PROPER 10, YEAR C

July 10, 2022

Christ Church, Woodbury, N. J.

 

Deuteronomy 30:9-14

Psalm 25:3-9

Luke 10:25-37

 

The Collect of the Day, which we prayed at the beginning of this Mass, asks God that we “may both perceive and know what things [we] ought to do, and also may have grace and power faithfully to fulfill the same.” And the appointed readings for this Sunday in the three-year lectionary cycle happen to focus this year on the first half of that prayer: exploring how we may best perceive and know what things we ought to do.

 

The Gospel reading from Saint Luke offers an example of Jesus teaching a lawyer how to perceive and know what things he ought to do. Moreover, our Lord employs the tried-and-true pedagogical method of answering the lawyer’s questions with questions of his own.

 

Putting Jesus to the test, the lawyer first asks: “What shall I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus responds by turning the question around: “What is written in the Law? How do you read?” In other words: You’re a lawyer; you must know what the Law says. The lawyer then gives a correct answer: “You shall love the Lord your God … You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” 

 

But, desiring to justify himself, the lawyer asks a further question: “And who is my neighbor?” In response, Jesus tells the parable of the Good Samaritan, concluding with the question back to the lawyer: “Which of these three, do you think, proved neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?” Again, the lawyer answers correctly: “The one who showed mercy on him.”

 

Notice what’s happened. Rather than just answering the lawyer’s questions, Jesus has got the lawyer to answer his own questions—by drawing on his own deep knowledge of the Law and the Prophets. So often that is how effective education works: not as much by imparting new information and new ideas as by drawing out of us what we already know and enabling us to apply that knowledge to new challenges in creative new ways.

 

Whatever bad motives Luke ascribes to this lawyer, putting Jesus to the test and trying to justify himself, he had at least this much going for him: he was willing to engage in the dialogue, and he was willing to entertain the Lord’s questions—an attitude of openness well expressed in today’s Psalm: “Show me your ways, O Lord, and teach me your paths.”

 

So often, that is the pattern in our own prayer lives. We begin by questioning God, only to find that God is questioning us. And it’s precisely our willingness to engage in that dialogue, to entertain those questions, that allows God to lead us deeper into the fulness of his truth. As the psalmist goes on to sing, “Lead me in your truth and teach me; for you are the God of my salvation; in you have I trusted all the day long.”

 

In the coming weeks and months, the Discernment Committee, to be commissioned today [at the 10am Mass], and subsequently the Vestry, will need to trust the God of our salvation to lead them in his truth and teach them. For their responsibility is not simply that of choosing the next rector as a hiring committee might choose the best qualified candidate for a job opening in a secular organization. 

 

No, as the word “discernment” implies, the primary task is one of prayer: seeking the Lord’s will for the parish, and discerning whom God has already chosen to be its next rector. It’s a tall order, and both the Discernment Committee and the Vestry will need the support of the whole congregation’s prayers for the duration of the process.

 

But today’s readings offer the comfort of reassurance that God is with us—with this parish, with the Discernment Committee, with the Vestry—as they undertake this awesome responsibility. In my discussions with parishioners over the past month, the one longing that’s been expressed most often is for a return to the flourishing community life that this parish enjoyed before the pandemic. But today’s Old Testament reading from Deuteronomy opens with the promise: “The Lord will again take delight in prospering you … if you obey the voice of the Lord your God.”

 

And then, in answer to the implicit question of how we may expect to hear the Lord’s voice, the reading continues: “This commandment is not too hard for you, neither is it far off … But the word is very near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can do it.”

 

This is really the same point as Jesus was making in the Gospel. The lawyer already knew the answers to his own questions—God’s word was already in his mouth and in his heart—and he just needed a little help from Jesus to understand how this knowledge applied to the questions at hand. In the same way, I’m confident that the members of the Discernment Committee and Vestry will help one another in their deliberations to draw on what they already know in understanding where the Lord is leading them.

 

Jesus concludes his interaction with the lawyer with the admonition, “Go and do likewise.” That is, go and show mercy to those in need just as the Good Samaritan showed mercy to the man fallen among robbers. And so, we come full circle to the Collect of the Day. For it’s one thing to perceive and know what things we ought to do, and another thing entirely to have the grace and power faithfully to fulfill the same.

 

Once the Discernment Committee and Vestry perceive and know whom God is calling to be the next rector, they’ll also need the grace and power to follow through and act on this knowledge—especially if it seems that other candidates are safer choices, or more qualified in a conventional sense. For God does not see as human beings see; and those whom he calls can well be those whom we might deem least likely according to worldly standards.

 

In today’s Gospel, Saint Luke doesn’t tell us what the lawyer went away and did, or whether his subsequent life was any different because of his encounter with Jesus. Some New Testament scholars suggest that these stories are deliberately left open-ended because we, the listeners, are meant to supply the endings ourselves, in the living of our own lives.

 

So, Jesus tells us the story of the Good Samaritan and then bids us go and do likewise. But once he’s shown us what we ought to do, our next move needs always to be that of asking God for grace and power faithfully to fulfill the same. And we do so in the trust that God never asks us to do anything in his name without giving us the means necessary to accomplish everything that he asks.

INDEPENDENCE DAY

Monday, July 4, 2022

Christ Church, Woodbury, N. J.

 

On this Independence Day, when we thank God for the liberties we enjoy in this country, it seems appropriate to reflect on the virtue of patriotism. For indeed, patriotism is one of the classical Christian virtues. 

In the thirteenth century, Saint Thomas Aquinas classified patriotism as a subcategory of the virtue of justice, by which we render to each their due. In Thomas’s scheme, just as filial piety is the virtue by which we render to parents and family the respect that is their due, and religion is the virtue by which we render to God the worship that is his due, so patriotism is the virtue by which we render our earthly homeland or country the loyalty that is its due. 

 

We become who we are as individuals in and through the communities that establish the context for our human flourishing. Our personal stories are inescapably embedded in the larger community narratives that establish our shared identities with our neighbors, colleagues, and fellow citizens.

 

The motive of patriotism is gratitude for the blessings we’ve received as citizens of our country: for all the ways in which it’s made possible not only our “way of life” but the very formation of our individual identities. Even when we judge our nation and find it wanting, we do so according to principles that we’ve learned in the context of our national life, and the freedom of thought, expression, debate, and indeed religious practice that it makes possible.

 

From the beginning, however, Christians have understood that loyalty to the nation (or to the emperor, king, or government) has definite limits. Aquinas writes that when the claims of family or nation come into apparent conflict with the claims of God – then duty to God comes first. (Aquinas knew this conflict firsthand, having defied his family to enter the Dominican Order.) The early Christians prayed for the emperor and all in authority, but they went to the lions rather than deny their faith or yield to Caesar’s demand to be worshiped as a god.

 

Moreover, there’s nothing unpatriotic in principle about protest and dissent. On the contrary, love for our country is often the strongest motivation for working for reform and the remedying of injustice in our national life. 

 

C. S. Lewis writes of love of country in his classic work The Four Loves, published in 1960. He argues that some forms of patriotism are good. Christ himself exhibited love for his country when he voiced his lament over Jerusalem. Patriotism grows out of love for one’s home: “love of old acquaintances, familiar sights, sounds and smells.” But this type of patriotism recognizes that just as one loves one’s own home, so foreigners no less rightly love theirs. Writing as an Englishman, Lewis remarked: “Once you have realized that the [French] like café complet just as much as we like bacon and eggs why, good luck to them and let them have it. The last thing we want is to make everywhere else just like our own home. It would not be home unless it were different.”

 

But then Lewis issued a dire warning: like the other forms of love, patriotism becomes demonic when it divinizes its object, when it makes its object into a god. Then, what began as a virtue degenerates into idolatry, with catastrophic results. Lewis understood those results only too well, having fought in World War I and having lived through World War II.

 

What Lewis was getting at, I think, was a distinction that others have made between patriotism and nationalism. For unlike the classical Christian virtue of patriotism, the modern ideology of nationalism is a perversion of patriotism. 

 

To my knowledge, the first person to oppose the two terms in this way was Charles de Gaulle, who said in 1969, “Patriotism is when love of your own people comes first, nationalism is when hate for people other than your own comes first.”

 

According to both Aristotle and Aquinas, each of the virtues is opposed by vices of excess and defect. Defects exhibit too little of the virtue; excesses take the virtue’s underlying impulse to irrational extremes. The virtue itself strikes the “golden mean” between the two. So, for example, the virtue of fortitude or bravery strikes the mean between the defect of cowardice and the excess of recklessness or foolhardiness.

 

In this scheme, the vices springing from a deficiency of patriotism are ingratitude and disloyalty to one’s country. In their weakest form, these may take the form of a casual disrespect or irreverence for national symbols. In their strongest form they take the form of active subversion and treason.

 

On the other hand, the vices associated with an irrational excess of the patriotic impulse are nationalism, chauvinism, and xenophobia. So, the virtue of patriotism strikes the mean between the defect of disloyalty and the excess of xenophobic nationalism.

 

While I’m on the subject, I’d be remiss if I didn’t say something on the question of displaying the national flag in church. I know that’s been a point of controversy in this parish, with the flags having been removed about twenty-five years ago, and then returned in the past few months.

 

My own point of view—which has evolved over the years—is that there’s nothing inherently wrong with displaying the national flag in church. In worship we offer God our whole selves, everything that we have and everything that we are, including our identity as citizens (or residents) of our county, and the flag’s presence in church symbolizes that.

 

It’s important to recognize, however, that for some Christians, such displays risk mixing religious and national symbols in a way that elevates both the flag and the nation it represents into objects of worship – precisely what C. S. Lewis was warning us against.

 

Believing as we do in the separation of church and state, some Christians also argue that just as it would be inappropriate to have a crucifix mounted on the wall above the judge’s bench in the courthouse down the street, so it’s equally inappropriate to display the national flag among all the religious symbols also on display here in the church.

 

Whatever our own views on the matter, in the life of a Christian community it’s crucial to respect the convictions of those who take an opposite view. Without compromising our own principles, sometimes we need to forbear with one another out of love. 

 

For better or for worse, it will be up to the next rector to decide the matter. In the Episcopal Church, the office of Rector does carry that authority. For the time being, however, my decision is that the flags are staying.

 

But we need to remain on guard against any temptation that the flag’s presence may pose to divinize the nation, to make the nation itself into an object of worship. Instead, let it symbolize our shared aspiration to be “one nation, under God.” Let it stand as a symbol, in other words, not of an idolatrous nationalism but of a healthy patriotism.

 

And in the spirit of such patriotism, I wish us all a happy Independence Day! And may God bless America!

 

PROPER 9, YEAR C

Sunday, July 3, 2016

Christ Church, Woodbury, N. J.

 

Isaiah 66:10-16

Psalm 66:1-8

Luke 10:1-11, 16-20

 

A theme running throughout our readings today is that of rejoicing. The Old Testament reading from Isaiah opens with the exhortation: “Rejoice with Jerusalem, and be glad for her, all you who love her; rejoice with her in joy, all you who mourn for her …” Even though the holy city is lying in ruins, destroyed by its enemies, Isaiah prophesies future restoration, peace, and prosperity, promising his listeners: “You shall see, and your heart shall rejoice …”

 

Then Psalm 66 extends this call to rejoice beyond Jerusalem to all the world’s nations: “Be joyful in God, all you lands, sing the glory of his name; sing the glory of his praise.”

 

Finally, in the Gospel reading from Saint Luke, the seventy disciples return with joy from their mission to the towns and villages of Israel, reporting to Jesus, “Lord, even the demons are subject to us in your name.” To which the Lord responds: “Nevertheless, do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you; but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.”

At bottom, authentic Christianity is not all stern commandments and grim duty, but a religion intended to bring us joy. The practice of the faith can entail hardship and sacrifice, to be sure. The seventy disciples likely set out on their mission with great trepidation; and who knows what privations they endured on the road? But in the end, it was all worth it, and they returned rejoicing with great joy.

 

In our pursuit of the Christian life, a question always worth asking ourselves is: Where is our joy? What is it about our practice of the faith, and our life together as a parish community, that gives us cause for rejoicing? 

 

When we’re feeling disheartened, moreover, it’s never a bad idea to try to reconnect with those tasks, activities, pastimes, and relationships that bring us joy, both emotionally and spiritually. When I find myself getting discouraged in my exercise of the priesthood, I try always to remember to ask myself: What is it about my ministry that gives me the deepest joy? And in those rare instances when I can’t think of any positive answer to that question, then I know that I’m in spiritual trouble and need to seek help. It’s a terrible thing to lose touch with the things that bring us joy—but they’re always still there, waiting to be rediscovered and reclaimed.

 

In a parish’s transition from one rector to another, this question is critical to the process of discernment. Not so much: What’s wrong here that needs fixing? – although that question may need attention, too – but above all: What’s right here? Where is our joy? What is it about this parish community’s identity, mission, and life together that gives us cause for rejoicing? The answer to that question is crucially important because it identifies those features of parish life that we most want to preserve and build upon for the future. So, let’s give it some thought and prayer in the coming weeks and months.

 

However we answer that question, we need also to be mindful of our Lord’s admonition in today’s Gospel: “rejoice that your names are written in heaven.” In other words, we need always to regard our earthly joys and sorrows in the perspective of eternity, and the infinitely greater joy that beckons us from the life of the world to come.

 

This phrase, “your names are written in heaven,” invokes an image that recurs throughout both the Old and New Testaments of a “Book of Life” in which God records the names of the just and the righteous. Of course, the image is not meant literally; the biblical writers aren’t suggesting that in heaven there’s an actual physical book in which God literally writes our names. Instead, it’s a metaphor for what God knows about each of us; and God knows each of us infinitely better than we even know ourselves. 

So, when our Lord declares to the seventy: “do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you; but rejoice that your names are written in heaven,” he’s effectively telling them that much as they might be tempted to take pride in their spiritual achievements, the ultimate question for them, and for us, is whether our names are written in the Book of Life.

 

How do we know, then, that our names really are written in heaven? The Church’s traditional answer is that God inscribed our names in the Book of Life when we were baptized. When I administer the Sacrament of Holy Baptism, I perform not only a public ceremony at the font but also a crucial bit of administrative paperwork at my desk afterwards. I record the baptism in the parish register, which, if you’ve never seen it, is an impressively large book. I’ve always found recording there the names of the newly baptized oddly moving.

 

And with good reason: the Early Church Fathers saw the ceremonial inscription of the baptismal candidates’ names in the Church’s book as an earthly reflection of their names being written in the Book of Life. In a fourth century sermon, Saint Gregory of Nyssa says to a group of catechumens, “Give me your names so that I may write them down in ink. But the Lord himself will engrave them on incorruptible tablets … the Bishop inscribes you in the Book of the Church that you may know that from now on you are inscribed in heaven.”

 

These words offer us all great encouragement. Now, to avoid any misunderstanding, I’m not saying that the unbaptized are automatically excluded from heaven or condemned to eternal punishment. That’s not the point. God is free to save whomever he chooses, baptized or not.

 

The point, instead, is that for Christians, Holy Baptism, along with the faith and repentance that it signifies, stands as the outward and visible sign of our names being written in God’s Book of Life. The Scriptures do suggest that while we can blot our names out of the book by serious sin—that is, by knowingly and willfully rebelling against God—we can also always repent and return to the Lord, in which case he’ll fully re-inscribe us in the Book. And there’s no greater cause for rejoicing than that.

 

Today, then, we avail ourselves of the opportunity to take stock of everything that brings joy to our lives—as members of our families, as citizens of our country, as parishioners of our church. But we also remember that the true foundation of all joy is our shared hope of eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. Above all earthly joys, then, we rejoice that our names are written in heaven.

PROPER 8, YEAR C

Sunday, June 26, 2022

Christ Church, Woodbury, N. J.

 

1 Kings 19:15-16, 19-21

Luke 9:51-62

 

In the Gospel reading that we’ve just heard, a certain Greek verb meaning “to follow” occurs three times. This verb occurs first when a man says to Jesus, “I will follow you wherever you go.” It occurs second when Jesus says to someone else, “Follow me.” And third when still another person says, “I will follow you, Lord; but let me first say farewell to those at my home.”

 

In the ancient translation of the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek known as the Septuagint, this same verb is used in today’s Old Testament reading when Elisha says to Elijah, “Let me kiss my father and my mother, and then I will follow you.”

 

The verb’s literal meaning is something like “to take to the road” or “to undertake a journey” with someone. And in today’s readings, it has the sense not merely of following someone somewhere, but also of making the total commitment of becoming that person’s disciple. 

 

In the reading from First Kings, the prophet Elijah has received God’s command to anoint Elisha the son of Shaphat to be his successor. Elisha appears as a wealthy young farmer, plowing with twelve yoke of oxen. Elijah casts his mantle upon Elisha—a  clear sign of calling him to follow in his footsteps and take up the prophetic office.

 

Elisha’s response expresses his acceptance of the call and his total commitment to following Elijah. Destroying his livelihood, he slays the oxen and uses the wooden yokes to make the fire on which he roasts the oxen to make a great feast for the people. Then he departs to follow and serve Elijah.

 

Today’s Gospel clearly harks back to this Old Testament episode. Saint Luke tells us of Jesus setting his face to go to Jerusalem: making the decision to undertake the journey that will result in his crucifixion and death. And filled with this single-minded determination to complete his mission, Jesus begins instructing the disciples on the level of commitment required of them if they’re to follow him on the journey.

 

Three encounters with would-be followers on the road illustrate the point. One individual enthusiastically declares, “Lord, I will follow you wherever you go.” The Lord’s response is sobering: Birds have nests, foxes have holes, but the Son of man has nowhere to lay his head. Those who follow him must be willing to give up even the basic security of having somewhere to call home.

 

A second person says yes to the invitation to follow Jesus, but with a condition: “Lord, let me first go and bury my father.” This person is seeking to fulfill two of the highest and most compelling moral and religious obligations imaginable: to honor his parents and to bury the dead. The Lord’s response, “Leave the dead to bury their own dead,” may seem callous and insensitive, but his point is that his call transcends all other claims of duty, no matter how worthy.

 

A third person spontaneously offers to follow Jesus, but again with a condition: “let me first say farewell to those at my home.” These words are almost the same what Elisha says to Elijah. But unlike Elijah, Jesus doesn’t give the man leave. “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.” In other words, Jesus demands a level of allegiance that takes precedence even over ties of familial affection.

 

Taken together, these three responses make clear that following Jesus calls for total and unreserved commitment. The call to follow is absolute, even when it entails leaving behind all other loyalties and commitments.

 

Now what does this mean for us today? Few of us are called literally to drop everything and leave behind home, families, and workplaces to follow Jesus on the road. On the contrary, most of us follow Jesus precisely by staying put and fulfilling our familial, social, occupational, and religious obligations in those stations of life into which it has pleased God to call us. 

 

But the real issue in the second and third encounters—I will follow, but let me first do this or that—involves the attempt to set conditions and put limitations upon discipleship. Occasionally, I’ve encountered parishioners who’ve said things like, “I don’t mind coming to church on Sundays, so long as I don’t become too religious.” In a previous parish, one lady told me that the practice of Christianity is fine in small doses, provided that it doesn’t interfere with one’s ability to enjoy the rest of one’s life. 

 

My initial impression of Christ Church is that such attitudes are not a major problem here. On the contrary, since my arrival at the beginning of this month, I’ve encountered a level of commitment and enthusiasm that would be the envy of many of my priestly colleagues if only they knew about it! Most of you display a passion for the well being of this parish and its people that is entirely commendable.

 

Any parish’s transition from one rector to another does, however, raise in acute form the issue of what it means to leave behind past forms of life to follow Jesus on the road. We’re all embarked upon this journey together. There’s no turning back. And in the coming months, we may well be called to engage deeply with the question of what aspects of the past need to be let go of into order to embrace more fully that future into which God is now calling us.

 

Such letting go, incidentally, does not mean forgetting or dishonoring the past. We do well to remember and be grateful for the many gifts and blessings that have made us who we are. For example, it was wonderful, right, and fitting that so many parishioners went out to Illinois to participate in Fr. Burgess’s consecration as Bishop of Springfield, while others gathered in the parish hall to watch the livestream. It was, however, not only a wonderful moment of celebration but also a valuable opportunity for closure—like Elisha kissing his father and his mother before taking to the road to follow Elijah. 

 

Bishop Burgess will rightly hold a place in many hearts for years to come as a rector who brought great blessings on this parish and profoundly informed its sense of identity and mission. But I know that he would be the first to agree that it’s now time for Christ Church to be open to a future in which a new rector may well want to move in new directions and do some things differently. Such openness does no dishonor to Bishop Burgess’s legacy; it simply recognizes that for us, as for him, the journey continues—and “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.

 CORPUS CHRISTI:  

THE BODY AND BLOOD OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST

Sunday, June 19, 2022

Christ Church, Woodbury, N. J.

 

 

Until the pandemic, it was perhaps easy to receive Holy Communion every Sunday without giving it too much thought. One unintended blessing of the lockdown, horrible as it was in so many ways, was that it cured us of any tendency we might have had to take this great privilege for granted. Still, at every church where I served before March 2020, the Holy Eucharist was the principal service on Sunday, with almost all the congregation coming to the altar rail and receiving Communion as a matter of course.

 

It was not always so. Within living memory, the principal Sunday service in many Episcopal churches was not the Holy Eucharist but Morning Prayer with hymns and sermon. To this day, by canon law, to be considered a communicant in the Episcopal Church one need only receive Communion three times a year: the traditional days being Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost, and in some places All Saints, for good measure. In Morning Prayer parishes, those who desired to receive Communion more often than that would go to the early service.

 

Meanwhile, in Anglo-Catholic parishes, the Solemn High Mass at 11 am was often a “non-communicating” Mass at which only the priest would receive. For example, growing up in the Church of England, my wife would receive Communion with her parents at the 8 am Low Mass. Then, after going home for breakfast, they would return to church to sing in the choir at the non-communicating High Mass at 11. But many more people attended the High Mass than the early service. In other words, in both high and low church parishes, the majority of the faithful might attend the principal service every Sunday and still receive Communion only monthly or even just three or four times a year. 

 

This pattern of infrequent Communion began to change as early as the 1930s, under the influence of what was known as the Parish Communion Movement. Its aim was to promote the people’s full participation in the Church’s worship. Above all, it sought to make the principal Sunday service a parish Eucharist at which all the people would have the opportunity to receive Holy Communion. 

 

One of the parish Communion Movement’s advocates in England, A. G. Hebert, wrote in 1937 that the ideal time for the Parish Eucharist was around 9 or 9:30 in the morning. 8 am was too early for many people; and 11 am was too late for most people to keep the traditional fast before Communion.

 

Four decades later, the Episcopal Church’s 1979 Prayer Book fulfilled the Parish Communion Movement’s key goals by designating the Holy Eucharist as “the principal act of worship on the Lord’s Day and other major Feasts” (that’s on page 13), and by directing that at every Eucharist the Sacrament must be delivered to the people (that’s on pages 338 and 365).

 

So, we’ve come a long way. And I certainly have no desire to go back to the days of monthly or quarterly Communion! The real question now, however, is whether we’ve perhaps come too far and grown too casual in our approach to the Blessed Sacrament. And here is where today’s Feast of Corpus Christi can assist us.

 

Through its history the Church has tended to see-saw between periods when Christians felt free to receive Communion weekly or even daily, as in the early Church, and periods when Christians were so afraid of receiving unworthily, and thus eating and drinking damnation upon themselves, that they tended to refrain from receiving at all.  In 1215, for example, the Fourth Lateran Council required lay people to receive at least once a year, usually at Easter, after making their Confession to a priest. The goal was to try to overcome people’s great fear of approaching the altar. 

 

Against this background, the Feast of Corpus Christi originated in the thirteenth century as part of a movement of devotion whose aims included a return to more frequent Communion. The feast’s message for us is twofold. On one hand, we should certainly avail ourselves of the opportunity to receive Holy Communion at least weekly. But, on the other hand, we still need to approach the Sacrament with the utmost care and preparation. 

 

In other words, we need to steer a middle course between a rigorism that would keep us from Communion out of fear, and a laxity that would lead us to become careless and irreverent. And I would submit that the latter rather than the former is the greater spiritual danger to us in today’s world.

 

Providentially, our Catholic Christian tradition offers us some practices that can help us increase the reverence and devotion with which we approach the Blessed Sacrament. Most important of all is spiritual preparation for Mass by saying our prayers and examining our consciences. For what sins and shortcomings do we want to seek God’s forgiveness and help? For what people and situations do we want to ask God’s grace and blessings?

At the very least, we can try to get to church on time so that we can settle down and get recollected in the few minutes before Mass begins. The traditional guideline is that we normally receive Communion at any Mass only if we’ve been present for the Gospel.

 

One useful form of preparation, to which I’ve already alluded, is the traditional Communion Fast. For some of us, health concerns make this impossible, and we certainly don’t want anyone passing out in the pews! But even if we can’t go without food from the night before, we can keep breakfast to a minimum, and if possible, observe the rule of eating nothing for an hour before Mass. It’s difficult to maintain the proper spiritual dispositions for receiving Communion when weighed down by a breakfast of pancakes, hash browns, eggs, and bacon.

 

The Church’s best wisdom, also, is that it’s difficult to prepare ourselves adequately for Communion any more often than once a day. If we find ourselves attending more than one Eucharist in the same day, it’s no longer forbidden to receive twice, but it’s also perfectly acceptable to attend Mass and not receive. (And don’t let anyone tell you otherwise!) Sometimes, indeed, we best express our reverence for the Blessed Sacrament by refraining from receiving when we’re spiritually unprepared to do so.

 

Finally, no less important than preparation before Communion is thanksgiving after Communion. When we return to the pew from the altar rail, or after the closing hymn, we take a moment to say “thank you” to God for his gift of himself to us in the Sacrament of his Body and Blood, and to recommit ourselves to the tasks he’s given us to do in the world.

 

On this Feast of Corpus Christi, then, we render thanks for all those before us who worked so hard for so many years to establish the Communion of the Faithful as the norm for every Sunday and Holy Day. But we honor their memory best by receiving this great gift with all the reverence and devotion that it deserves.

 

 TRINITY SUNDAY

June 12, 2022

Christ Church, Woodbury, N. J.

 

 

The Trinity is the central doctrine of the Christian faith. Before we can begin to make sense of it, however, we need a clear understanding of the role that dogmas and doctrines themselves play in the Christian life. A key point is that doctrines aren’t what need to be explained—because they are the explanation. The late Fr. Homer Rogers of Dallas, Texas, made this point at the beginning of his course of adult confirmation class lectures:

“Let me say by way of preface that I am not here to ‘explain’ Christianity, for that isn’t the problem. A person coming to this planet from Mars and landing among us wouldn’t ask, ‘Why do you believe in the Trinity?’ or ‘What do you mean by transubstantiation?’ He would ask, ‘Why do the good die young? Why is there many a slip twixt the cup and the lip? Why do the best laid plans of mice and men gang aft agley? Why is it that the best puppy in the litter is the one that gets run over? Why does a man’s reach exceed his grasp? Why is there so much pain, sorrow, grief, misery, and ugliness in human life and human society? Why is everybody homesick, even when he’s at home? …’

 

“Let me carry the matter a bit further. Why should there be people on earth in the first place? Or, for that matter, why should there be an earth? Why should there be anything? These are the things that need explaining. The Christian religion seeks to explain them. Sooner or later you will make up your mind, if you haven’t already, that the Christian religion is true or false, not in terms of how persuasively I explain to you the doctrine of the Trinity, and not even in terms of whether or not the Christian religion makes sense, but whether or not the Christian religion can answer any of these questions.”

So, what we’re likely to find most helpful is not any explanation of the doctrine of the Trinity itself but a prior understanding of the questions it answers, the problems it solves, the contradictions it reconciles, the confusions it clears up. For again, the doctrine is not what requires explaining because it is itself the explanation.

 

In his book Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis suggests that as the first Christians reflected on their new relationship with God in Christ through the Holy Spirit, they gradually formulated the doctrine of the Trinity as the only way of giving a comprehensive and coherent account of their religious experience. He writes this:

 

“People already knew about God in a vague way. Then came a man who claimed to be God; and yet He was not the sort of man you could dismiss as a lunatic. He made them believe Him. They met Him again after they had seen Him killed. And then, after they had been formed into a little society or community, they found God somehow inside them as well: directing them, making them able to do things they could not do before. And when they worked it all out they found that they had arrived at the Christian definition of the three-personal God.”

But there’s more. Doctrines provide not only an explanation but also a kind of roadmap. A bit earlier in the same book, Lewis describes an encounter with hard bitten old RAF Officer who stood up after one of his lectures on Christian doctrine and declared, “I’ve no use for all that stuff. But, mind you, I’m a religious man too. I know there’s a God. I’ve felt him: out alone in the desert at night: the tremendous mystery. And that’s just why I don’t believe all your neat little dogmas and formulas about him. To anyone who’s met the real thing they all seem so petty and pedantic and unreal!”

 

Lewis immediately agrees. That RAF man probably had a real encounter with God out in the desert. When he turned from his experience to the Christian creeds, he was turning from something real to something less real. In the same way, if we look at the Atlantic Ocean from the beach and then turn to a map of the Atlantic, we are turning from something real to something less real: from real waves, wind, surf, and sand to a sheet of colored paper. 

But, says Lewis, the map pieces together the cumulative experience of thousands of people who’ve actually sailed the Atlantic. Only, while our view from the beach affords but a single glimpse, the map fits all those partial perspectives together into a comprehensive whole. And, if we want to go anywhere, the map is absolutely necessary. Walking on the beach is much more satisfying than looking at a map. But the map is much more use if we want to sail from England to America.

 

So, Christian doctrines are like maps. They fall far short of the reality they describe. Merely learning a doctrine is like reading a map without going anywhere. But once we do embark upon the voyage of the Christian life, the map becomes indispensable. We don’t get anywhere by looking at maps without going out to sea. But neither are we safe if we go to sea without a map—and an accurate and reliable map at that.

Lewis goes on to relate the Trinity to the life of Christian prayer. He writes: 

 

“An ordinary simple Christian kneels down to say his prayers.  He is trying to get in touch with God. But if he is a Christian he knows that what is prompting him to pray is also God: God, so to speak, inside him. But he also knows that all his real knowledge of God comes through Christ, the Man who was God—that Christ is standing beside him, helping him to pray, praying for him. You see what is happening: God is the thing to which he is praying, the goal he is trying to reach. God is also the thing which is pushing him on, the motive power. God is also the road or bridge along which he is being pushed to that goal. So that the whole threefold life of that three-personal Being is actually going on in that ordinary little bedroom where an ordinary man is saying his prayers.”

If we regard the doctrine of the Trinity merely as an intellectual puzzle to be solved, we won’t make any real progress in understanding it. But as we grow in the Christian life, cultivating our relationship with God the Father through our union with Christ, stirring up the Holy Spirit’s gifts within us, the doctrine will more and more make sense as the only adequate guide to the vast ocean of reality on which we’ve set sail. 

 

Today’s celebration lays before us an invitation: not merely to understand the Trinity conceptually, but to enter a living relationship with the triune God towards whom the doctrine points. In that way, we participate in the eternal mystery of God’s own life as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit; and his life becomes our life as well.

THE DAY OF PENTECOST: WHITSUNDAY

June 5, 2022

Christ Church, Woodbury, N. J.

 

 

In my first year of seminary, my classmates and I were all required to take a course in homiletics – that is, preaching. The course followed a strict format. When we met, one of us would give a sermon, and the rest would listen. While the preacher was speaking, we weren’t allowed to take notes. When the sermon was over, we’d sit in silence for five minutes and write down everything we remembered. Then we’d each read back to the preacher what we’d heard. During this time, the preacher wasn’t allowed to say anything – even though there were plenty of moments when one wanted nothing more than to jump up and shout, “No! That’s not what I said! You got it wrong! That’s not what I meant!”

 

It was excellent training. We discovered how great the discrepancy could be between what the preacher said and what the listeners heard. As the semester progressed, however, this gap between what was said and what was heard narrowed considerably. It was good practice in learning how to get our message across clearly. And it was even better practice in learning how to listen carefully.

In our world today it can often be difficult to hear what others are saying. At certain times, we may sense that no matter how insistently we speak out, we’re not being heard, listened to, or understood. Our different backgrounds engender different mindsets and worldviews. Sometimes we use the same words and mean completely different things. The New Testament scholar G. B. Caird once remarked on the difficulties of translating ancient biblical languages: so much depends on context and frameworks of meaning. He observed that if someone says, “I’m mad about my flat,” it helps to know whether the speaker is British or American. If British, the speaker is most likely expressing enthusiasm about an apartment; if American, the speaker is most likely expressing frustration with a punctured tire.

 

A feature of postmodernity that many commentators have discussed at length is that even when we’re formally speaking the same language we often fail to understand one another because we’re nonetheless effectively speaking different languages. I notice this phenomenon a lot in the Church: when liberals and conservatives, progressives and traditionalists, try to debate the hot-button issues of the day, the result is often miscommunication and misunderstanding because each subculture has its own code-words and phrases, its own narratives, its own interpretive frameworks. The same is true in the wider culture. Add in the difficulties in communication that result from differences in upbringing, geography, ethnicity, education, race, and class, and we may well despair of ever truly hearing and understanding one another.

Against this background, the story of Pentecost describes a miracle of hearing and understanding. When the Holy Spirit descends upon the apostles in the upper room, two things happen. First, the apostles are empowered to speak out and proclaim the Gospel. Second, pilgrims gathered in Jerusalem from every nation in the known world miraculously hear the apostles speaking to them in their own native languages.

 

Some biblical commentators regard Pentecost as a symbolic reversal of the confusion of tongues at the Tower of Babel. In the early chapters of the Book of Genesis, we may remember, all human beings speak the same language. Then they attempt to build a tower that will reach heaven. Because of the presumption of this project, God confuses their speech so that they no longer understand one another; and they subsequently scatter over the face of the earth to form different nations and peoples speaking different languages. On the Day of Pentecost, however, the Holy Spirit descends in a rush of wind and tongues of fire to overcome this profound alienation. Suddenly, they all hear. Suddenly, they all understand.

Such a miracle is necessary if the Church is to fulfill its mission to preach the Gospel to the ends of the earth. From the day of Pentecost until today, and indeed until the end of time, the spread of Christianity requires a continual work of translation. The truth of the Gospel is unchanging and universal, for all peoples and nations, and yet it must always be translated anew into idioms that its hearers can understand in the places where they live. This process of translation is sometimes called “enculturation,” and it applies not only to translating the Scriptures into new languages, but also to finding new ways to express the truth of the Christian faith in the musical, liturgical, artistic, architectural, and literary forms of the diverse cultures where the Gospel is preached and received. 

 

Pentecost remains an ever-present possibility for us today. The Holy Spirit descending enables us to overcome our insularity and deafness to one another. Perhaps you’ve had the experience of working hard to express yourself, to get another person to understand what you’re trying to say, and your frustration is building and you’re on the verge of giving up – and then suddenly the other person exclaims, “Oh, I get it. What you’re saying is …” And when they’ve finished summarizing back to you the point you’ve been trying to make, you can only respond, “Yes, that’s it! I couldn’t have put it better myself.”

 

As Christians we believe that such grace-filled moments are much more than human achievements reflecting effective communication skills. Rather, they signal the presence and work among us of the same Holy Spirit who enabled people of every nation to hear the apostles proclaiming the Gospel in their own native languages. It follows that one mark of the Spirit’s presence is the ability of all the Church’s members to engage in grace-filled conversation and dialogue: to speak and be heard, to listen and to understand. 

 

It gives me great joy that my first Sunday here at Christ Church should be the Day of Pentecost. In the coming year or so, we’ll be engaged together in a great task of discernment. This work entails listening carefully to one another, so that everyone knows that their voices are being heard, and their perspectives understood; and, even more importantly, listening carefully together to what the Spirit is saying to the Churches—and to this church in particular. I’m sure that I’ll have much to say to you in the coming weeks and months. Which is meet and right, given my role as your priest and pastor during this interim period. But my pledge to you this morning is that before I speak, I’ll always do my best, with God’s help, to hear and understand what you’re saying first.

 

This morning, then, we take advantage of the opportunity to call upon the Holy Spirit to manifest his presence among us, so that we may be empowered not only to speak the truth, but also to hear and understand what others are saying, in the confidence that we’re being heard and understood as well. We pray the Holy Spirit, then, to continue to form this parish community into a people with ears to hear, minds to understand, hearts to love, and wills to enact the truth that comes from God.