fidelity to the very nature of the sacraments lost to most of our teaching. An idea of Spirit-led discernment and consistency, that I didn’t recognize in my own sacramental theology. In turning from confirmation to baptism, she exposed my own flawed understanding and hypocrisy.

She injected me with a dangerous idea. And it spread through me.

What if we are less controlling of the sacraments and more spontaneous? What if our expectations for “preparation” matched our belief in the Holy Spirit? And what if we treated each of the sacraments (and sacramental rites) as if they were not human controlled, but Spirit-led?

What if we stopped being gatekeepers and started being gateopeners?

It is what my generous heart has longed for the whole time.

 

Check out last week’s series on the sacraments

The missing Pentecost post

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When my friend, David Henson wondered on Facebook where all the Pentecost posts were, it exposed me. Not that the world rotates around me. It’s just… I haven’t been here. My mind has been elsewhere.

I wonder if they all are.

All the minds, that is.

All the minds are elsewhere when it comes time for us to remember Pentecost.

Drifting. Eyes glazed with window stares at the green leaves and sun-danced radiance shimmering off flower petals and windshields. The sudden birth of the world, woken from the winter slumber, and our brains become like overcooked stew, still stirred and served.

We miss Pentecost for the fury and fever of Holy Week, met by the exultant alleluia! of Easter. Then suddenly, it is over, as theologians call the game.

And Pentecost, the granddaddy of church holidays, the most important, most revolutionary, most inherently true to the name gospel which means “good news,” that one day is lost to sun worship.

In mourning, the eulogy is written for this movement, birthed from nonviolent revolution and drawn by GOD to the fitting conclusion that it is us that have the divine spark! Us that are given the keys to the future, not Peter. And it is us who are ordained to love and transform the world.

But instead, we have gone back to the old gods.

What I Think Of When I Look At You

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wedding eyesThis is the picture I think of when I think of my wedding day. We took other pictures. Maybe better pictures. Certainly more “weddingy” pictures. But this one sticks for me. It is totally my favorite.

It goes along with this fun, some-what private moment afterward, while the people were still in the nave, hearing the postlude, before filing out and heading to the reception. A quiet moment, serene. Us. The sun. The perfect day.

Happy anniversary, Baby. These are the moments I think of when I look into your eyes. We certainly could use more serene!

wedding bubbles

The Spirit is Here!

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a Sermon for Pentecost C

Text: Acts 2:1-21

A Holy Spectacle

In Pentecost, we have the dawning of a new era. Jesus has departed and the Advocate, the Holy Spirit has arrived. It is now the apostles’ turn to deal with the ministry for which Jesus was preparing them. I’m not sure what they expected, or what we might if we were there, but what they received was nothing short of amazing. Tongues of fire descending upon them. An incredible visual spectacle. And suddenly the apostles are able to speak so that anyone can understand them.

This is a powerful statement about collective witness. What is not happening here is one person having a little private conversation with someone else in a living room saying “you should come to my church on Sunday!” but a group of Jesus’s followers, in Jerusalem, speaking at the same time, while a large group of Jews from all over the known world respond to the commotion. And when they arrive, they hear the Good News as if the apostle were speaking right to them.

Or better, as if GOD were speaking right to them.

And what we most ignore about this event is how public, spectacular, universal, and particular this event is. This city street becomes the epicenter of GOD’s holy spectacle. This is not a secluded stable, where a baby might be born in peace. This new event dawns in broad daylight. And who are the witnesses of the event? But the already faithful.

A Moment for Us

The trouble we have as the already faithful, is knowing how to take this event. At one time, Pentecost was the most important day of the Christian calendar. We saw it as the church’s birthday, and we saw it as the very crux of the Christian story. And I think it is way more than that. We don’t merely tell the biography of Jesus, but witness to what GOD is doing in our world. In creation, in the incarnation of the divine Word in Jesus, and in the swirling tempest and whisper quiet of the Holy Spirit compelling us to live out a new way. It isn’t Easter or Christmas, but Pentecost, the empowering of humanity to be in holy relationship with the divine.

And yet, we neither celebrate it differently in any meaningful way, nor do we take the conviction of the Spirit in a communal way. Not in our tradition, at least. We don’t speak in tongues here, or get up and dance. We don’t allow for the Holy Spirit to move our physical forms at all. We govern our forms by making them sit and kneel and stand at appointed times, rather than allow our movements to be coaxed by the Spirit.

Perhaps most provoking for me about the story this time is that it is witnessed, not by the unbelieving “heathens” outside, but among the already committed faithful. And the power was bestowed upon faithful people to speak to other faithful people. Not as some insular gathering or closed system, but that they were the ones that knew what the spectacle actually meant: that GOD was doing something amazing.

I’m not so sure we’re always so attuned.

To Witness, One Must See

The story ends with Peter’s quote from the book of Joel, saying this moment fulfills the coming of the Holy Spirit. Peter knows that the Spirit is doing this. Peter knows that this is an act of GOD—that something amazing is taking place in the midst of the people: something amazing for the “elite” followers (the apostles) and for all the rest of the faithful Jewish people. That GOD had once again come into their midst to guide and direct them in a new way and in a new direction.

In Peter, we now see the zealous, eager follower demonstrate uncanny wisdom and understanding. Not because he is smart, we know that’s not the case, but in allowing the Spirit to move him, to speak through him. He is able to know GOD because he isn’t too busy defining GOD or defending GOD or denying GOD. He is speaking to the acts of GOD. He is responding to what GOD has done and is doing. Peter, ever present in the moment, in the now, is unleashed to be in the now.

The Spirit With Us

This story is about the now. The public spectacle in this shouts! This isn’t some demure moment. This isn’t a moment of serene, personal transcendence. We aren’t to hear this and calmly nod our heads or silently sit in our pews or walk to the altar rail at communion as if the Holy Spirit only shows up in personal moments, as if we didn’t matter, as if we aren’t the gathered children of GOD, as if we weren’t ordained by the Holy Spirit to do GOD’s ministry, as if we weren’t the very means by which GOD transforms the world.

Feel the Spirit today. Feel it’s presence with us. The Spirit is here. The Spirit is moving around us. The Spirit is empowering us. The Spirit is compelling us, whispering and shouting and tickling and demanding we respond. That we all say Alleluia! Let’s say it! Alleluia! Again.

We have another word we say when we are feeling it. Amen.

When we get ready to come up to this table, what do we say? AMEN!

When we receive the body and blood of Christ, what do we say? Amen!

When we have eaten, we have heard about all the great things GOD is doing at St. Paul’s, we pray, are blessed, and we sing, I am going to say “Alleluia, Alleluia! Let us go forth into the world rejoicing in the power of the Spirit!” then what do we say? Thanks be to God. Alleluia, alleluia!

Hear it, Thanks be to GOD! These aren’t just words, so we dare not say them like they are any old words. Are we thankful? Is GOD doing good things? Then we better say it. Say it like there’s an exclamation point Thanks be to GOD! Alleluia! Alleluia!

The Spirit is here! Let us all say Amen.

5 Years Ordained

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Today is the fifth anniversary of my ordination as a presbyter. Of course, I’m celebrating appropriately–writing sermons for a funeral on Saturday and for Pentecost on Sunday.

Rather than reflect on all that I have been a part of over the last five years, I am instead struck by this picture. It dawned on me that many of these friends and colleagues in ministry are now spread out all over the country, serving in new calls and in retirement. That ours is a ministry, not of stasis and static service only to one community, but as fellow travelers and followers of Christ who is always journeying, always seeking out those most in need.

And to all my friends who I have had the pleasure of serving as both Christian brother and as presbyter, I hope that I have, and continue to be, a source of guidance, support, and most especially love. And to those friends I have yet to meet, may the love of Christ be within you and may that love show through you.

Choosing Sacraments

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[This is the third of three posts about the sacraments. Click the links to read the first about the sacraments and the second about their messy history.]

If you recall, a sacrament is the “outward and visible signs of inward and spiritual grace, given by Christ as sure and certain means by which we receive that grace.” Or the physical means by which we receive the spiritual grace of GOD. The sacraments, particularly Baptism and Eucharist, are our most common ways of receiving that grace. Lest we believe they are so neat and tidy, we covered six questions we persistently have about the sacraments, which reveals wide disagreements about their intention and nature. Now, let’s explore what it means to choose how we understand the sacraments. I’ll speak specifically to Baptism.

In the early church, baptism was practiced with two very different, though related ideas: that it was a transformation of a person and that it was the means by which one enters the Christian community. In those early years, this made a great deal of sense, as nearly all the early converts were adults and their participation in community could be stalled until they had been properly prepared. Soon after this, however, churches began to receive entire families, causing the people to decide whether or not to baptize children and infants. Many did and many didn’t. This decision brought with it problems for those two primary purposes:

  1. Infants have no sin to reject and cannot reject it themselves anyway.
  2. Entrance into the community was often still restricted after baptism.

The very foundation of baptism is shaken. Excuses for preferred methods are made (and still made) to defend why or why not infants should be included. However, in baptizing infants in the first place, we have opened the door to a new way of understanding community that doesn’t allow, in many cases for that early understanding of the sacrament to stand. What becomes particularly plain for us is that one of these understandings is easier to maintain in this way than the other. We can speak for very young children, but we can’t train them as if they were adults. And if we believe they are members in baptism, then restricting them or denying them Eucharist is sacramentally inconsistent.

Generation after generation has redefined the very nature of baptism, and particularly how it is used and for whom. It appears that much of the way we have redefined baptism have been based first on practical understanding followed by a theological defense. Remember that with the changing of who gets baptized (not just adults, but children, and infants in particular), the training of the new Christian is the piece that gets moved and altered. We have shifted much of that burden to the sacramental act of confirmation.

I am moved by the idea that we may need to make a conscience decision about sacraments based on making either a principal of practical consideration or theological witness of primary order. Not that we act without consideration to either, but that we recognize that our decisions must be either grounded in theology and practical application must be discovered or that they are decided for practical purposes and theological defenses are constructed.

As it is, the temptation to backtrack to the ancient traditions or to maintain mideival constructs is so strong, that we must consider our core traditions with fidelity or appropriate understanding.

My gut tells me that I rather have an imperfect sacrament born out of outstanding theological work than a great sacrament with a flimsy theological basis. What do you think?

The Messy History of the Sacraments in 6 Questions

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[This is the second of three posts about the sacraments. The first was yesterday's: “What is a Sacrament?”.]

As we explored yesterday, our Sacraments, primarily Holy Eucharist and Holy Baptism, are a physical and spiritual means of receiving grace. Today, we’ll have a small taste of the messiness around the living out of the Sacraments. There is no way I could sum up two thousand years of conflict in 500 words or fewer without scrubbing out big parts of the story. So, rather than go chronologically, I’ll name several significant issues for what they reveal to us.

1) How many sacraments?

Depending on who you talk to, there are either seven or two. Or perhaps 2+5. We have inherited from our ancestors two sacraments that are scriptural and attributed to Jesus: Eucharist and Baptism. We have also inherited five more that grew out of the tradition: confirmation, ordination, matrimony, reconciliation of a penitent, and unction.

2) Are some more important?

If we believe that all sacraments are of equal value, we have to treat them as equals. If we recognize that only Eucharist and Baptism are “authorized” by Jesus, does this mean that the others are “lesser”? And by extension, unnecessary?

3) What happens in…

The Eucharist—Perhaps the most famous conflict in the church is the one over what we think happens in the Eucharist. As I discussed yesterday, we are torn between the ideas that the host actually becomes Jesus or that Jesus is merely symbolically remembered. Many Christians have sought a different interpretation that rejects that binary question, arguing that something changes that allows the bread to be bread and something new.

Baptism—Are we dunked in the water as adults to reject a sinful past or are we sprinkled with water as infants to protect us from evil? The character of baptism is about transformation and the rejection of evil. It has also historically been an entrance rite to the church, proving one’s commitment and participation in the community. Since the Patristic age, these purposes have not run in unison and caused great conflict as we have chosen one purpose over the other.

 4) Who is in charge of the sacraments?

This question gets into what we call ecclesiology, or the study of the church, and is often a conversation about authority. The historical matrix we have for these discussions is about distribution of power in the church, either to a priestly class or to the laity. This has meant that our understanding of who gets a say in the sacraments is based on how hierarchical one’s church is. For Catholics, this means the line goes all the way up to the pope. For many Protestants, the line goes straight into the individual participant that may be given authority by the worship community. For many of us, we live in a both/and structure with ordained authority figures as gatekeepers who attempt to inhabit a grass-roots theology of collaboration.

5) What if the gatekeeper sucks at it?

As persistent as these other questions have been for the church, perhaps none is as damaging as this one. In the early days, there was a group called the Donatists. Their focus was on purity and they began to reject the sacraments from those who were not doctrinally pure enough. In other words, they refused taking communion from people who didn’t believe “right” (as in their way). Even though this is one of the named heresies condemned by the worldwide church, you don’t have to look very hard to find Donatists in our midst.

6) Must we keep the gates?

This is most timely of these questions, as we rediscover the roots of our sacraments and question how best to embody them in our world. Questions about restrictions to the sacraments are causing great conversation (and conflict) in many parts of the church. In many ways, this is the outgrowth of the church’s historic response to question 5, which is to say that the sacrament is a sacrament by grace—not the magic powers of the individual. This shifts the power from the gatekeeper to the Holy Spirit (where it perhaps always was) and changes some of our expectations. In the Book of Common Prayer, it gives instruction for the priest to deny the sacraments to anyone we suspect is an unrepentant sinner, meaning it is actually my obligation to keep the gate. But is that itself theologically consistent?

How we wrestle with these questions does a great deal to inform our theology. Perhaps more important is that we recognize the need to wrestle with them.

Tomorrow, we’ll explore how we choose our theology about the sacraments, and what this does to our practice.

What are your favorite theological fights? Are they over sacraments? How do you deal with some of the messiness in the sacraments?