Last week, while serving some of my Annual Training days with the Army, I made use of the extra large white board in the Chaplain's office to write up some words of wisdom each day. Of course, me being me, I chose either the most ridiculous Bible quotes I could find, or else other quotes designed to rock the boats of those arriving in the Chaplain's office and expecting said Chaplain to tow the "More Christiany than Thou" line.
Thus was I delighted to discover a new quote for my repertoire when visiting the blog of The Crusty Old Dean this morning: Like a dog that returns to its vomit
is a fool who reverts to his folly.
—Proverbs 26:11
Oddly pointed proverbs aside, I highly recommend this blog post about generational angst and the church. As usual, the best advice may just be: "get over it".
In Memoriam
Last Sunday was Easter, a day that we Christians set aside to celebrate and rejoice. We celebrate the resurrection of Jesus, of course, but we are also celebrating our own resurrections. We don't precisely understand this, mind you. Though some of us will pretend to, none of us really know what it means to be resurrected with Jesus on Easter. We believe it (or we try to, depending on the day), but we don't really understand it.
It isn't simply that we've received a promise that we will be resurrected after we die, it is more that Jesus said several things that seemed to indicate that we were already resurrected. Somehow, through the events we commemorate on Easter Day, we are already risen. We don't exactly understand this, but we do our best to believe it, and on good days we even try to live as if it were true.
In the weeks following Easter we will read in church the stories about what happened after Jesus disappeared from the tomb. There's the story of Pentecost, where the disciples speak in tongues and everyone thinks they've had too much to drink, even though it's nine o'clock in the morning. There's the story about the two nameless disciples who walked all the way to Emmaus with a curiously compelling stranger and didn't recognize him until they sat down for dinner and realized it was Jesus. There's the story we'll read during services tomorrow about Thomas who won't believe the disciples when they tell him that Jesus is alive, and then Jesus shows up and Thomas gets a little talking-to.
Learn where there is wisdom,
where there is strength,
where there is understanding,
so that you may at the same time discern
where there is length of days, and life,
where there is light for the eyes, and peace.
I'd like to pause for just a moment here to make a comment about Wisdom. The focus of the Easter Vigil is not the sermon, a fact I understand well, so I won't keep you, but I want to savor this moment for just a little longer.
In accordance with the most poetic of the Prayer Book's rubrics, we have lit the New Fire of Easter. The rubrics are those small lines in italics which give us directions about how to do the Liturgy we're doing. The Great Vigil of Easter begins with a simple ten word rubric: "In the darkness, the New Fire of Easter is kindled." Not, "When the sun goes down the New Fire of Easter should be kindled," but "In the darkness, the New Fire of Easter is kindled." As if the Prayerbook knows that whatever we might choose to do with our liturgy, that New Fire is a fait accompli, a salvation fact, a mission accomplished long before we were born.
I could write an entire sermon on that rubric—have done precisely that in fact, in other years.
In the darkness... Fire is kindled...
O God, Creator of heaven and earth: Grant that, as the crucified body of your dear Son was laid in the tomb and rested on this holy Sabbath, so we may await with him the coming of the third day, and rise with him to newness of life; who now lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
My Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
The idea of sabbath is trendy these days. I’ve read at least two books on sabbath in the past few years and could name several others. Silence and Quiet are other topics that seem, in my completely unscientific survey of things, to be trending. Contemplative prayer, which is the quietest, most sabbath-esque kind of prayer I can think of, has been popular for quite awhile and continues to be.
This past Friday, at our Youth Cafe program, I led 5 teenagers in a contemplative prayer practice. After some introduction we sat in the darkened church with just a few candles burning and a touch of incense in the air. We spent five full minutes at it; five minutes with no talking, no singing, no moving, no nothing. Just quiet prayer. And these were teenagers, mind you. And at the end, they all said it was too short. That they could have easily gone for more of that.
Even bears need time for quiet refelction.
I had taken that day away from the office to make up some time I owed the Army. For this sermon to exhibit perfect synchronicity that day would have been a Friday, but I think it was actually a Tuesday. Maybe a Wednesday. Anyways, I end up owing the Army a day here and there because they give me Sunday mornings off on those Battle Assembly weekends when I'm supposed to be there all day Saturday and Sunday. "Give off" being an inaccurate term of course, since I have to pay back those Sunday mornings with other mornings and/or afternoons at some other point. I'd let two Battle Assemblies pass by, so I owed two Sunday mornings, or, in this case, a Tuesday morning and afternoon. Maybe Wednesday.
All of this is neither here nor there, except to say that by five in the afternoon I was ready to go home, and take off the uniform, and relax. Yet ready or not, I had one more stop to make, and so I drove to his home. I parked in the alley and knocked on the back door, because that's the kind of home it is and those the kind of people that lived there. A pair of fluffy white paws planted themselves on the window in the door; a curiously distant bark sounding the alarm. I'm not one to be afraid of dogs, especially not this one with whom I used to share a home. Door opened, dog calmed (somewhat), I crossed the kitchen and sat on the couch in the living room.
The "Good" part needs qualification...
First song
I wrote a sermon, several years ago now, in which I quoted a line from a song by The Dave Matthews Band. The line was this: "I have no lid upon my head, but if I did, you could open it and see what's on my mind." I can't remember now what the point of that sermon was, but I do remember why I quoted that line. I was demonstrating that sometimes words are completely ridiculous until you sing them. On the face of it, a hinged skull that could be opened for viewing of the contents is both gross and very unlikely to lead to any kind of insight into the thoughts of the person with such a horrible affliction. However. When Dave Matthews sings that line, his funny-croaky voice transformed, the snap of a taught snare drum keeping pace, the crying of a violin in counterpoint, the wizardry of his fingers upon the strings of a guitar... Then the line not only makes sense, it becomes poetry, and truth.
That long ago sermon wasn't on Dave Matthews of course, it was on the Bible. Again, I don't remember what part exactly, but it was one of those places where the words of the Bible don't really make sense. There is some pressure on us, as Christians, to pretend that the Bible always makes sense—that this faith we're involved in is perfectly comprehensible to us. I think it no heresy to admit when we don't understand. Surely God can handle any perceived slight to the divine authorial skills. After all, if we understood all of it, we wouldn't need to keep reading it, would we? Also, I would be out of a job.
So when the Bible (or faith, or even life for that matter) becomes incomprehensible to you, one way forward is to stop trying to understand, and start trying to sing. That's what I was trying to say: that when the words don't seem to make sense, maybe it isn't the words' fault. Maybe it's your brain's fault. Maybe you should try switching brains, a thing that music does for us in a manner that looks very much like holiness.
Hallelujah doesn't always look the way we think it will...
(Photo Credit)
This is the 5th book in this series, and the last one my local library has on the shelf. It ends in a cliff-hanger, but I think I'm done for now. There's nothing wrong with the coffee—that's tea. It was an unleaded week last week. Nothing has changed about my opinion on these books or this author. I still think the idea behind it is great but I still think Stross's other book I read (Rule 34) was a lot better. The writing wasn't bad, exactly, but there were persistent little mistakes that eventually overwhelmed my ability to ignore them in pursuit of the story.
At one point in this novel it is mid-morning on the West coast and late afternoon on the East. I know Stross lives in England, and I'm sure the U.S. looks pretty wide from over there, but there's only 3 hours difference between the two sides and it really isn't too hard to look that up. Like I said, pretty minor slip, except that there are so many of them.
So, don't bother is the recommendation I'm giving this one. Try Rule 34 instead. Now, n to a new series!
This was very nearly the last book in the series that I was going to read. Fortunately I caught sight of a very positive review of the next installment, where the reviewer said book 4 was a big improvement over book 3. The best part of this novel may well be the hat sitting on top of it... This is, I realize, faint praise. I continue to like the idea behind the book, and continue to be amazed at the fairly lame writing craft from an author whose other work I've quite admired.
I'm not recommending this book to anyone who isn't already invested in the series or has something else on hand. Or who isn't trying to read ten books during the month of February. Two down, eight to go!
[The last in my Epiphany series of sermons on the Nicene Creed.]
When first written, the Christian creeds were used to distinguish between believers and deniers of a particular doctrine. The creeds were born in conflict as a way of defining what was orthodox and what was unorthodox. Lacking both the internet and much in the way of historical tradition, many bishops, theologians, and patriarchs worked to develop their own systems of belief which they then taught to the faithful within their jurisdictions. Differences in these systems were inevitable; it’s not like the finer points of Christian doctrine are immediately obvious to everyone. Also, God had never become human before (at least, not so’s we’d noticed) so we shouldn’t be surprised that it took a couple centuries for us Christians to decided on what we thought that meant, exactly.
Actual photo of the Nicene Fathers and their finest published work. Not pictured: Jesus. Photo credit: Constantinipolitan Associated Press Wire Service.
My Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Today is the feast day of St. Brigid of Kildare who, among other things, started and became abbess of a nunnery in Ireland. She lived a long life, being born into a Druidic family in the year 450 and dying in a Christian one in 523. You know there’s got to be a story in there somewhere, right?
Actually, the story isn’t nearly as exciting as you might think. Ireland is famous in Christian history for inventing green martyrdom. Green martyrdom, as opposed to the more traditional (not to mention bloody)red martyrdom, is where a saintly soul, wishing to be martyred for Christ, removes themselves from society to live apart and alone amongst the green of the land. If you’ve been to Ireland you’ve probably seen ads offering you a tour of Skellig Michael, or another of the many skelligs they’ve got lying around off their coast. I’m pretty sure that ‘skellig’ is Gaelic for tiny-rock-out-in-the-ocean. Green martyrs would row out the these rocks, build wee huts out of the rocks they found there, and spend all their free time in prayer.
St. Brigid's got some fires for you.
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