No one in the world can change truth. What we can and should do is seek truth and serve it when we have found it. The real conflict is within. Beyond the armies of occupation and the hectacombs of the extermination camps, two irreconcilable armies lie in the depth of every soul. And of what use are the victories of the battlefield if we are defeated in our innermost selves?
The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them.
A couple of weeks ago, Dan Clendenin of Journey with Jesus had a good post at emergent, Lovin' the Lectionary. It's not too surprising as he features a lectionary essay, what I usually call a reflection, on the week's readings. He says that he has come to love the lectionary for four reasons:
Liberation: Pastors who follow the lectionary are forever freed from the onerous burden of dreaming up a sermon topic for every Sunday. The weekly readings decide that for you. Your creative energies are thus directed toward interacting with Scripture rather than wondering how or where to start. With four readings every week, there is also flexibility that allows for one's personal inclinations.The last point is of particular note. Because so many Christian groups use some version of the Revised Common Lectionary, resources such as Textweek can exist.
Discipline: When you follow the lectionary you can't "cheat" or cut corners by gravitating toward favorite passages, avoiding unpleasant texts, or choosing Scriptures that you consider more relevant or clear. Instead, you're forced to deal with the "whole counsel of God" that, in my experience, we honor only with lip service---from John 3:16 to Hosea 13:16 and the butchering of babies and pregnant women.
Thoroughness: When you follow a three-year lectionary cycle you will read and grapple with almost the entire Bible. Imagine what a lifetime of lectionary devotion might do to our churches or to our very own souls as we work through all Scripture every three years.
Community: Most Christians in the world follow the lectionary; those who do not find themselves in the minority. I love identifying myself with the communion of saints around the world who are all studying the same Scriptures at the same time. Together we read, meditate, and pray through the rhythm of the Christian year---Advent, Christmas, Lent, Easter, Pentecost, and all the so-called "ordinary time" in-between feast days.
I write the way I do because (not though) I am a Catholic....I think that the Church is the only thing that is going to make the terrible world we are coming to endurable; the only thing that makes the Church endurable is that it is somehow the body of Christ and that on this we are fed. It seems to be a fact that you suffer as much from the Church as for it but if you believe in the divinity of Christ, you have to cherish the world at the same time that you struggle to endure it.
Why no posts or links? I've simply been too busy at work, and I have my final New Wine paper to finish. More when things slow down a bit in a week or two -- sporadic posts at best until then.
I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.
Prayer for the Grace to Age Well
When the signs of age begin to mark my body
(and still more when they touch my mind);
when the ill that is to diminish me or carry me off
strikes from without or is born within me;
when the painful moment comes
in which I suddenly awaken
to the fact that I am ill or growing old;
and above all at that last moment
when I feel I am losing hold of myself
and am absolutely passive within the hands
of the great unknown forces that have formed me;
in all those dark moments, O God,
grant that I may understand that it is you
(provided only my faith is strong enough)
who are painfully parting the fibres of my being
in order to penetrate to the very marrow
of my substance and bear me away within yourself.
You are deep, unfathomably deep.
You cannot be a shallow person; God does not make shallow people. You can, if you choose, close your own mind to the depths within you.
But you cannot be shallow.
The Comment-Spammer-Never-To-Be-Named dropped three little pieces of joy into the combox on the immediately preceeding post. Comments, of course, are still on, but you will have to type in that distorted word first.
I will not call this progress.
Those of us who work in detention ministry around here got some shocking news last Friday morning. Stanley "Nick" Barnes, senior chaplain at US Penitentiary, Atwater was killed in a head-on collision while driving home Thursday night.
For a year, while the Bureau of Prisons was searching for a Catholic chaplain, I was one of the volunteers keeping some kind of Catholic presence at USP Atwater, and its associated minimum security camp. (I no longer work there -- we concentrate our time at another facility. For security reasons, I would rather not post about any facility I currently visit.) In a federal maximum security prison, volunteers are escorted in and out of the facility, and often Nick was our escort. There are facilities where the various Christian chaplains from different denominations feud. I think that is scandalous, and unprofessional. We volunteers never had a problem with Chaplain Nick or his staff, and they were often very helpful with the difficult task of trying to put together a consistent program with volunteers. He remains an excellent example of what a prison chaplain should be: a person of deep faith who remains true to their own faith tradition by making sure that all inmates have access to pastoral care appropriate to their own individual beliefs.
May light perpetual shine on him, O Lord, and bring comfort to his family.
When they work well, new words like spime are like new brooms. They're good for getting rid of the old words that have turned into dust. New words can sound silly or dangerous, like empty buzzwords, gobbledygook, hype, but this should be understood as the innate nature of language in fast-changing circumstances. Hype is a system-call on your attention. If hype clearly aimed straight at your wallet, you are right to worry. But hype is only bad for you if you drink it unthinkingly, by the barrel and case. If you soberly track its development, hype is very revealing. Even mistaken and obscurantist hype shows that people are stupid and trying to hide something, which are always good things to know.
In politics, the opposite of hype is political reality. Political hype is BS, it's a campaign speech, it's meant to deceive the listener. But in technology, the opposite of hype is not the truth. The opposite of hype in technology is argot. It's techno-jargon. Argot is not reality, jargon is not the truth. Argot is a super-specialized geek cult language that has no traction in the real world. Argot is the deliberately hermetic language of a small knowledge clique. A small clique likely doesn't have enough people in it to successfully name its own inventions and practices, especially when those inventions and practices emerge from their lab and spread widely throughout a general population. It takes a whole lot of people to manage a popular language. If you know how to watch you can see them at work. You can even just join right in.
address at Emerging Tech Conference, 2006
May I say just a word to those of you who are struggling against this evil. Always be sure that you struggle with Christian methods and Christian weapons. Never succumb to the temptation of becoming bitter. As you press on for justice, be sure to move with dignity and discipline, using only the weapon of love. Let no man pull you so low as to hate him. Always avoid violence. If you succumb to the temptation of using violence in your struggle, unborn generations will be the recipients of a long and desolate night of bitterness, and your chief legacy to the future will be an endless reign of meaningless chaos.
In your struggle for justice, let your oppressor know that you are not attempting to defeat or humiliate him, or even to pay him back for injustices that he has heaped upon you. Let him know that you are merely seeking justice for him as well as yourself. Let him know that the festering sore of segregation debilitates the white man as well as the Negro. With this attitude you will be able to keep your struggle on high Christian standards.
from Paul's Letter to American Christians, delivered November, 4, 1956 (with thanks to Natala)
Don't beware the Ides of March, beware the links:
Well, it finally happened. I got my first piece of comment spam. It had to be a particularly stupid bot to post here, considering the low traffic this blog gets. I looked at it for a minute, considering it in the same light as the first scratch on a new car. Then I deleted it.
The lessons for the second Sunday in Lent are:
After six days Jesus took Peter, James, and John and led them up a high mountain apart by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no fuller on earth could bleach them. Then Elijah appeared to them along with Moses, and they were conversing with Jesus.For just a moment, on top of this mountain, the reality of just who Jesus is becomes visible. We again, just as at Jesus's baptism, hear the Father declare Jesus his son. By appearing with both Elijah and Moses, Jesus is revealed truly as the anointed one of God, the Messiah. And the change in appearance foreshadows the change that will come with his resurrection and ascention.
Then Peter said to Jesus in reply, "Rabbi, it is good that we are here! Let us make three tents: one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah." He hardly knew what to say, they were so terrified. Then a cloud came, casting a shadow over them; 4 then from the cloud came a voice, "This is my beloved Son. Listen to him."
Suddenly, looking around, they no longer saw anyone but Jesus alone with them.
It is ourselves that we must spread under Christ's feet, not coats or lifeless branches or shoots of trees, matter which wastes away and delights the eye only for a few brief hours. But we have clothed ourselves with Christ's grace, with the whole Christ - "for as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ" - so let us spread ourselves like coats under his feet.
Welcome, new arrivals from Open Book! You're just in time for one of the local traditions - links:
I am behind on everything, particularly posting, but I could not pass up this SFGate story. As some know, I am a detention ministry volunteer at a nearby California state prison. This story points out some key questions about how we both need to and choose to treat those convicted of crimes. Some try to see them as monsters, some as victims and some as heroes in stories like this. It's not that simple, easy, or risk free for anyone involved.
Fair warning -- this is a long one, because I am including some big sections of stories you need to read. This morning, SF Chronicle staff writer Demien Bulwa recounts the most recent event in this story:
James Tramel awakened Sunday in a prison cell. He went to sleep Sunday night in the rectory of a church he will help lead.What he did
It was a day of transformation for Tramel, 38, who is believed to be the first prison inmate ordained as an Episcopal priest. He was convicted more than 20 years ago of murdering a homeless man in a park.
In 1985, Tramel and David Kurtzman, both 17, were students at Northwestern Preparatory School, a school that sent many graduates on to the military academies. Tramel was the son of a former Green Beret and had been provisionally accepted at the Air Force Academy. Kurtzman was an Eagle Scout who aimed to attend the U.S. Naval Academy.I remember this case -- it got a lot of coverage at the time, and became an iconic event for those concerned about violence against the homeless. Buttons displaing Michael Stephenson's last words, "No, my friend, no", were worn by many in the Santa Barbara area as a protest against such crimes.
One August night, members of a Latino gang had gotten into a confrontation with some of their classmates. The next night, Tramel and Kurtzman led a group that went out looking for the gang. According to his own account, Tramel egged on his friends, instructing them in martial arts moves. When Kurtzman wanted to bring along the 6-inch folding military knife he would sharpen during idle moments in the dorm, Tramel readily agreed.
After hours on the prowl, the band of avenging angels came down to just Tramel and Kurtzman, clad all in black.
They found no gang members, but returning to school for their 1 a.m. curfew, they cut through Alameda Park, where music wafted from a radio beside a man bunking down in the gazebo.
For a brief time, the pair chatted with him. The homeless man was Michael Stephenson, 29. He was not Latino. Tucked inside his sleeping bag, he was anything but hostile. As Tramel leaned against a railing with his back to Stephenson, they talked about the cold weather.
"Several seconds later, I heard Michael say, 'No, my friend,' and then I heard what sounded like coughing," Tramel wrote in an account for his 2005 parole hearing.
"When I turned around, Michael was on his hands and knees, and Kurtzman was leaning over him. Then Michael suddenly collapsed onto his side, I saw the knife in Kurtzman's hand, and before I could say or do anything, I saw Kurtzman cut Michael's throat. My body froze in horror, and I gasped, 'Dave, stop!' Kurtzman looked up at me with a crazed look in his eyes, and he was trembling."
Kurtzman gave an account at his trial that mirrored Tramel's. Earlier, he told investigators that killing Stephenson was like slaughtering a pig. Kurtzman stabbed him 17 times.
Back at the dorm, the two swore their pals to secrecy, and Tramel promised a skeptic $50 if their story turned out to be a hoax. Their disbelieving friends visited the park later that morning and called police.
Tramel's first trial ended in a hung jury. He was convicted of second-degree murder in the second. Both he and Kurtzman received sentences of 15 years to life.
"The prosecutor made a good analogy at my trial," he told the parole board in October. "Kurtzman was a gun that I had loaded and cocked…. That makes me culpable for what Kurtzman did; that makes me responsible for Michael's death."
Start your weekend out right with links:
The world is not getting any more normal, apparently . . .
I am proud to report that I have been recognized as an Amateur Catholic. The proper logo will appear on the right. Yep, I'm proud to be on the second string . . .
The Bible is essentially an open, artistic, imaginative narrative of God’s staggering care for the world, a narrative that will feed and nurture into obedience that builds community precisely by respect for the liberty of the Christian man or woman.
Strugging to the surface, more links:
A special link: Amy is now blogging from Rome, and all of it is worth reading. For example there is this post busting some myths about Rome.
Bonhoeffer begins his look at the call to be a disciple by examining a number of the stories of Jesus' early ministry recorded in the Gospels. He first points out the peremptory nature of that call — that in each case there is no "explanation" as to why someone responds toJesus's call. The call asks for a complete and immediatecommitmentt simply to follow. It is not a matter of calculation or evaluation but of obedience personally to Jesus himself.
While it would be rather conventional to say that such obedience is a result of belief, Bonhoeffer asserts that the converse is true as well. Neither is prior to the other: only he who believes is obedient, and only he who is obedient believes.
Since then we cannot adequately speak of obedience as the consequence of faith, and since we must never forget the indissolubleunity off the two, we must place the one proposition that only he who believes is obedient alongside the other, that only he who is obedient believes. In the one case faith is the condition of obedience, and in the other obedience is the condition of faith. In exactly the same way in which obedience is called the consequence of faith, it must also be called the presupposition of faith.Nothing easy about this, but I can understand it from my own life. There have been changes to my internal spiritual life that have lead to changes in behavior, to reconsidering decisions made and directions aimed at. But just as, or perhaps more often, it is the change in behavior, the decision to obey as best I understood in some area of my life, that has changed me internally and spiritually. It has never been a matter of becoming perfect, but of being willing to take the one step visible to me, then stepping out. I have been longer on belief than obedience, and Bonhoeffer points out that may not be really believing at all.
Only the obedient believe. If we believe we must follow a concrete command. Without this preliminary step of obedience, our faith will only be pious humbug, and lead us to the grace which is not costly. Everything depends on the first step. It has a unique quality of its own. The first step of obedience makes Peter leave his nets, and later get out of the ship. It calls upon the young man to leave his riches. Only this new existence, created through obedience, can make faith possible. (pp. 69-70)
The lessons for the first Sunday in Lent are:
In these first Lenten Sunday lessons, the key ideas are covenant, baptism, kingdom -- ideas that really do go together, especially as we learn to read Scripture as a single (but complicated) story. Persons were brought into the original covenant that God made with Israel by birth, or marriage, and only rarely by conversion. Baptism by itself was not all that new, but it became a new sign for the restoration of covenant relationship, the establishment of a new covenant that would be the basis for the renewed reign of God.
If I remember correctly, archaeologists have found suzerainty covenants in ancient documents. These contracts between a ruler and a vassal nation set out, in a form quite similar in some ways to the ten commandments in Exodus, the responsibilities of the vassals toward the ruler, or suzerain, and the commitment by the ruler to protect the vassal city or country. In creating the covenant with Israel, God chose to use a familiar legal structure to describe this relationship. John the Baptist called those already under the original covenant back to their responsibilities, and God's willingness to enter into relationship with Israel. In declaring the coming of the kingdom of God, Jesus reveals that this relationship is entering a new phase, and that, as foretold, it is to be with the whole world.
Just some notes, in a week where I have let myself get too busy. Ah well, let's try for something better this next week.
Monday, all day long, and if we aren't lucky, well into tomorow"
A few fast tech notes -- things aren't quite finished yet.
Onward to the links:
So, how did the church in Germany (and many other Christians as well) go off the tracks so badly? Bonhoeffer says that one reason was making grace "the data for our calculations" instead of the sum:
At the end of a life spent in the pursuit of knowledge Faust has to confess:Bonhoeffer is a theologian himself — he is unlikely to think proper theology a minor thing. But there is a key difference between knowing about Jesus, even in a most detailed way, and following him. Bonhoeffer states that while the church he belongs to is quite orthodox, he cannot be sure if it is still following Jesus. There is a point in the Christian life where experience does trump knowledge. And this points us to the basis of what valid Christian religious experience is. It must be rooted in discipleship, in obedience to God.
"I now do see that we can nothing know"
That is the answer to a sum, it is the outcome of a long experience. But as Kierkegaard observed, it is quite a different thing when a freshman comes up to the university and uses the same sentiment to justify his own indolence. As the answer to a sum it is perfectly true, but as the initial data it is a piece of self-deception. For acquired knowledge cannot be divorced from the experience in which it is acquired. The only man who has the right to say that he is justified by grace alone is the man who has left all to follow Christ. Such a man knows that the call to discipleship is a gift of grace, and that the call is inseparable from the grace. But those who try to use this grace as a dispensation from following Christ are simply deceiving themselves.(p.55)
Links without meat, for a Lenten Friday
The first chapter of The Cost of Discipleship is it's best known, "Cheap Grace". To Bonhoeffer, the cause of the church's ills in Germany, if not everywhere is that while we can do nothing to earn or buy God's favor and grace, that grace is not without cost. If grace alone does everything, everything can remain as it is, we can live just like the rest of the world. It is a grace that is cheap instead of costly, and justifies sin instead of the sinner.
Cheap grace isIt would be possible for a Catholic to be a little snarky at this point. (I originally wrote "easy" instead of "possible", but no comment can be made easily against such words, from such a speaker.) Such a comment would include some reference to the idea that works really are important after all. But that would be in error -- this is not a matter of faith vs. works. It is a matter, as we shall see, of who is in charge of your life, you or God? And it is clear that there is no shortage of cheap grace in the lives of many Catholics. This particularly includes myself.
the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance,
baptism without church discipline,
Communion without confession,
absolution without personal confession.
Cheap grace is
grace without discipleship,
grace without the Cross,
grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.
Costly grace is the treasure hidden in the field; for the sake of it a man will go and sell all that he has. It is the pearl of great price to buy which the merchant will sell all his goods. It is the kingly rule of Christ, for whose sake a man will pluck out the eye that causes him to stumble, it is the call of Jesus Christ at which the disciple leaves his nets and follows him
Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives man his only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner. Above all it is costly because it cost God the life of his Son: "ye were bought at a price," and what has cost God much cannot be cheap for us. Above all it is grace because God did not reckon his Son too dear a price to pay for our life, but delivered him up for us. Costly grace is the Incarnation of God. (pp. 47-48, reformatting mine)
It may be Lent, but you still get links:
Just getting started, this first day of Lent, with my Lenten reading, The Cost of Discipleship (Nachfolge, auf Deutsch) by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. (And yes, I am reading it in translation — even when I lived in Wiesbaden my German was never up to this.) Just to start off, I think that there are a couple of points to consider.
Bonhoeffer was a Lutheran pastor and theologian in Germany between the two World Wars. Then, as well as now, both the Lutheran and Catholic Churches recieve the bulk of the so called church tax collected by the state. Bonhoeffer was dealing with an established church facing Hitler. In 1933, the Nazi government started to alter or combine many institutions, in order to take control of them. One of them was the so-called Protestant Reich Church, which was intended to swallow up all non-Catholic Christians. (The Nazi Party was always much more explicitly anti-Catholic, but many Nazi's tried to keep their ties to churches where they could, if these churches could be cleansed of so-called "foreign" or "non-ayran" elements.) Bonhoeffer was a leader in the Confessing Church movement, that attempted to keep an independent Protestant church alive in Germany. As I will bring up some other time, his oppostion to the Nazism took other forms as well. But it is true that the issue of how a Christian could work out the sometimes competing calls of Scripture and the institutional church, especially an established one. His answer was radical discipleship:
When the Bible speaks of following Jesus, it is proclaiming a discipleship which will liberate mankind from man-made dogmas, from every burden and opression, from every anxiety and torture that afflicts the conscience. If they follow Jesus, men escape from the hard yoke of their own laws, and submit to the kindly yoke of Jesus Christ. But does this mean that we ignore the seriousness of the demands? Far from it. We can only achieve perfect liberty and enjoy fellowship with Jesus when his command, his call to absolute discipleship, is appreciated in its entirety. Only the man who follows the command of Jesus single-mindedly, and unresistingly lets his yoke rest upon him, finds his burden easy, and under its gentle pressure receives the power to persevere in the right way. The command of Jesus is hard, unutterably hard, to those who try to resist it. But for those who willingly submit, the yoke is easy and the burden is light. "His commandments are not grievous" (1 John 5:3). The commandment of Jesus is not some sort of spiritual shock treatment. Jesus asks nothing of us whithout giving us the strength to perform it. His commandment never seeks to destroy life, but to foster, strengthen, and heal it.The nature of true discipleship is a fundamental topic of this book, which makes it perfect for Lent, when we try to return to a closer relationship with Jesus.
Fear nothing and never be afraid; and don’t fret. If only your penitence fail not, God will forgive all. There is no sin, and there can be no sin on all the earth, which the Lord will not forgive to the truly repentant! Man cannot commit a sin so great as to exhaust the infinite love of God. Can there be a sin that would exceed the love of God?the character Father Zossima to a penitent in Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov
Think only of repentance, continual repentance, but dismiss fear altogether. Believe that God loves you as you cannot conceive; that he loves you with your sin, in your sin. It has been said of old that over one repentant sinner there is more joy in heaven than over ten righteous men.
Now go, and fear not. Be not bitter against men. Be not angry if you are wronged. Forgive the dead man in your heart what wrong he did you. Be reconciled with him in truth. If you are penitent, you love. And if you love, you are of God. All things are atoned for, all things are saved by love.
If I, a sinner even as you are, am tender with you and have pity on you, how much more will God. Love is such a priceless treasure that you can redeem the whole world by it, and expiate not only your own sins but the sins of others.
