Reflections on a Long Parish Ministry

We were partners in a strange marriage,
An arranged marriage in which
We gave our consent to a life together
We had neither prescience or understanding of.
But, it was a marriage and because
We honor marriage,  we determined
To make the best of it.

I loved you and did not know
How to love you.
And you loved me and shared
The same ignorance.

All the things that sour a marriage were there:
Pride, fear, confusion, inflated expectations.
But the things that save a marriage were there, too:
Forgiveness, humor, respect, and satisfaction.
They worked contrary to one another in such a way
As to produce a persevering resignation and trust.

And the result was a good thing for both of us.
We brought to one another
What the other lacked.
We were bettered by the conflict,
By the discipline,
By the failures,
And by the many renewals of love.
Thus, we were made more like one another
And more like the Thing
We both supremely loved.

And in my aging days I look back.
My regrets stare back at me with hollow eyes.
But, there is no bitterness
And the pangs of longing are mixed with joy.
The regrets and pangs make me wish
That I could have been a better man, a wiser man.
And, yet, even in that longing
Is also something of love.

To John Peter Boonzaaijer, "Batiushka"

And so, you came to me:
Young and impressionable,
A sponge, ready to drink in everything
I could give you.
And, like a sponge,
Rough and wooly on the edges.
And I taught you
All I could,
Ancient truths,
And the lore of the woods and fields,
(Remember when we skinned the raccoon?)
And the forgotten crafts
Of wood and iron,
Of water, fire, earth and air.
And you left me richer than you came,
Dripping with newly acquired knowledge
And a modicum of experience.
You left happy
And I watched you go with a
Sad joy.

And so, I came to you:
With white hair and wrinkled eyes,
Still longing to know,
Still thirsty to drink from
Wells of knowledge.
And you taught me,
All you could,
Ancient truths,
Venerable forms,
The lore and luster
Of the Ancient Church,
The old light shining with
New illumination upon the Sacred Text.
You taught me
The holiness of real things,
Bread and Wine,
Water and Oil,
Holy smoke from
God's own forge.
And we stand together now,
Not parted, not parting,
Until death shall come for one of us-
And I hope it will be me first,
And you will
Watch me go with a
Joyous sadness.

A Christian "Culture of Complaint"?

We are hearing a good deal these days about the persecution of Christians in current American culture.  (Most of the noise is to be heard from the 24-7 news (?) media and the social networks like Facebook.)  Much of this so-called persecution has revolved around free enterprise operations like Chick-Fil-a, Hobby Lobby, and the television series "Duck Dynasty."  I rarely shop or eat at the first two, and I have never seen an episode of the last, so I have no emotional investment in any of the them.

I have been cautious about commenting on any of this, and once, when I did, I was grossly misunderstood, ended up alienating a few friends, and was cautioned by my Rector.  The scalded dog avoids any water thrown in his direction.

But, the more I have listened  to this noise, the more I have thought that something is missing.  It was only last night that I think I saw what that something is.

Years ago, the late art-critic, Robert Hughes described America in the 90s as a "culture of complaint."  American's in the 90s had become hypersensitive, whiny, complaining, self-absorbed, quick to take offense and shrill in their response to it (real or imagined).  I agreed with Hughes' analysis then, and I think that thirty years later, we are not only the same, but worse.  So goes the culture and that does not cause me a lot of concern.

What does concern me is this:  The same charge can be leveled at Christians in America at the present time.  And with justification.

In the present climate with all the talk about persecution and "rights" the outrage and complaint are palpable and the whining and self-pity are thinly disguised (if at all).  "Poor Christians, we are always getting a raw deal."

What is missing from all of this is the attitude of the early Church, and the Church throughout the ages and

even now in other parts of the world.  What is missing is what Jesus commended and commanded in His disciples when confronted with mistreatment.  What is missing is Joy.

"Blessed are ye when men shall revile you and persecute you for my sake and the Gospel's"  "Rejoice and be exceedingly glad for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you." This is what the Founder of the Christian church said, and having said it, went on to model it before the world.  Even unto death.  Even unto death on a Roman torture stake.

The early Christians understood this.  They took up the cross, suffered mistreatment, persecution, and death and did so without complaint.  Indeed, they did so with joy and rejoicing.  "They rejoiced that they were counted worthy to suffer for Jesus' name."

We may be watchful about the current of contemporary culture.  We may be concerned about the loss of freedom in a free society.

But, we must never whine and complain.  This is a tacit denial of a core ethic of our Faith. The world understands this better that some Christians do.

And it is watching...too.

A Little Incident at the Baptist College by E. D. "Shinbone" Smith, Bomar, Oklahoma, formerly Indian Territory, IT

For a spell I thought I was called to preach and preach I did with a license from the Thackerville Baptist Church.  I was young and zealous and full of fire- more fire than light, I'd say now.

 Anyhow, everybody thought I should get some education, and Lord knows, I needed it.  So, I packed up what little I owned (it fit in one big suitcase) and headed off to the Baptist college.  I always loved books and reading, so in one way I was in my element.  There was plenty of books and plenty of time to read.  Trouble is,  I'd get interested in something one of the professors said and start reading everything about it I could get my hands on and the rest of the class and the professor would take off and leave me behind.  I learned a right smart, but not always what I was supposed to be learning.

There was a lot of preacher-boys like me at the college; some of them was smart and some was as dumb as a 'possum.  Pretty much like life in general, I expect.

One day we was studying the life of King David in the Book of Samuel and there is this story there about how old crazy King Saul was envious of David and had reneged on his promise to give David his daughter's hand in marriage for killing the giant.  To thicken the soup, King Saul told David he could have the girl if David brought him a hundred foreskins of the Philistines.  You can read about this in I Samuel 18.

Now there was this country preacher-boy named Clovis from down around Gotebo, Oklahoma in the class.  There was a right smart of 'possum about old Clovis.  When he heard this story, his face kindly screwed up in a grimace and his shoulder started to jerk.  Finally, he raised his big hand.

"Dr. Blackwell, " he said, to our old wizened professor, "I was jist wondering, did he have to kill them fellers to git them things?"

Old Dr. Blackwell, leaned back, drew breath, and with just the fuzz of a smile, said,

"Well, son, he'd have to kill me to get mine!"

I always loved old Dr. Blackwell and I don't know what ever happened to Clovis.

A Reply to a Friend, Part II

My dear Friend,

My move from my previous position, which I held for nearly forty years, in a very profound way came of my coming to see a conflict and controversy between


things, real things on the one hand,

and, ideas or thought constructs on the other.

I will try in this post to explain what I mean by this.

As Protestant Christians you and I believe that sinners are saved by grace.  Sinners and sin are not ideas, they are real things.  And grace is not an idea (nasty thought!).  Grace is God himself acting in undeserved and unmerited favor to deliver and heal sinful men and women.  We are not saved by an idea of grace, even a correct theological idea of grace, we are saved by the Triune God of grace.

My previous world-view was made up chiefly of ideas.  My previous life was spent in trying to find and maintain the right set of correct ideas about God, human critters, and the world.  It was an endless and exhausting task.  It was also a delimiting one.  Once I came to the right idea about sin or grace, the second coming, the nature of the Bible, etc., I was ready to plant my flag and scan the horizon for those potential foes flying a different one.  This is one of the essential marks of the fundamentalist, whether he reads Greek and Hebrew, or cannot read at all.  But, it is finally about ideas, not stuff, not the stuff of God's creation.  This is why the fundamentalist has such a hard time loving anybody but those who share his ideas.  The fundamentalist loves the Big Idea, he does not love the world that is there.

This view is really just another form of the old Gnostic heresy.  Ideas matter, stuff does not.  (In fact, I can trace my earliest unease with my views to a book, Against the Protestant Gnostics, by Philip J. Lee.   Highly recommended and still in print.)

The catholic and Anglican view is that this view of the world and of God's work in the world is completely, utterly wrong-headed.  The Biblical view is concerned to stress certain realities against certain other ideas.

Things  vs.  Ideas

The Whole Person  vs.  The Mind

Scriptural Declarations  vs.  Propositions or Constructs

The Embodied  vs.  The Disembodied

Sacramental Reality  vs.  Spiritual Ideals

Life in the Body and in the World  vs.  Life in the Mind or Spirit

The Community of the Church  vs.  Individualism

The catholic and Anglican emphasis on the left hand side of these things is the one that seems to me to best represent the reality presented in the Bible.  This means that grace and faith are not mere ideas, but realities that are lived out the way the rest of our lives are.

Illustration:  I married Kathy forty years ago this coming December.  That marriage was formalized in solemn vows before God and witnesses and bonded in our sexual union of oneness on our wedding night.  Since then, a whole series and complex of liturgies have blessed and deepened our devotion to one another over these many and happy years:  Touches, kisses, words of endearment and commitment,  shared sorrows and joys, three living children and one lost little girl-child in her sixth month of life, cards, gifts, shared homes and travel, memories kept in photos and journals, and on and on...  In addition, there have been hurts, wounds, harsh words and cold shoulders, misunderstandings and grievances, and much,  much forgiveness, forgiveness marked by real words and actions.    Who can doubt the importance of these small sacramental gestures in bringing health and joy to this marriage?  Thus, our marriage, like all good ones has been supported by a liturgy of daily acts of love and considerateness.  Marriages, real and good ones, are not just based on ideas or even shared points-of-view at every point, but on faith and faithfulness,  love and mercy, grace and patience lived out in real words and acts in a life that is messy, fallen, and earthy.

In the same way, the life of God is lived out in the same way.  Not simply in the mind or "heart," but in a host of acts and actions.  We bow our heads, we bend our knees, we lift our hands, we receive water upon our heads (or in the immersion of the whole body), we receive bread and wine, chewing and swallowing it, we receive the oil of blessing, healing, and unction, we sing, we speak, we read, we hear- in a word, we use all our senses in acts of worship and service.  Toward the people of God, we listen, speak, weep, pray, touch, hold, hug, kiss, laugh, etc.  This is an embodied spirituality,  spiritual, not because it takes place in the mind alone, but because it is incarnated in acts of love and service.

Does this mean that the mind does not matter?  That truth does not matter?  Of course not!  But, it does mean this:  A life that divorces the mind in ideas from worship and service in earthy, imperfect, but beautiful acts cannot claim to be the religion of the Bible.  It is this last point that I will try to develop in my next post.

I hope this is helpful and I wish you every blessing, my dear friend, in Jesus.

Tbone+

A Reply to a Friend, Part I

"So how did you come from being a Baptist to being an Episcopal (Anglican) sacramentarian?"

This is the question asked me today by an old friend.  Many of my old friends have wondered the same thing, though most of them have not asked.  I gave it some thought and concluded that this would be a good place to start an explanation of the journey.  I will not start with exegesis, though there is an exegetical infrastructure under the whole thing.  But, we fool ourselves if we think that exegesis stands alone in our theological constructs.  We are complex and our constructs are complex.

The fact is this:  I have spent all my life trying to understand how the world works and how human persons work within it.  I have spent nearly fifty years trying to understand the world and human persons as God's critters, His creation.  More and more in the past twenty years, I came to believe that the world works and that God's world works in much the same way.

I believe in the creation, in the stuff of creation, in "what is there."  "God loves 'stuff;' he invented it."  C.S. Lewis.  The stuff is there.  It is reality.  What we think of it and how we construe it is not the same- though our thought processes are a part of the reality.  God's original idea, his Big Idea, was to create the world as a home-place for a race of human critters made in his image (sonship language).  When sin violated this original idea, God's purpose in redemption (purposed from all eternity) kicked in.  It was still his idea and purpose to have, to possess a human family of men and women being the divine image.

This redemptive purpose would not be executed outside the creation, but within it.  Thus, the Biblical story from Genesis onwards.  It is earthy, real, and messy-rooted in time and space- in history.  The Climax of this is seen in the Incarnation of the Son (Image) of God, Jesus Christ.  He is conceived, born, circumcised, trained, tested, perfected, as a real Man in the real world.  As the True Man he works out the salvation of men in this world, all of which culminates in his rejection and death.  But, as a real Man he is raised from the dead, not as a disembodied spirit, but as an embodied human being.

When he sends his Spirit on Pentecost it is in order that he may be embodied in human beings who now exist as his temple, his dwelling place- the Church.  Now, if you want to see something earthy, real, and messy, just look at the church.  The church, in all its weakness and sin, far from being the argument against the Christian Faith that it is thought to be, is really the proof of the pudding:  God's intention is this-worldly, not other-worldly.  Like I said (or was it Lewis?) he loves stuff.  And he loves the church and those messy sinners who constitute her reality in the here and now.

So, I began to see that God's purpose is rooted in his love for his critters.  His purpose is to save his critters, human persons and physical creation itself by bringing both into perfect and loving congruity with himself.

From this perspective, the whole creation and the whole person- real "stuffness," is the object of this purpose.  Not disembodied souls, or minds, but the whole complex of mind, affections and will in a physical reality that is God's good making.

From this place it is not a huge jump to come to believe that the spiritual life is about the same stuff. And, the spiritual life outlined in the Bible is concerned with things like speech, blood, fire, oil, wine, bread, and water.  In the New Testament this concern is linked with sacraments (outward signs of promised inward spiritual graces).  There can be sacraments without grace and faith, but normally, there cannot be grace without sacraments.  These sacraments are represented in water, bread and wine.  By partaking of these in faith, we enter into fellowship with the Father as sons, through the death and resurrection of the Son, and in the power of the Spirit of adoption (as sons and daughters).  Thus, when the NT speaks of partaking of these things it is never as just symbols, but in the reality.  Baptism saves, cleanses, unites us with Christ, washes us in regenerative grace, etc.  The Lord's Supper feeds us on the real body and blood of Christ and enables us to participate in the life of the Covenant God whose supper it is.  There are mysteries here and, as an Anglican, I do not try to explain them or to explain them away (Like the Roman Catholic and Lutheran or the one hand or the Baptist on the other).  I come to them in the faith of the Gospel of Christ and in the promise of God to give grace in them.  God gives grace in his word, his water, his bread, and his wine.  He has promised to do so and fulfills that promise to all who receive his promise in faith.  Thus, God chooses to work in the world in the same way he has always worked, in and through the stuff of creation.

Well, that's enough for now, but by now you, my inquiring friend, can see the trajectory of my thought and of my journey.  Grace and peace in our Lord Jesus Christ.  Tbone+

Against the "God-Talkers"

They talk
And talk
And talk:
Asserting their certainties.
Affirming their formulae.
Arguing their auguries.

Let them.
Let them
Talk
    and talk

        and talk

           and talk.

Let them affirm.
Let them assert.
Let them argue.

I will be silent.
I will hold my peace.
I will keep my counsel.
I will remain absolutely aloof.

Until...
Unless...
They learn to listen.