AKMA’s Random Thoughts

Sunday Heartbreak

Another busy day around this house: Pippa and I went to church early, she to sing in the choir and I to say the early mass. Then I had a knog, long talk with Jonathan Callard about Every Voice Network’s Via Media project, a plan for a curriculum with videotapes introducing Anglican thought on a variety of theological topics. They want me in on the discussions of God and Scripture, which are pretty important topics (although for Anglicans often not as important as, for instance, Liturgy and Canon Law). I give full credit to Jonathan that after two hours of looking at my face, he still thought that it might serve some evangelical purpose to include me on a videotape. Maybe they have one of those face-scramblers — they could make me the Mystery Theologian!

Then Margaret had to drop Nate back at the train station, sending him off to Eastman for the last two weeks of classes.

Then we trundled off to a dinner in honor of Richard Webster, Organist and Choirmaster of St. Luke’s for thirty-one years, who has been forced out of his role in the parish for unknown reasons. This was a very hard occasion; we felt deep grief and loss that Richard won’t be working with us any longer, we felt mystified by the powers’ insistence that he had to be fired, and we felt lacerated by the confidence that everyone involved thought that he or she was acting in the congregation’s best interests. And we were torn up to see Pippa, on this her tenth birthday, sobbing and sniffling because Mr. Webster wouldn’t be her choirmaster any more (and she wasn’t the only one in tears). That’s how the evening ends; we’re weary, sad, sorry that our Pip’s birthday fell under such a shadow, and feeling pretty bleak for the congregation’s foreseeable future.

News From the Disseminary

In the long-awaited outcome of negotiations involving the copyright protraction laws recently enacted, the Disseminary has obtained permission to distribute Evelyn Underhill’s essay for pacifism, “The Church and War.” We now have an official, legal sample for our publication series — and it’s a timely, theologically-rich tract.

Swing by the Disseminary and look over Underhill’s essay. We have a line on a strong dissertation which the author may assign to our ministrations, and Dorothea indicated that Egeria might be marked-up and ready by the end of the year. Progress!

We’ve Heard Those Too

Kevin calls my attention to a Ship of Fools bulletin board thread about organists who insinuate recognizable popular melodies into their improvisations. I’m not a subtle enough listener to pick up every such musical reference, but I’ve head more than one or two in my day, and I’m certain I’ve missed even more.

News Filters

Mitch Ratcliffe’s conversation with Robert Scoble rightly points out the power that newspaper page designers exercise in shaping our attention to the stories the papers report. On target, and a helpful reminder about the invisible agencies that impinge on our perspectives day by day (or for our family, “week by week,” as we don’t take a daily paper). Mitch goes on to note the way that the Michael Jackson furore eclipsed the vastly more significant protests against George W. “Call Me ‘Imperator’ ” Bush in online sources, without an attention designer (as it were) directing our gaze at the events of greater global importance.

True enough, if one goes just by link-counting devices such as Daypop and Blogdex (not that I’m complaining about them) — but my own news-source repertoire of Josh Marshall, Fred Clark, and Mitch Ratcliffe keep me on top of the side of the US news that I don’t count on seeing at CNN or GoogleNews. Bookmarking (or aggregating) them provides me with the attention design I’m looking for.

Happy Birthday

Happy Birthday to Denise’s new baby! Cheers to newborn child (Do we know your name yet? Did your parents heed Peter Biddle’s three rules for naming a child?), to Mom and Dad, and best wishes for an exciting holiday season.

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving — as a secular holiday that draws a veneer of theological justification thin enough to deny if anyone objects to it — doesn’t exercise much power over the Adam family imagination. That doesn’t mean we aren’t thankful; just that we’re blasé about the state’s efforts to gin up an ambiance of spirituality in the civic context. On the other hand, we try to practice gratitude (eucharistia) more daily.

So first, I want to give thanks for all the love and friendship that’s come this direction from online. I’m thunderstruck every time I stop to think about the vast difference between what I expected when I started writing online (almost two years ago, now) and what has turned out to be the case. Our recent visit with Jenna and Jeneane and John was just a lovely instance of what’s been a general phenomenon. Y’all have been wonderful and fascinating and invigorating. Amazing!

Second, I’m thankful for the opportunity to spend another long weekend at my absolute favorite conference hotel in the world, the Marriott Marquis in Atlanta (Mark Goodacre didn’t like it, thinking it “soulless,” though I find it hard to regard the Marriott as less soulful than the standard-issue halls-and-rooms block-construction alternatives). My fondness may derive from it having been the first conference hotel I ever stayed at, back in 1986 when I roomed with Richard Hays — but even apart from nostalgia, I think that the Marriott has many features that set it apart from its tiresome competitors. On the other hand, it was expensive this year, and when I called this morning to retrieve the cell phone charging cord, the Marriott’s security personnel had trouble with some relatively basic functions (such as transcribing the troublesome number “638”). Whatever. This year’s conference was quite satisfying, and Margaret really tore up the pea patch, which was loads of fun to see.

Third, I’m thankful for Margaret’s delicious enchilada dinner, our annual tradition for this meal. Several years ago we prepared enchiladas as a complement to a great community feast with my mother’s side of the family, at which banquet a come-along guest found our (vegetarian) entree a source of ceaseless lackwit mockery; his condescending disdain only confirmed in us the sense that this would be our Thanksgiving Day fare from that day forward.

Fourth, I’m thankful for a day to recuperate from the hustle and bustle of the SBL meeting by noodling around aimlessly at the end of the dining room table.

Fifth, I’m thankful for our wonderful children, and I’ll be even more thankful if they let me take a picture or two of them before Nate heads back to Rochester. Nate and Pippa, this means you!

Sixth, I’m thankful for whole boatloads of other people and circumstances I’d have to take days and days to list — which is why we support daily eucharists. I do pray for you and give thanks for you as near to daily as I can. Grace and peace be with you.

Home Safely

That’d be us. We even tried to get bumped from our plane flight — if you can’t get bumped on a pre-Thanksgiving trip from Atlanta (the busiest airport) to Chicago (formerly the busiest airport), when can you get bumped? — but to no avail.

We were joyously reunited with our offspring, we watched The Hot Rock courtesy of our new Netflix subscription, and now we’re going to sleep.

Social Day

Today was mostly dedicated to visiting We had a fantastically wonderful (7 o’clock in the morning, cold-water shower) breakfast with Shannon and Laura and Amy. We’ve loved spending time with Shannon and Laura for ages, and although we hadn’t seen Amy in a certain number of years, since she graduated from Eckerd (Margaret probably saw her at Shannon and Laura’s wedding), we all fell in together at laughing and listening to current events in one another’s lives. And more laughing.

We hit the book display sale, then — Margaret buying out much of the Routledge theology stock — and spent midday with Jennifer, having lunch and catching up and good-bye-ing.

Then a time for napping, and then the rare and delightful treat of a visit with Jeneane and Jenna. They’re as lovely and sweet and as much fun to talk with as anyone could imagine; we’re so tickled that they drove all the way in from Acworth (George would have too, except that he needed a rest). We played in the hotel room, and watched as the workers outside the window rolled up and down in their scaffold; we went up and down ourselves, in the glass-walled elevators of the Marriott; we had a julienne-potato snack; we went back to the hotel room for some drawing and planning; we went out to dinner, settling on a Mexican restaurant after the Chinese restaurant we’d been thinking of had closed. As we were making our way to the restaurant, John Adams caught up with us and made it a fivesome. Dinner was fine, all were getting tired, and now we’re just about ready for bed after a long conference and a long day.

Thanks so much, Jeneane, Jenna, and John! Who says blogging is bad for your social life? (Well, maybe some concerned friends of Jeneane, Jenna, and John, but for us, it’s great.)

Rush and Collapse

I had another business breakfast this morning, on an issue that promises to be processed to death. I had the privilege of listening to more people asking for more input and more alternate perspectives relative to a project that should have been on tracks and steaming a year ago.

Then I scrambled back to my hotel room* to polish off my presentation for this afternoon. I Photoshopped and typed and edited and edited and typed and Photoshopped, and in the end I had put together what I hoped would be a not-too-embarrassing presentation. I got to the conference room early — or, to be exact, Margaret dragged me to the conference room early — and I noticed that my TiBook had crashed when I put it to sleep at the hotel. It took much of the first speaker’s time for the TiBook to get through the file system check, and then it became clear that the crash had knocked a few nuts and bolts loose. I spent the second speaker’s time restoring the slides to the proper order, and adding a couple of goodies that I’d forgotten to incorporate in the presentation the first time.

The first speaker was a well-known biblical scholar/media critic, who devoted the first paper of this “Digital Hermeneutics” section to an exposé of the Veggie Tales videos. Now, I don’t know much about Veggie Tales, and I’m willing enough to believe they’re badly done and pernicious to biblical literacy. The paper didn’t have much to do with “Digital Hermeneutics,” though, and amounted mostly to a review rather than, say, an academic paper.

The second speaker was also pretty well-established, but his presentation trod the thin line between “report on activities” and “commercial for his biblical-video business.” He helped spark my imagination on these issues a long time ago, and his presentation made at least some gestures toward “digital hermeneutics,” but it was still a let-down.

The upside of all this is that mine was the only presentation that actually addressed the topic of the session, and neither of the other papers was anywhere nearly as sophisticated as mine (not that they were trying — both presenters are highly-sophisticated scholars, they just weren’t doing that today). So the paper itself went spectacularly, much better than I’d been expecting. The respondent, who had been very patient with my improper last-minute-ness, described the presentation with several superlatives. The other presenters were very impressed (the fellow whom I’d known longer observed that although he had been working on media criticism for years, he’d just never thought of the issues I was pressing. There were a couple of Jeff Ward/Arete/Culture Cat-level rhetoric and media types (for whom this is old hat) in the audience, but mostly they were standard-issue biblical scholars, and they were not prepared for my position. (I sketched the beginnings of what I was planning to say back here and here and here.)

So I rocked hard. Not as hard as Margaret did yesterday morning, but hard.

Then the whole question-and-answer period was swallowed up by people who wanted to issue five-minute monologues about Veggie Tales or about the other presenter’s video-clip Bible stories. I just sat there while person after person gave little speeches. No one asked about my stunning presentation at all. Gnash, gnash. Ah, well, at least I have the satisfaction of knowing it was good; maybe it’ll sink in over time.

Sunday’s Activities

As you may imagine, a conference of theologians, biblical scholars, and specialists in comparative and historical studies of religion is not a hotbed of technological innovation and availability. (There are hot patches of technology — there’s a Computer-Aided Research Group, for instance — but they’re oases in a pretty barren landscape.) So I’m not doing any live-blogging. The paucity of electrical outlets and online access make that impractical.

But I did go to an Editorial Board meeting of Teaching Theology and Religion, at which a couple of clued proposals seemed to gain a little traction. And I’m on my way to a paper on forgiveness that Margaret’s giving, at the Systematic Theology Section. Lunch with an editor two whom I owe two books, and then I spend the afternoon working on my “visual hermeneutics” presentation. I may blog then, by way of distraction and procrastination. Then an evening packed with receptions, where I’ll be going to renew old friendships and where Margaret’ll be going to do that and to vivify her connections with profs at places she’s applied for doctoral work. And there’s always the book display. . . .

Gasping for Breath — Or Something Like It

For the past year or so, it’s been getting harder and harder for me to breath hotel air. Not so much during the day — I’m not sure why — but sleeping through the night in a hotel room gives me a sore throat, a headache, and sinus aches of various sorts. Is it just me? I’m tempted to get an air tank with real, humidified, non-hotel-processed-and-recycled air in it for night breathing.

Apart from that, the SBL meeting is going well. Jim Caccamo and Trevor are at the Hyatt, which has free wireless but they don’t have an Airport card, and we have pay-per-day wired connection here at the Marriott with an Airport card. So far, life is good — till I have to breathe through the night, anyway.

We’re He-e-e-re

Margaret and I woke up at about 5 AM, left home at 7, left O’Hare at 10, and arrived at our hotel at 2 — at which time I noticed that I had befoggedly left my registration packet at home. The SBL people were very kind and cooked me up a new name tag. We’re resting; Jennifer will be turning up in a couple of hours. Everything seems to be working all right.

I was impressed by the banners all over town saying “The Home of Amy Morrison”; hey, I know her!

I received an invitation yesterday Jonathan Callard of the Every Voice Network, ask me to participate in a project they have cooking. It sounds intriguing, and, with my deans’ permission, I’ll follow up.

Now I need to rest and do some furious Photoshopping and Keynote-making, to make progress on my presentation for Monday. Likewise work on my response to a book, for a panel presentation tomorrow. But first, a very short nap is in order.

Predictable?

I tried the Googlerace (linked from Dave Winer) with the search term “lying hypocrite.” You won’t be surprised at who won. What made me laugh was that no other candidate came up with any results for that accusation.

Joe Lieberman won for “bad hair day.”

But, What If. . . ?

I’ll admit to having a defective faculty for speculation. It’s not in my temperament. But I completely fail to grasp the urgency with which people last night clung to the notion that Jesus was married. I laid out the reasons for thinking he wasn’t; I put the best face on the reasons for thinking he was (which amounts to almost nothing, but it’s important to acknowledge the almost part of that nothingness); and still people wanted to know, “But what if he had been married?” and (this one really gets my goat) “Can you prove that he wasn’t married?”

Well, of course I can’t prove he wasn’t married. I can’t prove he wasn’t half-man, half dolphin either. None of the sources we have mention such an oddity, but that silence can best be explained as the embarrassment that someone The Church wanted to proclaim as divine had a dorsal fin and a blowhole in the back of his head. “You don’t think they’d boast about that, do you? They suppressed all references to his dolphin characteristics. But notice — he associated with fishermen, and he had an inexplicable knowledge of where to catch the most fish even though he wasn’t a fisherman himself!”

(Later): And then there’s that “stilling the sea” thing, too.

Oh, no — I think I’ve started a sequel. . . .

Did You Hear?

Well, the big da Vinci Code panel discussion went off well tonight. The place was packed; one of the rectors of St. Elizabeth’s reckoned there were 260 people in the main body of the church, nave and choir and someone sitting in the pulpit, some draped over the altar rail — and another few dozen in the hall and in a side room listening on an audio feed.

I was there with Barbara Newman (Northwestern University medievalist) and Brian Hastings (spiritual director and associate rector at Church of Our Saviour). Barbara and I were mostly on the same wavelength — and she rocked. She did a superb job of talking through the ways that Sophia-theology has permeated, disappeared into, and re-emerged from broader Christian theology. Brian has rather a different perspective on the book and on his vocation from either Barbara or me; his is a more fluid spirituality that starts with whatever interests someone, and finds something of spiritual value therein.

I spoke first, and addressed the topics I’d been assigned: Was Jesus married? What about the Gnostic gospels? and When were women forced out of church leadership? I began by explaining that although we can’t know for a certainty that Jesus wasn’t married, there is no evidence to suggest that he was married, and plenty of evidence to suggest that he wasn’t. On the evidence we have, there’s just absolutely no basis for suggesting that Jesus might have been married.

If, however, he had been married, there’s again no reason to suppose that his wife was Mary Magdalene. They appear in various settings together; none of our earliest or most reliable sources suggest that their relationship was any more intimate than that of a teacher and student. When Mary met the resurrected Jesus, she didn’t run to him and cry, “Darling! You were right!” The one text — out of all sources for early Christianity — that even comes close to suggesting that they were intimate is the gnostic Gospel of Philip, in which Mary is identified as Jesus’ koinwnos (here carried over into Coptic from Greek), “partner, companion” and in which they complain that Jesus kisses her on the mouth and loves her more than them. This second-century text is thus the closest we have to suggesting that Jesus was married, and — with its marked gnostic flavor — it’s surely not more reliable than first-century traditions that show no awareness of a conjugal relationship between Jesus and Mary Magdalene.

Then I covered the gnostic gospels, and the process of canon-formation. Dan Brown is flat wrong about this, too. He suggests that Constantine, in a fit of imperialistic censorship, decreed which gospels would count (the ones in which Jesus was depicted as divine) and which to ban (the ones in which Jesus showed a humanity that might prove dangerous to imperial politics). Contrariwise, the canon seems to have grown up and selected its texts based on such criteria as breadth of use, antiquity, the extent to which it communicates a satisfactorily familiar portrait of Jesus, and association with an apostle (not always as an author, but at least as a friend). All of these were operative well before Constantine attained the throne.

Constantine didn’t “make Jesus divine,” either. The Council of Nicaea, which Constantine convoked and bankrolled, voted on whether Jesus was semi-divine (the Arians, who thought that the Son was a sort of bridge between humanity and divinity), or fully divine (the Athanasians, who held that the Son was divine just as the Father was); that he was in some sense divine, nobody questioned. And the outcome wasn’t close — 298 votes for the Nicene Creed,, 2 votes against. (Constantine probably used intimidation to ensure the outcome, but soon afterward supported Arians and semi-Arians, so his role in the whole process was less monovalent than Brown suggests).

Finally, the church was indeed open to women’s leadership. The New Testament texts themselves testify to Euodia and Syntyche from Philippi, Chloe in Corinth, Prisca (of the missionary couple of Prisca and Aquila), Phoebe the deacon, and Junia, “eminent among the apostles.” Moreover, the church appointed women to the offices of “virgin” and “widow” — and if you think that’s no big deal, you ought to consider the ramifications of living without male support and protection in the ancient world. The church gradually discouraged these ministries, and eventually siphoned off able women into the nascent monastic movement. But this too was well under way by the time Constantine got to the scene; it wasn’t his doing.

I brought along some prints of medieval and renaissance paintings to debunk the foolish claim that the figure by Jesus in Leonardo’s painting of the Last Supper is Mary (&ldqu;;their figures make an ‘M’!”) The iconographic tradition conventionally depicts John the Evangelist as a young man with very feminine features; to clinch the case, I pointed to this painting. (Of course, it may be that all the painters of the West were in on the secret. Or it may just be that Dan Brown is flat wrong.)

Moreover, the plot twists are predictable and some are downright obivous. The female lead of this novel about the Divine Feminine serves mostly just as a foil for the male leads, with little personality of her own. Neither of the leads seems particularly smart or clever. It’s not even a good thriller.

Looking Ahead

Tomorrow is the da Vinci Code panel discussion. Barbara Newman (a co-panelist) and I put our heads together at lunchtime to talk over what we’d say, and agreed over and over about the book’s stature as a grim literary debacle. Advance word suggests that it’ll be a packed audience. I’ll report tomorrow night on how the evening develops.

Ecumenical Oops

We just got the catalogue from Paulist Press for their “Classics of Western Spirituality” series’ 25th Anniversary sale. I was thumbing past the introduction from Bernard McGinn, noting the Dominican entries, when my eye lit on the blurb for the volume on John Calvin, edited by my former colleague at Princeton, Elsie McKee. You won’t see this on the web — but the print catalogue identifies Calvin as “the great reformer of Genoa.”

Paulist Press is, after all, a Roman Catholic enterprise; I’m betting that wouldn’t have slipped past my friends at Westminster John Knox (though they, in turn, might have identified Thomas Aquinas as a Franciscan or something).

Back in the Olden Days

A long time ago, in a very different city, with very much younger children (two of them were, oddly enough, exactly as much younger as the time of which I’m thinking is distant; the third was not yet among us), the lads and I used to spend ages and ages playing Scarab of Ra, what was then a fabulously sophisticated shareware adventure game, a first-person shooter (although one only had tranquilizer darts to inconvenience the lions and snakes and mischievous monkeys). It was a labyrinth game, with a different layout for each level, each game. Full, rich, black and white only, of course.

I hadn’t thought about it for ages, till this afternoon Nate IM’ed me with only a URI: Semicolon Software. . . .

It runs fine in Classic, too. . . .

That’s My TinyURL

Via BoingBoing: add your name/initials/other personal identifier after the address“http://tinyurl.com/" to see where it leads you. Mine (“/akma”) points to a hack for making the Philips DVDR-880 region-free.

TinyURL is one of the handiest and most under-used web tricks going. If you enter a long, unwieldy URL, they return to you a short, simple URL that directs to the site you initially chose.

That’s My Sweetheart

Margaret has been working hours every day, preparing to take her GREs (toward doctoral study in theology next year). This morning she took the computer-adaptive exam, which keeps feeding you questions at the edge of your tested ability so that you can’t judge how well you’re doing; not only did she attain the score at which she was aiming, she passed it by a solid margin. We are relieved, and I’m very proud.

That’s My Son (sort of)

The Eastman School of Music, where my older son Nate studies, is the subject of a handsome Flash presentation at the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle site. The only way they might have improved it would have been by including a picture of my good-looking son, and eliciting from him some pithy wisdom about the leading undergraduate music theory school in the country, or his great teachers, or convenience to generous and helpful blog-neighbors. . . .

Proper 28, Year B

I profited from an afternoon at Peet’s drinking coffee (Margaret hangs out there drinking tea — it’s her office-hours location), and the sermon came together without excessive agony. I didn’t have the opportunity to blog it in process, since Peet’s is wireless-less, but it held up well this morning, so I’ll post it below in the “extended” area. The only glitch turned out to be that the reader was assigned only the first half of the reading from Daniel, so the concluding reference to the 1290 or 1335 days (a somewhat odd feature of Daniel 12:11-12) didn’t make any sense. I skipped it at the second service.

Proper 28, Year B
St. Luke’s Evanston
Dan 12:1-4a, 5-13/Ps 16:5-11/Heb 10:31-39/Mark 13:14-23
November 16, 2003

There shall be a time of anguish, such as has never occurred since nations first came into existence.

+ In the Name of God Almighty, the eternal Blessed Trinity – Amen.

Well, there’s nothing like the end of the world, the abomination of desolation, and suffering such as has not been from the beginning of creation, to put our problems at St. Luke’s Parish in Evanston into perspective. Or, perhaps more to the point, there may be nothing like these cosmic tribulations to drive home to us the fact that the problems of one little parish don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. “Someday,” says Daniel, “someday you’ll understand that.”

The problems of one little parish don’t amount to a hill of beans; we don’t matter that much. The outcome of any particular issue, any flare-up of a long, weary parish conflict, this election or that vote of the vestry, just don’t make such a big difference in a vast, lonely, impoverished world of tyranny, genocide, disease, and famine. I hate to be so blunt — you know I love St. Luke’s — but if this lovely edifice of wood, stone and steel were to collapse in some unthinkable catastrophic accident, if we who gather here were dispersed to the various calmer and stronger congregations closer to our homes, then despite the painful loss of history and memory, God’s work in our community and the world would roll forward unhindered by the of this troubled congregation. The Spirit itself would continue to cut loose in new, exhilarating, astounding ways. Our lessons remind us this morning that the whole cosmos hangs in the balance, awaiting on God’s judgment; what can justify us taking ourselves, our wounds and our feuds and our vindication, so very seriously?

Everybody has a different idea about the parish, and often enough those ideas suggest that they ought to be more cooperative, more honest, less manipulative, and less obstinate. If we could only agree on who they are, find them and work them out of the congregation, our work might be simpler; but the longer I live at St. Luke’s, the more it looks as though they are us. The very contentiousness and partisanship that we need so desperately to escape has seeped into us, has altered our sense of taste and of hearing, our vision and touch, so that as a congregational body we don’t encounter an idea, a prospect, an opportunity or an obstacle, without assimilating that new element to a texture of fear and mistrust that have so forcefully defined our interactions with one another. If we do this, they’ll win; if that happens, we lose. And with the elegant, subtle, damnable logic of perdition, no matter how hard any one of us tries to make something good happen, to make some blessing arise from the ashes of the curse under which we’ve labored, still the interlocking patterns of wounding and betrayal ensure that our striving is but losing. So let’s open our eyes, sisters and brothers: we already lost. You lost, and you lost, and you lost, and every single one of us lost, and we all together lost. That’s bad news, and we live in it, and we will only perpetuate and aggravate our troubles if we don’t come out and admit it. Fact of life: right now, we’re hurtling down the mountainside propelled by an avalanche of history and habits and hellbound good intentions. And we haven’t hit the bottom yet.

So that’s the precipice we’re falling down. It’s familiar, it’s how we’ve grown accustomed to dealing with one another, and it’s fatal; but darn it, it’s our precipice, and we’ve gotten good at falling. At this point, I’m not foolhardy enough to suggest that we won’t just stick with what we’re good at until we smash ourselves and one another to bits on the jagged rocks below. But neither am I so short-sighted or so heartless as simply scold and chastise; in this pulpit, our Lord looks down from over my shoulder to remind me and to remind you that no matter how obvious the bad news may be, no matter how powerful the forces that impel us toward devastation, that no matter how deeply-ingrained the demonic habits that set one child of God against another, we have been set free from the powers that would consume and devour us, and we are not bound by any so-called “inevitable” outcome of our trials. It hurts me to rehearse this promise of hope again, beloved friends, since I see nothing that heralds the advent of that hoped-for renewal, that restoration, that resurrection among us — but I am under a compulsion to preach the good news no matter what I see, and that good news promises us that God has not abandoned us.

But then, I spoke out of turn a moment ago. I do see signs of the promise. Through all our hard traveling and infighting, St. Luke’s has not ceased to feed the hungry, to teach and befriend the neglected, to stand firm in solidarity with lesbian and gay Christians, to welcome and amply to support refugees without asking anything in return, all out of the radical faith that God calls us to such practices when there’s no specific profit in it for us. I dare say this morning that we could not survive the malignancies we’ve endured had we not been so committed, and any time we’re tempted to give up on the project of working together, together, as St. Luke’s Parish in Evanston, we should pause for a moment, kneel down and give thanks to God for the privilege of serving thousands of sojourners whose lives have been delivered from the predations of torment and oppression. You showed compassion for those who were fleeing persecution, you cheerfully accepted the opportunity to share your possessions, knowing that you yourselves already possessed something better and more lasting. Do not, therefore, abandon that confidence of yours. For you need endurance, so that when you have done the will of God, you may receive what has been promised.

Endurance comes harder and harder with every week that passes, with every disappointment, every sting, every sour surprise. God knows that — and in Jesus, God has participated fully in the agony of false friends, of misguided authority figures, of hasty judgments and cruel consequences. Yet Jesus, the Righteous One, lived by his faith as he endured tribulation; and in him, we ourselves may find faith to continue. Through our continuing life in Christ, God has not left us to our own devices and desires, has not dumped into our laps the responsibility for ensuring that those who are wise shine like the brightness of the sky. That’s not our job, it’s God’s job, and God has promised to bring that consummation to pass with a wisdom and a glory that far transcend our fondest wishes.

In the next few weeks, we will learn what our bishop plans for St. Luke’s clergy leadership; we will face planning about various aspects of our congregation’s future; we will elect vestry members and a warden; we will struggle with the aftermath of the convulsive changes we’ve wrought, and the embittering aftertaste of heartfelt disagreement. In all these things, I beg you to remember the service to which St. Luke’s has been called, in which St. Luke’s has persisted on behalf of neighbors we didn’t know we had, neighbors who ate sandwiches and found jobs and did homework and escaped tyranny and heard angel’s voices raised in song, neighbors whose lives have been enriched, perhaps even saved, through the intercession of this congregation. Remember them, and forget the temptation to think that we should make right prevail. Instead, please lose. Deliberately lose. Persistently lose. Say your piece, plainly and openly, then gracefully lose. Because it’s not up to you, it’s not up to me, it’s not up to the rector or the wardens or the vestry, it’s not up to Virgil or Richard or Larry or Bishop Persell, not up to a self-appointed messiah or to any one of us to bring about justice. The brand of victory that we work up on our own steam isn’t worth getting anyway, especially not at the cost of injuring our sisters and brothers. The grass withers, the flower fades, the political triumphs of one party or another pass away or, worse still, metastasize and return to eat us alive from our heart outwards. Our parish struggles are not worth that spiritual gangrene. Let go.

Instead, through all our trials and distress, join with one another, join with the brother who disappointed you and the sister who won’t listen to reason, and see if together we can figure out some way to get another refugee family settled here in safety. Together we can make some lunches for Movable Feast. Together we can devise some fund-raising plan to shore up and strengthen this home base of our many ministries. Together we can let go of the longing to win, confess our sins, and like other losers the world around, together receive the holy food and drink of new and unending life that binds us, together, in Christ Jesus.

For we do no credit to our faith if we just cry on the curbside and ask “How long?” if we try to figure out exactly when the parish’s 1290 days began, or was it 1335, or has the Lord shortened the days for the sake of the elect? Go your way, and rest – rest, so that we can get back to work in the kitchen, on the streets, down at Family Matters. Rest, the better and more sweetly to sing anthems of joy. Rest, to build up the patience that strengthens losers on Chicago’s North Side endlessly to wait for next year. Give over to God the labor of wrangling, and rest. There shall indeed be a time of suffering — but Michael will protect us, and Jesus the Righteous One will enliven us by his faith, and Lord will show us the path of life, in whose presence we will know the fullness of joy, and in whose right hand we will together rejoice in pleasures for evermore.

Amen

Simple Question

I know, I’ve complained about iTunes’s way of organizing files before, but it’s been a while, so here I go again. Why can’t a user simply indicate that such-and-such a disk should be read as though it were an iPod or CD or CD-ROM: that is, as a removable drive from which the main library may read files, but shouldn’t try to add everything to the Über-Archive? So that if I mount a hard drive with some tunes on it, I don’t find missing tunes clogging up my Main Library, or have to wait till iTunes has added all the files to the Main Library? This ought to be a piece of cake, and would make at least one user much happier.

I Can’t Help Falling in Love

A couple of days ago I got too fed up with AppleWorks to continue using it willingly. Once upon a time it had mastered all its trades economically and effectively; I felt as though I really was working smarter, not harder, when I used ClarisWorks. A version or two ago, the suite started to falter, and the Carbonized version of AppleWorks runs clunkily under OS X, giving the distinct sense that it’s a massive kludge. Now I feel as though using AppleWorks makes me work dumber and harder. Pfaugh!

So a couple of days ago I decided to register Mellel and make it my daily writing app. I had liked some of its features when I first met it; specifically, Mellel makes choosing typefaces simple, and makes paragraph and character styles convenient. I didn’t stick with it, though; it lingered in my Applications folder, but I hardly ever opened it. It didn’t pass the tipping point of application allegiance.

Well, color me tipped. In fact, I am so far beyond the tipping point that it would take a massive failing, a cataclysmic mismatch with my working needs, to attenuate my enthusiasm for Mellel. I keep finding new aspects of the application to admire. I hover over a button, and the label tells me about a convenience I would never have anticipated. I click on a palette, and I find exactly what I would hope for, where I would look for it. Styles — which have always involved undue complications in every word processor I’ve ever used — work clearly, intelligibly, and smoothly here. And Mellel’s programmers are hard at work fine-tuning, improving, and polishing it. I can’t help loving this word processor, and that’s even without using its tremendously powerful Hebrew-language capacities.

If I had Steve Jobs’s ear, or Bill Gates’s, I would buy Mellel for double what the Redlers team asked for it — they’d still come out ahead. This is one sweet word processor, and I urge every Mac user to grab it while it’s still a steal at $25.

Tomorrow’s Sermon

Steve (and Jane, and Gary with his pointer) gave me such wonderful help that I feel an awful ingrate for going a direction different from that which he commended to me — but as I worked with the apocalyptic urgency of the readings for tomorrow, I found myself making some strong (and probably pretty obvious) connections between the texts and the conditions at St. Luke’s. I pulled and pushed for a while, but at this point (around 3 PM) I’ve got about two-thirds or three-quarters of a sermon that takes up the scriptural tone of eschatological peril, and situates the congregation’s ups and downs in that context. The hook, I think, involves the Hebrews passage’s invocation of the recipients as having “endured a hard struggle with sufferings, sometimes being publicly exposed to abuse and persecution, and sometimes being partners with those so treated. For you had compassion for those who were in prison, and you cheerfully accepted the plundering of your possessions, knowing that you yourselves possessed something better and more lasting.”

St. Luke’s has seen hard times, and right now is in a precarious position relative to the diocese’s intervention in parish life, and the parish’s own capacity to keep itself pulled together. But all along, the parish has sustained a variety of lovely, admirable ministries; awful as the present moment may be, the spirit that energizes the congregation’s work on behalf of hungry people, kids who need mentoring, visitors who are touched by the celestial music that resounds in our halls, and especially the many refugees whom St. Luke’s has sponsored over the years, that spirit of self-denial on behalf of others stands to sustain the parish through its present struggles, if only we can treat one another with the selflessness with which we treat our neighbors. . . .

So. . . ?

Sermon ideas, anyone? Steve?

Belated Flash

We interrupt this wearying thread of theological polemics to wish Donna Wentworth’s mother a happy sixtieth birthday! We’ll be pleased as can be if our kids benefit as much from home schooling as Donna manifestly did (any gigs for sixteen-year-old non-resident interns at EFF, Donna?) — thanks, Donna’s mom!

Gene Robinson Update

In comments to yesterday’s post, Christopher clarified the basis of his demurrer and alluded to remarks by Bishop Robinson suggesting that “Robinson himself said that his teaching might be contrary to Scripture and Tradition, but that that by itself didn't make it wrong.”

That intrigued my diligent spouse, who came up with this paragraph from Orthodoxy Today:

The strange thing is that the gay Anglican clergyman, Gene Robinson, agrees that his opponents are right that his election “was contrary to the church’s traditional teaching against homosexuality.” But, he added: “Just simply to say that it goes against tradition and the teaching of the church and scripture does not necessarily make it wrong. We worship a living God, and God leads us into the truth.”

It looks to me as though Robinson is simply (but casually and imprecisely) stating the obvious: traditionally, the church wouldn’t have done this, and there are familiar biblical passages that inveigh against it.* Now, I’d be happier if he had expressed himself more carefully — but malformed theological statements are the prevalent currency of public discourse in this sorry day and age (especially, but not exclusively, among “liberal” theologians, who can tend to take theological diligence as a waste of time). If Christopher wants to apply the criterion of theological sophistication across the board, I’ll cheer for him and mourn for the church because I’ve heard authority figures from practically every denominational body speak carelessly.

Someone who thinks that the consecration of Gene Robinson seals the doom of the US Episcopal Church will read his remarks as a repudiation of Scripture and Tradition as foundations of the Church’s identity. Thoughtful advocates of Robinson’s cause will read his remarks as an honest acknowledgment that his consecration marks a change of direction — not, however, by way of rejecting Tradition and Scripture (as I have argued in print, in pulpits, and online), but by way of internal self-examination of the Tradition, and discernment of where the Spirit leads us. I’m not a cheerleader for the Continental Reformation, I’m ambivalent about the West’s unilateral decision to interject the filioque clause in the Nicene Creed, and I’m constitutionally suspicious about restorationist impulses — but I don’t have to condescend to people whose allegiances lie elsewhere.

I trust that the Spirit will make clear how the Churches should order themselves relative to women in ordained leadership and the possibility of sanctity in homosexual relationships. If I’m wrong in my stance, I stand guilty of loosing one of the commandments; if my conversation partners are wrong, they’re guilty of making some of Christ’s little ones stumble. Why are we arguing over which of us must be right? Instead we might endeavor to live together in ways that reflect the Spirit’s power for illumination and correction, trusting that if this plan or this undertaking is of human origin, it will fail; but if it is of God, nothing will be able to overthrow it — in that case people may even be found fighting against God.

*I’m taking it for granted that Robinson actually said this, but the record should note that the report of his words comes from a hostile witness.

Communion, Schism, and What I Think

Now I’m confused by something else: why, if an alleged breach of church discipline is so very bad, are those to whom it gives offense unwilling to say, “We can no longer remain in communion with those transgressors; we renounce communion with them”? In the present dust-up, it seems as though people want very much to be able to say, “We aren’t renouncing them — they’re renouncing us.”

I’ve been scolded on several points about the consecration of Bishop Robinson, and I’ve been scolded again for not responding to these scoldings, so I’ll put off working on my sermon and SBL presentation to answer as best I can.

First, to address the easiest point. Craig says, “ The heretic is always willing to remain in communion with the orthodox, and 99% of the time an observer unfamiliar with both sides can identify which is which by that fact alone.” Unfortunately, church history doesn’t back Craig up. The church catholic has pretty consistently erred on the side of embracing even erring brethren. The Novationists wanted to uphold higher standards of membership than did Cyprian; the Donatists wanted to link the efficacy of God’s action to the worthiness of the minister. In both these (significant, long-lasting) conflicts, it was the schismatics who rejected a church that would otherwise include them. Craig or others will certainly cite counter-examples, but nowhere near the 99% proportion that Craig proposes.

Jeff (who preached a wonderfully challenging, humble, and truthful sermon on Monday but has fallen mute, blogwise) asks whether the US church indicated that it might be unwilling to share communion with others when it pursued a course of action contrary to the 1998 Lambeth resolution that urged a moratorium on sacramental actions such as blessing the relationships of same-sex couples or, presumably, the consecration of a non-celibate homosexual to the episcopate? I don’ think so, inasmuch as I understand the US Episcopal Church to be saying, “We will not try to impose upon you our understanding of qualifications for ordination or or marital practices, and we will not be compelled to observe your standards in these matters.” That doesn’t require impaired communion, though if dissenting provinces or dioceses want to declare their unwillingness to share communion with the US Church, I would understand their reasoning.

He further connects the US action with integrity and accountability, two theological premises that I honor highly. I agree that the US Church should be accountable to others, and that no one should be surprised that other branches of the Anglican Communion have opposed the consecration of Bishop Robinson. If they were to declare us out of communion with one another, again, I would understand; what I don’t understand is why they’re unwilling so to do (I think I read somewhere that Peter Akinola has said as much, but I’m not sure it’s on the record).

On the other hand, what about the integrity and accountability of Episcopalians who believe that God has called Gene Robinson to be Bishop of New Hampshire, a belief shared by the people of the Diocese of New Hampshire themselves (and to which the vast preponderance of US bishops assented)? Both sides can’t claim to be the “weaker brother.” The integrity of non-US Episcopalians doesn’t trump the integrity of US Episcopalians. We find ourselves with conflicting senses of how our consciences bind us; at such a time, with we ought all the more to renew our communion, that together we may work toward a fuller understanding of where the Spirit is leading us.

The US Church should absolutely be willing to face the consequences of its actions. Dissenting churches should likewise take responsibility for their actions. If the US is out of communion with other provinces, it’s up to those provinces to name the condition and claim their role of leadership in recalling the US Church to repaired communion.

I have been addressing this kind of question for a while, Susan (from my comments), but I’m going back over what I say in person and online, just to be clear.

Cliff Healy compares my claims to the notion that a persistently adulterous husband may claim to be faithful to his spouse, but we all know that he just plain isn’t; so too, the Episcopal Church claims to be in communion with the rest of the world, but it just plain isn’t, on the basis of its adulterous behavior. I suppose that if I agreed that support for homosexual clergy constituted theological adultery, I’d be obliged to follow where Cliff leads. But I don’t, and that’s where more of these arguments fall into a discursive abyss: we’e disagreeing about one of the terms of the argument, but people are fussing about the conclusions.

Christopher (again, in the same comments) castigates my poor ecclesiology, suggests that I don’t know what the controversy is really all about, and suggests that heresy has engulfed the whole Episcopal Church. That’s not a very promising beginning for a conversation, but I’ll do my best to respond to his thoughts, recorded here.

Christopher submits that Robinson’s teaching that homosexual activity is not intrinsically sinful constitutes heresy; presumably, then, the problem isn’t with Robinson but with every bishop who teaches that homosexual behavior isn’t intrinsically sinful — including the Archbishop of Canterbury. If that’s the company of the heretics, I am not displeased at my company. Not all of it, anyway; there are some in there with whom I remain extremely uncomfortable. But Christopher’s point does clear some ground, since it suggests that if you’re not willing to accuse every pro-gay bishop of heresy, the Robinson consecration ought not cause new disruption of the church’s status.

Christopher then suggests that in consecrating Robinson, the Episcopal Church is implicitly renouncing the Apostolic Deposit of Faith — though since we’ve consecrated pro-gay bishops before, I8’m not sure what makes Robinson more of a “false teacher” than other bishops. But more to this particular point, Christopher maintains (entirely intelligibly, though not indisputably) that advocacy of the full engagement of homosexual persons in Church life constitutes an ipso facto rejection of apostolicity. I don’t; the Archbishop of Canterbury didn’t when he wrote about the topic extensively as a theologian and as Archbishop of Wales; and I’m ready to marked this down as a disputed question. Christopher not only isn’ willing so to do, but simply already knows that I’m wrong.

Maybe that’s my summary perspective on the problem. I’m willing to respect Jeff’s, Christopher’s, Susan’s, Clifton’s, and Peter Akinola’s consciences and deliberations; they have a genuine, strong, coherent, respectable theological stance (I’m assuming as much for the people I don’t know as well — it seems only fair). As such, I do indeed hope to remain in communion with them, such as I’m already in communion with. I’ll regret being anathematized by people I respect, but I’m ready to be judged for my theology.

I’m up past my bedtime, I’ve neglected pastoral, academic, and familial responsibilities, and I doubt I have any argument left in me. Goodnight, all, and God bless.

What Do You Think?

Margaret, Pip and I were shopping in our local book-opolis, browsing through the art section, when Margaret tugged my sleeve and pointed to an upper shelf. “Think we should buy

this book

for Halley?”

Homiletical Warning

Sermon due Sunday morning. The readings are Daniel 12:1-13, Psalm 16, Hebrews 10:31-39, and Mark 13:14-23. The apocalyptic overtones should connect pretty directly to life at St. Luke’s.

By the way: if you Google for the phrase “best Episcopal (remember to put the whole phrase in quotation marks) preacher,” it takes you to Micah’s blog.

Thanks a Lot, Micah

I wish Micah hadn’t pointed me toward this list. I’m more and more inclined to think that seminary should comprise a year of introductory survey, followed by a year of reading from a faculty-generated list of Important Works (in conjunction with tutorial discussions of their reading and careful writing assignments), followed by a year of reading from sources that the students themselves select, in consultation with their advisor (leading to a thesis).

That would set in motion so much good reading, good conversation, and (perhaps) a sense of “books worth reading” that might falsify the quotation from Trevelyan with which Jackson Carroll closes his article: [Theological] “education... has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading.”

Semantic Webs

Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to talk about something others know so much more about and care about passionately!

I’m not even going to bother doing all the back-linking; I don’t have time any more, and I trust Liz to collect all of the links that are worth checking. My position — in my ignorance, and despite the cumulative heated blogging contrariwise — is that the Semantic Web won’t come off as its fondest exponents suggest, even as mini-semantic web stuff expands and extends itself. For small tasks, clearly delimited, all the initial stuff (the DTDs, the specific flavors of XML, and so on) will accomplish what’s promised us and more. Nevertheless, the Really Big Versions of the Semantic Web won’t fly (for some of the same reasons that smaller versions will flourish, oddly enough). The kinds of consensus we can develop over describing things like baseball box scores and airline ticket prices and weather forecasts just won’ fly for complex jobs like characterizing a seminary curriculum. As others have pointed out, document writers err, and lie, and they don’t bother to adhere to even simple rules of syntax (how many Semantic Web boosters are classroom teachers?). And schemas defeat some of the most important generative ways to use language.

That’s my sideline perspective, but don’t listen to me — listen to the players to whom Liz links.

Missing From Vinyl

If I had a functioning LP player (and all my LPs past) one of the first tracks I’d rip is “1967 (Seems So Long Ago),” the Tom Robinson song from The Secret Policeman’s Ball. I’m itching to hear that again.

Of course, then I’d start on a whole torrent of other missing-in-action vinyl favorites, too.

Anti-Campaign Slogan

“George W. Bush: the Stealth Quayle”

Quotation of the Day

Natura in reticulum sua genera connexit, non in catenam; homines non possunt nisi catenam sequi, cum non plura simul possint sermone exponere.
- Albrecht von Haller

Nature connects its categories in a network, not a chain; people can’t follow anything but chains, for they can’t express several things simultaneously in words. (very rough translation, subject to correction from my betters)

Scribble, Pray, and Eat

I’ve been quite the busy theologian today — morning mass at St. Luke’s then working intensely on my “Seeing Hermeneutics” paper, then back to church for a funeral, then home again and a few more minutes work toward the paper, then out to parish friends’ house for dinner and general conversation and (inevitably) fretting about the parish. The “Seeing Hermeneutics” work is a blast.

I’m scheduled to preach next Sunday, but not Steve Himmer nor anyone else will choose the topic for me, thank you very much, so don’t get ahead of yourselves. . . .

Women and Beer

On my way to and from Oak Brook (which will now proudly append to its name the epithet, “Home of the Action-Packed 166th Convention of the Diocese of Chicago”), I had the opportunity to peruse a great many billboards along Interstate 294. I’ve commented on one before; the ones that impressed me today were a series of signs indicating that women just go wild for inexpensive, insipid American beers such as Budweiser, Bud Lite, and Michelob.

Now, I’m not proposing my antiquarian singles years provide an adequate basis for assessing women’s attraction to cheap beer, but certainly nothing in those years, or after, would have prepared me to think that I could enhance my status with models and starlets by offering them Budweiser. All the beer-drinking women I know prefer more refined brews — imports, or microbrewed locals, for instance. (Margaret doesn’t like beer.)

Would my life as an undergraduate (before I met Margaret) have been entirely different if I’d walked up to the most breathtakingly beautiful woman at a bar somewhere, and asked her, “May I buy you a mug of the cheapest brew they sell here? Or its Lite version?” Accordion Guy may be able to help me on this. I hope his birthday party is more exciting than my Diocesan Convention, but convention would be pretty hard to top for thrills, even if Accordion Guy has the Hot Tub On Wheels.

Saturday Reflections

For those of you who’ve been holding your breath to see what the Diocese of Chicago decides at its Diocesan Convention, you may as well exhale now. The closest we came to controversy was a motion to study the possibility of making reparations to descendants of American slaves, for which there was a little resistance.

Oh, we talked about sex all right; some few delegates were dissatisfied with our bishop’s vote in support of Gene Robinson, the gay new Bishop (Coadjutor, meaning “Gene has to wait till the present diocesan decides to really really retire, or die, or whatever”) of New Hampshire. There was a motion to censure our bishop, and several people took the floor to protest his stand (and many more to support him). The motion was defeated on a pretty decisive vote. Then someone moved to affirm the diocese’s allegiance to the Anglican Communion, and the motion was discussed for a while before it was overwhelmingly passed.

Two observations on all this: One, the votes themselves weren’t as significant to me as the business about them. While there were scattered moans, objections, light applause, and so on, most of the speechifying took place as it would have on almost any other motion. Only one or two speakers were addressing people to change their minds; the rest were stating very definitely and publicly their strong feelings on the issue (without much of a veneer of attempted persuasion). Now, I wish we actually had had an exercise in deliberation on the topic — a disputatio, if you will — but that would probably ask too much of an assembly already sick to death of the whole matter. Maybe the diocese could arrange a careful, mutually-respectful, humble panel discussion among people who are willing to admit they could be wrong.

Two: Speaking as one on the “liberal” side, I’m annoyed from hearing people who vote against the Robinson consecration suggest claims and consequences that weren’t made and don’t follow. One speaker this afternoon persistently accused “liberals” of feigning surprise that the world-wide church wasn’t on board with this consecration — but who ever said that? Only an arrant fool would have been surprised, and no one I talked to in the weeks before and after the consecration was so absurdly out of touch with reality. Then also, people say that the American Episcopal Church has withdrawn from communion with the rest of the churches — again a crude misrepresentation of what has happened. Yes, the US church has gone ahead with a gesture that gives offense to many other diocese and provinces around the world; but the US church has given no indication of its unwillingness to share communion with these aggrieved others. If there’s going to be a breach of communion, it will have to be initiated by the other dioceses. (Some dioceses seem to have set up “If . . . then. . . ” resolutions — but the action to break communion still originates with the diocese that so moves, not with the US church that remains eager to sustain positive relationships with other national and regional churches so long as the US church can maintain its regional theological integrity.)

Pass It Around

There’s a buzz going around about Clay Shirky’s recent dissection of the Semantic Web, a well-deserved buzz. I usually go to Clay’s site expecting to read something sharp and insightful, but with emphasis that seems misplaced to me (the notorious “power law” column, for instance). But I think Clay’s right on target this time.

Clay notes that Mark Pilgrim and Cory Doctorow had set out some of the fundamental problems with the Semantic Web (I knew of Mark’s, had forgotten Cory’s) — but I remembered some lively discussions of the Semantic Web and Artificial Intelligence in a less formal style over at Chris Locke’s place, several times at Shelley’s,and Joe Duemer’s.

Applause for Clay — he put it together beautifully. I wish I’d written that (as David Weinberger does, too). But the big provocation for my thinking about the Semantic Web and its problems started with Shelley and Chris.

For Frank’s and My Students

Blessed are they who endure biblical source criticism, for they will truly enjoy David Clines’s “New Directions in Pooh Studies: Überlieferungs- und religionsgeschichtliche Studien zum Pu-Buch.” Watch out for problems caused by misrepresented fi- and fl- ligatures (typeset letter-combinations that word processors frequently mistranslate from one character set to another). I came by it from the Grove Biblical Studies Bulletin page, to which I was directed from Mark Goodacre’s blog — thanks, Mark!

It’s my day for link-and-comment, because I spent most of the day going to, sitting at, and coming home from the Diocesan Convention, the local branch office’s annual version of the national church’s triennial General Convention (the one that got a lot of press this past summer). It resembles a General Convention in miniature in very many ways: a much smaller display of organizational and merchants’ booths; a smaller legislative agenda (often with less conflict, though I’ve attended my share of acrimonious conventions); hanging out with friends whom you don’t see often enough; and sitting through administrative monologues. It was good to see Bishop Persell up and about after his heart surgery.

As I drove past O’Hare this morning, I realized that it had been a long time since I’d flown off to some conference or another. Ah well, only two weeks till the SBL meeting in Atlanta.

Oh, and I wanted to link-and-comment to the amusing Church Sign Generator (don’t miss the related Church Sign Collection), and to the opening of the Skokie Apple Store (to which Pippa and Josiah and I went, and waited in sub-freezing cold for a half hour for our official Apple t-shirts).

We Took the Red Pill Twelve Years Ago

You, too, can escape The Meatrix.

Whew!

I was writing well up to the minutes before my afternoon Church History class began, but something like what I sketched this morning turned out to serve adequately for tonight’s sermon, so I made it under the wire. Thanks for the inspiration, Steve! (In class we spent the two hours talking about Egeria’s Pilgrimage, a lovely fourth-century narrative written by a chatty, credulous, religious tourist from Spain.) We honored Archbishop William Temple, prayed for dads, and then I tumbled home to grab a slice of pizza and drive Josiah to choir practice. Dishes, laundry, and now I’m turning my attention to the “visual hermeneutics” presentation while I wait to pick Si up again.

Anyway, here’s the sermon.

Mass Commemorating William Temple
Seabury-Western Theological Seminary
November 6, 2003

“The Word became flesh and lived among us”

Jokes about Anglicans never really seem to amuse me. I hope that by now you’re willing to believe I’m not entirely humorless; I revel in absurdity, incongruence, wit, even slapstick. But jokes about Anglicans typically reduce to making fun of the upper class (when that class just doesn’t typify Anglicans of my acquaintance), or mocking people who like sherry (when as best I can calculate, every Anglican woman, man, and child would have to drink two liters of sherry if they were the only ones who consumed that wine, and I happen to know a goodly number of Anglicans who don’t like sherry, so the rest would have to drink double to make up the difference). And Anglicans famously adopt a middle way on every topic, wanting to have their controversial cake and eat it too – both/and, no matter what the situation.

That can serve as a way of avoiding conflict; we supposedly just nod and say the magic word “comprehension,” and abracadabra! all our worries disappear. This is known to have been attempted even at Seabury. If we claim to embrace all the possible perspectives, then maybe we can remain united without ever grappling with the meaning of our disagreements. If we’re lucky, the disagreements won’t flare up and cause problems till we’ve moved to another parish, or another diocese, or another province, or to an eternal incumbency. If we construe “comprehension” as a ten-dollar word for conflict-avoidance, then jokes about the Anglican via media aren’t funny, they amount instead to a devastating critique of a superficial theology and ecclesiology. If that’s what we’re about, then we deserve all the mockery we get — and then some.

John’s Gospel points us in a different direction, though. John’s Gospel challenges us to look at apparently-contrary conditions and admit that through God’s grace, by divine power if no other, the contrary terms apply simultaneously. The eternal Word became flesh and dwelt among us; in so doing, God revealed in Jesus Christ what it would be like to see God. Whoever has seen Jesus, has seen the God who sent Jesus. Though no one has seen God, Jesus has demonstrated and articulated for us who God is.

So whatever else we may say about God, among the truths we recognize in this evening’s gospel lesson we should count the truth that God is not subject to our binary distinctions, our eithers and ors. You-all in Early Church History know how much trouble people get into when they start their theologies with either/or premises. The growth in our understanding of Trinitarian theology (and for that matter, of Christology) reflects the awkwardness of projecting onto God’s fullness the partiality of our reasonings. In John’s Gospel as perhaps nowhere else, Jesus persistently and patiently reminds us that we haven’t yet gotten all the way to what Ephesians calls “the mystery hidden for all ages” — but if we keep to the Way, to the Truth, to the Life, then the Spirit will guide us onward.

And if there be any road signs on the way to the truth, they are not clearly-marked forks in the road onto which we can shunt those undesirable fellow-travellers who pollute the pristine clarity of our theology or discipline with their dunderheaded bumbling. Our way is marked by the revelation of grace and glory, by unanticipated gifts, by love that surpasses natural affection. The way that God has offered to us defies categorization, resists forced alternatives, and leads us by the hard way of comprehensive fellowship, of communion with sisters and brothers whom we receive not of blood or of the will of the flesh or the will of man, but from God.

Our communion, then, ought not amount a polite, chilly, conflict-avoidant quiet around an antique tea table, sipping our two liters of sherry and maintaining a stony silence with regard to the topics that we care most about. Our comprehensive communion constitutes a bustling, vibrant, bazaar of theological wrangling, wherein we hold each other to ever-higher standards of thoughtfulness and devotion and mutual respect — so that through the church the wisdom of God in its rich variety might now be made known to rulers and authorities, to bypassers and bums, to a world full of bemused newsreaders wondering what those foolish Anglicans will get up to next. We don’t know, and that’s all right! But we look each other in the eye, we promise that we will not let go until we are brought together into all Truth, for in the love that holds us together amid our candid acknowledgement of differences and contradictions, we have seen the glory of God, full of grace and truth.

Amen

Dawn of an Idea

At about 4 AM, I was lying awake next to my poor, cough-wracked spouse, when an idea for the sermon began to coalesce. The readings include John 1:9-18, with its heavy emphasis on the incarnation (fitting, for a mass celebrating Archbishop William Temple, who especially appreciated John's Gospel and the doctrine of the incarnation). I plotted a skeleton that begins with reflections on Anglican-ness and the “comprehension” (in the sense of “holding together a great many things”), develops through ways in which comprehension can easily serve the ends of conflict-avoidance, and closes with a reflection on the incarnation as a model of a comprehension that not only embraces many things but does so even at the cost of conflict.

At least, that sounded good last time I thought about it.

Yikes!

Gewalt! I’m preaching tomorrow night at mass, and I have four hours of classes tomorrow to keep me from thinking about the sermon. I’d better have some intensely homiletical dreams tonight. . . .

Oh, Dear, and Oh, Wow!

(a) I vexed Jeff Ward (in a post entitled “Constipation,” of all things), which is a drag because the deeper I get into my presentation, the more I wish he were around here where we could go out for a cup of coffee and I could pick his brains on my topic. He’s so obviously so much sharper on these issues than I am that even if I’m headed in a different direction from he, I’m going to feel like a poseur talking through my ideas in the knowledge that he’s the real Deep Thinker on them.

(b) Luckily for my research day (what I pretend counts as my “research day,” since I spent nearly the whole day teaching, praying, and performing household responsibilities) I finally tracked down what had been haunting the back rows of my memory for ages. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, one poular mode of biblical instruction invovled the Hieroglyphical Bible or the Bible in Pictures, a sort of rebus-like affair wherein pictures stand in for some of the words. For instance, in this example (from well-known printer Isaiah Thomas’sA Curious Hieroglyphick Bible, or, Select Passages in the Old and New Testaments, Represented with Emblematical Figures, for the Amusement of Youth) shown in the Library of Congress, the author has substituted a haloed Hebrew Tetragrammaton for the English “God,” an odd cloudy shape for “heavens,” a globe for “earth,” and so on. This dovetails exquisitely with Magritte’s observation that “An image can take the place of a word in a proposition” (in the seventh proposition in “Words and Images”).

I found another, Picture Puzzles, or How to Read the Bible By Symbols, with almost identical content. Picture Puzzles, however, does include some real rebuses: in several, the illustrations “king”and “dome” stand in for the word “kingdom.” And no, Joey (happy birthday, Accordion Guy!) and Trevor, these are not just prophecies of the Toronto Blue Jays’ home field. These are all just utterly too cool.

Happy Birthday and A Happy Return

Margaret was surprised indeed — and markedly suspicious — when various unexpected people sent birthday greetings for her. When I came home after midday mass, she looked me straight in the eye and said, “What have you been doing? Did you send out some kind of mass email?”to which I could truthfully answer steadily, “No.” But she’s got smart stuff between her ears, and didn’t relent till she had cracked the case. We’re delighted to be back together, great to hear about Nate (and his school nickname!), great to be together when we hear our wild daughter spinning her left-field ideas, and Si trying hard to look innocent when Margaret interrogates him about the online surprise party (“I didn’t see anything on Dad’s website when I looked this morning”).

We had a birthday dinner at Cozy Noodle with Trevor, and are getting ready to wind down for the evening.

(A thankful shout-out to my Early Church History class today, where Cliff took the floor toward the middle of class to ask whether he understood correctly that congratulations were in order. That was sweet and kind — and especially in a class where they’ve only known me for a few weeks.)

Halley’s Reality

So Halley reminded the world of our conversation last year (was it only fifteen or so months ago, Halley? It seems as though we’ve been friends so long) about whether people are “really” the same online as they are in person. Halley thinks there’s a deep difference between people’s online personae and their physical-world personae; I think that it’s one of life’s lovely ironies that Halley is the one making that argument, since I know few people from both worlds who are so consistent in both modes of acquaintance.

I’d have devoted another long-winded essay to my reasons for disagreeing with Halley, but David Weinberger gave his typically persuasive case for the social constitution of identity in his own blog today. So I’m left with nodding and affirming, “What he said.” That was what I was trying to work toward with Dave Winer way back at Bloggercon a month ago. But it’s still fun to talk about.

Oh, Boy

Is this ever going to be part of my presentation for the SBL meeting. . . and so is this.

Backlog

If I owe you an email, please bear with me. In my quotidian chainsaw-juggling, today and the next couple of days will concentrate on getting a working text of the paper I’ll be delivering at the end of the month to the Society of Biblical Literature meeting in Atlanta.

I hate being rude about late responses to email, I really do; but I can’t do everything all at once.

Over There

I already thanked people, and I don’t want to flog this horse, but it wouldn’t be right for me to not acknowledge the online congratulations from so many people. If I’m missing any among you, it’s because I didn’t get a trackback —I don’t mean to neglect you. There’s David Weinberger, Joi Ito, Shelley Powers (above yet another remarkable photograph from her mineral collection), Steve Himmer, Euan Semple, Dave Winer, Jim McGee,Don Temples, all the people in the comment thread, and especially the astonishing Gary Turner. [And Marc Canter and Chris Tessone.] (And Jordon Cooper.) (It’s a pretty strange day when a theologian’s promotion makes Blogdex!)

On Liberalism and Terrorism

Could it be that “terrorism” manifests the bad conscience, the [necessary] blind spot of the combination of liberal democracy and market capitalism? I’m just ruminating here — but it seems, in certain regards, as though terrorism is what you get when you solemnly assure people that they’e the ones in charge, as long as they don’t violate the social compromise that puts them in charge.

That’s still not clear. Liberal democracy and market capitalism derive their admirable qualities and their overwhelming political prominence to their offer of freedom and choice — all to the good. But freedom and choice don’t simply subsist in an unentangled way. In the modern [North and] West, the experience of generations of religious warfare convinced law-givers that freedom could effectively be obtained by setting apart some topics on which constituents could agree to disagree, “religion” being one of them. After the Wars of Religion, the English Civil War, and various groups’ emigrations to North America, the dominant population determined that most people’s faiths were congruent with one another to the point that they would exchange the option of establishing binding norms of religious observance for the general welfare that came with defining these religious as a matter of indifference for civil purposes.

That trade-off has worked spectacularly in most areas of the modern [North and] West, with a notable exception in Ireland; that trade-off doesn’t apply in Israel’s situation, inasmuch as religious difference is one of the constituting rationales for Israel’s existence as a nation. That trade-off has run into a number of dire problems when the North-West has tried to apply its solution to areas where (for instance) religious observance simply isn’t up for grabs as a matter of indifference. The North-West may collectively say, “Ah, but they ought to adopt our way of looking at religion, in order to enjoy the benefits of freedom and choice” — but that overlooks, in fact it simply can’t account for the possibility, that some cultures will regard their religious identity as more important than the supposed benefits of freedom. And those people, when liberal market democracy is forced upon them, will respond by violent resistance. That’s not because they hate freedom; it’s because they don’t want freedom if it costs them their souls.

I don’propound this as a news flash to people who might never have thought it before, but as a possible reminder that forcing people to be free (on our terms) might be a self-defeating, destructive gesture — again, not because people oughtn’t be free, or because they might hate freedom, but because “freedom” comes with hidden assumptions about what counts as freedom and what doesn’t, and the experience of the global North-West might not fit all national cultures in the same way, if at all.

Many Thanks

With Margaret away — and here I’d interpose a frowny face if I were the sort of person so to do — I was lead dog in the household today; did dishes, made pancakes, took offspring to the library and the grocery store, made a special dinner of fried egg sandwiches (an haute cuisine entree for which I am known as a specialist), french fries, and [vegetarian] Italian sausages.

But most of all, I wondered at and gave heartfelt thanks for the fact that so many people stopped in on their weekend to wish me well on my promotion. I’ve met so many brilliant and accomplished people online that I don’t feel nearly so vain about a job title as I might have in my more cloistered academic identity. All the more, then, do I thank you; you who teach me so much, who show such patience with my folly and ignorance, you who stick around even when I exasperate you. The real honor comes not from the title, but from the care of people who needn’t bother. And I guess I am proud of that. Thanks, so much.