the whether of Christianity as the religion. Is this belief system any better that any other. Or is it simply the one I grew up with, the one scribbled on my tablet by my parents, and the neighbors (most were Catholic) and the culture. Could I have been just as content (or discontent) as a Muslim? Or a Buddhist? Or a Kabbalist? Is this Christianity no more than one way godward among many? Is it mine simply because it was the most marketable religious system in the fourth-century Mediterranean world? I think that might be. A system grown out of the mystic Jesus’ experiences, codified by the brash, enthusiastic genius of the mystic Paul. Did it simply make the most sense for the most people throughout most of the Mediterranean basin in 200 AD? Was it simply better coinage than the state religion and folk piety of that day? I remember Dr. Solomon at Bexley Hall commenting in an aside about folk piety. Though I cannot recall his words, I do not remember that he disparaged folk piety, rather he seemed to be alerting us to it. I had never heard the term folk piety before, but had come to Bexley deeply imbued in it. Christian folk piety was my religion when I arrived, and I was in the process of exchanging it for a much more intellectual, and intellectually acceptable religion, orthodox Western Christianity. But in retrospect, was the orthodoxy any better than the folk piety? And was it any closer to a relationship with God himself? Or was first century Christianity simply the more marketable folk piety of its day? And converted by those early Church Fathers into a supremely acceptable (for its day) intellectual religious system? And I inherited it. And it’s no closer to God that the other stuff, loved mainly because it could claim a real, live martyred human Jesus as its founding mystic?
I am wondering. And wandering. But not feeling lost!
********************
XIX Pentecost—September 21, 2008
Arrived at church a quarter of an hour before the service, greeted warmly Drew, now a cancer survivor, and settled in to muse a few minutes. Ed Burdick sat down beside me, asked if I was working on my sermon. Notes were appearing, scribbled on the front of my bulletin. It was a productive morning, the musings just kept coming, so cryptic notes kept filling up the blank spaces on the bulletin cover.
I get occasional glimpses. Susan says she doesn’t give a hang for the unseen God. And while I sympathize with her disinterest, I do (and just how-hard wired is that need, I wonder?) I am curious, but more than just curious. There is a vague yearning, one which I suspect will never be satisfied, at least in this life, to experience God for myself. My occasional glimpses are so vague as to be indescribable. The divinity I glimpse is not the very personal, but very incendiary and inconstant, very human and anthropomorphic YHWH of Hebrew Scriptures. Nor the warmly loving Abba of Jesus’ gospels. The God I glimpse (“It,” I am inclined to say) seems remote, impassive. I cannot tell from this perspective whether It has concern for me, for us. My yearning is to see Its face, though, as in the Hebrew writings, to see Its face may be to die. So far I’ve glimpsed only what seems to be Its backside and I’m still alive. Still, maybe in some sense I have died; at least that ancient, childish comprehension of God has died, and the more matured, Christian comprehension has died as well, along with my clinging to those. In the glimpses I get the God does not seem to care that I am peeping at It, yet I sense It may care in some vague sense. I read others’s words, that everything exists within God, and that somewhat expresses what I sense, and yet It is transcendent, out there, separate but still united with the creation.
Then I suddenly realize how much my thinking, my intuitions have been so shaped by the culture, by what I’ve learned, by all the forces that have gone into the shaping of this being, of this mind which I hold at this moment, that I don’t know what to trust. Which images of God arise out of my glimpses of the infinite and which lurch out of the muck of my own unconscious shaping?
Still Pentecost XIX—September 21, 2008
As Ed Burdick joked about my making sermon notes, I remembered what I’d learned long ago, that the word “sermon” in the Latin (which stands far-distanced behind our use of it) meant a conversation, a discussion, a talk. And I recalled a story about a rigged dialogue sermon Jack Bishop and Bill Jamison cooked up for one Sunday morning four decades ago, when Jack climbed into the pulpit and purposely wandered off into a slightly tangential, uninteresting direction and on cue Bill, then the Senior Warden, stood up and said loudly enough to be heard throughout the nave something to the effect of “Bullshit,” and Jack reacted, and they proceeded to hold an across-the-nave dialogue centered on the topic and direction. I thought, what a creative and daring way to engage the congregation, and why can’t we do that every Sunday morning in the sermon time? Hold a real dialogue, wrestle with the issue(s), allowing everyone to grab hold and go home convicted by their own words? And celebrating our diversity! Why should I get up there in the pulpit every Sunday and pretend that I know what they need and ought to hear? Make the sermon a real sermon, a dialogue, a discussion, a multi-logue? But, alas, I was never daring enough to try it. Too bad!
And maybe that had been possible in the very early years of the church, that the elder could facilitate the members’s sharing about the Scripture readings among the saints. But then Constantine legalized us, and the Constantinian need for us became that the elders shape us into good citizens of the empire, loyal, obedient, faithful, subservient, conforming citizens. And for the elder, in loyalty to the emperor, to instruct us in our duties and behavior as good citizens. Oh, what a seduction was in that! And, still today we preach at the people.
And in the midst of my musings and Stephen’s sermonic monologue these words sprang into my consciousness, “From your perspective, young man, that may make sense, but from mine, as an old man, it does not make much sense.” And I have NO idea what those words were about!
But I still yearn for a richer, deeper, fuller, more complete, less conflictful experience and sense of “It,” of God. And I know that will never happen within this comfortable circle of standing stones.
********************
Pentecost XXII—October 12, 2008
This morning at the coffee hour discussion Brad Bateman framed his discussion about the relatedness of religion and the economic life by citing a sociologist of religion who posited that what we get out of our religious life, out of church is a 1) sense of the transcendent along with 2) rules for daily living. He underlined that by confessing that is what he gets through the liturgy of the Episcopal/Anglican Church. And as I ruminated this morning, sitting in my circle of standing stones, that made sense to me. For me a combination of liturgy and intellectual life of this Episcopal Church offers transcendence, and the force of this circle of people offers a sense of what they and I (and therefore God?) think would be good, useful, beneficial behavior on my part, and what would be outside the pale of acceptability, what would be unhelpful, or even destructive behavior from me toward them (and beyond). Transcendence, that which is greater than me, than us, than all of this; and rules for daily living within and beyond this circle.
********************
Pentecost XXVI—November 9, 2008
The first reading today is Joshua 24:13, the covenant renewal ceremony of choosing for YHWH. But the reading asks me why I choose YHWH. And that throws me back to the paradigm of mystic-codifier-institutionalizer. Joshua was the codifier, the people were the institutionalizer. In that day the religion of the leader was automatically the religion of the people. In 1 and 2 Kings and in the eighth-century Prophets the leaders are apostate, so people’s devotion to YHWH languishes, which is the ultimate sin, the failure to devote oneself (i.e., the nation as a unit) wholly and solely to YHWH.
The discussion at coffee hour today was about death. Scattershot. Ed Burdick states the key, we have no way to talk about death. The wall is unbreachable We can know nothing about the other side. All the talk about death/heaven/afterlife is metaphor, really talking about here/now/us. Giving structure-meaning-direction to my life, to this community, to my living in this community.
********************
