religiocity

Posted on: April 30th, 2016 Ministry, Margin, & Gleaning

The Old Testament from Last Sunday (the 5^th Sunday of Easter) struck me deeply.

Here is a common experience for this preacher: after having spent (on Saturday and very early Sunday morning) hours of study, prayer, thought, and rhetorical preparation for my sermon in the 11:05 Epiphany Eucharist, I find myself sitting in the chancel pew in the Christ Church nave at the 7:30 Eucharist on Sunday morning. I’ve been focusing intently on my sermon, with its particular emphases rooted in a particular text, but now it is time to worship the Living God.

The faithful lay reader begins with the Old Testament lesson, and I begin to notice a different theme, a different image, a different tone than the one(s) I have been pounding home in my own sermon prep. Even though it often barely registers the first time through, this is the first nudge from the Holy Spirit that God is way bigger than I forgetfully assume. Then Father David (or Father Keith) mounts the pulpit. A typical experience is that those faint images from the lay reader’s voice–which had barely registered–are then handled deftly and persuasively by the preacher, and I am left undone. Often times tears begin to roll down my face.

I had been focusing on X, but it was Y which the Holy Spirit wanted to press into my bones. It is not that X was bad or unworthy; it is simply that God is bigger than my heart/mind, and I that am not in control.

I don’t remember what X was for me last Sunday; but I do remember Y.

Y was: gleaning. From Leviticus 19.

When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap to the very edges of your field, or gather the gleanings of your harvest. You shall not strip your vineyard bare, or gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and the alien. I am the LORD your God.

What are the ways I tend to “strip the vineyard bare?” What are the ways I forget about margin? The margin which allows me to work less, which allows others to thrive? I think about my car, my body, my family, my ministry.

I don’t want to romanticize ancient Israel’s practice of gleaning, and I am still prayerfully listening to what this might mean. But I do want to become so mature in Christ (Eph. 4:13) that I have some good stuff left over. That I am not continually “spent,” so that others can enjoy. That I remember that while hard work is good, it is not ultimate. My hard work is an act of obedience and worship, but at the end of the day, God must grant the harvest. God must make things grow. God must make everything OK.

Not reaping to the edges of our metaphorical (or literal) fields is an action, a little ritual, which reminds us that our hard work, our astute planning, our laborious attention, is penultimate at best.

Maybe the Pentateuch knows that for most of us, “workaholism” is a bigger danger than laziness, or that we have a tendency to oscillate between the two, or that most of us assume the paradigm of “working for our salvation.” And so it wisely gives us a golden mean for which to strive: not too little work, and not too much.

May God help me, and all of us, to become more like an ancient Israelite in this way, and less like a 21^st century, capitalist-individualist American. May God help me, and all of us, to practice in our lives the ancient wisdom of gleaning.

Posted on: April 3rd, 2016 Intersubjective Ecclesiology

Today I experienced the Episcopal Church (in my diocese, the Diocese of Texas) at its best.  Today a small army of saints was newly confirmed and received, the Gospel of the Risen Christ was clearly preached, and the Kingdom of God was extolled and celebrated.

All this leads me to reflect on my church, and my place in it.

I am a traditional Christian. I am in a real sense deeply catholic, committed to the teaching of the apostles. And yet, my church–the Episcopal Church and the Diocese of Texas–seems (to my mind) to be drifting away from that foundation in some important ways.

Am I tempted to leave this church, to walk away and find greener pastures elsewhere, more doctrinally faithful to the apostles? Yes, I am.

And yet, what I am compelled to admit after today–a day of rich fellowship and joyful love with the saints–is that I can no more walk away from my church than I can walk away from myself.

Why would I say such a thing? I say it because this church is my very self.

In this lecture David Bentley Hart argues (at about the 19-minute mark) that the traditional doctrine of eternal damnation in hell presupposes something like Cartesian subjectivity. That is, to think that my loved ones can burn eternally in hell but that I can remain free and clear of those flames assumes that my soul is “buffered” (to invoke Charles Taylor’s) terminology, and this, in turn, is something like Descartes’ (or Kant’s) notion of the individual subject.

But this is not Christian. To view the soul or the human self in a way which resonates with Christian assumptions is to recognize that my soul is formed by, in, and with others. My soul is the product of a whole web of influences, personalities, convictions, perspectives which I did not invent, but rather which I inherited from others. That is, my soul is enmeshed with the souls of many others. My soul is not distinct, but “porous.” It overflows into the souls of others and vice-versa.

To embrace this is to embrace intersubjectivity.

My soul is intersubjectively enmeshed with the souls of countless others. But chiefly among these “countless others” are those with whom I share Christ’s body and blood week in and week out. Chiefly those with whom I am “one body”–the Body of Christ–in the most concrete ways possible. In the most basic, visible ways possible.

I am talking about my church. The visible Body of Christ with whom I am in communion. The Diocese of Texas. This is the community of souls with whom my soul is enmeshed.

I might not “agree” with the majority. Praise God! I get to demonstrate that the love of Christ is not conditioned by agreement, but is bigger and deeper!

I can no more leave these saints than I can leave myself. Literally.