I have a certain affection for the East Porch at Willow Brook Country Club (thanks, Trey & Peyton!).
And yet, in my 41 years I have never really been much of a golfer.
I have, however, been thinking about golf today. Golf, and frisbee golf.
Let me back up and tell you a bit about my day. I spent a couple of hours this morning reading a book written by one of our speakers at this year’s Diocese of Texas Clergy Conference, a priest in the church who also teaches at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota, named Dwight Zscheile (pronounced like “Shylie”).
People of the Way is a thought provoking and sobering book. In the first couple of chapters alone Zscheile brings out such useful concepts as:
– The “vernacular principle,” according to which we Episcopalians should embrace our rich heritage of “translating the church’s life into the language of the people,” a principle which might lead me to adopt terms such as “schedule” instead of “rota.”
– The “benefactor paradigm,” according to which “those with power, privileges, and resources do good works on behalf of others, yet retain their superior status.” This paradigm stands in direct opposition to the way of Jesus. Tim Keller describes an opposite approach, one in which “the essence of the Kingdom is the giving away of power,” an approach much closer to what Zscheile recommends in his book.
– “Strategic, managerial solutions” which we hope will “solve the church’s problems.” Zscheile writes that “Strategy operates from a posture of strength to remake one’s surroundings according to one’s own needs and desires.” Such ways and means, Zscheile suggests, are a thing of the past.
Much of the book is a serious and intense grappling with the Episcopal Church’s struggle to deal with its loss of “the legacy of establishment,” the golden age of the Anglican Church in America, which climaxed in the mid 1960’s, during which the Episcopal Church commanded respect and wielded influence in the surrounding culture.
As such, the book grapples with the issue of class. Zscheile forthrightly admits that, in the church’s zeal for “equal rights” (the most recent example of which is the fight for “full inclusion” of LGBT folks) we are still more “classist” than ever.
And now, back to my modest thought(s) about (frisbee) golf.
On my five mile run today in Lindsey Park I ran past some Frisbee golfers, probably in their early 20’s. They looked like they were having fun, clad with tattooes, smoking I-don’t-want-to-know-what, laughing, and drinking cheep beer in tin cans.
And yet, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that, despite the class difference between them and the denizens of the WBCC East Porch, what the two classes have in common runs much deeper than that which divides. Yes, I am thinking about the imbibing of beer. (!) But much more than that, both groups have a longing for community, an urge to connect, and a need for love and acceptance.
Is it possible to do church, to make Eucharist, with both groups? For the love of God and the world, I hope and pray that it is!
And here we offer, and present unto thee, O Lord,
Our selves, our souls and bodies,
To be a reasonable, holy, and living sacrifice…
One month ago in my Crucifer article I wrote about the need, as we minister to others, to “let God be God.”
Closely connected to this idea is the need to be “wise as serpents.” Yes, Christ calls us to be “innocent as doves” (Matthew 10:16), but I find that, among those who endeavor to minster to people in the name of Christ and for the sake of the Gospel, few of us are truly “wise as serpents.”
I know many people who engage in ministry who are well intentioned but whose “innocence” verges on naiveté.
To wise is, among other things, to promote longevity, to prepare for the future, to live life in ways that are sustainable. Practices that lead to “burnout” are not wise. And yet we live in a culture in which “burnout” seems to be the default mode. Burnout in the federal government. Burnout in the global economy. Burnout in marriage. Burnout in the good earth God gave us.
What does it mean to be a reasonable sacrifice? Week in and week out, as these words, spoken from the altar, flow out of my mouth, as they echo in my mind, I am reminded of the need for ministers of the Gospel, including all baptized Christians (though the clergy must model this), to be “wise as serpents.”
This language in our Eucharistic Prayer is borrowed from Romans 12, where St. Paul calls us to “present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship.” The word “spiritual,” here, is the Greek adjective here is related to the noun logos, which means (among other things) “reason.”
As the baptized priests of the new covenant of Jesus Christ, who are given a “ministry of reconciliation,” we must sacrifice for others. We must give our lives away, and “spend” them on others. All of this is true, and all of this matters deeply. The Christian life is not simply a life of luxury; it is a life of sacrifice, and even a life of suffering for and with our suffering Lord.
A minister who “sacrifices reasonably,” however, will know when to rest and when to serve. When to go to the hospital to visit a sick brother or sister at midnight and when to be with his kids. When to say “yes,” and when to say “no.” When to push and when to relax. When to ask, and when to not ask. All of this is a matter of wisdom.
And the things about wisdom, is gained only by experience. Life. Failure. Trial-and-error.
I’m very mindful of the many ministers at Christ Church who are not ordained, who sacrifice daily for the sake of the Gospel, and for others. These men and woman are truly awe-inspiring.
Let us take Christ as our model. Christ who truly sacrificed for others, by putting their needs before his own. Christ who knew when to say “yes,” and when to say “no.” Christ who was innocent as a dove, and wise as a serpent.
In A Secular Age Charles Taylor discusses the issue of the “two speeds” in the church. That is, at least since the rise of monasticism & St. Benedict, there has been in the church a kind of distinction between the ordinary “lay people” (Lat. laicus) and the more “spiritually advanced” members of holy orders, religious and “secular.”
What Taylor is doing in this book is (among other things) giving a kind of genealogical account of what intellectual and cultural developments led to the kind of secular world in which we live, in which (for example) atheism seems more obvious to people than historic Christian faith. The question is “How did the secular world come to be?”
One of the developments which Taylor points to is the attempt on the part of various and sundry reform movements, particularly throughout the medieval period, to “flatten out” the various distinctions among “religious” people and the ordinary secular folk. Of course, a primary movement like this is the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century.
Now anyone familiar with Taylor will know that he is not given to brash, unqualified positions. Rather, especially in a work like this one, he tries to be descriptive and nuanced. Thus it is at times a challenge to discern the precise role he imputes to such movements, let alone to detect his final evaluation of them.
And yet, it is difficult to resist the c0nclusion that such reform movements played a complicit role in the rise of the modern world, and to the extent, then, that this book is a subtle and complex critique of modern secularism, such movements are viewed with suspicion.
This account resonates with me. It is easy for me to lay much blame for the contemporary marginalization of theology and church at the feet of the Reformation in particular, although for many years I subscribed to the opposite view that the original Protestant movements (and subsequent communities which were loyal to them, such as British Presbyterianism) could be viewed as a kind of “counter-Enlightenment,” almost like a reformed & renewed version of medieval Christendom.
Yet this has not been my position for several years now, at least since my conversion to Anglicanism. I cannot now resist the temptation to view the 16th century Reformation as an essential ingredient of the rise of western modernity, and Taylor’s point about the Reformation’s attempt to flatten out the “two speeds” makes a lot of sense to me.
And yet, I do agree with John Milbank and others in Radical Orthodoxy that this is an example of a movement which – however destructive and ill-conducted – was in fact reaction against a real problem in the Catholic Church. That is, the ultimate cause or problem is, as always, within the Church’s “own house.” (Note that RO and similar movements are, when at their best, not just a critique of modern secularism but also of the conditions within the church and within Christendom which gave rise to modern secularism.)
In other words, even if Taylor is right to criticize the flattening out of the two speeds, it does not follow from this that the “dual speed arrangement” was legitimate in medieval Christian culture. Rather, the resources were always there in the Church, perhaps, to overcome this false dichotomy and to empower all the faithful to live the life of Christ to the fullest, in the deepest possible ways. (Two possible counterpoints would be what some would regard as the failure of halakhic Judaism, and Paul’s injunction to celibacy in I Cor 7.)
To this end, I appeal to Scripture, namely the Psalms and the “new covenant” which is described in Jeremiah 31 and Hebrews 10.
The psalms are replete with a celebration of delighting in the law of the LORD, and this certainly does not seem to be limited to some “higher class.” Rather, all people chanted such Psalms as Psalms 19 and 119 in the gathered assembly of the Temple (note that it is the simple who are made wise by the law in Ps 19:7):
Psa. 19:7 The law of the LORD is perfect,
reviving the soul;
the testimony of the LORD is sure,
making wise the simple;
Psa. 119:1 Blessed are those whose way is blameless,
who walk in the law of the LORD!
Psa. 119:18 Open my eyes, that I may behold
wondrous things out of your law.
Psa. 119:29 Put false ways far from me
and graciously teach me your law!
Psa. 119:34 Give me understanding, that I may keep your law
and observe it with my whole heart.
Psa. 119:44 I will keep your law continually,
forever and ever…. (ESV)
In addition it is difficult for me to envision some kind of “remedial level” of spirituality as compatible with the “new covenant” language of Jeremiah 31, which implies a full penetration of intimate “cutting” in covenant with the Spirit of God.
“And they will not teach each other or say to one another ‘know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest.” (Heb 8:11, quoting Jer 31:34, NRSV)
Seems like “one speed” to me.
