“If you have responsibility for security but have no authority to set rules or punish violators, your own role in the organization is to take the blame when something big goes wrong.” (from Technology Review)
This applies, mutatis mutandis, to so many other aspects of technology administration (though especially for security). About a year ago, I blogged my institutional slogan No Accountability Without Power; I’ve been trying to live it out here at Seabury, which has entailed explaining dozens of times over that the Tech Committee has the authority to think up good ideas, but none to implement them; we have the authority to suggest solutions, but no budget to maintain our proposals. So far, we’re getting some good work done by out-sourcing decision-making to other logical committees, but we still get pushback when anything goes wrong (I should say, Micah and Mark Moore mostly get the pushback; I get only a little). Our role is often to take the blame for circumstances we could have prevented, if we had the authority or budgetary resources so to do.
Margaret’s working on an end-of-term paper on Paul Griffiths’s terrific book (she says; I haven’t read it yet) Lying — An Augustinian Theology of Duplicity as a model for reasoning about pacifism. As we shared observations about the book and a review of it, we reached the point of noting how odd it is that “pacifism” has become identified as “opposition to war,” when it is much more a matter of living in a particular, nonviolent way.
The pacifist’s opposition to war becomes operative only at the extremity of human behavior — whereas the real work of pacifism takes place day by day. Margaret’s going to argue that Augustinian truthfulness provides a model of how we can envision pacifism as a way of life, inasmuch as Augustine both prohibits deception and discusses how people can live in a world where deception prevails. We noted that our family’s commitment to pacifism has affected our relations with one another, our behavior relative to neighbors and co-workers, our involvement in church and other spheres, much more than it has affected our attitude toward (for instance) the ongoing conquest of Iraq. Someone who says that pacifism is cheap when you don’t actually have to participate in war or face harsh consequences for your refusal, may not have considered sufficiently the cost of trying to live a life characterized by aiming at harmony and cooperation in a culture overwhelmingly defined by competition, rivalry, and conflict. That’s all the more true to the extent that anything we say or do risks supplying the grounds for an accusation from a hostile inquisitor (of whom I find a surprising number).
Pacifism is more than not serving in the army: it’s living as an emissary of peace in exile in a land of contentiousness. When you begin with treating your spouse and children, your neighbors and students in a way governed by the blessing of peace, of course war is unthinkable — but there’s so much more to be done before the question of war even comes up.
And I say, “Go, Sox,” and confess my flawed insensitivity here in public as a sign that I’m not hyping my own stock here. I’m emphatically not an example of pacifist perfection. Living as a pacifist in this comprehensive sense is hard work (as the President might say — and he gets very much more time off than I do).
The women of the family arrived safely, albeit somewhat shaken up by the 50-mph gusts that buffeted their descending airplane. We’ve settled back into an utterly familiar family ambiance, and all is swell. Pippa had hardly gotten into the car before she was cutting loose with improvised song and hearty laughter. I found myself wondering how I’d gotten by while her absence had muted my world.
It’s great to be able to hold Margaret’s hand, or give her a hug — but I realized this afternoon how much I’d missed just bantering with her, relishing absurdities and sharpening ideas in cooperative tandem. We’ve done a little of that via IM, but the constraints of IM damp the vitality and spontaneity of the conversation. Plus, I can’t see her eyes sparkle.
DRMA: Expect Your Miracle by the Clark Sisters; Mysterious Ways by U2; How To Be Dumb by Elvis Costello; Bye And Bye by Bob Dylan.
Leaving in a few minutes to pick up Margaret and Pippa at Midway. Pippa’s sticking around, but Margaret will leave Tuesday morning (two days before her birthday). That’s okay; I’ve missed them both awfully, and their return to Evanston will make the weekend great.
Anyone nearby have a MiniDisc player or some other way I could transfer MiniDisc audio information to a simpler medium?
My new colleague Ellen Wondra is giving her inaugural lecture to the assembled alumni, students, staff, faculty, and guests of Seabury-Western. Her lecture concerns “The Highest Degree of Communion Possible,” the goal of the Windsor Report.
She begins by rehearsing some of the headline recommendations from the Report. She’s concentrating, though, on the proposed changes in the Anglican Communion’s self-understanding that would shape the way forward that the Report envisions. The Windsor Report deals with the tensions inherent in global communion emphasizes unity, centrality, and authority over diversity, locality, and autonomy. The Report proposes an Anglican Covenant that would bind provinces to the Instruments of Unity (Archbishop of Canterbury, Anglican Consultative Council, Lambeth Conference, and the Council of Primates). It defines and limits the autonomy of diverse provinces; a province would be free to amend its prayerbook, unless the changes injure the unity of the whole (as, for example, by substituting a local creed for the Nicene Creed). Ellen observes that the overall tendency of these proposals would be to vest the principal responsibility for upholding unity in the office of the bishop (especially a small number of prominent bishops)
Anglican provinces need to “consult” one another before proceeding with dramatic changes, but the verb “consult” may be read either as “talk to people” or “reach an agreement.” On one reading, the US church did consult its Anglican partners (however feebly); on the other, we did not.
She observes that the Instruments of Unity have typically come into being not on the basis of harmonious agreement, but because of besetting conflicts (cf. the first Lambeth Conference, relative to the Colenso case). She notes that the Agnlican Communion, with its loose organization, is constitutively unsuited to articulate unified doctrinal or disciplinary positions.
The Windsor Report thus advocates strengthening the Instruments of Unity — though, ironically, we cannot strengthen the Instruments of Unity without a worldwide consensus, which is precisely what we presently lack. Ellen notes the weakness of the proposed gestures involves precisely the possibility of recognizing the grounds for innovation or development; where the Anglican Communion has hitherto benefited from its flexibility, adapting productively to local or cultural circumstance, the strengthened Instruments of Unity batten down the hatches and seal the cracks by which the Spirit might infiltrate the conservative momentum of the institution.
Ellen follows through by pointing out the way that the Report makes a spotlight case of the ordination of women. If the innovation of women’s ordination worked through the Instruments of Unity, then questions of sexuality ought to be handled in the same way. She alleges that the Windsor Report caricatures the vitriolic controversy over ordination of women; she cites the absence of any reference to the actual schisms, the actual restrictions on ordained women’s ministries, and the extra-canonical actions of U.S. bishops that precipitated such (limited) acceptation of women’s ministries as we have presently obtained. The first Eames Commission Report concerned exactly this issue, and concluded that the church would have to learn to live with ambiguity, and would need a long period of reflection and deliberation to come to terms with.
But, Ellen notes, the Windsor Report constructs a version of history and current events that serves its goal of advocating strengthened Instruments of Unity — at the cost of falsifying, both explicitly and by omission, the way things came about. The cogency of the claims on behalf of the Instruments of Unity rests on the contrast of the [domesticated] process on behalf of the ordination of women with the [disorderly] process on behalf of recognizing the theological validity of lesbian and gay relationships. On matters of common concern, no province may act until one or all of the Instruments of Unity say that they may.
This weights the whole process significantly toward traditionalism, especially since all the deliberation in view must take place in theory, not at all in practice. We cannot find out whether the church can function if divorced people can remarry, if women can function in ordained ministry, if lesbian and gay people can flourish in theologically-endorsed relationships.
Ellen makes the point that one of the hallmarks of God’s way as known in Scripture and church history consistently shows that God operates in ways that we cannot and ought not try to predict and contain. Further, Ellen asks whether truth exists in a rarefied, abstract realm of theory, recognizable by a small cadre of bishops, or through the combination of action and reflection, through conflict and uncertainty. The truth, on Ellen’s account, emerges through the consensus fidelium that emerges from critical reflection on the life of the church.
All of this would constitute both a dangerous rupture in the constitutive fluidity of the Anglican Communion, and a dangerously theological move. Whether we agree with the actions of the U.S. church or not, the whole Anglican Communion benefits from the looseness of its present structure.
We do need stronger Instruments of Unity — but these proposals envision too tight a unanimity. The best way forward would involve strengthened Instruments of Unity, and a minimal communion-wide code of canon law, but also an acknowledgment that provinces may push the boundaries of controversy at the risk of schism and pain, for such experimentation itself tests the soundness of the controverted topic’s validity.
[Warning: I’m not a good note-taker. Don’t bind Ellen to what my fingers think she said! I know that I flattened out lots of nuance, and I expect that I totally missed some points, too.]
I had wanted not to talk about the recent story over at Christianity Today, reflecting negatively on the judgment of the Episcopal Church’s Women’s Ministries website. The page in question evidently detailed a “women’s liturgy” that recapitulated the exact practices relative to goddess-worship that the book of Hosea decries. The whole thing seemed like the sort of lamentable problem that attention would only exacerbate.
Today, though, I got an email eliciting my response, and I figured it was time to do my homework and state my perspective on the brouhaha. I re-read the Christianity Today story, wincing, and followed the link to the text of the liturgy, but it was gone, 404’d. One can find easily enough a cached copy of the page, however, and the liturgy does indeed entail offering raisin cakes to the Queen of Heaven.
In a tepid defense of the page and the church, I would note that (a) the page doesn’t actually recognize Astarte as distinct from the God of Israel, but seems to be suggesting that she represents God’s “feminine face,” a notion I would resist vigorously, but which amounts to something less than flat-out idolatry; (b) the page in question seems to be maintained by a seminary intern, and I’m vocationally committed to encouraging seminarians to speak their minds in public, even when they end up putting their digital foot in it; (c) someone was evidently concerned enough about the page to take it down in response to the CT article — which isn’t the way I’d suggest handling it, but it amounts to an admission that something was off target.
On the other hand, one does wonder what’s going through people’s heads. I vigorously support feminist inquiry and theological endeavors, but slapping a neo-Druidic rite onto an Episcopal liturgy doesn’t advance the cause of truth in either, or any, particular way. If there’s an appropriate way for Christians to respond positively to feminist challenges (and I’m willing for that to stand an open question), I’m entirely confident that the path lies not by the way of assimilating the Christian tradition to an allegedly more women-friendly pagan tradition. It’s way, way more complicated than that.
I’m given to understand that some people think they can reconcile Christian faith with Celtic-Druidic doctrine by picking and choosing the elements of each that they approve of. I’m not spiritually-evolved enough to see the ways in which that’s not perniciously self-aggrandizing in all the most spiritually dangerous ways. If you were wondering what I think about the page that has since gone missing, please know that I take it as a bad idea, and that I’m unequivocally against idolatry.
What a post-season!
My dad (scroll down) has been a Red Sox fan for ages — I don’t know precisely when he declared his allegiance, but has had a Jimmie Foxx autographed scorecard, and he rooted for Joe “Burrhead” Dobson — and I’ve lamented with him in 1967, 1975, and 1986. In the meantime, my own heroes (the Baltimore Orioles) have racked up world championships in ’66, ’70, and ’83 (with near-misses in ’71 and ’79, and bitterest of all, the not-even-close defeat at the hands of the Mets in 1969 — but I digress).
Congratulations to everyone in Red Sox Nation, and too bad to the three-games-down-to-the-Yankees naysayers!
“The people’s flag is deepest red. . . .”
I can’t believe I ever thought about not being a teacher. Which is not to say I won’t ever falter again, but that today two wonderful Seabury alums both stopped to talk with me in ways that reached the deepest sense of who I am and what I do. I make no pretense of being a Great Teacher or an Outstanding Role Model, but I hope that occasionally I can be a friend to people who come to learn and grow about particular topics, in particular ways. This morning two lovely souls told me I had done that. If I keep up this work, perhaps — by God’s mercy — it may happen again. For now, though, a teacher’s heart has been deeply moved, and a teacher’s restless disposition has been reminded that it’s still a teacher’s restless disposition, a teacher’s heart, so chill out and be patient.
I’ve been looking for this text for ages. It’s from The King's Declaration Prefixed to the Articles of Religion (“the 39 Articles,” a summary of the official position of the English church on matters controverted by Roman Catholic and Protestants), promulgated in November, 1628:
That therefore in these both curious and unhappy differences, which have for so many hundred years, in different times and places, exercised the Church of Christ, we will, that all further curious search be laid aside, and these disputes shut up in God’s promises, as they be generally set forth to us in the Holy Scriptures, and the general meaning of the Articles of the Church of England according to them. And that no man hereafter shall either print, or preach, to draw the Article aside any way, but shall submit to it in the plain and full meaning thereof: and shall not put his own sense or comment to be the meaning of the Article, but shall take it in the literal and grammatical sense.I think I’ve even quoted that “shall not put his own sense or comment to be the meaning of the Article, but shall take it in the literal and grammatical sense” part in an article somewhere, but I don’t know which (if any).
So listen, everyone — stop putting your own sense to be the sense of things, and take everything in the literal and grammatical sense! That’ll resolve our differences (as it did so well in 1628).
DRMA; Just Dropped In by Kenny Rogers and the First Edition; Lipstick Vogue by Elvis Costello; Gone Flying by Phil Manzanera; The Day That Lassie Went To The Moon by Camper Van Beethoven.
Here are some things I like about the W/E/L Commission Report:
And here are some things I don’t like:
Probably more, too, but it’s getting late.
I remain utterly convinced that this wound should be healed by poultices and good nutrition rather than by excision or amputation; I trust that the Spirit will not permit us to persist in destructive error, whatever we ought to be doing. If any of the positions under consideration is of human origin, it will be overthrown; but if it is of God, nothing will be able to overthrow it, and we might even be found resisting God.
This morning Seabury had a good long walk about the block, sprinkling the buildings and offices with holy water and blessing everyone and everything in sight. I woke up at 5:30 in order to get in my exercising (grrrrr) and in order to work out the sermon for the service.
As it turns out, the “fish/snake, egg/scorpion” text finally engendered a notion for a homily (I’ll append it in the “more” section). It went well, and as afternoon arrived I had only a normal backlog of course prep, letters of recommendation, memos, and other appurtenances of academic life.
DRMA: Homecoming King by Guster; ; The District Sleeps Alone Tonight by the Postal Service; Such Great Heights by the Postal Service; We Will Become Silhouettes by the Postal Service.
Anderson Chapel of St. John the Divine, Seabury-Western
Blessing of the Seminary Grounds and Buildings
October 25, 2004
Luke 11:1-13
+
Only on a very few occasions have I been tempted to offer my children snakes instead of fish, and then you will have to take my word that they had sore provoked me. But in this morning’s lesson, Jesus actually makes the easy point instead of pressing us on toward a more radical challenge. The urgent question isn’t whether we’ll extend our culinary offerings to include Orange Mamba-lade, but rather: Who among you, when your son styles his hair with Elmer’s Glue, dyes it a color hitherto known only in the feculent depths of the infernal abyss, and comes home from the mosh pit asking to have scorpions for dinner, wouldn’t say, “Sorry kid, but tonight it’s free-range unfertilized eggs”?
The question from this morning’s gospel lesson is easier, inasmuch as Luke and Jesus make it absolutely clear that they want us to know that Heaven will eventually answer our prayers if we nag God persistently enough, that God will not gives us snakes and scorpions when we pray for kipper and eggs. Difficult as it may be for us to await the good things God has promised, we know the right answer to this question.
But we don’t always pray for good things. We labor in vain to build houses that the Lord does not build with us. We make long-range plans, when this very night our soul may be demanded of us. We ask for the scorpions that all the other cool kids are eating, when God longs for nothing other than to nourish us with Omega-3 enriched eggs. Students ask, “Teach us this way”; faculties ask, “Dean us that way”; even our pets don’t reliably cooperate with our plans for their best interests.
Centuries, millennia of patriarchy undergird an assumption that Father Knows Best, that we must always adhere to the dictates handed down from the top of the pyramid of power. Decades, centuries of American rebelliousness and egalitarianism energize a conviction that the people should determine the direction of every important decision. And if we want to serve both God and our neighbors, if we want not to labor in vain but to share in a project so great, so long-range, that we can glimpse its end-point only in a glass darkly, we need to learn that hardest lesson of how to lead and follow wisely, how to rule and submit, how to cooperate with the Spirit in strengthening God’s people, and to cooperate with God’s people in discerning the Spirit.
So the exasperating conclusion to the questions I invoke this morning is that I can’t tell you how to arrive at the right menu for God’s people. Sometimes the church has to subsist on an arachnid diet for a while, and other times that would be a poisonous folly. Without rigid instructions from the hierarchy, without chasing after popular trends, perhaps we can only put our faith in communion: the communion of saints, the Communion of our neighbors, the Communion we have with God. No snakes, no scorpions, but mere bread and wine, and the fragile trust that love will not lead us wrong.
Amen
The sermon went fine this morning at St. Giles — somewhat surprisingly, since I had to go to sleep with the text only half-written. I woke up early, got most of the way there, then thought through the last bit while I was motoring out to Northbrook. I’ll append the sermon in the “extended” portion.
Now, however, I have to put something together for tomorrow’s service for the Blessing of the Seminary Grounds and Buildings. The gospel reading, as I said earlier, is Luke 11:1-13, but right at the moment (and we’re adhering to a strict definition of the word “moment”) I think I’ll preach on the liturgical refrain of the first part of the service, “Unless the Lord builds the house / They labor in vain who build it” (taken from Psalm 127). But so far, I haven’t the faintest, foggiest idea what I’ll say. It’s not fair that the Sox play World Series games during sermon prep time.
[Later: I’m beginning to think I might use “Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for a fish, will give a snake instead of a fish? Or if the child asks for an egg, will give a scorpion?” and talk about Josiah. Hmmm. . . .]
DRMA: What, are you kidding? I’m watching/listening to the Sox game.
Proper 25, Year C October 24, 2004
St. Giles, Northbrook
Jeremiah 14:7-10, 19-22/Psalm 84/2 Timothy 4:6-8, 16-18/Luke 18:9-14
I tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other.
+ In the name of God Almighty, the Blessed Trinity — Amen.
You are strangers to me, and I to you; I know none of your secrets, nor you mine. Yet I know that there is one among us, someone here, who has sinned perhaps just a little more than anyone else. That person may only have sinned a shade more than the rest, just one more unit of litter or one more mile an hour over the speed limit — but someone must be a greater sinner than the rest, and that means one of us here. . . is that person.
One of us is the greatest sinner in the bunch, and one of us is the saintliest person here, the person who most successfully resists temptation, whose good character keeps wrongdoing and heedlessness at arm’s length. The sinner and the saint may be sitting next to one another, may be married, may not even be acquainted. I may be one, and you wouldn’t know which; you may be one, and I’d be none the wiser. Two churchgoers, two souls, two permanent record cards in heaven, two divergent paths.
Of those two. . . well, you were listening to the gospel lesson, you know how the story comes out. Two people go to worship. One of them is the best-behaved believer in the congregation, the other is the naughtiest rascal in the building; and Jesus singles out one of them as an example of the kind of person whom God loves. We don’t have to paint the figures as extreme types. The good person doesn’t have to walk on water and find lost kittens, nor need the bad person be a murderer or predator. Doesn’t matter, for the sake of the parable, since St. Luke tells only that the nice parishioner gets the cold shoulder, and the wretch receives applause from Jesus.
I would prefer to think around that outcome. I’d like to make excuses for Jesus’ poor taste in good examples — really, I might say, the good parishioner shouldn’t be so self-satisfied, and really, the naughtier parishioner asked nothing more than mercy. Really, I suppose, the well-behaved churchgoer deserves a reprimand, and the fraudmonger deserves congratulations. Really, we should be less like the saints and more like the criminals. Really, good is bad and bad is good. Really, it all depends on what “good” means. You can see easily enough where that leads.
It leads to a world that’s governed by our sense of how God ought to manage things, rather than on God’s promise of good news. People want to know who the holiest person in the congregation this morning might be, and praise them; people want to find out who’s keeping a shameful secret, sneaking out on his spouse or pocketing a percentage at work, and expose their dastardly underhandedness. Most of us want credit for our goodness, want to live in a world where our willingness not to deceive and exploit meets some reward. It seems as though there must be some benefit for goodness; why would anyone forgo violence and treachery if there’s nothing whatever in it, if we’re just volunteering to be taken as suckers by people who not only get away with it, but who then get a kind word from God in the bargain. How fair is that?
Well, the answer from Jesus is that it’s not fair, and it isn’t meant to be fair. The Kingdom of God operates on a basis that departs from fairness, and it moves further away, more rapidly, the more concern we show about whether God meets our standards of fairness. All we need do is look around us to see that the Kingdom doesn’t revolve around fairness; so many of God’s beloved children suffer in poverty, in pain, in loneliness, in torment from evil powers. Where’s the fairness in schizophrenia? In AIDS? In famine and genocide? Where’s the fairness in being cut off from your loved ones for arbitrary, capricious reasons, to fret in isolated loneliness? Where’s the fairness when the church turns its back on faithful, energetic servants of the gospel — whether those rejected believers live in the US or in Africa? Where will we find fairness, if not in God’s Kingdom?
That vital question pushes us out onto thin theological ice, sisters and brothers; if we don’t answer carefully we may find ourselves falling into dangerous waters. For instance, the church often tries to shush questions about God’s fairness, whether by scolding people who question God or by promising that we’ll understand it better bye and bye. Those answers, true as they are, may only drive us out further onto the ice — especially when comfortable, prosperous, strong people mouth the words.
The way back from the thin ice to the safety of God’s true ways requires us to push even further ahead. God’s loves us and regards us fairly, yes, and that fairness extends beyond our goodness and our flaws. God’s fairness embraces us, each, as we are in our totality, and envelopes us in a blanket of giving — of giving, not deserving; of giving, not earning; of giving, not rewarding. God gives to the tax collector, and the tax collector accepts that gift; but the pious churchgoer isn’t sure he wants to be included with the thieves, adulterers, rogues and tax collectors to whom God is determined to offer the Kingdom. So to the sinner, God offers the opportunity to enter; and to the saint, God offers the opportunity to pass up a bliss that he’s have to share with those undesirables.
Jesus doesn’t just spring this parable out of nowhere; he preaches this scoundrels’ gospel all along. The pious churchgoer in this morning’s story plays the same part as the older brother in Luke’s parable of the Prodigal Son, or as the rich man in the story about the beggar Lazarus. St. Luke reminds us, over and over and over again, that God’s grace overwhelms us, sweeps us off our feet and into heaven. If we insist on entering heaven on our own steam, marching step by deliberate, self-conscious, perfectly choreographed step, walking side by side with this morning’s Pharisee, we’ll waste a lot of energy and anxiety trying to marshal the strength to accomplish what still only ever comes about by grace.
The rushing current of grace catches us off balance, out of control, so that we have nothing to say but, “God, have mercy on me-e-e-e-e-e. . . .” That prospect scares me to this very day, after twenty years of studying and serving and teaching and preaching the good news of God’s grace. The water of baptism runs swift and strong, washing sin away from us. The water of baptism makes no distinction between woman and man, child or elder, nor even Pharisee or tax collector; baptism swirls together unlikely (sometimes unwelcome) sharers in a miscellaneous family of God’s children. The water of baptism sweeps us off the righteous course we planned, on toward a less predictable, less comfortable voyage. But comfort and predictability aren’t the only elements that make for an edifying journey, and the grace that gathers in the sinners with the saints, that grace promises us one awesome ride.
That ride departs from this table every week at about 10:45; indeed, it begins daily when you wake and nightly when you dream, it’s a trip you’re on already, whether you recognize it or not. Are you the unknown sinner in our midst? Watch out! Grace has caught you up and popped you into these pews — heaven only knows what that might lead to! And secret saint, that same grace has brought you here, too; don’t resist that grace, but swim along with it, as rough and tempestuous as it looks, let the power of grace supply a patience and wisdom that our own righteous never attains. Saints, swim with the current of grace wherever it leads, guided by grace, strengthened by mercy, humbled by the magnitude of a sea of love beyond our imagining — and maybe in our best moments even thankful that God‘s grace, unlimited by our wickedness or worthiness, gathers secret sinners and surreptitious saints, and a few surprise guests to boot, into the full, joyous company of the children of God.
Amen
Last spring, during the spasm of interest that the Lessig Free Culture read-a-thon stimulated, I was interviewed for the Toronto Globe and Mail (which had, of course, become one of my favorite newspapers until they decided to commercialize their archives; here’s David Akin’s blog post about it); now they’ve sullied their pages with my name again, this time as a supporting actor in the serial Adventures of AccordionGuy and Wendy:
Ms. Koslow and Mr. deVilla met last October at a blogging conference in Boston, with their initial introduction courtesy of a priest named AKMA (who is also, yes, a blogger).
(Thanks for the news, Joey!)
I’m available to make matches and read aloud from analyses of copyright law at weddings, funerals, and bar mitzvahs. Talk to my agent.
DRMA; And a God Descended by Dar Williams; Mohammed's Radio by Warren Zevon; How I Got Over by Mahalia Jackson with Mildred Falls; Shake You Donkey Up by XTC.
I think I may have a hook for tomorrow’s sermon (still stuck for Monday, but I can’t afford to think that far ahead). One way to address tomorrow’s lessons runs by way of bracketing, for a day, the historic markings of the two characters in Jesus’ parable, and to foreground the characteristics that fund the parabolic punch: the good guy gets snubbed, and the bad guy gets praised. If we focus on the particularities, we’re liable to wind up in arguments about just who the first-century Pharisees were, and how tax collectors made their money.
That, I think, distracts us from the gospel of grace at work in the parable. The Pharisees thinks too well of himself, maybe; but the scandalous message involves God’s commendation of the bum, the traitor, who does not even express penitence. He wants mercy, but rather than apologizing or offering restitution (as Zaccheus specifically does in the chapter coming up), he says, “That’s right, I’m a crook; cut me some slack, anyway.” And according to Jesus, he’s the one God approves.
Go figure.
DRMA: Ten Feet Tall by XTC; Evangeline by Los Lobos; Cyclops Rock by They Might Be Giants.
Not only is Margaret a distinguished graduate student in systematic theology, she’s also been honored recently in Paul Nikkel’s “Testifyin’ at the SBL” post as winner of the “Most Stylish Title” Award, for the paper she’ll be reading: “Beyond the Plain Sense: Why Frei when You Can de Lubac?”
It’s not only a classy, metrical, paronomasiac title — it’s also a terrific paper (I got a sneak preview). If you’ll be at the SBL Meeting, check it out.
Hat tip to my friends and former student Eric Thurman and former grad-school co-conspirator Dwight Peterson for calling this to my attention!
DRMA; Soma by the Strokes; Memo From Turner by Rolling Stones (this one goes out for Gary); You`ve Lost Your Way by Idlewild; Slow Ride by Foghat; We're Desperate by X.
OK, I just watched Kill Bill (both volumes, back to back; Si and I wanted to see them together before Pippa moves back to Evanston, and it made for a curious sort of pacifist father-son bonding). I’m undecided about whether the beauty warrants the brutality, but I can’t deny the beauty. Tarantino knows how to make an extraordinary movie.
The reason I mention this, though, is to ask whether anyone pointed out how eerily David Carradine resembles Chris Locke? In the first shots in which he appears (the wedding rehearsal scene in volume 2, not counting his hands and boots in volume 1; his hands and boots may resemble Chris’s, I haven’t looked that closely) I almost dropped my popcorn thinking that Chris had gotten a movie role and never told us. Separated at birth? (And a thousand years hence: Gordon Liu.)
But the real reason I bring up the resemblance is that now everybody’s getting in on the “plug Gonzo Marketing” fad, six months after I tried to stir up a wave of Rageboymania: “Since Gonzo Marketing was eclipsed by post-9/11 spasms of grief and insecurity, relatively few of the mainstream pundits who’re trying to suss out the Dean Qijote phenomenon have read Chris Locke’s brilliant, profane, analysis of why things happen the way they do online.” (Then once again in June.) Ah, well — if it finally catches on, who cares who started it?
DRMA: Father by Aphex Twin; That Falling Feeling by Phil Manzanera and 801; Turn It On by Flaming Lips; The Home Front by Billy Bragg; Wild Thing by Jimi Hendrix; Wild Wild Life by Talking Heads.
I’m preaching both Sunday and Monday, as I noted before — though I haven’t the foggiest notion when I’ll have time to prepare. I have a committee meeting this morning, class this afternoon, a dinner and presentation this evening (not that I’m giving the presentation, but a colleague), Meaning and Ministry tomorrow morning (for which I owe Lynette and Laura comments), a student flying in from Oklahoma to meet with me tomorrow afternoon. . . . And those are just the obligations I remember, leaving out things like course prep time and eating and sleeping.
Did I mention, by the way, that I hate exercising, especially when I neither gain strength and endurance nor lose any weight?
The readings for Sunday are Jeremiah 14:(1-6), 7-10, 19-22; Psalm 84:1-6; 2 Timothy 4:6-8, 16-18; and Luke 18:9-14. To save you the trouble of looking them up, that’s Jeremiah’s plea for the drought to end, Paul’s plaintive acknowledgment that he’s at the end of his career, and the parable of the Pharisee and the Publican. Ordinarily, I’m drawn to texts that seem to trigger anti-Judaic prejudice (such as Sunday’s parable, which permits pious Gentiles to congratulate themselves for not being hypocrites like those Pharisees), but I’m not sure I can modulate my philo-Judaic interpretation of the text into a proper sermon. moreover, the Jeremiah passage includes the words “We look for peace, but find no good; for a time of healing, but there is terror instead,” a refrain that seems a propos for this particular juncture.
And then there’s dear old Paul, getting ready to hang up his — whatever it was that he used, that he might either hang up or leave in a heap on the floor, for the dog to lie on, so that his parents would say, “The floor is not a coatrack; go hand that up like a civilized person.”
Monday’s service includes a blessing of the Seabury grounds, in which there’ll be lots of miscellaneous verses, and the main Gospel reading is Luke 11: 1-13, which includes Luke’s (short) version of the Lord’s Prayer, the parable of the friend at midnight, and the query about giving children stones instead of eggs, a scorpion instead of fish. Heaven only knows what I can do with that; maybe I’ll look into those miscellaneous verses for a resource.
Maybe I’ll be able to sneak some sermon-writing time in during the committee meeting and presentation.
[Later: Through the helpful intercession of Josiah, I have opened an antique file that records what was actually a pretty decent sermon. I won’t be able to preach it just as it stands — time has passed, the setting is different, few people will remember the transitory outrage that the Savings and Loan scandal-giveaway engendered — but there’s a good homiletical idea in there, so I won’t necessarily have to start from scratch.]
DRMA: Kid Fears by the Indigo Girls; Velvet Underground by Jonathan Richman; Miracles by the Jefferson Starship; The Man I Love by Ella Fitzgerald; Blessed To Be A Witness by Ben Harper; Down On Me by Eddie Head and his Family; The Revolution by David Byrne.
Why isn’t there an ad for the Democratic candidate for President that runs something like,
President Bush looks at Iraq and says, “Freedom is on the march.” How would you feel about electing a man who thinks this — [video segments of explosions, newspaper headlines announcing kidnapping, figures of U.S. and Iraqi fatalities] — is freedom?John Kerry can tell the difference between freedom and chaos.
Just asking. . . .
In the frenzy of the past few days, I missed the chance to note that Seabury has confirmed that I’ll be giving an inaugural lecture as Professor of New Testament this coming spring. Seabury will include my lecture as one in a series of endowed lectures including presentations by my friends Francis Watson, Kirby Laing Chair in New Testament and Professor in New Testament Exegesis at the University of Aberdeen, and Stephen Fowl, Professor of New Testament at Loyola College in Maryland. We’ve invited another participant, from whom we haven’t received a response.
These will constitute the Winslow Lectures for 2005, an endowed lectureship that Seabury has left quiescent until recently. We’ll all be talking about biblical theology, in one or another way. Steve has indicated an interest in drawing on Aquinas’s commentary on John; Francis has recently written on Paul’s hermeneutics, which may provide a jumping-off point for his presentation. I’ll be speaking about biblical theology as a signifying practice, for which my working title is “Representing the Truth.” Since the Evanston area hotels will surely fill up instantly when the dates are set, we’ll see what we can do about making these presentations accessible online.
I’m also preaching Sunday and Monday (at Seabury) both, which counts as something less than unalloyed good news, considering how busy I’ll be between now and then. If I have something vaguely resemlbing an idea of what I’ll say, you will be the first to know.
Oh, and the Red Sox won again!!
Probably the best response to the Eames Commission Report that will come along appears at The Wibsite — but Simon Kershaw’s page is open for comments, and seems to be attracting some useful feedback.
I read the Eames Commission Report today with mixed feelings. I uphold, firmly and without hesitation, the ministries and relationships of my lesbian and gay friends. At the same time, I see that the Episcopal Church in the USA mishandled the process by which it approached and consummated its advocacy of these causes, and I recognize ample ground for Anglicans who dissent from these conclusions. I don’t see a way that the Commission could have gone further without utterly alienating the vast preponderance of my neighbors in the Communion — and the point of the commission’s report was to ascertain how best to maintain the communion.
The Report answers its assignment by saying, “This is what ‘communion’ means. Looks as though the ECUSA and the Diocese of New Westminster [the Canadian diocese that’s developing rites for blessing same-sex unions] haven’t been living out their end of that. Since we can’t undo what’s already happened, let’s avoid exacerbating the tensions by making formal decisions that ignore the threat to communion that we presently face — specifically, no more non-celibate gay bishops, and no formally-recognized rites for blessing gay relationships.”
Thus far, I can’t see a lot to argue with. The USA has devoted tremendous energy to its internal struggles over sexuality; it has put relatively little effort into convincing the rest of the world that there’s a solid theological case for the church’s mind. Having convinced a constituency in the US sufficient for the election and consecration of Bishop Robinson, and having charted a course through toward experimental rites for solemnizing same-sex unions, the ECUSA proceeded. A sizable number of US Episcopalians and a vast proportion of world Anglicans outside the US remained unconvinced, but that did not prevent ECUSA from going forward.
At this stage, one question is: does the urgency of the theological justice point (assuming that is granted) outweigh the importance of conducting this sort of deliberation in collaboration with everyone involved? The US leadership argues that its actions fall into the category of the kinds of things about which the rest of the world doesn’t really have a say (things like whether to ordain a particular candidate to the diaconate or presbyterate). The rest of the world points out that the episcopacy constitutes a sort of hinge office, the fulcrum of the relationship between the diocese and the wider church; under those circumstances, decisions about who becomes a bishop absolutely make a difference to the world church. The US acted unilaterally — and in defiance of specific entreaties from the every collective body of world Anglicans (which the Report identifies as “Instruments of Unity”) — at a juncture when the rest of the church deserved consultation.
Since the Eames Commission unanimously concludes that the US and New Westminster disregarded their obligations to pursue more collegial deliberations, the Commission’s conclusions seem relatively mild. Indeed, I’m a little surprised that the Commission attained unanimity; I expect that more conservative spokespeople will be gravely disappointed in it, and I can see why they would be. Their frustration will be mirrored by those who see the Report as the church closing ranks in support of a defensive ideological timidity, once again relegating the lives of the gay and lesbian faithful to secondary importance.
The Commission evidently looked for a way to fulfill its charge to find a way to preserve communion (not to determine anything about sexuality). They chose to refuse either to punish the US and New Westminster or to minimize the significance of those bodies’ actions relative to the world of Anglicans who did not consent to them.
So: do I like the Report? No. Do I respect the labor that must have gone into it? Yes. Does the Report make a closely reasoned, theologically careful case for its findings. Yes. Can I imagine the Commission doing a much better job of outlining a way forward that may sustain communion across the board? No.
I read the Report with an eye open to the influence of Bishop N T Wright, with whom I’m acquainted through New Testament guild circles. It looked to me as though his thought pervaded the Report: a strong Pauline streak, with firm emphasis on an expansive construal of the scope of communion. I was impressed, then, that despite Bp. Wright’s strong opposition to the consecration of Bp. Robinson and to the recognition of same-sex unions, he was able to vote for a Report that left room for an outcome inimical to his deeply-held theological convictions.
If I had my druthers, I’d have had the Episcopal Church more actively involved in the lives of other Anglican Provinces for the past four decades or more, such that we would have had a more vivid sense of our mutual life, and would have communicated more effectively the sorts of reasoning that make the consecration of Bishop Robinson a source of joy, and the blessing of unions among our beloved friends and relations a source of renewed strength for our own committed relationships. We didn’t extend ourselves for those years, and now we can’t be surprised that others feel that we have left them (and the faith by which they have been saved) behind us. If we’re going to disagree, vehemently, we ought to devote all the more energy to working together and helping one another, so as to make sure that our discernment not be clouded by our provincialism, whether of the right or of the left. This Report, frustrating though it be in certain respects, seems to ask us to redouble our efforts to bind our lives more closely with those of sisters and brothers far away, so that we’re speaking and praying and reasoning and deciding about real human beings, rather than paper cutouts, projections, abstractions from the flesh-and-blood people whose lives will bear the consequences of the decisions we ultimately reach.
DRMA: Floe by Philip Glass; Heart of Gold by Neil Young; He’s On The Beach by Evan Dando; Veronica by Elvis Costello & Paul McCartney; Deep Ellum Blues by Jimmie Dale Gilmore; Work Song by Paul Butterfield Blues Band; Roll Jordan Roll by Fairfield Four; If You Want Me To Stay by Sly and the Family Stone; Listen by Sophie B. Hawkins; I'm Free by the Who; All the Things She Gave Me by the Waterboys; The Sermon by the Original Five Blind Boys of Alabama; All This Useless Beauty by Elvis Costello; Wild Wood by Paul Weller; Jon the Revelator by Taj Mahal et al.; Custard Pie by Led Zeppelin; Come On In the Room by Georgia Mass Choir; Dancing With Tears In My Eyes by X; Danny Boy by Black 47; CIA Man by the Fugs; Memphis Queen by Joe Grushecky & the Iron City Houserockers; Ring of Fire by Elvis Costello; Smiling Faces Sometimes by the Undisputed Truth; The Day I Tried to Live by Soundgarden; Trouble by Lindsey Buckingham; The Ballad of Peter Pumpkinhead by XTC
Although there’s nothing going on here to rival the election miasma or the American League playoff series, or even Chris Locke’s amazing Sunday, the past twenty-four hours have offered plenty of attention-grabbing developments.
First, Pippa will be coming home in a couple of weeks. She sized up life in Durham and life in Evanston, and estimated that the benefits of living up north here outweighed the benefits of living down south. She reached the decision with impressive calm and diplomacy. She astonishes Margaret and me time after time.
Margaret made the plane arrangements last night, late, and we figured out that Saturday would be the day. She and Pip will fly in, and on Tuesday, Margaret will fly out. Si and I will scramble a little to make sure Pippa’s covered through our busy schedules (AKMA: busy with classes, meetings, appointments, services, sermons; Si: busy sleeping and going to friends’ houses to watch movies and commiserate about [other] fickle teenagers), but everything will work just fine.
Second, I covered services for one of my former students this morning (I think that may be a first) and was assisted by another. I led worship for the early “traditional-language” and the midmorning “contemporary-language” services, and I taught the Adult Education group between the two. The Adult group was a blast; I’m always excited to work with people who want to learn more about Scripture and the church, and these parishioners could have pursued our discussion for hours longer. The services went fine; Harry was preaching and deaconing, so I didn’t have much to do. The services went fine, although (sorry to talk technical-Episcopalian stuff here) the second service was Prayer C, already not my very favorite, chanted all the way through. Now, I love singing the service, so that’s fine with me — but at St. Giles, they use the Simple Tone and I’m strictly a Solemn Tone guy, to the extent that I have a very hard time adapting to Simple Tone ever, at all. Singing all the way through Prayer C, to an alien tone, while trying to keep track of my manual ritual actions, overmatched me for a few phrases about two-thirds of the way through the chant. I lost track of my tone, and just wavered up and down a few tones till I got back onto the track at one of the cadences.
Third, Bea ran away from home for a few minutes this evening. She came back, but it would’ve been catastrophic if she hadn’t.
I was awake late last night and up early today, and even though I fell asleep at the computer for a while this afternoon (“Huh? What? Oh, hi, Si!”), I should retire soon. It’s hard to go to sleep while the Red Sox haven’t yet successfully eliminated themselves, but I’m pretty groggy.
DRMA: Power Of The Gospel by Ben Harper; Jennifer She Said by Lloyd Cole And The Commotions; Bye Bye Baby by Little Hat Jones; Waiting by Cake; Lord, In My Soul by Trumpeteers; God Don't Like It by Elder A. Johnson; Brilliant Mind by Furniture; At the Hop by Devendra Banhart; Satisfied Mind by Ben Harper; Float On by Ben Lee
Well, looks like Kerry hadn’t counted on the most dangerous element in the Republican repertoire, more dangerous even than Karl Rove off his leash: the factual result of the election in November may not matter, if the Bush regime needs it not to matter.
The aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.''
Presumably, including creating the reality of an electoral college victory.
DRMA: If I Had My Way by Rev. Gary Davis
Are the Red Sox trying to kill us? I’m not even a huge Red Sox fan, and this playoff series is driving me ’round the bend. . . .
DRMA: Walkin' Blues by Paul Butterfield Blues Band
