Because this is a penitential season, I thought it might be a good thing to look at how my own tendencies and personality traits sometimes get in the way of communicating clearly and positively what I am thinking and trigger anxiety and reaction rather than conversation and deeper listening.

I am thinking in regard especially to my post on the Presiding Bishop’s Christmas message.  As I have pondered it, I do not think that my underlying supposition was without merit.  However, I should have taken a step back and realized that this was not a piece for debate but a pastoral letter.  That does not mean that it is not subject to critique but that it is designed to do something different than a statement of doctrine.

I think I could have reacted to the letter from the point of talking through its pastoral implications rather than its theological merits.  I think that I did a better job of that in a follow up piece – but the initial response could have been more carefully crafted so as to respond to underlying questions I had about its overall effectiveness.

In looking at a chart about INTP personality types, it was interesting to see how my personality type tendencies were directly revealed in the piece and, moreover, how those who responded with either vigorous assent or vehement disagreement may have been operating out of their own type inclinations as well.

INTPs tend to be

• Analysts and abstract thinkers
• Straightforward
• Insensitive
• May be condescending
• Loathe rules and guidelines

I approached the Presiding Bishop’s message as something to be analyzed rather than engaged.  I was straightforward in communicating that analysis and insensitive to her intent and those who found meaning in it.  The piece definitely held elements of condescension and a loathing of rules and guidelines made it unlikely that I would hold my opinion in check despite the rather wide gap in our respective ecclesiastical standing.

While I do not doubt the underlying validity of my critique, both the writing and the response it generated have reminded me that people will run with whatever you put out there and impose upon you and what you write all that they wish to – and we bear some responsibility for putting out there things that will enliven and yet create space for dialogue.

Opprobrium and Reaction

Once, I had the pleasure of engendering “conservative” opprobrium.  In a conservative journal, I was asked, “What, are you high?” and “Have you been smoking crack?” and fun things like “And where has this silly man been? One can only feel pity. I have no respect for him” were said.

And when I offered a criticism of Communion regardless of Baptism another piped up “You’re OK with pervert priests marrying their paramours, with celebrations of abortion, and THIS is what bugs you?”

Over the course of the day yesterday and today though the indignation and personal attack from those on the liberalish part of the Episcopal Church has, frankly, been just as heated.

One of the more heated remarks went, “Idiots suspicious of interpretive language who enforce their own parched ecclesiology on the rest of us born out of their limited christology may be a binding phenomenon across the Communion.”

This whole episode has demonstrated for me two things.

The first is that there is a passionate debate to be had about what it means to share the Good News in a changing culture.

The second is that there is a need for us to create space for those conversations to happen in which “smoking crack” and “idiots” are not the terms we use in those discussions.

I wrote not long ago on my distaste for using the phrase “You don’t have to leave your brain at the door” to describe Episcopal churches.  This whole debate has solidified my conviction that there is a deeper issue here – we don’t know how to have a lively discussion without often resorting to invective and questioning the intellectual capacity of those with whom we disagree.

My criticism was sharp and pointed – and it focused on the Presiding Bishop’s message.  I did not call her a heretic, tyrant, or an ice queen or any of the other foul things I have seen her called.  Neither did I say she was an idiot or smoking crack.  I questioned her message’s ability to reach those who are unchurched or those yearning for a strong articulation of the promise and person of Christ.

We have this interesting phenomenon going on – we are addicted to politeness and niceness so long as they are being used to ignore difficult topics.  That is until we are not.

Then the gloves are off and there is open season on those with whom we disagree.  The quickest way, of course, for a good Episcopal argument to be settled is by questioning the intellectual ability of those with whom we disagree and dismissing them.

What I am longing for is a passionate, evangelical, catholic articulation of the faith that helps lay out what it means to be a faithful person who belongs to a Church that has taken progressive positions on a host of issues.  This is where we can learn from the Oxford Movement – there was a theological core that made them fierce advocates for social and economic justice.

I am committed in coming posts to exercise as much charity and kindness as possible and to offer positive articulations on faith and hope.  I too don’t want to get caught in the trap of responding out of habit, reactiveness, or personality quirks and to make sure that I am helping to create a space for the honest and open exchange of ideas.

We are trapped in a culture of reactivity and primed to be offended.  I think this has less to do with any one person’s failures than it does with our deep seated desire to find a safe home in which we know who we are.  Whether it is “liberals” (for lack of a better word) who have found a safe haven or “conservatives” who found a place that was a place of disciplined prayer and theological rigor – it is too easy for us to forget that this Church is a home for the wayward and the lost.  It is a home for those struggling to make meaning in a confusing time.

There might be heated disagreement but we are all, ultimately, wanderers who have stumbled in one way or another into this place of grace.  We will have heated discussions about its future and direction because this is a place where our identity is being crafted and new life is being found – it is a place we love because it let us know that we were loved in return.

I am not hoping to quiet or avoid fierce and passionate discussion – I am longing for it.  The Episcopal Church needs a renewed passion and focus.  I just hope we can do so without needing to throw our brothers and sisters under the bus as idiots along the way.

Robert

I have gotten, in the last few days, no small amount of flack about my post on the Presiding Bishop’s Christmas message. I will say that my willingness to post such a missive demonstrates one of the things I love about the Episcopal Church and Anglicanism – we can have the conversation.  I love being part of a Church in which the things that frustrate us are points of conversation and debate.

I thought, after a day or two, that it might be helpful to talk a little about the cultural context and why I think our new cultural realities demand a different kind of engagement with the world than the message offered.

One critique I heard was that it was obvious that she was talking about Jesus – look at the terms she uses “Word” and “Prince of Peace.” Yet, even as those terms were used, there was little declaration about what it exactly means for the whole of humanity that a Savior was born among us who is the Word made Flesh and the Prince of Peace.

We are reaching a cultural point in which the majority of those coming of age will have little or no real exposure to the Gospel message.  I cannot count the number of people who come through the doors – young people – who have no idea who Jesus is.  I have been literally asked, repeatedly, “Who is Jesus?”

Public messages from leaders in our Church are an opportunity for us to lay out, for a new generation, who Christ is and what his birth and resurrection victory mean for the whole of the human family.  Whether we like it or not much of our engagement with the emerging generations is going to feel a little remedial.  That’s because people are asking us “Who is Jesus?” because they haven’t heard it much before and they haven’t seen it much lived out either.

Too many of our churches, across denominational lines, are offering training for our youth that is, as writer Kenda Creasy Dean says, a form of “therapeutic moral deism.” It is the kind of faith that is comforting for those who grew up in religiously abusive environments and it is vague enough not to scare off those who have only experienced Church as a source of shame or fear.

(If you doubt the challenges we face in Episcopal Christian formation – I invite you to look at this post I did on the National Study of Youth and Religion – and the follow up piece here.)

However, the fruit of that kind of religion has been, quite simply, the hollowing of the Church.  There are many, many more factors at play in the decline of churches across the spectrum.  But here is the core problem – when people ask (aloud or silently) “Why does the Church matter?” We often aren’t offering much.

We are meeting a national cultural identity crisis with an identity crisis of our own.  There are people across our country who are begging to find hope and meaning in the world around them and the Church is that place which is most poised to answer that yearning – if we have the courage and conviction to welcome others to the Body.  We can boldly do this not for our benefit but in thanks for all of the benefits of Christ’s own victory.

The challenge for the Church now is not soft-peddling our message of Christian hope found in Christ out of fear of offending but to know ourselves so caught up in the saving love of Christ that the only thing we can do is share that hope with others.  Messages like a primate’s Christmas and Easter messages are a prime place for this to happen – to set a vision and course for the Church and her faithful people.

There is a desperate need for a faith in this country that is clear, welcoming, and theologically orthodox.  I use the term orthodox not to create boundaries and limits but to indicate that we can be a Church that welcomes and affirms not because we are avoiding theological truth and spiritual rigor but because of them.  I use the term welcoming not to indicate that we fling open the doors and just gather about and do yoga and hold hands – but because we welcome all into the life-giving work and labor of the Christian faith as we come to know Christ at the Altar and are sent out in reckless joy.

Those coming to our churches are not looking for one more place to be affirmed or marketed to – they are looking for a place that will unmake and remake them.  Whether they can articulate it or not their search for hope and meaning is grounded in a search for the grace and hope we hold dear.

They are yearning for Baptism.  They are yearning for Communion.  They are yearning to be transformed.

The commitment so many young people are making to things like the Episcopal Service Corps, Lutheran Volunteer Corps, and Jesuit Volunteer Corps demonstrates the real longing that our young people have not only to make a difference but to find out who they truly are in the context of a community that offers not a new identity but gives them a chance to know their true identity bound up with Christ’s own.

They are not looking for an easy, vague, or veiled faith.  They are hyper-marketed to and don’t have time to sift through what they think we might be saying.

They are struggling to find a place that is authentic and real – that offers a faith that is a both mysterious and gritty – that breaks bread with dirt under the nails.  Messages that soft-peddle the Incarnation and the Resurrection are simply not going to communicate the kind of authenticity and vigor that a new generation of seekers is demanding of us.

If we want people to hear, see, and know that the Church is making a difference we must be clear that we are different not because we are here but because Christ is.

Robert

As we are preparing for several mission trips in the coming year, I have doing some writing and thinking about a theology of mission – especially in the context of thinking about Advent and repentance.  I found an essay that I wrote several years ago that proposed a theology of mission and evangelism grounded in the Sacrament of Reconciliation and include some of it below along with some new thoughts.  It should be noted that though this essay stresses the work of international mission, there is a desperate need in communities all around us that are as foreign to many of us as any distant shore.

Mission is one aspect of the Church’s work of reconciliation in the world.  It is an expression of the repair of the present and past looking forward to the future. When it is undertaken appropriately, the Church and the Holy Spirit can find the mistakes of the past to be tools of learning and reconciliation.  The efforts of a Church yearning to be reborn in the Spirit are expressed in vigorous mission efforts that blend the voices of past and present, self and other, into a body whose praise for the Holy is service and whose service is offered with joyful hearts.

For missionary churches in the post-colonial era, there is a degree of guilt present in the collective consciences of those sensitive to the evolving awareness of our collective guilt for the abuses of the past. This awareness is, in some part, a healthy regard for the other and a movement toward accepting the legitimacy of a variety of worldviews and histories without seeing them as invalidating one’s own. However, this awareness has also resulted in, what some would argue, is a potentially crippling reluctance to engage with the other in an open and honest way for fear of reenacting historical abuses or reinforcing past prejudices.

The vague uneasiness of the contemporary Christian has, in some ways, been shifted onto the mission enterprise and become an excuse to devalue or redefine mission.  Lamin Sanneh argues, “Much of the standard Western scholarship on Christian missions proceeds by looking at the motives of individual missionaries and concludes by faulting the entire missionary enterprise as being part of the machinery of Western cultural imperialism.”

Yet, in the rush to deemphasize mission, or worse, to implicate it as emblematic of the predations of imperialism, the Church may have set aside its most potent and powerful tool in the work of reconciliation. A Church that seeks to make amends for historical wrongs must engage with those it believes it has wronged and who believe they have been wronged by it. An open and humble missionary Church can gain an understanding of host cultures that is unmatched within the sending church.

Moreover, a missionary’s work at the level of the individual believer and the individual host imbues the relationship with an incarnated holiness that is at once a reflection of and reflected in the wider Body of Christ.  Missionary endeavors, when undertaken with humility and with an eye toward companionship, presence, and mutuality can become a sign of redeemed living and a symbol of self-offering.

It is in the meeting of the other that stories of abuse may be brought to light, dealt with, or simply heard, depending on the needs. Moreover, in those very human interactions, the missionary and the hosts begin that Incarnational dialogue that repairs the breaches of time. Missionaries are, in many ways, the modern Confession of the Church body. They are an offering from one Church to another in the hope that true Communion might take place and, like any offering, the fruits are manifested in such a way as to blur the line between giver and receiver.

Our missionaries are on the ground, engaging in individual dialogue with those who may have been wronged in the past, hearing those voices and stories through which we come to understand the lasting legacies of past injustices and, moreover, hearing the needs of the contemporary societies.

It is in those discussions that we come to truly be martyrs in the ancient sense of the word, witnesses. This martyrdom, like Confession, erases our pride and self-importance and brings us into an honest, sharing, mutually enriching relationship with others.  C.M Rogers wrote in 1958, “A real meeting between a Christian and a non-Christian in Asia or Africa presupposes a willingness to be open on the part of the Christian to all that the non-Christian has to share and has to give.” This engagement with the other begins to fill a “lack” which is sin, begins to create understanding.  Mission, like Confession, calls us out of our perpetual enchantment with the self while refocusing our energy on understanding God and the other.

Mission is the point at which we can provide timely and human repentance that is steeped with deeper meaning than a declaration or announcement by a Church body.  That meaning is provided, in part, by the embodied reality of the missionary in the context of a lived relationship – and that common relationship becomes a point in which sacred meaning can find root.

Mission provides a means of embodied hope and for the translated contrition of the church yearning for deeper relations with the other in an honest spirit of humility.  Just as sin, a lack, makes itself known in our interactions with the other, so too is reconciliation and grace made manifest in and through the other.

The dangerous thing though is for us to go with an eye toward undoing or repairing historical wrongs.  Our task is much simpler – we are being called to listen.  To be present.  Not to  the busyness of fixing but to the harder work of opening up to the voices of those unheard.  It is tempting to give in to modern forms of discrimination which Ian Douglas identifies as “dysfunctional rescuing, avoiding contact, and denying differences.”

By neglecting fulsome, on-the-ground missionary efforts in favor of grant-giving, the church has indeed, too often, engaged in behaviors of dysfunctional rescuing, avoiding contact, and denying differences. Mission is our Church’s Confession that we still have much to learn from the world around us, that we are willing to be vulnerable to the work of the Spirit, and to admit that our blindness, fear, or even laziness have habituated our institutions to simultaneously old and new forms of racism. Missionaries are one way for the church to rectify and avoid these manifestations of racism.

The missionary enterprise, rooted in the open and confessing spirit, expressly engages the other, recognizes differences, and seeks reciprocal friendship rather than the false hope of “rescue.”  Our amendment of life takes place in moments when we act in love, partnership, and openness with others. This joyful amendment of life, in the constant reflection and refraction of the reconciling spirit, reverberates through the web of individual relationships the missionary is blessed to be a part of, including both the wider sending church and the host culture.

The joy of forgiveness can empower churches to fully reengage in mission and to recognize that the missionary endeavor itself, rather than being an impediment to reconciliation, may be our most sure way of realizing it. That reconciliation requires churches and missionaries to be marked by sympathy, self-awareness, and humility.

The joy of our faith in a God of Creation is that this God is the Lord over all the Earth in its manifold splendor and diversity. There has never been a time when any person, village, or people have been forgotten by God. Thus, we enter each village, city, and home as a sister and brother sharing a Father. That divine parentage is the very ground upon which we humbly walk as stories are shared and the blessings of companionship and solidarity are known.

Solidarity is our goal in so many of the Sacraments.  Baptism, Confirmation, Communion, Confession, Ordination, Last Rites, and Marriage are all Sacraments that bind us in solidarity more deeply in Christ and with one another in those moments of joy and pain when the curtain between Heaven and Earth seems most translucent. Confession and mission both serve to bring our lives into accord with Christ’s will, draw us closer to one another, commit us to transcending the self, call us to recognize our impact on others, and concomitantly proceed from and engender humility.

Confession and mission patch rents in the human conscience by recalling those places in which we or the human family have failed and can do more to honor God and one another. This creates the space for the Holy Spirit to effect conversions of heart, soul, and mind.  Working out of a theology of Reconciliation, mission efforts may provide a way forward that does not simply transcend nor deny the errors of the past, but baptizes them, making them a point of mutual sharing, growth, and understanding for all parties.

Robert

I continue to struggle to understand the Presiding Bishop’s reluctance to mention Jesus in her feast day messages.  I have written previously on her Christological murkiness at Eastertide and her 2013 Christmas communique continues a trend in which she fails to mention Our Savior in messages around feasts that center on the saving action of Christ.

Whether it is time to consider the Incarnation or the Resurrection, the Presiding Bishop is consistent in her unwillingness to mention the person in whom our whole faith and hope rests.  It takes some effort to avoid using the name of Jesus in an Easter or Christmas message – multiple times.

I offer below the word cloud of her Christmas message for 2013.  Her reference to the name of Christ or even God is striking only in its consistent omission from her messages.  At this point, with repeated messages that omit reference to Christ, it can only seem intentional that she not actually reference the singular significance of the Incarnation and Resurrection of Christ let alone his saving action.

A message that centers on authority and shoulders must be significant to some small portion of our membership yet  the message most needed in these times is for the unique and holy condescension of God’s indwelling among his people in the person of his Son.

There are some number who might welcome this vagueness on the part of the Presiding Bishop to fail to acknowledge the personhood and uniqueness of Christ.  I am not among them.  Our inability to claim the wholeness of God’s saving action in the person of Christ is a missed opportunity.

This kind of theological opacity might be a virtue to a sliver of our membership but it is an unfortunate avoidance of the heart of the Gospel.  The vagueness of the message communicates an unwillingness to proclaim the basic tenets of the faith (this is different from whether she believes them which I believe she does).  Her opacity evinces a lack of comfort with the essential doctrines of the Christian faith and borders on gnosticism.

I use the term gnosticism as her message is so densely worded as to be accessible only to those with an inside knowledge of contemporary theological language.  I long for a leader with clarity who can articulate the abiding power of the Incarnation such that all who hear might be drawn the the Living Christ.

One can only read, contrast, and lament the difference between the Presiding Bishop’s message and the Christological core of the Pope’s recent encyclical, Lumen Fidei, in which he boldly proclaims Christ, faith, and God.

The Pope’s recent selection as Time magazine’s Man of the Year is not based on his lack of clarity but rather on his emphasis on the Gospel of Christ’s love.  Yet, one can see above that his message is not in spite of the uniqueness and decisiveness of Christ but because of that very reality that the Presiding Bishop seems reluctant to proclaim in these feast day messages.

I have followed this post up with some reflections on our current cultural realities that fleshes some of this out a bit more…

Robert

“The Episcopal Church is a church where you can come in without leaving your brain at the door and then have the opportunity to love all of those who managed to come in with their ‘wrong’ ideas.” — The Rt Revd Leo Frade, Bishop of the Diocese of Southeast Florida

“We deeply love the intellectual as well as the spiritual life that is cultivated in our members (‘you don’t need to leave your mind at the door’)” – Progress Report from the Task Force  for Re-Imagining the Church

Yesterday I saw these quotes pop up in two different places.  As I read the report from the Task Force, I had a difficult time reading after the “mind at the door” line.  I found myself thinking, “Is this what we want a reimagined Church to emphasize?”

I get what people are saying when this line is put out there – many of us come from traditions that were overly dogmatic, prescriptive, or even fundamentalist.  Yet I find there to be a sad smugness to our adopting this line as a party platform.

I have chosen this Church over the Roman Church and yet I do not want my Roman Catholic family members and friends to think I chose this Church because they are all leaving their brain at the door when they go to Church.

What does this kind of message say to a single mother who goes to the local Baptist Church because they invite her and her kids to sing in the choir and to be part of the Singing Christmas Tree?  What does it say to the widow who goes to the local Roman Church because it was the last place she felt real peace?  What does it say to the Methodist dentist who goes there because his family has for four generations and they built the church steeple?

The Episcopal Church has enough issues with people perceiving us as a club that is not for them.  Why would we perpetuate that perceived haughtiness by adding yet another perceived barrier – a lack of smarts – to coming to our churches?

As we are undertaking mission work here in Denver, one of our challenges is that there are many who can’t read English or can’t read at all.  I don’t want them to ever think that this is not a place that they could call home.  If the Episcopal Church wants to put up signs that say “All are Welcome” then we need to be prepared for all kinds of people to come through our doors – people who aren’t there to prove that they are smarter than other faithful people.

I wonder what exactly qualifies as checking one’s brain at the door?  If one believes in The Virgin Birth, The bodily Resurrection, the Second Coming, miraculous healings, and the efficacy of relics – has one checked one’s brain?  If one both rejects the death penalty and abortion – has one checked one’s brain at the door?  If one believes that God, indeed, has sent angels to watch over us – has one checked his or her brain at the door?

Much of our culture already thinks that we have checked our brain at the door simply for believing at all.

I have met clergy with shocking gaps in their theological, liturgical, and organizational training.  My own gaps in Scripture, contemporary theologies, and modern music are sources of real distress at times.  In other words, even our seminary trained ministers have lots of learning to do – especially when I talk with Methodists about preaching, Roman Catholics about social doctrine, Baptists about Scripture, and Pentecostals about the power of the Spirit.

Comprehensiveness as a Church must mean that we are open to learning from brothers and sisters of the faith rather than dismissing them as insufficiently smart or lacking in self-awareness.  It is unhelpful for us to position ourselves as the Church that isn’t full of unthinking spiritual drones when there are faithful, kind, and generous people all across Christian traditions.

I recognize that we have methodological differences in interpretation of Scripture and ecclesial differences with regard to authority – and these differences have hurt many – yet every other church out there is not some version or another of Westboro.

Frankly, we’re just not that smart – and thankfully Jesus doesn’t seem to be searching out smart people to share his message.  He looked for those who were least likely to be “in” or even thought of as people let alone who might be smart.  Jesus calls us to the deepest love for one another and a charity of spirit that this kind of language undermines.

I pray that we’ll be careful talking about checking brains at the door lest people just think we’ve decided to check our hearts instead.

Robert

I have been noticing lots of cultural phenomena lately that I often ignore for the rest of the year. The busyness of the holidays often makes one aware of things that you might otherwise simply not be aware of. You go into a bookstore looking for a gift and you suddenly realize the dominance of e-books in their physical space must say something. You are waiting in line and hear pundits on the television or radio decrying this, that, or the next. You have chats with folks, whether distant relatives or casual acquaintances, that you don’t see often and they mention issues and concerns that normally don’t hit your radar.

One of the cultural phenomena is Black Friday. There has been lots of critical coverage in Christian publications and on Facebook – and it is a deplorable thing. The fact that we are now losing Thanksgiving as a national day of rest is extraordinarily depressing and represents another step in national hyper-activity and sensationalism. Yet it is a symptom of a deeper and far sadder condition as the drive to consume is consuming us relentlessly.

It is in the interest of purveyors and peddlers to keep people amped up. Most people, when given space to reflect, will realize that they do not need some new thing. Look at how casinos are organized – no pause in the constant action so that patrons will spend, spend, spend. If someone glances at a clock or sees the light of day go up or down, they might just stop pounding quarters into the machine for a minute. So we stay hyped up, frustrated, and annoyed.

24 hour news, social media, email, smart phones, online shopping, texts, radio, junk mail, spam, and so much more crank up the noise to a level that is nearly unbearable – in fact it is unbearable. Look at the rates of depression, ADHD, and the like. This is not a culture that just sells caffeine or anti-depressants – it needs them to survive.

One of our dogs, Penelope, has a little red light that she plays with – chases around. If I let her play with the red light, she will chase it until she literally cannot walk. She will lay on her belly and crawl toward the light when she is too worn out to chase it anymore. Even when she is exhausted, if I put away the red light, she will whine, beg, and plead for it to come back out so that she can chase it until exhausted again. She will ignore other toys and even treats if the red light has been played with recently because she can only think of that light. Penelope is addicted to the laser light.

Our whole culture is addicted. If something is not entertaining, fast, or distracting enough we start to whine and beg for something else – something new.

Yet the burnout is happening – even faster than we realize. There was an article on millenials and the search for meaning in the New York Times last week. The thrust of the article was this, “Millennials have been forced to reconsider what a successful life constitutes. By focusing on making a positive difference in the lives of others, rather than on more materialistic markers of success, they are setting themselves up for the meaningful life they yearn to have…” The rise of intentional communities, slow food movements, and the like are rational responses to an irrational system of hyper-stimulation and marketing.

The deeper need is for something real – something that is beautiful and not just pretty. Something that brings true joy and not just momentary happiness. Something that forms who we are and doesn’t just let us escape for a while.

This is where the Church has much to offer. Death, scarcity, competition, and avarice are the signs of a profoundly disordered society rooted in the notion that suffering and conflictive daily existence are somehow parts of God’s plan. Yet, the Trinity is the embodiment of difference as cooperative movement rather than something to be overcome. It is at once a response to unity and a call to it. The Trinity is not the completion, but the infinite act of ongoing completion in harmony and beauty.

That is a bit of theological denseness that simply means that the Church can offer a vision of wholeness and completion that does not rest on individual struggle over and against but on the deepest longing of God for each of us to know wholeness and meaning poured out in God’s own act of constant creative generosity and love. The key to knowing this ongoing act of beauty is found in the definitive act of love offered in Christ.

There cannot be a Christian conception of beauty without understanding the compelling a transcendent beauty of lives lived fully in the service of Christ and the whole of humanity. For beauty is necessarily transcendent, and fundamentally calls us out of ourselves into the world and to greater service and purpose. The Christian life is an act of beauty for it reflects the ongoing transcendent love of Christ in the world and through his people.

Beauty is not about prettiness. It is really about survival. That which is beautiful gives life and offers a picture of that which is in balance and harmony. It is an essential quality of the Church’s offering to the world. We offer the beautiful revealed in the most common of things – a vision of the Divine made known in human form.

There is a fundamental difference between a work of art and a reproduction. The Church cannot offer only reproduction whether it is of the past, of the culture around us, or of some anticipated future. The Church offers a vision of the here and now that is full of delight and decay, joy and regret, inspiration and despair. We worship a God who is the fullness of Presence and the source of beauty in its many forms.

Yet all of this beauty is ultimately not about our worship, architecture, or artwork – it is about the rapt awe we feel when we see someone living an essentially Christian life. It is why so many are fascinated by the new pope – we are given a vision of authenticity and therein lies beauty. We are dying for examples of coherence in which the inner life and the outer are in alignment – examples that give people a meaning and hope that lift them out of the conflictual busyness in which we are all too often mired into something holy and sustainable.

It is shocking when we see such examples and breaks, just for a second, the hold of addictive freneticism such that new possibilities are revealed.

We cannot offer just an alternative to cultural expectations and demands but a wholly other way of being that forms how we engage that culture. Christ, our model, came challenging the culture of his day but loving with fierce compassion those all around him. The Church has the power to be an agent of such compassion, such beauty, and such joy that we can help others find a new way of being that is utterly present and authentic because it finds its heart in the way of Christ.

Those who criticize the Church are doing us a profound favor because they are holding up for us a mirror so that we can see exactly where and how we are failing. Until we offer with clarity and conviction an authentic, present, vibrant, real faith we will continue to wonder at the busyness of the world around us and marvel that people don’t come and see. The challenge for us is not to figure out how to get others to come and see but to figure out how to go and show.

Robert

The other day, I heard an old saying for the first time – “Full faith means an empty church.” The implication of the aphorism is that a church that is preaching the fullness of the Gospel will quickly find itself without a congregation.  The demands and charge of the fullness of the Christian faith are simply too much for many of us to bear for long.

Yet, I am beginning to think that the phrase might be heard differently.  Can living the full faith of the Church lead us to buildings that are empty not because the faithful are frightened by the Gospel but because they are enlivened by it and finding their fulfillment serving those most in need in our communities around us?

The challenge for the Church amidst the changes taking place all around us is not for us to attract more believers to our buildings but to welcome those all around us deeper into Christ-shaped living.  This won’t happen through the force of our pulpits or the power of our teaching alone but through the simplicity of lived Christian faith.  Our congregants are our chief missionaries and evangelists – they are equipped for lives of purpose that draw others to see something of Christ.

Full faith doesn’t mean that our buildings are absent of faithful men and women but that our buildings are the waystation for the faithful to draw strength and hope from being in Christ’s Presence so that they can go out refreshed and renewed for the work of Christian living.

It has been this way since the very beginning.  St Peter on one level appeared to be everything that faithful Christian should not be. And yet, before it was all over, Peter became the rock upon which the Church would be founded and a powerful evangelist and missionary for Christ.  His life is a testimony to what God can do with a life offered to his service.

At some point, over the course of his ministry, Jesus goes from saying “get thee behind me” to “Feed my Lambs.” Jesus knew Peter and knew what and who he was called to be.

Convicted by the teaching and preaching of John the Baptist, Peter’s brother Andrew tells Peter of Jesus, “Behold the Lamb of God.” Peter’s journey is one of faith, endurance, mistakes, mis-steps, tragedies, martyrdom, and reward. He takes a journey from beholding to becoming. From beholding the Lamb of God to becoming the Body of Christ.

Jesus knew that life with him, despite Peter’s failings, would transform Peter and make him strong enough to bear the Church. And he knows this of us too.

The new occupant of the throne of Peter seems to understand this call to go out if the reports of his leaving the Vatican at 1am to go out and to be with the poor and the hungry are true.  The Swiss Guard are, of course, upset that the pope is taking such risks and yet there is the heart of the Gospel calling us to risk so that others may see and know.

In the Church, we are called to behold and become – to know the living Body and to make it known.  In so many ways, despite our belief and our unbelief, we are being welcomed into the new life of the Risen Christ.

This Body itself is not outwardly visible – it needs outward signs to be known to the world. It is our willingness to show forth in our lives what we proclaim with our lips that shows what it means to be the Church. In a time when fewer and fewer people will read Scripture growing up or receive the Sacraments as part of their everyday life – it is that much more vital that we offer some way for them to see and know something of the simple kindness and love of Christ.

Are we saved by being kind? No.  Are we saved if we aren’t kind? Possibly.   Will we help others to see the love of God if we aren’t kind? Probably not.

Probably not because being of the Body – truly knit to Christ – means allowing ourselves to be more fully drawn into a life of self-offering. A life marked by a lack of faith, hope, or charity is probably not one that is fully of the Body. This may be at the heart of sainthood and of sanctification – we grow in relationship with God and as we do so our outward lives are transformed to ever more resemble the inward grace we are blessed with.

We are being called to missionary life – to one that lives in the wilderness yet is nourished by Bread and Wine.  The paradox is that as we see our lives ever more deeply formed by the missional imperative to go out we will find our churches even more full as the next generation of believers is called to come and see.  The Church’s challenge is to move from an attractional model of ministry that is based on creating programming and a more impressive show to an incarnational one rooted in the lived Christian experience of every believer growing into their identity as the Body.

This starts at the Altar.  We receive the Body so that we might grow into its likeness.  Yet the Mass is not a moment outside of time but is time most fully experienced.  In the Presence of the Holy we know our true self revealed and exposed so that we might truly be present.  It is not simply Transubstantiation that is being effected but a substantial transformation of ourselves, our hopes, our intentions, and our purpose.

Yet after offering, blessing, breaking, and sharing comes a sending forth with strength and courage.  We are given a measure of Christ’s own self to offer it to others.  We behold and we become.  The action of the Eucharist is ongoing and manifold.  Even as we are sent out it is not because the liturgy is over but because it has just really just begun in us.  We are being called to welcome others to gather, to hear how God’s Word is changing us, to know brokenness, to share blessing, to be one in holiness, to be and share peace.

Often, the liturgy is referred to as the “work of the people” from its Greek root.  Yet this means far more than that it is the responsibility of all to take part in the liturgical life of the parish.  It means that it is our employment, our vocation, and our call.  It is as essential to our identity.  It is the work of the people in that it is the very infrastructure of our life – undergirding who we are and what we do.

“Full faith, empty church” – it takes on a different meaning when we realize that the Church is never empty.  It is always full of the Presence and potency of Christ.  At some points our buildings have fewer or more people in them yet this is not the only measure of health.  The real question is what are our people up to when they are not in the building?  Are they living the liturgy in such a way that the Church is not confined by walls but magnified by the vision of Christ?

Our buildings are among our greatest assets.  They are a home for the hope-filled and hopeless alike.  Yet their greatest strength lies in their ability to feed us to go out – to be forgiven and restored for life and beyond so that others may see and know the Living Christ.  Are we, by our becoming, welcoming others to behold?  Is our full faith the testimony of a Church that goes out from its buildings with courage and hope?

Robert

Not long ago, a friend, Scott Gunn, put up a blog post on the perennial discussion about blue or purple vestments for Advent.  There are those who claim that one or the other is markedly superior for any variety of reasons.  I am partial to purple myself for reasons I shall remark more upon momentarily.

What I was particularly struck by though was the stridency of those who were advocating for blue based on the notion that Advent is “not a penitential season.” This also carried over into another conversation I read about whether or not to say “Alleluia” during Advent which reminded me of other practices during Advent that are similar to Lent, such as suppressing the Gloria or saying the Litany in Procession.

The reaction from the non-penitential crowd was a bit ensaddening though as it gets to the heart of a theological issue in the Episcopal Church – what to do with penitence, sin, and guilt.

Of course, Advent is a season of anticipation – even joyful anticipation.  Yet that anticipation is not of a random event – it is the anticipation of the coming of Christ among us.  We hear, throughout Advent, that we are to be prepared – to not allow our lamps to run out of oil.  Today we heard, “Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.” Next week we will hear, “His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire” and that we must “Bear fruit worthy of repentance.” In Advent III we will hear, “See, the Judge is standing at the doors!”

The message is fairly consistent, Advent is a time of self-examination for the Christ who comes does not simply come with flowers in hand – he comes to make new our hearts within us.

Yet for that new creation to take root in our lives, we must do a little careful preparation.  This is the heart of repentance.  Advent, as a penitential season, is one of careful reflection and making room for the Living One to find a place to dwell within us.

We are on pilgrimage in Advent as a people paradoxically as strong as we are weak for we are creatures of Body and Blood and Water.  This journey is one we have made before and that we are making again and will make in the future. It is the never ending journey of our lives back to the baptismal font.

We make our way back home to those waters of new life where the pledge was first made to renounce the vain works of the Devil. John Macquarrie writes of Baptism, “Sin, or rather the conviction of sin, is the presupposition of baptism. We have a sense that all is not well with us.” The baptismal mystery is that we understand ourselves to be washed from sin in Baptism. Yet, we also recognize the reality of sin and temptation in our lived Christian experience.

That reality – that we sin – inhibits our ability to truly welcome the Christ who comes in the most unexpected ways.  Penitence in Advent is not about lamenting and bewailing – it is about creating.  It is the re-creation of space for Christ’s birth to find a place within us.  As our lives are filled with the stuff of busy lives we find ourselves wandering ever further from the oasis of Font and the refreshment of Altar.

How do we hold onto that centered place in which we know ourselves at one with Christ, literally donning Christ at the font?  This holy season of Advent is not about becoming perfect, but about walking toward the perfection that we were one with at the baptismal font.

Just as Mary’s yes to Christ made Divinity known in humanity – we are being called to say yes in ways that will enable those all around us to see Christ made Present in our very life and love. The process of Advent repentance is one in which we re-remember who God has made us to be and make room for the wholeness of Baptized Presence to well up in us anew even as we are tempted by pride to false self-sufficiency or by the toil of life to despairing nihilism.

Baptism is the sign by which we are to see, feel, and know our life as awash in divine promise. Repentance makes the unobservable and the easily avoided more concrete so that we also know the concrete reality of Grace.

As we repent and make our Communion, the Holy Spirit strips away those things which distance us from one another and from God.  We begin anew the migration back to the baptismal font, that place where we are who we were meant to be when our deepest being was one with Christ.  We ask now to again be indwelt by God.

The reality of the Incarnation means, necessarily, that we will fall short.  The season of Advent offers not only a time to anticipate and rejoice but to do the hard work of making room, of creating space, and of finding our way back to the source of our wholeness and health.

The promise of the Incarnation is that humans are caught up in divine promise – that promise is not a gnostic one though nor without form or shape.  An incarnated faith requires, from time to time, that we come to terms not only with the miracle and the promise but with the messiness and the pain so that we can even more fully find ourselves caught up in the joy of new birth.

Robert