Burning the Scroll

In December 604 B.C., Jeremiah was ordered by the Lord to write down all his prophecies on a scroll. The prophecies included many threats against the nation of Judah and its rulers and people, which would be enacted if they did not repent of their rebellious ways. Jeremiah, prevented from entering the Temple, sent his secretary Baruch to read the scroll to the people. The populace had gathered in the Temple for a fast. When they heard what Jeremiah had written, certain officials became interested and asked that the scroll be read in their presence too.

When Baruch complied, these officials took the words seriously and said that the king must be informed. Knowing that the king would not welcome the prophecies, they suggested that Baruch and Jeremiah go into hiding. The scroll was then taken into the king’s presence and read to him by a servant named Jehudi.

Since it was winter, there was a brazier with fire in it to heat the apartments. “Each time Jehudi had read three or four columns, the king cut them off with a scribe’s knife and threw them into the fire in the brazier until the whole of the scroll had been burned in the brazier fire” (Jeremiah 36:23). The king then ordered the arrest of Jeremiah and Baruch, but they had been hidden. The Lord ordered Jeremiah to write the scroll over again; it is likely that what he wrote now comprises the bulk of his prophecies that we find in the Bible. As we know, the king and his successor did not repent, and the threats in the prophecies of Jeremiah were fulfilled.

How often it has been the case that people refuse to hear or heed the word of God proclaimed to them. In Scripture we see it and in the history of the Church. It is very easy to assert that this pattern is showing itself again in the Episcopal Church and Anglican Communion today—which I think is true. Most of the leadership in the Episcopal Church and beyond is effectually “burning the scroll” by resisting and denying and trying to silence the authoritative word of God as received by the faithful from the earliest days of our profession. They continue to resist, and the road of calamity continues to be the main highway.

I think, however, there is great danger in stopping with such an indictment. Pointing the finger at others, even when there is good reason to do so, does not excuse the finger-pointers from being “scroll burners” themselves.

Unlike the king of Judah in 604 B.C., I believe that most of today’s “scroll burning” leadership does have at least a little something of value to contribute to understanding and living the Gospel. And it is a vital part of discipleship regularly and frequently to ask, “Where am I myself resisting the word of God? What do I not want to hear?”

I expect that, except for the great saints, every age, every individual Christian, has a blind spot somewhere in Christian profession. Other ages were cruel; others were indifferent to the suffering of the impoverished; others were complacent or lethargic. In each case those who believed themselves to be faithful could and did provide good reason for believing that their “blind spot” was consistent with the Gospel.

Pointing the finger, in love, is an important part of the Gospel, i.e. taking the speck out of a brother’s eye. We must not forget, ever, that taking the beam out of our own eye is even more important. These are the very words of Jesus. (See Matthew 7:3 and Luke 6:42.)

I suppose that God knows that fallen people, even the faithful, are prone to these blind spots, and that they plague our discipleship. I imagine that he has allowed for them, also, in the course of salvation history. May he open the eyes and hearts of today’s “scroll burners”; may he open my eyes and heart wherever that needs to be done.

“I Have Been Young And Now I Am Old”

When I was a child, my grandparents lived a few miles from my family’s home. We visited them frequently. I recall a small, white, wooden house with a large pepper tree in front, which I occasionally climbed. There were many such houses in the neighborhood, nestled under the shadows of old trees. The rooms inside the house were small, even to the eyes of a child under ten years of age. There was a cozy fireplace in the living room, with a burgundy-colored wing chair in front, and an old, patterned sofa to one side. The kitchen had a worn linoleum floor, and the stove stood on cast iron legs. There was a carved table in the bedroom; a collection of tiny bottles, probably for perfume, was arranged on a lace covering, spread over the table. Behind the house and separate from it was a one-car garage. A gravel driveway led to it from the street.

My grandparents moved from the house in 1958, and as years passed I had not been back to see it. Thirty-five years later, I unearthed the address of the house and went to search for it. Although the street had been widened and its name had been changed, the site of the house was not difficult to find. One would never have guessed that there had been such a quaint and peaceful neighborhood in the area, for the entire block had become a wrecking yard. There were no houses or trees for hundreds of yards. The wrecking yard was surrounded by a high fence, made partly of corrugated iron and partly of cinder block marked in places with graffiti, with gates of chain-link fence filled in with slats. Incongruously, there was an old-fashioned mailbox on a square post jammed into the three inches of earth between the cement sidewalk and the cinder block fence. The mailbox bore my grandparents’ address.

A sense of loss coursed through me, of course, and I remembered again my family’s visits in that quiet place in a much simpler and slower age. My earliest memories of my grandparents stem from those years, when I came to know those old people who had seen the turn of the twentieth century. In the early 1970s, their ashes were buried in a cemetery a few miles to the south of their old homesite.

Two days ago I turned sixty. Am I old now? On that day, as I was praying the psalms, I read, “I have been young and now I am old” (Psalm 37:26a). I was sitting in that same burgundy-colored wing chair which I inherited after my grandparents and then my mother died. It still has its original covering, and the cloth is only a little faded. Nearby is an old wrought iron stool that, long ago, I covered with a remnant of the patterned cloth that had been on my grandparents’ sofa.

From the moment we are conceived, we move toward death, and our path is marked by many lesser deaths and griefs. We live in a world that we often perceive to be indifferent and sometimes even hostile, full of pain and sorrow, heavy with loss and disappointment and frustration. Tragic headlines reveal the appalling extent of our world’s suffering in numbers that numb us. Our years extend and our memories preserve this burden of sorrow, even as we ourselves age and weaken and suffer continuing loss.

But still we love, look for joy and satisfaction in life, and hope in unseen things. It seems most illogical to do so. If we look only at this world, the evidence of decay and wrong is overwhelming: all things die, and human greed, cruelty, and indifference seem to continue unchecked. But although some individuals despair, and a few despair completely, our race continues to hope. Taylor Caldwell, in her great novel Great Lion of God about the life of Saint Paul, referred to this redemptive, never-quite-defeated side of humanity, when she wrote of “the alleged good that lay, like a pearl, in the slimy musculature of a bestial organism”. George MacDonald used even more poetic imagery when he said, “There is glory and might in the body, this vital evanescence, this slow glacierlike flow of aging mortality and revealing matter, this ever-uptossed rainbow of tangible humanity.”

The perfect beauty and eternal joy promised by God can seem as wonderful—and ephemeral—as a rainbow in the face of the unrelenting iron of mortality. Yet a rainbow, comprised of water and sunlight, is made up of the elements that age and corrode iron over time, until it is fully dissolved and can even become nourishment in soil. True love endures against mortality. “Our present perishable nature must put on imperishability and this mortal nature must put on immortality” (1 Corinthians 15:53). Am I old now? It doesn’t matter. “There are three things that last: faith, hope, and love” (1 Corinthians 13:13). And I have all three.

Onward, Christian Soldiers

In January 2007 I called for the formation of a Discernment Committee at Blessed Sacrament parish to consider our place in the Episcopal Church during this time of the Anglican crisis and realignment. After sixteen months, that Committee made a preliminary recommendation to the Vestry. The recommendation was also presented to the parish on Sunday, May 25, in a sermon for our Feast of Title, Corpus Christi. The text of the sermon follows, and the audio of the sermon can be found here. It is 32 minutes long. Since I preach without notes, the sermon as preached will not follow the text very precisely. After the sermon was preached, I took my rough notes and turned them into the following text.

In the Name of God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

One thing I learned on sabbatical last year is that God has always been present in my life, to guide me when I was uncertain, protect me when I was under attack, forgive and renew me when I had turned away from him, empower me when I was called to lead, and reveal to me what I needed to know in order to be effective in my calling.

He has done the same for this parish for as long as I have been here. His providence has blessed us far beyond what any of us could have guessed even ten years ago, much less thirty years ago when our complete membership, including children, was much less than a third of what it is now.

Today we celebrate Corpus Christi, the festival of the Blessed Sacrament to which this parish is dedicated. We are probably in better shape now than at any other time in our history. We have many people who are committed to the work of the kingdom of God and to spiritual maturity. We have many children, many young families, and an astonishing eight people preparing for ordination. I am constantly grateful to God for calling me to be Rector of such a fantastic parish, populated with an amazing number of dedicated and gifted Christian people.

I will begin this sermon with the report and recommendation of the Discernment Committee, for I know that many are anxious about that—especially those who went through the turmoil of a dividing parish thirty years ago. As I am sure most of you know, the Episcopal Church has been in crisis for three or four decades, and the intensity of the crisis has been rapidly escalating over the past few years and now affects the entire worldwide Anglican Communion. As former Senior Warden Robert Bell said over a year ago at the Annual Meeting, “There is a storm coming, and we cannot ignore it.” At that time I called for the formation of a Discernment Committee to help us see what the best course for our parish might be in this time of the Anglican crisis.

WHAT THE REPORT SAYS

The Discernment Committee has been working for a year and four months, doing very careful and considered work in an extremely complex situation in order to make a recommendation to the Vestry. The Vestry has now received two documents: my personal report on the background of the current situation after more than 35 years of contending for the Faith, and the Discernment Committee’s Preliminary Report and Recommendation. Together these two documents comprise twenty-nine pages. The two documents provide observations on our current crisis in the worldwide Anglican Communion and how that crisis affects us. There is also an Executive Summary in three pages. There is also a summary of everything in nine sentences. In addition, the Discernment Committee has put up a website with extensive documentation.

Here is the recommendation. I’ll put that to you first so you will know what is before the Vestry. The report and recommendation were accepted last Sunday by consensus but are now under prayerful consideration before anticipated final acceptance in June. Yet the Vestry is of one mind sufficiently now to begin to act on the recommendation.

The recommendation has four points:

The first point asks the Vestry to recommit the parish to Catholicity, Education, and Prayer—to make an unqualified and strong public commitment to the Catholic Faith, as received by and practiced within Anglicanism and consistent with the faith and practice of the undivided Church, without compromise of revealed truth or dilution of godly charity regardless of any pressure to conform to the precepts of the Episcopal Church wherever the Church violates that faith.

The Committee further asks the Vestry, on behalf of the people of the parish, publicly and emphatically to disavow the stances and practices the Episcopal Church has taken that violate Anglican consensus and orthodox Christianity, and affirm our commitment to the Anglican way and membership in the Anglican Communion wherever it is faithful to Scriptural and creedal Christianity.

The Committee also recommends that a variety of programs and materials be made available in an effort to educate the parish regarding the issues.

The Committee further recommends that there be a devotional prayer cycle for the parish in which intercession is offered daily that the Holy Spirit will move within the leadership of the Episcopal Church. That prayer cycle will be inaugurated today.

The second point asks the Vestry to request Delegated Episcopal Pastoral Oversight (DEPO)—that is, a relationship with another bishop whose convictions we recognize as in line with creedal Christian belief and worldwide Anglicanism. We would call upon this bishop in times when we have candidates for confirmation and ordination, for the purpose of conducting teaching missions, and when the time comes that we need to select a new rector. Having a DEPO bishop would strengthen our effort to evangelize to Christ in the Anglican tradition and would help to overcome the reluctance of many parishioners and potential members to be identified with the Episcopal Church.

The third point recommends full support for our vocationers to ordination

It has become clear that it is very difficult for our vocationers to get through the ordination process in the Diocese of Los Angeles for reasons that do not satisfy me or the Discernment Committee. There are other options, however, such as going through a DEPO bishop. The Committee therefore recommends that the Vestry support each vocationer regardless of whichever path that vocationer may choose—that is, if we are convinced that an individual has a call to ordination, the Vestry will do everything it can to ensure that the vocationer will be ordained.

The fourth point calls for restricting or redirecting our Mission Share Fund

The Discernment Committee recommends that the Vestry redirect the bulk of our Mission Share Fund, the money we give to the diocese, toward missionary and outreach programs that can be gladly supported by all of our membership. Recognizing that the diocese does provide us with many benefits, blessings, and support, the Vestry will give a percentage or a fixed amount of our Mission Share Fund to the Diocese.

Please be aware that the recommendations for DEPO and the redirection of our Mission Share Fund are options that Bishop Bruno has already offered to us at a meeting the Vestry had with him in August 2006; he took the initiative in these matters.

Finally, this is a preliminary report because the Discernment Committee will remain in place to monitor emerging developments within the Anglican Communion and keep the Vestry informed.

WHAT THE RECOMMENDATION MEANS

Who are we? That is, what is this parish? What do we stand for? To what are we committed? Our Statement of Vision says that we were founded as an Anglo-Catholic parish and that we intend to stay that way. What Anglo-Catholicism is may have different definitions for different people. It is proper to have a reminder of the genuine definition of who we are and what we stand for.

One of the great claims of the early Anglo-Catholics, now virtually undisputed, is that the Anglican Church is in direct continuity with the pre-Reformation Church in England—that the Catholic faith of the Western Church before the Reformation is the Faith of Anglicanism—at its best. It is the Faith that built the cathedrals of England, with lofty spires that drew the faithful eye to heaven, whose foundations were placed in the heart of the city, and whose parish churches were central to English village life. It is the Faith that the saints depicted in stained glass were the companions of the faithful in the fields and shops and houses of the people. It is the Faith that the land once known as “Mary’s Dowry” is still that land. It is the Faith that its liturgies were closer to the apostolic ideal and the practice of the early Church and the pastoral and monastic life of the Celts and Angles than the established Church governed by Parliament in the post-Reformation era. It is the Faith that this conviction had never been entirely lost in the Anglican Church. It is the Faith that that Church is THE Catholic Church of England, whose heritage went out in the 19^th century through the British Empire to cover the world. It is the Faith that the whole Christian Faith can be found and lived in Anglicanism—evangelical and Catholic, Spirit-filled and life-changing.

That is the claim of this parish from its foundation 51 years, seven months, and eighteen days ago, of which I became Rector, and therefore steward, thirty years ago this coming October.

We recognize that there are weaknesses in the Anglican Way. Perhaps the greatest weakness is that there is no machinery within Anglicanism by which binding decisions can be made for the entire Communion. We are in a state similar to the time in the American colonies when independence had been won from England but before the formation of a central government: a bunch of independent states loosely connected by a common heritage and history and a shared hope. There are processes being developed right now within Anglicanism to address that weakness—though, born of crisis, it will probably take a long time for things to settle down.

Some may say, “Well, if I don’t like the way things are going, I’ll just hunker down in my own comfortable church. As long as nothing changes much here, it won’t bother me.” And others may say, “Well, if I don’t like the way things are going, I’ll just change churches.” NO! Such an attitude does not describe the Church which is the Body of Christ, the Church of the New Testament, although it also had its problems. Consider rebellious and immoral Corinth, wavering Galatia, the stern traditionalists of Jerusalem, the backsliding group to whom the letter to Hebrews was addressed, unreliable Sardis, worldly Laodicea, overtolerant Pergamum, slacking Ephesus—in all of these difficulties, nobody quit. They were one family.

Every one of these churches was beleaguered, and most of them by spiritual attackers; where there were human attackers, Paul did not hold back in his condemnation. We cannot do them same that Paul did, or in the same way, but what does cross all cultures and times is the uncompromising adherence to the received faith. A line in the first point of the Discernment Committee’s recommendation says that this parish should live “Without compromise of revealed truth or dilution of godly charity.”

Just ten days ago I hosted a meeting of the local priests of the Society of the Holy Cross, the SSC (for its Latin name Societas Sanctae Crucis). This is a society of Anglo-Catholic priests founded 153 years ago in the slums of London at a time when they were assailed and sometimes even assaulted for their convictions. The SSC was founded 153 years ago in London as a society of priests dedicated to proclaiming and defending the Catholic faith within Anglicanism in a time when they were resisted and persecuted for doing so. Little has changed.

One of our members is about 90 years old and suffers from Parkinson’s Disease. As we left the sanctuary to go to the hall for lunch, I helped this priest—Father Don Irish—to come down the steps, grasp his walker, and go through the double doors. He shook and trembled as he came down the steps holding on to my elbow. When he came safely to his walker, I moved ahead and opened the doors and held them for him. It took him at least a minute to move from the center aisle through the doors. As he passed the threshold, he looked at me with a wry smile and said, “Onward Christian soldiers!” Ah, here is a true image of the Church, though not often seen today. You don’t give up!!

We have all but lost the very powerful fact that the Christian faith is a martial faith. The martial images of the New Testament are rife: “Contend for the faith once delivered…” (Jude 3). “We are more than conquerors…” (Romans 8:37). There are many other verses that can be quoted.

The motto of the SSC is, “No desertion, no surrender.” In most ages and places of the Church, the Church has been challenged and opposed. We must recognize or remember that Christian discipleship in this world is a martial enterprise. The term “Church militant” was coined several hundred years ago. The Church is an army.

Now be very clear that the enemy is not other human beings who believe differently from what we believe and who have fallen far from the faith once delivered to the saints; our foes are “not flesh and blood but the powers of this dark world and the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms” (Ephesians 6:12). And they have been conquered. Jesus said, “In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world” (John 16:33).

The Anglican Communion is our home—to be defended, protected, and preserved. The very term “God wins” that I have used many times over the years implies that we are engaged in a battle. More than that, we are engaged in a battle that has already been won.

It is battle that makes saints. “Safety first” is NOT a Christian virtue. Where are the warriors today? There are some, but not many. I am determined that we will be among them. By so doing, we will be more like Jesus. In the Incarnation, like the Real Presence in the elements of Communion, the divine enters into the mortal and the decaying to hallow and redeem. This is our calling. This is a great time for Christian discipleship, not a time for softness. It is time for the faithful of this generation to defend the Faith that they hold.

This is the meaning of Church and community and family. It is not “me first” or “safety first” or “feed me”, but rather, “Whom shall I send and who will go for us? Here am I, send me” (Isaiah 6:8).

In the same passage where Paul teaches that our enemies are not flesh and blood but the powers of this dark world, he commands the followers of Jesus to “Put on the full armor of God” (Ephesians 6) and commands them to “Stand, stand, stand”, wearing the belt of truth, holding shield of faith, wielding the sword of the Spirit, shod with the shoes of the Gospel of peace, and wearing the helmet of salvation. As has often been pointed out, there is no armor in the back.

Consider those who are called the Greatest Generation—the greatest generation that this country has ever produced. They lived through the Depression, and in huge numbers they signed up for military service after their country was attacked in Pearl Harbor. They showed a mass response to hostility not seen and sustained since those times—not in our country, and not in our Church. Those of that generation are in their eighties now, and some of them are in this church right now. They show us what the response should be when one’s home is attacked.

Consider Samson who lifted the jawbone of an ass when he was attacked by a thousand enemy soldiers. Look at the Church—it is to be an army with flying banners and led by the sound of a trumpet.

WHAT YOU CAN DO

Recognize the nature of the Catholic Church—it is a lot more than moving liturgy, great music, good teaching, a sense of history, Word and Sacrament, etc. This is a family, not a cafeteria. You do not get to pick and choose. That’s what “Catholic” means—often translated “universal”, it really means “the whole thing”. Lots of things are universal that aren’t Catholic. “Catholic” means “the whole thing”. When you follow Jesus in the Catholic faith, you do not get to have it your way. You don’t get to pick what you like and leave behind the parts that you don’t like or find hard; you get everything. We are not a cafeteria, we are a banquet, and like many parents of a half century ago, when you sit at table you will be told to clean your plate. You will not be coddled, but you will be loved instead. You will not merely be tolerated, you will be accepted instead. What you see here is not just a parish; you see worldwide Anglicanism and more than that. You see the Catholic faith, the whole faith of all time, lived out in the best of Anglican tradition.

The Blessed Sacrament—Corpus Christi, the Body of Christ—is a form of the Incarnation: Jesus came into a wicked world filled with enemies, just as he makes his Sacramental home in wafers of unleavened bread and wine. He was born in a stable and laid in an animals’ feeding trough. He came in to do battle and win it (Philippians 2:6-11). He came not for his own safety, but for our deliverance. And that means battle.

You don’t leave because you don’t like it; you stay because you don’t like it. You fight when you are attacked. You defend your home. Though there are indeed times to withdraw or separate, they are rare and always to be deplored, like a divorce or an amputation. Even when told to leave Sodom and Gomorra, Lot had to be forced. There are times to withdraw, but there are never times to give up.

In my opinion, many have left over thirty years and more to protect themselves more than to defend the faith. But God will use even that. Look at Gideon: he began with 32,000 soldiers (Judges 7:3), reduced by God to 300—a little less than 1% of what he started with (Judges 7:6). Why? Because God had said, “…lest Israel vaunt itself against me and say, ‘My own power brought me the victory’” (Judges 7:2). God always wins, and we are always called to remember that.

Some who have been here in this parish for a long time, many decades, may be too complacent, with a vision that needs bolstering. You remember the griefs of thirty years ago, when the voice of discouragement won the day and this parish split. Things now are much worse than that time, but you do not hear the voice of discouragement from me. This is the time when saints are made—it is a time for strength, not softness. The Christian faith is always a thing of joy, regardless of circumstances. Do not take your faith and your place for granted. They are now besieged. This is a time to work, learn, give, pray, and be mentors.

Others of you are new—new to this parish and new to Anglicanism. You come from other traditions with inadequate theologies of what it means to be “church”. Again, the Church is not a cafeteria, but a family. As today’s lesson says, “We, who are many, are one body, for we all partake of the one loaf.” We want you to be part of us. We see your faces week by week but we don’t know your names. Some of you have waited a long time to let us know who you are. God will tell you when, but I suspect that many of you have been on the edges too long. I have pursued some of you maybe even to the point of rudeness, but it is because it is important to me and to this parish that you know that you are wanted and loved in this family. Decide where you are going to make your home. Give us your contact information—we are your family, not your waiters. Do not think of this parish as “them”. If you have been coming here for some time and if you like what you find and if you are nourished in Christ, then this parish is “us”.

The dedication of our committed college students and other young people has transformed this parish, transformed me, and brought encouragement and deep gratification to those who are older. Over the past eight years probably well over 300 college students have passed through our doors. Many of them have chosen to stay after graduation and raise families—they chose to stay here mostly because of this church. We are filled with young people, and we are blessed with an astonishing number of people seeking to be ordained. It is a time when God is not only blessing us, but preparing a new generation of believers, many of whom will be leaders. This is a time of encouragement, not anxiety.

To be specific, for all

Rededicate to the fullness of faith and this parish—because the first thing to do when one is called to battle is to dedicate yourself to holiness.

Become educated—read our website and our reports, attend the programs and classes that will be offered. The Discernment Committee’s work has been carefully done, without rancor or complaint, calmly and faithfully. Avoid the many websites, blogs, and similar venues out there who complain, call names, pander to innuendo, spread rumors, and fan the flames, but they do not serve God. Avoid them.

Participate in the prayer vigil—this is designed to be the work of the entire parish. On Sundays we will pray together, but on each weekday we want at least one person in the parish to pray about these things—pray in any way that you wish, but pray.

Realize that we are not alone, and therefore do not have to act alone. Join Forward in Faith. Recognize that we are not alone. God is raising up leaders. There is much that is happening and much that is in flux, and there is a lot going on that I don’t know about or need to know. But do know that God is working, and so are many others.

Our time at Nashotah House last week showed the Episcopal Church at its best. The fourteen of us who went to Wisconsin for Micah Snell’s graduation from seminary and the awarding of Sandy Fryling’s honorary doctorate came back heartened and encouraged. We saw many faithful—and joyful—bishops and priests. Nashotah House is a thriving seminary that has to set up chairs in the aisles to accommodate the students, most of them young, all of them traditional, while other seminaries are troubled and one has already closed for lack of students and lack of sufficient funding.

A few years ago one of our college students, new to the Anglican tradition and seeing how we lived and that we are the product of a great heritage, said, “Wow, church history is going on right now!” And so it is. This is a sad time in many ways, but in other ways it is a grand time. In an age such as this there is the opportunity to come to know and serve God better than ever.

I now dedicate myself to this and call everyone in this parish to do the same. Onward, Christian soldiers!

In the Name of God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Witnessing to Jehovah’s Witnesses

Last week I took a few days off to read and write alone in the second home of a parishioner in the old gold rush town of Julian, California. On my second day there I was visited by two Jehovah’s Witnesses. As is their practice, one did the talking and the other was silent, learning by observation. The one who did the talking began by offering me a positive, encouraging selection from Scripture—in this case, a few verses from Psalm 37 about deliverance from sin. Naturally I agreed with it.

When the next step began about worshiping Jehovah-God, I jumped out of the “anticipated response mode” that Jehovah’s Witnesses are trained to use, and said that I knew something about their religion and that it was about being saved by works rather than faith, but that I believe that one is saved by faith in Jesus. She agreed, but said that works were important. “Jesus said, ‘faith without works is dead.’” After I corrected her that it was James who wrote that and not Jesus who said it, I said that indeed works are evidence of saving faith. She nodded.

I went on to say that my experience with Jehovah’s Witnesses (I used the term for the first time at that point) was that they prefer to argue with people rather than really present them with Good News. Coming to truth was not as important as arguing about what it is. She asked me for an example, and I pointed out their translation of John 1:1—“… and the word was a god” rather than “… and the Word was God.” She gave me a knowing smile, but before she could respond, I said, “You see, you use your own translation rather than any of the translations that are recognized throughout the world. Do you really think that you know better than the many millions of Christians who have translated and read the Bible for hundreds of years?” (Blast. I was entering the “argument” mode myself.)

She didn’t answer, but pulled out copies of Awake! and Watchtower, and asked me if I were familiar with them. I said that I was, and she asked what I thought of them. I responded that I didn’t like them—once again, because they emphasized salvation by works rather than faith, and especially that I knew that Jehovah’s Witnesses got “credit” for the number of stops they make and the number of tracts they distribute, but that I believed in a God who loves us and asks us for a trusting relationship in Jesus by which sins are forgiven, etc., etc. “It’s about a loving God, not a god who demands that you earn your salvation by going door-to-door.”

She then turned to the end of Matthew and read the Great Commission to support “going into all the world and preaching the Gospel to every creature, baptizing in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” For a split second I was tempted to leap into argument about the Trinity, but instead I said, “You are right, and that’s what I’m doing right now.”

“You’re doing that to me?” she asked, aghast. I glanced at the silent partner and smiled. She wore what looked to me like a tense expression.

“Yes, indeed! I want you to know about the true love of God that comes as a gift to you by faith, so that you will know that you don’t have to earn it.”

She replaced her copies of Awake! and Watchtower into the bag she was carrying and put her Bible on top of them, told me that she hoped that I would have a nice day, and she and her partner left.

I did have a nice day, mostly, but I was a little disturbed at how I’d handled the encounter. Of course, as usually happens after the opportunity has passed, I thought of better things I could have said, but mostly I entrusted the two women to God to do for them whatever he wanted, through the encounter that we had had. After all, if I thought too much about how I could have done “better”, it might have meant falling into the trap of depending too much upon “works” rather than the grace of God.

The Anglican Communion and the Ordination of Women

Recently I did some research on the Anglican Communion. The number 70,000,000 has been widely used for years as an estimate of its worldwide membership. I wanted to find out for myself some of the particulars of each of the 38 provinces, including where they stand on the ordination of women. What I discovered was surprising to me, although I will readily concede that I’m wrong if someone can provide me with better information.

A year ago, when I began my research, I went to the website of every Anglican province that has one, and added the membership figures. These websites showed that membership in the Anglican Communion stood at approximately 60,000,000 although there are seven provinces, all in the Third World, whose membership numbers are not available. Some of these are almost certainly quite small, but two or three may number in the low millions; an optimistic estimate might bring worldwide membership to something approaching the oft-quoted 70,000,000.

However, this number assumes that the Church of England has 25,000,000 members. I have read several independent reports that realistic estimates indicate that active membership may actually be about 2,000,000. If this is so, a more reasonable estimate of the membership of the Anglican Communion is closer to the low forty millions.

I learned that the largest province is Nigeria, with 15,000,000 or more. Africa overall has approximately 23, 000,000 Anglicans. Mexico and Central and South America have approximately 1,000,000 Anglicans. The South Pacific has approximately 500,000 Anglicans. Asia and the Middle East have about 1,500,000 Anglicans apart from the rich Asian provinces of Japan, Hong Kong, and Korea, which have only about 90,400 Anglicans altogether.

The rich western provinces have a little more than 10,000,000 Anglicans unless one wishes to count the 23,000,000 inactive members of the Church of England—which I don’t.

The Ordination of Women

For the following statistics, I will assume that membership in the Church of England is the active 2,000,000 rather than the 25,000,000 that is reported. If that is so, then about 72% of the world’s Anglicans live in the Third World, and only 18% live in rich “First World” nations.

Five provinces, comprising 43.1% of the total, do not ordain women at all; four other provinces, comprising only a small percentage (in two of the provinces the Anglican membership is unavailable), ordain women only to the diaconate; ten more provinces, with nearly 11,840,000 members comprising about 32% of the Anglican Communion, ordain women to the diaconate and priesthood; nine other provinces comprising 11.9% of the total permit women to be ordained as bishops but as yet have not done so; only three provinces (the United States, Canada, and New Zealand), comprising about 9.7% of the total, have ordained women bishops. Australia has just elected its first female bishop, and I expect that she will be ordained soon. In two other provinces and a number of extra-provincial territories the status of women’s ordination is unknown.

In summary, a little more than 43% of the Anglican Communion does not ordain women to sacerdotal orders; 32% ordain women only to the priesthood; 22.5% permit ordination of women as bishops; and the status of women’s ordination in about 2.5% of the Anglican Communion is unknown.

Plowing the Sea

“Can one plow the sea with oxen?” (Amos 6:12) This is the prophet’s image for misguided people thinking they are okay when in fact, having departed from the way of God, they are trying to do something that is both impossible and foolish.

A few days ago I went into a tobacconist’s shop. For many years, I have considered smoking to be one of the two greatest evil causes of death in the world. (The other is abortion.) If the figures I have heard are accurate, tobacco has caused more misery in the form of grotesque tumors, lingering illnesses with prolonged suffering, and more widespread death and grief than any war.

Yet, I must admit, there is a mystique about smoking. The scratch of a match, the aroma of a butane lighter, tamping aromatic tobacco into the bowl of a pipe, wreaths of smoke can be strangely seductive. Sherlock Holmes, hobbits and wizards, and Theodore “Beaver” Cleaver’s dad (I think) all smoke pipes. Gandalf even blows smoke rings. While I was in the tobacconist’s shop I almost toyed for an instant with the idea of buying a cigar just for the fun of blowing smoke rings. Forty years ago I did it a few times for the mystique, but I didn’t like the awful aftertaste, headaches, ruination of my taste buds, and stale repulsive odor in my clothes.

The reality is that even a little smoking is unpleasant, malodorous, and makes you sick. There is nothing redeeming whatever about it. As long ago as the 1950s when I was a child, cigarettes were sometimes called “coffin nails”. The Surgeon General’s Reports that began to come out as a result of many studies only revealed what was already commonly known and widely believed. The reports just gave us more information about it, and showed that what we all knew was even worse than we had believed.

So I always shake my head in wonder whenever I see anyone smoking today, especially a young person. It isn’t cool, fun, or impressive. It’s a sign of empty-headedness.

Like heresy. It’s not just wrong. It’s not just cruel. It’s a sign of empty-headedness. Whenever one goes off the beam of authentic, adventuresome, exciting, evangelical, Catholic Christianity, and holds to that wayward course, disaster eventually results. When it is nearly the entire leadership of a Church and a lot of followers of “where the power is”, the disaster becomes extensive. But it isn’t permanent, though much damage is done to many souls during the time of apostasy. (See this old post of mine on the subject.)

And so it is today in the pseudo Episcopal Church. The spiritual warfare that has been eating the Church from within for decades is becoming more identifiable for what it is. Under its current leadership, the most public assistant is a lawyer. We haven’t heard much about “inclusivity” lately, I think. The principle of “inclusivity”, which for the past thirty years or more has been the banner on the flagship of the juggernaut to falsehood, has been abandoned. The lust for power seeks now, openly and boldly, to root out the opposition and, like a spider, reaches out clutching limbs in a widening circle, grasping after control. Those who believe that they are in power enforce the canons to the slightest jot and tittle in order to inhibit and depose faithful priests and bishops; they encourage lawsuits, crush charitable relationships between people of differing convictions, and contemptuously brush away appeals from all other authorities—and often do so with disregard for canonical and due process, and scorn for anyone who points out that they are doing so.

But they are not in power. They are plowing the sea. Both impossible and foolish. Doesn’t history show repeatedly that those who clutch for power always lose? Like smoking, there is a mystique in power, and the adulating fans of the higher leadership of the Episcopal Church want to reach out and touch it. But in the long run, it is not power but perseverance in the faith, not fans but faithfulness to Jesus, not plowing the sea but planting the seed that get results. It has always, always been so. Heretics, hypocrites, and heavies are empty-headed—as foolish as those who take up smoking. Plowers of the sea.

They are not in power—they only think they are. The Church is God’s, not theirs. Their time will come.

Wounds That Don't Heal

Isn’t it curious that the risen, glorified body of Jesus retained the wounds of his crucifixion? “Jesus spoke to Thomas, ‘Put your finger here; look, here are my hands. Give me your hand. Put it into my side’” (John 20:27). For that matter, how did Thomas know before he believed in the risen Jesus that the wounds of Jesus remained in the Body that the other disciples claimed had been resurrected? “Unless I see the holes that the nails made in his hands …” (John 20:25). Maybe the others told him about them.

There is glory in the wounds of Jesus. The last book of the Bible makes that clear: The One who has triumphed is described as the “Lion of the tribe of Judah”, but is presented as “a Lamb that seemed to have been sacrificed” (Revelation 5:5-6). But why? The wounds of Jesus on his hands (almost certainly wrists), feet, side, and brow were imposed during the time he was mocked and then crucified. The five red wax nails in the Paschal candle represent these wounds, pressed into the heart of this central Easter symbol. By the shedding of Jesus’ blood, the world was remade—hence, the glory of the wounds. (I have reflected on this profound mystical reality on this blog before, such as here.)

What, then, of our own wounds that don’t heal? There are some hurts that are “life wounds”. They don’t heal. Ever.

Shortly after I became Rector of Blessed Sacrament, a family in the parish suffered a great grief. A five-year-old boy had come home sick from kindergarten. The next morning his parents woke up and found that he had died during the night. The boy’s name was Thomas, and he died on December 21, St. Thomas’ Day. Every St. Thomas’ Day after that, his father attended the Mass until he retired and moved away. He told me once, probably twenty years after his son had died, “It doesn’t hurt any more,” but I am sure that it did. How could it not?

Some wounds are “life wounds”. They don’t heal. Oh, one learns to get by day after day, and the immediate shock subsides, but the hurt remains like an interior stigmata, always bleeding and never healing. Wounds that children receive in abusive families. Even the very best of families can inflict “life wounds” on children. Betrayals by friends, spouses, and others whom we trust. Tragic losses like house fires that destroy heirlooms, permanent debilitating injuries, and so forth wound us in ways that never heal. One learns to get by day after day, but the hurt remains.

How can our “life wounds” become, like the wounds of Jesus, avenues of glory? The easy, and probably correct, answer, is that those with “life wounds” are to take them to Jesus. Easy to say, hard to do. What does it mean to “take them to Jesus”? Well, sometimes I think it means not having the pain removed or healed, but learning to accept it as a burden by which we, and often others, are shaped more into a Christ-like mold than we are now. Discipleship must include some unwelcome facets.

When I was very small and attending Sunday School at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Van Nuys, California, I remember in the children’s chapel a very large black and white photograph of a man dressed to look like Jesus, standing on a rock and carrying a lamb on his shoulder. Jesus is our Savior, the One who “calls his own by name”, the Good Shepherd. A great image for a child.

But Jesus is also the One who said that his followers must take up a cross. He said that his yoke was easy and his burden light, and that those who labored and were heavily burdened were to come to him. Still, however you look at it, discipleship does include wearing a yoke and carrying a cross. That must mean that sometimes discipleship will be hard. We are to die with Christ so that we may be raised to the new life. Death comes first. Resurrection requires that death come first—otherwise, it is merely healing and not resurrection.

The longer we live the more “life wounds” we get. I suspect, faith being my support, that such woundedness is for this life only, and that in the next the wounds we have carried faithfully and patiently—or at least learned eventually to be patient with—will be marks of glory. They serve a purpose. Now and then I can even feel it in this life, like seeing a light through gauze. Maybe the mystery of unresolved pain is to compel us to put our trust more and more in the only One who will never be cruel to us, betray us, or abandon us—ever. And who promises that the “tears of every eye” will be wiped away (Revelation 21:4).

Ballroom Dancing Teaches a Godly Truth

Last summer my wife and I began to learn ballroom dancing. To my surprise, I learned that ballroom dancing is hard work! Being used to the individual practices of gymnastics and martial arts (both of which I have done for many years), learning to work with a partner in every technique was a challenge. Both of us had to learn together and be patient with one another. It took me a few months to learn that most of the mistakes my wife made were my fault.

In partner dancing, the man leads and the woman responds. The woman needs to be ready for a number of possible moves, and be able to respond to her partner’s leading in an instant. The man, however, knows what he wants to do, and is responsible for communicating his lead effectively without words, i.e. with body movement. If he doesn’t lead well, his partner doesn’t know what to do.

The man doesn’t lead by pulling his partner’s arm or pushing her in the direction he wants her to go. He might think that that would be easy, but it doesn’t work and the woman doesn’t like it. Women don’t want to be pulled or pushed; they want to be “led” to the move so that the couple may flow as one. The man leads, rather, with his whole body, and must communicate gently but clearly by how he moves. When it is well done, it is exhilarating for both the man and the woman; they are constantly communicating without words, and moving in a rhythmic partnership to music in give-and-take patterns as a couple that neither can achieve alone.

One day, one of the female instructors (in an apparent attempt to transcend perceived cultural sexism) declared, “Most people call it ‘leading’ and ‘following’, but I prefer to call it ‘inviting’ and ‘responding’. The man ‘invites’, and the woman may choose to ‘respond’ or not; maybe she will want to do something else.” Well it seemed to me, beginner that I was, that if the woman does “something else”, it wouldn’t be dancing.

Apparently the women in the class felt the same way as I did, since one of them said firmly, “But we want them to lead!” And the others nodded. “Leading” and “following” is what creates dancing. One is not superior or inferior to the other. Each is unique, different from the other, making a complement so that a single unit is created in the dance. Change things from what has been done for hundreds of years, and all at once you’ve got competition between individuals rather than a partnership, and you don’t have a dance any more.

Both the man and the woman know the dance and the possible moves. She needs to know clearly what he wants her to do, so the man must lead, being single minded and setting the direction. The woman, usually able to “multi-task” better than her partner and therefore move almost instantly in the direction he sets out of a number of possibilities, follows to create the flow of the partnership. Unclear leading muddles the entire dance.

For a time our instructor was a woman. In order to show me how to lead effectively, sometimes she would “back lead” me—that is, as I danced with her and tried to lead, when I was unclear she would lead me in the leading I ought to have done so that I would learn how to do it. But it was not a reversal of roles—it was the instructor teaching the student. She did not abdicate her role as “follower” to my “leading”, but rather showed me how to do my part (“lead”) better so that she could do her part (“follow”) better. It was partnership without inequality.

Now our instructor is a man—a very skilled and gifted young man named William. In this video on youtube he talks about “leading” and “following”. As William says, leading and following have a lot to do with trust.

I am sure that there is a great, Biblical truth here that our culture needs to learn and many of our churches need to relearn. “God created man in the image of himself, in the image of God he created him, male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:27).

Men and women were created by God to be different from and complementary to each other. When we understand this, relationships can go far toward being respectful, joyful, and fulfilling. Forget this, and we get… well, a lot of what we see in our world today. Much of the grief so many people suffer in relationships, perhaps, is brought about because many men have abdicated their place in relationships with women and families. Dancing is one way that the believer can see how God intended things to be.

At least so it seems to me.

Imagine That

This blog’s new direction
It’s been a month less a day since I last posted on this blog. During that time I have pondered how best to use this blog, or what new direction would be best for it. Having done so, I think I’d like to use it as a forum for reflecting on the Christian spiritual life. Writing on suitable topics will help me to sort through my own commitment to Jesus, and maybe help someone else who might read what I post. This blog already contains a good number of posts with that purpose and, although they were the most difficult to write, I think that it was worth the effort. So below I will put up the first post with this old/new direction. I have others already planned.

The Inner Longing
Two or three times a year, a friend of mine sends me a series of beautiful photographs of hidden places on the earth. They affect me profoundly, for they are able to reach deeply into my heart’s deep longing.

Whenever people want to have an experience of God, many leave the city and go into the desert, forest, mountains, or other “hidden place” on the earth. In such places, somehow, God seems more accessible. Probably that is because in such circumstances we set aside many of the artificial defenses we have against his presence and activity. The “inner longing” for God that is in the heart of human nature is given proper attention and can emerge.

It’s risky to do so, of course, because the longing can never be fulfilled in this life. We know that to experience genuine longing for God, then, is to experience a measure of grief, of wanting something that is outside the world, something that is inaccessible, something we can never fully have in this life. Because this is so, one’s longing for God will always have a measure of painful unsatisfaction in it. And the greater the longing, the greater the lack of satisfaction. However, the pain of unfulfilled longing for what is radically true and the only source of complete joy, is itself a kind of holy pleasure.

Of all the photos this individual has sent me, this is the one that I would keep if I were told that I could have only one.

This photo puts the viewer clearly into a place where he is a stranger and yet also has right of entry, even passage. There is a road, but it is a way through something. It does not show its end. The trees are tall and classic, giving the viewer a feeling that they have existed long before he came upon the scene. The trees don’t “need” anyone—certainly not the viewer; nor are they at risk because of his presence. There is darkness among the trees, indicative of enormous mystery far beyond what the road shows. Yet there is also bright green, indicative of new life, beauty, growth, and even welcome. Sunlight comes into this place. The darkness and the sunlight are not at odds. There is peace here.

I don’t know who took the photo so can’t give credit, and I don’t know where it was taken —which is probably good because if I knew, probably a whole lot of others would know too, and many would go to the place and then it would become spoiled. This is a place of the imagination, not a place that a GPS could lead you to.

As a reader of many books, appreciator of much music, and gazer at a lot of art, I know that it is absolutely essential that the connoisseur of books, music, and art have a good imagination. It is imagination that ultimately makes use of what the senses receive. One’s imagination, I think, is one of the human attributes by which we love and long for the beloved. Without it, or when it is misused, no amount of beautiful or profound stimulation can have much of an effect.

Nearly two years ago, someone wrote to me and asked, “I was wondering what your thoughts were about the use of the imagination in the Christian life. I am extremely resistant to using my imagination in this context. I’m not sure how to explain it exactly but it seems that I have a great fear of “making up” my experiences with God and it’s as if I expect God to reveal Himself to me entirely independent of myself. I think I have a fairly powerful imagination and I am afraid of “pretending” to experience God and “imagining” that God is comforting me or guiding me, etc. when in reality it’s all in my own head. I realized that this resistance may actually be hindering me from experiencing God in more full and powerful ways - I can see how it affects me in prayer, worship, etc., but I don’t know how to trust that what I think of in my head is truly of God or if it is simply my imagination. What do you think?”

This was my answer:
Imagination is part of what it is to be human. Imagination, therefore, has an important, even vital, place in how human beings relate to God. “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength.” No part of us is left out. We worship God with our bodies, minds, emotions, and everything we’ve got—including imagination. The question is discovering what the right place of imagination is. You are right to guard against taking false experiences as true, but I think that you have gone too far in that direction.

A safe course is to realize that God will use your imagination to provide what imagination does in other places in your life, e.g. entertain, add an emotional sense of security or assurance, fill out or enrich the “bare bones” of an experience, etc. Whenever you read fiction or see a movie, the medium can only provide so much; your imagination must do its part or you are not really engaged in the experience. Whenever you see a movie, your imagination must add the third dimension (depth), scents, etc. Whenever you read fiction, your imagination must add sounds, etc. Your imagination, then, is an essential part of receiving the message in the book or movie.

God works in the same way. He made our imagination and intends it to be used. Read Scripture and other holy books, go through the liturgy, etc., and allow your imagination to put yourself into the situation along with your mind. (When I preach, I try deliberately, intentionally to draw emotion from the hearers or engage their imagination in order to add depth to the message, especially if the topic or passage of Scripture is something they are already familiar with.)

So far, I hope, so good. This tells you that imagination should have its place in your devotions and your overall relationship with God. But how do you guard against error? That’s the other part of your question. There are several dependable guardrails.

Any experience you have of God that is dependent mostly on your imagination must be consistent with Scripture and the tradition of the Church, i.e. the common experience of the faithful throughout the ages. If your imagination takes you off the mark of your relationship with God, it is at least suspect. If you feel suspicion, it is a sign that there are correctives within you to what imagination might do. Imagination never acts alone.

There are guardrails on certain mountain roads because there is need for them, and occasionally people scrape them. Applying this analogy to your relationship with God, this means that you don’t need to worry too much about “getting it wrong” or “pretending”. If you do make a mistake, in most cases a good response should be “so what”? Give God credit for caring enough about you to bring you back on the beam. Scraping the guardrail is not the same thing as flying off the cliff. You’re not always going to get it right all the time. That’s kind of why those bumpy things define the lanes on the freeway. If you drift too much to one side they rattle your tires and you jerk the wheel back to the center.

Besides, suppose you use your imagination in your devotions and have very warm and comforting experience of God, and he feels really close. Is it “only your imagination” or is it God using your imagination to produce those feelings? And how are you going to know the difference for sure??? And is it really important to know? If you conclude, or fear, that something good is “only your imagination”, then what you’re saying is that God is not really close to you and you’re only providing a “wish fulfillment” experience for yourself. To put it another way, you’re looking at yourself and not God. Another side of your doubt is that you might be uncertain about whether you are truly, unconditionally loved—by God or others. (This is extremely common, by the way—probably universal! The condition just manifests itself differently with different people.)

If you really believe that God loves you (at least intellectually), then whether it is “only your imagination” or God using your imagination to produce those feelings is really beside the point. It is a true experience. In other words, you can’t ever tell for sure whether it’s “self delusion” or truly from God because both experiences are identical! Therefore take it, safely, as being from God. The only alternative is that he’s not there and is indifferent to you. I, for one, don’t believe that!

Pulling your imagination back for fear of being uncertain about your “good experiences” with God is itself one of those bumpy things in the spiritual road, but it is telling you to use your imagination more, not less. Without using your imagination, or at least keeping it in tight check, might mean that your devotional life can be pretty dry or mostly intellectual. Another word for that state might be “boring”. A healthy, mature relationship with God should rarely be dry or boring. (I am not contradicting the “dark night of the soul”—even the “dark night” has joy in it.) The fact that you are asking about the use of imagination might mean that you are ready to engage your imagination more in your devotions.

Above all, depend upon God. As you want to move closer to him, he won’t abandon you or let you fall.

As I gaze at the photograph of the simple path through a dark forest of tall trees, I am drawn quickly and easily out of myself with my fears and pains and hesitations and insecurities, and far along the desire for God. I do occasionally wonder where its reality is to be found. But not too much. In a way, I already know where it is in its most important place—in my imagination, that which reaches out to such a place and painfully, joyfully embraces it, knowing it to be truly the threshold of God.

Saul in Tarsus

I’ve been back from sabbatical for over six weeks, and it does seem as if things at the church are pretty much back to normal now. But I myself have changed—especially since the three-week intensive retreat. In fact, I am pretty sure that I have changed a lot. Identifying what those changes are, how they are emerging, and how they are being put into practice is a process, i.e. it is happening over time. In many ways, it is pretty uncomfortable, because if I have changed, my relationships have changed. Not everyone wants to recognize the changes or even hear about what I learned when I was away. I hadn’t really anticipated that.

In the past year there has been more upheaval in my life, parish, and the wider Church than at any other time. And nearly all the upheaval so far has just brought ambiguity and irresolution. Nothing much has been “solved” or come to closure. Although this is uncomfortable, it is not bad by any means. I see it as a necessary transition time in which God is working.

Shortly after I returned home the house was recarpeted. That meant that just about everything in the place had to be taken out and then put back in. It was a ton 0f work and there are many details of reorganizing still to be sorted out, even a month later. The recarpeting was a super symbol for returning from the three-week retreat. It’s the same house, of course, and it is definitely recognizable for what it is—but the interior is both the same and also very much different. There is still a lot of stuff in the garage that needs to be unpacked. Some will be put in a place other than where it was before, some will go into storage, and some will be given away.

So today I mused on the time when Paul went to Tarsus after his conversion in Damascus. Setting apart his own somewhat different story (in Galatians 1:15-24) of the post-conversion events, I looked at Acts 9:1-30, especially the last five verses. Saul had gone to Damascus “breathing threats” against the Christian believers, got converted, and then began to preach what he had just tried to destroy. That raised murderous ire in some folks. Then he went to Jerusalem to try to join the other disciples but they were initially distrustful of him. Once again his preaching inspired a murderous response. So “the brothers … sent him off … to Tarsus” (Acts 9:30). He doesn’t appear again until Acts 11:25 when Barnabas sought him there and brought him back to Antioch to assist in the church. From there, after at least a year, began the missionary journeys and eventually the Pauline epistles.

Of course I had read this account many times, but only today did I ask, “What did Saul do in Tarsus?” We are told nothing about it. It is reasonable to expect that, at least in the beginning, it was a time in which he was pretty disconcerted. He was a highly trained rabbi with a powerful testimony. His effectiveness in Damascus was remarkable, his teaching even incontrovertible. When he came down to Jerusalem, he may well have expected that he would have been welcomed by the believers—which, eventually, he was. But this “highly trained rabbi” found himself subject to one-time fishermen who had been described as “uneducated laymen” (Acts 4:13)—not only that, but apparently he stirred things up enough in Jerusalem that the “uneducated laymen” sent him home to Tarsus. That couldn’t have been pleasant, nor would it have boosted his ego.

So I ask again, “What did Saul do in Tarsus?” What part did his stay there play in his later effectiveness? I expect that a time of tempering, including growth in humility, was vital to his Christian profession and subsequent preaching. Like many of the good things in life, time is essential for the ingredients of something to blend properly. Tea has to be steeped, wine has to be aged. I think spaghetti is better on the second day. Music played too fast becomes comic. Changes in life have to be assimilated and lived out.

I think that what I am going through now is learning to live with the ambiguity and irresolution that have so strikingly characterized the past twelve months. I very much doubt that it is a coincidence that so many important issues and events have been left open-ended—a state I have previously found to be prickly at best. At the very least, the irresolution means leaving the timing and details of things to God—and other people—as matters unroll. Patience. Humility. More listening and less talking. Putting familiar furniture back onto new carpet, etc.

Gradually things will get sorted out. Even the new direction this blog needs to go in is emerging. I doubt it’ll be too different from what it was before—like putting the furniture back into the house. But since the writer of the blog has been changed, what is written will be done a little differently.

To Everything There is a Season

This blog started up fourteen months ago, and I’ve posted an average of a little less than one entry per week. Now that my sabbatical has ended I have come to a place in which I note that the more I have reflected on personal and spiritual issues, the less I need to say. It seems good to me now to step back from blogging.

Since John One Five started up, my blogposts have been on several themes. One theme, and the one that got the most hits, was Being Orthodox in the Episcopal Church. Things are now moving quickly in this arena, and many people are writing and speaking about them. I’ve made my contributions to the exchanges, and I think that they were unusual and cogent—such as Jawbone of an Ass, Winner Take Nothing (one year ago today), and Martial Church. Now I believe that my place is to be silent for the time being. But let no one conclude that silence means indifference, acquiescence, or surrender.

I’ve also posted on the theme of Office and Person—what it means to be a priest and pastor but also a person. The posts I wrote on this theme took more time to compose than any others, and affected me—and a few other people—more than any other. The more I thought, reflected, and then wrote, the more complex the matter showed itself to be. Whatever the complexities, however, I have concluded that no matter what the nature of the relationships I may have with members of the parish—friend, sensei, supervisor, employer, spiritual director, etc.—the role of pastor will be and should always be uppermost. I must hold fast to that one in every case; any other relationships that there may be will always come first from pastoring and be subordinate to it.

I’ve posted on a number of topics regarding the Christian Spiritual Life, like personal evangelism, the importance of showing affection, hearing confessions, reconciliation, and devotion to the Virgin Mary. I’ve been generally pleased with these and wouldn’t change much about them, and hope that they have been helpful to others.

Finally, I’ve written about a number of Miscellaneous Personal Matters like the value of hobbies and the treasures of memories. These posts probably had little merit other than entertainment, if that. These have interested some readers and perhaps bored others, but they were fun to write.

On the sabbatical I went more deeply into my own heart and memories than I ever have before, and now words are not sufficient for what I feel called to do. Words in a blog, no matter how carefully thought through or prayed about, are no longer the best way to communicate as I wish to. I won’t close the blog down and will probably still post once in a while, but I think that John One Five has served its purpose. Or maybe it will take some time to rethink what direction it may be moving in.

“To everything there is a season. …There is a time for speaking and a time for keeping silent” (Ecclesiastes 3:1, 7b).

The Golden Thread

I said I would report back later. Yesterday I returned from the three-week intensive retreat called Journey. It’s a program offered by Dr. Bryan Van Dragt in Gig Harbor, Washington. Bryan is a remarkably gifted and skilled Christian psychologist/spiritual director.

I have been on a lot of retreats, but never anything like this. The retreatant is to have no distractions—no internet, no telephone calls, not even books (except the Bible). “Boredom is your friend,” said Bryan early in our time together. You just have to trust that that is so, and discover what emerges in the empty hours.

The retreatant meets with Bryan very early in the morning Monday through Friday for a double appointment, and then returns home to the cabin that is provided for the duration. Bryan gives you a topic for that day’s reflection, very generally, in a very few sentences. For the rest of the day, apart from meal preparation and other necessary labors, there is nothing but silence and a journal. I filled 194 pages with handwritten notes—probably more than 30,000 words.

The cabin is located on Fox Island in Puget Sound. Here is a photograph taken from a fishing pier at the east end of the island, looking south.

Although there are many residences in the area, most of them are surrounded by old growth forest. Many homes cannot even be seen until you are right upon them. Here is a photograph of the cabin from one of the nearby streets.

Journey is not intended to be a restful retreat, but an encounter with God in the depths of oneself. I found it very hard at the beginning but the rewards began to come within a few days. Toward the end of the first week, I began to do almost nothing but go through all the memories I could possibly bring up from the first two dozen years of my life. Doing this at age 59 was, well, amazing. After a few days, a life without distractions had become almost second nature, and my reflections continued without ceasing, even during meal preparation, taking a shower, or during walks. A great peace settled into me that remained until the end. Then I was ready and eager to come home.

I was greatly blessed by the experience. It was astonishing how many of the great mysteries of my life were solved. Patterns, feelings, habits, attitudes, fears, interests, and joys that have marked my life for decades, whose origin I never knew or understood, became clear and fit together into a whole fabric. I might even say that I have no major questions left, and have come back very much changed.

Sometime early in the retreat, as I drove back to the cabin (eight miles from the office), there was early morning fog through which the newly-risen sun was shining with spectacular beams. I took several photos; this one seems to be the best of the lot. If there is a single photo that could capture what Journey was like for me, it would be this one.

One foremost theme that came through my reflections, the journaling, and the appointments is that there has never, ever been a time when I wasn’t aware of God’s presence and guidance, from my very earliest memories up until now, even in the darkest and most painful of experiences. In my journal I called this “the golden thread”. In everything God’s timing has been flawless, even in dreadful reversals and times of suffering. In periods of joy but also in every single dark, agonizing, or confusing period of my life, there was always the “golden thread” for me to follow, which I knew was the sureness of God’s presence. Bryan said that if he could give one gift to everyone, it would be that.

It will take some time, of course, to assimilate the changes, and maybe to show them. I have one more week or so to ease back into normal life, and to reflect on the experience. I will be back at church on Sunday, November 18, and my sabbatical will be over.

Garden

In the early 1970s, when I was in seminary in Vancouver, British Columbia, there was a tiny shop in the downtown area called The Anglican Bookroom. It was run by an elderly couple, Albert and Florence Edge, long gone to their reward. They were simple and devout people. Their shop, also long gone, had many inexpensive treasures in it. I was greatly blessed by Mr. and Mrs. Edge and by several valued items I bought from them and still own.

One of them was a small book called The Hidden Garden of Prayer. It was written for children, first published in 1931 and reprinted in 1953. It is an exquisite handbook for teaching prayer, both deep and simple, childlike and mature. The author was an English Cowley Father, Edward Sedding, S.S.J.E. (Society of Saint John the Evangelist). He delivered his captivating teaching through an account of the cultivation of an English garden—preparing the soil, putting down a border of rocks, weeding, setting out the flowers, and of course enjoying them. The book began with an account of unlocking an old wrought iron gate to get inside the garden. I have since found ten or so copies of this little book, and have given some away as gifts and retained some on my bookshelf.

Here is the cover.

Here are a few internal illustrations. Beautiful in themselves, they also match the tone of the book.

I mention this enchanting book because I have the feeling that during the next three weeks, I’ll be living it out somewhat as I go on to the next step in my sabbatical. About halfway through the sabbatical now, I have come to feel like a garden that is being weeded, dug up, turned over, maybe fertilized, and definitely prepared for some new planting.

On Saturday morning I’ll fly up to Gig Harbor, Washington to continue my sabbatical with a three-week intensive retreat called Journey. I will stay in a cabin on an island in the Sound, surrounded by trees. Once a day I will drive across a bridge to meet with a psychologist/spiritual director. The rest of the time will be spent without any distractions—no internet, no telephone calls, not even books. Nothing but silence and a journal.

Of course, there will be the necessary housework like preparing meals, cleaning up, doing laundry once in a while—but other than that, there will be only prayer and reflection. It’s okay to walk in the woods, but only if it is conducive to deep deliberation. This is not intended to be a restful retreat, but an encounter with God in the depths of oneself; there are to be no distractions—not even too much exercise. The prospect is simultaneously attractive and daunting.

Six or eight other members of the parish have already gone through this experience, usually reserved for those in the Spiritual Direction program at Biola University. With two or three others, they comprise my primary prayer support for Journey. As one of them said to me recently, “If you ain’t scared, you ain’t taking it seriously enough.”

I’ll report back later…