Both Child And Crucified

"The Conversion of St. Paul" by Italian renaissance master Caravaggio is well known to those who have attended St. John's continuing Christian education (and seventh grade New Testament) classes. Here's how it was described by Caravaggio biographer Andrew Graham-Dixon in a Dec. 1 podcast interview with one of the most cogent interviewers in the country, Sam Tanenhaus:

He's just painted St. Paul by his horse, lying on the ground. But the horse makes the scene feel like a manger, so St. Paul at the moment of his conversion is Christ the child, Christ the infant, and yet his pose, with his arms outspread, is that of the Crucifixion. What Caravaggio has brilliantly telescoped into this image is the idea that at the moment of conversion Paul experiences...mystically the entire life of Christ in his mind's eye as he's blinded by the divine light of revelation. He's both Christ the child and Christ the crucified.

An' a 1, An'a 2, An'a 3, Advent IV

After Sunday's wonderful Christmas pageant at St. John's (that's Brenna Hayden, as Mary the mother of our LORD, singing a solo as angel Emily Salvanera watched beatifically), we skipped the readings appointed for the fourth Sunday in Advent, which were all about paradox and perplexity, just like the Incarnation -- God spurning the mighty temple King David wanted to build, the astonishing miracle of St. Paul's universal ministry in the hidebound first century, and especially the Annunciation.

Here's the song I offered instead. I wish I could hum it for you. I probably wish this more than you wish to hear it. The congregation graciously joined in on the chorus. Think Calypso. Thanks to Andy Guilford for the balcony-eye photo:

[chorus]
We love Christmas, but here’s the thing
How can a baby be a king?
This Bible stuff, it seems to us
Is sometimes too mysterious

[2 Samuel 7:1-11, 16]
Joseph descended from David’s throne
Capernaum was his stepson’s home
No saint ever lived in poverty
Who understood that grace is free

[Romans 16:25-27]
You’d have found Paul too intense
The job God gave him was immense
The equity we still aim to achieve
In the apostles’ time, an impossibility

[Luke 1:26-38]
Love that transfigures time and space
Revealed at a single hour and place
The favored one’s perplexity
Should daily happen to you and me

Pauline Faultline

In the middle of the first century, within about 20 years of the death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, the great apostle Paul of Tarsus wrote these words to a community of Christians living in Rome [Rom. 12:14-21, NRSV]:

Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly; do not claim to be wiser than you are. Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God; for it is written, "Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord." No, "if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink; for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads." Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

I remember how overcome by evil I felt that morning, and those weeks, and all those months. Almost all of us remember. The smoke and fire. The faces of the missing, lost, and fallen. The anxiety about what might come next. Many people felt a parchedness of the spirit, even the temptation to perceive God’s silence, indifference, or absence.

Then there was the rage. Do you remember feeling the rage?

Imagine St. Paul coming to town in the weeks after Sept. 11, preaching his bold sermons about blessing those who persecute us. A considerable number would have stood up in church and assured Paul that that vengeance wouldn’t be God’s anywhere near as soon as it would be ours.

If we feel more secure on this anniversary than we did five years ago or nine years ago, it’s because of the methodical, bloody work undertaken by United States military and intelligence services against al-Qaeda and the Taliban. They haven’t eliminated the threat, but they’ve reduced it.

We may not call this vengeance. We may call it a just and proportionate response to the evil our enemies have done.

Yet I will tell you – I’m not proud, but it’s true -- that my heart leaped with satisfaction at the news, which came not long after the joy of Easter, that Osama bin Laden had been killed by an American who pulled the trigger in that compound in Abbottabad and shouted, “For God and country.”

We pause to thank all the men and women who protect us – those who by their diligence and valor have purchased the blessing we enjoy this afternoon of remembering and reflecting in freedom and in relative security.

Yet we Christians still have to contend with St. Paul. Pacifism may be your witness. Perhaps it should be mine, but it isn’t.

But how do the faithful do violence?

Can we love and kill our enemies at the same time?

Are we too prone to mistaking our neighbor for our enemy?

What risks do we run by insisting that we are wise and holy enough ever to extend the arm of God’s own justice?

In Rome during the Emperor Claudius’s time, when Paul wrote his letter, observant Jews were arguing with Christians. Jewish Christians were arguing with non-Jewish Christians. Rome was persecuting both Jews and Christians.

Can you imagine what it was like back in the day -- the fear and mutual suspicion, the scapegoating and the name-calling?

As a matter of fact, you probably can – if you remember the aftermath of Sept. 11.

If we are to achieve justice without vengeance – if we are to act as God would have us act so far as it depends on us – then the call of the gospel is to a relentless discipline of humility and forgiveness. Angry and hurt as we may be, whether in our national life or our daily lives, these virtues are supposed be our default settings.

Paul went so far as to imagine an improbable Roman paradise in which Jews, Christians, and pagans set aside their enmity for the sake of their humanity – a paradise he understood would be populated one proud, reluctant soul at a time.

Today, Paul might well promote harmony among Jews, Christians, Muslims, and all believers – even harmony between Democrats and Republicans.

My wife, Kathy, and I have attorney friends named Harry Waizer and Karen Walsh. Harry grew up in Brooklyn as an orthodox Jew. Karen grew up Roman Catholic in Westchester County. Many of their family members boycotted their wedding. Their Jewish and Catholic mothers shunned one another.

Harry worked for Cantor Fitzgerald in the World Trade Center and was burned by jet fuel over most of his body after the terrorists attacked. He was in a coma for weeks. Doctors gave him a 5% chance, but he beat those odds, and he’s back at work.

A few weeks ago, Karen told us about the night in late September 2001 when she arrived at the hospital after a long day of working and caring for their children. Walking down the darkened hall toward Harry’s room, she saw two small figures walking ahead, hand in hand.

If you knew instinctively that the two figures were Harry and Karen’s mothers, then you already have a profound understanding of the glory of which humanity is capable, the fellowship, joy, and peace to which we are all called by our Creator.

Karen said that she worried that if Harry had awakened as his two mothers leaned over him, their worried faces looming side by side, he would have assumed that he was dead.

Harry didn’t have to wait that long. Neither do we.

I made these remarks at an interfaith service at St. John's Episcopal Church and School in Rancho Santa Margarita on the afternoon of Sunday, Sept. 11.

Feeling That Easter Discomfort

Charles Dickens' Nicholas Nickleby contains an insight into theological sophistry with which the Church has grappled virtually since the days of Jesus's earthly life. Near the end of the epic story of the novel's brash, heroic namesake, a dissolute character named Walter Bray is on the verge of selling his daughter, Madeline, into marriage. When the wedding day comes, Walter says to his co-conspirator, Nicholas' uncle, that it seems like a cruel thing to do. Dickens observes:

When men are about to commit, or to sanction the commission of some injustice, it is not uncommon for them to express pity for the object either of that or some parallel proceeding, and to feel themselves, at the time, quite virtuous and moral, and immensely superior to those who express no pity at all. This is a kind of upholding of faith above works, and is very comfortable.

Dickens conveyed his surgically precise grasp of human venality and vanity in characterizations that were often harsh but sometimes deeply affecting. I especially love Nicholas' narcissistic if harmless mother. In chapter 55, as she begins one of her exasperating, self-celebratory flights of free association, her son tries to keep reading his book. Finally, Dickens writes, "Nicholas snuffed the candles, put his hands in his pockets, and leaning back in his chair, assumed a look of patient suffering and melancholy resignation." Dickens was more astringent about misdeeds such as Madeline's greedy father's, especially if they were laced with pretensions of compassion.

Dickens' grace note about faith and works was an echo of Reformation struggles by Protestants against medieval Roman Catholic doctrines that seemed to teach that we could earn and buy our way into heaven. The author of of the New Testament letter of James proclaimed that faith in God without good deeds and works was dead [2:26].

As James and St. Paul (in Romans 6:1) both make clear, even in Jesus's time some had concluded they could do whatever they wanted as long as they had faith that they'd be forgiven, once they repented, at long last. For centuries, Reformation ideals propelled some Christians into lives of robust situational ethics. Even today, whenever we're tempted to compromise, neglect, mistreat, lash out, oppress, or isolate, we're been called to live Easter lives instead. But it's not always easy. Thinking we're justified in ungodly or unkind action or inaction is, as Dickens would say, very comfortable indeed.

Fixing First Texts

It's called textual criticism when Bible scholars examine how the earliest Christian texts -- St. Paul's authentic letters and the four gospels -- could have been altered by scribes, either because of copying errors or for substantive reasons. Experts think a ban on women speaking in church was added to the 14th chapter of 1 Corinthians after Paul wrote it, for instance.

Now Scientologists are saying much the same thing about their holy writ. A church spokesman blames unnamed persons for adding anti-gay references to L. Ron Hubbard's writings after his death (Hubbard is shown here). The LDS received new revelation in the late 1970s about the status of African-American people and, just last year, softened its teachings about homosexuality.

Cynics are are probably inclined to think that officials of both churches manufactured latter-day insights about first principles so that their doctrines would better conform to current social mores. So-called orthodox Christians accuse so-called progressives of the same thing when they accord full sacramental status to women and gay and lesbian people.

And yet modern biblical criticism does help expose the astonishing social egalitarianism in the Christ moment and early church, especially in the context of patriarchal Palestinian culture and the hyper-status conscious Greco-Roman world of the first century. Our scholarship aims to recover the true gospel and help us better appreciate Jesus Christ's teachings about how people should behave toward one another despite differences in condition and circumstance. Whether the same can be said about the founders of Mormonism and Scientology is for others to say -- though it's hard to criticize any institution that's bending in the direction of justice and righteousness.

Sunday Sermon: "Paul's Pilgrimage"

The six denominations in charge of Jerusalem's Church of the Holy Sepulcher feud and bicker not because they're Christians but because they're human. They achieve an uneasy coexistence because they agree on only one thing: That Jesus died and rose from the dead somewhere on the rough stones buried a few meters under their feet. What's the rock that unifies our homes and communities despite the disturbances and conflicts inherent in the human experience? My Sunday sermon, in honor of our patron, St. John Proparoxytone, is here.

What A Party!

"It's No Secret: St. John's Celebrates God's Grace," a glimpse at what's up at St. John's Episcopal Church. For production assistance, our thanks to Brandon Wislocki of St. John's School. For scriptural inspiration, our thanks to St. Paul (1 Cor. 5:8).

Two Flashes Of Light

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem

Cathy Lynn Grossman:

Barry Kosmin, one of the nation's top researchers on the demographics of faith, argues in a book he co-authored, Religion in a Free Market, that competition among religion groups keeps interest in God high in the USA, even as denominational identity is fading.

Now, you can see that "market" in action: The final formal break-off of a small but significant group of U.S. and Canadian parishes and dioceses from their national denominations and, quite possibly, from the Anglican Communion, the world's third largest Christian denomination, as well.

The Episcopal Church, the U.S. branch of the worldwide Anglican Communion, has been riven by dissent for years over how to read the Bible and whether homosexuals can serve as bishops.

Not to judge Kosmin's book by its title, but Jesus demonstrated that the marketplace and gospel don't mix by cleansing one in the name of the other, his only reported direct use of violence. Post-1960s American Christians do tend to be church-shoppers, tempting pastors and congregations to focus on customer service and nose-counting. We keep God popular by making him seem palatable and relatively undemanding. But the gospel is about giving, not consuming. Christians are supposed to be more interested in the fast than what tastes good. We can't follow the money or the attendance tallies to truth and salvation. As Jesus also showed, it's possible for the ten thousand to be wrong and the one right.

As for Grossman's summary of the Episcopal Church's problems -- the ordination of a partnered gay bishop and differences of opinion about how to read the Bible -- that's about right. In the end, the second problem may be far worse than the first.

By the time we're through, five or ten percent of Episcopalians will probably have left because of the church's purported permissiveness. Which of the remnants, the larger or the smaller, is righteous? The question is complex and emotional. It's about individual dignity as well as the best way to raise children. But the church is learning along with civil society about the permanence of sexual orientation. In 50 years, it could be as unthinkable to deny ordination or a blessing on the basis of homosexuality as ethnicity or eye color.

While progressives may be on the right side of the arc of history when it comes to gays and lesbians, they are whistling past the empty tomb when it comes to Grossman's second issue -- how Christians read the Bible. Tens of millions claim to do so literally, especially many U.S. evangelicals and virtually all those who are threatening to rip the Anglican Communion apart. In a way, it's hard to blame them. As Episcopal theologian Phyllis Tickle has pointed out, Anglican missionaries lugged crates of Bibles to Africa in the 19th century and proclaimed that its every dit and twiddle was the basis of salvation, including passages such as Romans 1:27 which prohibit homosexual relations. It seems almost churlish to complain when some of their bishops take umbrage now that there their newly enlightened U.S. and Canadian colleagues insist it's not a sin after all, in spite of God's authoritative word.

When it comes to Bible rules, some of which are more practical in modern life than others, it's all about authority. Roman Catholics believe God empowered the pope to explain and elaborate Bible rules, making church tradition tantamount to God's own proclamations. Since the Reformation, Protestants have been struggling to find an alternative. What many have fixed on is the unquestioned authority of the written word itself, the doctrine of sola scriptura.

The chasm between these Christians and those who read the Bible using various modern tools such as historical, textual, and canonical criticism is at least as wide as the divide over sexual orientation. Take this passage from St. Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians (14: 34-35, NRSV), for instance:

Women should be silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be subordinate, as the law also says. If there is anything they desire to know, let them ask their husbands at home.

While some churches may follow this proscription, no women I know attend them. Our critical tools give us permission to ask these questions: How did the role of women in the first century Roman world affect Paul's thinking? Could he have been worried that noisy women would put both them and the young Christian movement in danger? Did Paul even write the passage, or did a scribe or follower add it later to reinforce male authority in the church in spite of Jesus's egalitarianism?

Many worshiping in mainline denominations have no trouble asking these questions and yet still honoring the sacredness of the Bible. Conservative evangelicals also make some allowances as well, permitting women to pipe up occasionally but tending not to call them as preachers or pastors -- and whatever they might decide about women, ix-nay on the a-gays.

Authority in the Episcopal Church is rooted in 18th century representative democracy, right down to the bicameral legislature (with houses of bishops and deputies). Believing that the Holy Spirit is present when faithful people gather in community, TEC votes on how to interpret the Bible, when to ordain women and gays, and whether to have fish or steak for dinner. Though Anglicans have a formula for weighing three factors -- scripture, tradition, and reason -- our polity tends to give more weight to reason than the originator of the famous three-legged stool, Richard Hooker, may have intended. After all, smart, well-intentioned people can talk themselves into anything. As for tradition, even that changes as faith communities and denominations change with the times. For some, only Scripture is immutable.

The irony is that many biblical literalists don't realize that in their church practice they're participating in modern scriptural interpretation. Every woman at Saddleback who speaks her mind in Bible study instead of asking her husband to teach her at home is violating St. Paul's literal rule, because some authority in her church has correctly decided that Christ's church can't discriminate so harshly against women in our egalitarian times. But if they set aside Corinthians for the sake of women but not Romans for the sake of gay and lesbian people, then they are being selectively modern. They are choosing when to stick to a literal reading depending on a human predisposition about the sinfulness of homosexual behavior, rooted either in the traditions of the human church or their own intestines.

To a greater or lesser extent, almost every Christian observes some Bible rules and exempts himself from others. Without some central authority to set and enforce rules for Bible living, individual Christians are free to provide their own. The danger is that we will arrive at self-justifying, self-idolatrous interpretations, contrary to the thrust of Christ's radically other-focused gospel. At the root of the TEC schism is the individualistic American tendency for any community to shrink until only the like-minded remain, with the church of one (probably not including Jesus) being the ultimate solution.

For their part, some schismatics rightly fear that progressives are also carving up the Bible, keeping Jesus's humane teachings and the best stuff in the prophets about peace and justice while excluding the bits about righteous living as well as anything smacking of the magical such as miracles and healings. Also up for grabs -- focal point, perhaps, for the coming schism of schisms -- is what the Bible discloses about Christ's bodily resurrection. Whether or not they disclose it at Easter services, many modern churchpeople are squishy about whether Christ's body was literally reanimated. For decades there has been a lot of talk about how he just seemed to be alive again because his memory and teachings were so powerful.

I can't help but think that this is the real deal breaker for the Church, with debates about women, which prayers to use, and the rights of gay and lesbian people being the sideshows. The risen Lord is the hope of the world, not the imperfectly transcribed accounts of his teachings or the wisdom and piety of the human beings in his church. Perhaps Christians need a new fundamentalism with just two pillars: Insistence on the absolute dignity and equality before God of all whom he has made as he made them, and faith that he created the world with a flash of light and saved it with another.