Easter 2: Rehabilitating Thomas, Rehabilitating Evangelism

May I speak in the name of the Risen Christ.  Amen.

Who does the church belong to?

I interviewed Daniel Webster over the weekend, the Canon for mission in the diocese of Maryland.

He spends time working with congregations trying to help them become healthy,

Healthy enough that they can begin to share their spiritual narratives with each other,

So that they can start to DREAM:

Do Real Evangelism Almost Mindlessly.  

He says he sees a troubling split between two different ideas about why the church does the work of evangelism:

His own is DREAM.

What he sees far more often is the dedicated few trying to play the GODsquad:

GODsquad: the Grow or Die squad.  

The DREAM team doesn't have to work to share their faith.

It flows from who they are: out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks.

The GODsquad is filled with doubt.

How will we survive?  What will become of us if we do not grow?  How can we pay our bills?

Thomas was a disciple filled, so the story usually goes, with doubt.

Unless I see him,

Unless I touch him,

Unless I put my fingers in his side and his hands,

I will not believe.

I cannot believe.

Thomas takes a lot of flak every year come Eastertide for his doubts.

But what's interesting to me about Thomas's so-called "doubt"  isn't the resurrection.

It's what Thomas has to teach us about community, about equality, about evangelism.

First of all, can you really blame Thomas?

His friends were talking about resurrection. 

From the dead.

You know, like, when people die.

Get buried.

They don’t usually come back.

It’s not that Thomas doesn’t have faith.

Thomas, perhaps more clearly than any other disciple, knows what resurrection would mean.

The women who encounter the empty tomb rush away, terrified.

Mary Magdalene thinks the risen Christ is just the gardener.

The disciples

even after Jesus breaks in on their closed and locked room,

And appears to them in the flesh,

And they themselves touch his wounds

They are shaken, and fearful.

Their whole world came apart when Jesus was crucified.

Reality itself came apart when Jesus rose from the dead and appeared to them.

After the crucifixion, the followers of Jesus went underground, afraid that they would meet the same fate as their beloved.

After the resurrection, the followers of Jesus stayed underground

Afraid they would meet the same fate as their beloved.

Thomas is the one, the first one, to immediately proclaim what resurrection means:

My Lord and My God!

Thomas’s faith in Jesus was deep, powerful, unwavering.

But he had to know it was Jesus.

Thomas is the first disciple, after the resurrection, to make the intellectual shift from social movement to theology, from Messiah to “My Lord and My God!”

In a way – with apologies to St. Peter – Thomas might be the true head fo the church.

He understands what resurrection means. 

He understands it first. 

He understands it most clearly.

Thomas might have doubted for a moment.

But the result of his doubt is the most profound faith,.

The most sublime theology,

The most mindless evangelism.

His confession is ripped from his mouth by his unique experience of Jesus.

This is the last act of the disciples in John’s gospel,

Because now the story must shift to the book of Acts, the story of the church.

This shift does not happen without Thomas,

Who brought the disciples out of their cave,

Their hushed and fearful locked-inner rooms,

The true knowledge of what Jesus’ resurrection really means.

And prepared them for the DREAM space of evangelism.

Canon Daniel Webster  describes the difference between DREAMteam and GODsquad this way:

When he was the rector of a tiny, struggling church in the Diocese of New York he had a secretary.

The secretary came in one day and said she'd been asked why she spent so much time at church.

Her answer was that she was the secretary and the treasurer,

And the church’s bills had to get paid.

What a loss, he says, of an evangelism opportunity.

Why didn’t she talk about the eighteen twelve-step programs that met there,

The food ministry they have making sandwiches for the homeless,

The fact that this church staying open saves lives.

We saved lives, at that church.

Shouldn’t that be what we answer when anyone asks us anything about it?

We.  Save.  Lives.

Who does the church belong to?

I said a minute ago that Thomas is perhaps the true head of the church,

It’s first post-resurrection theologian.

In our first Sunday after Easter, our celebration of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead.

Does the church belong to the ones who know what resurrection means?

Does the church belong to us? 

If today’s reading from Acts doesn’t scare you out of wanting to own the church, just wait a couple of weeks.

No one claimed private ownership of their possessions.

Everyone shared everything in common.

So Luke would have us believe, there was no poverty within the early church.

Poverty wasn’t even a category they thought of, because they were not concerned with possessions, with wealth.

They were not concerned with ownership.

They were concerned with fellowship.

Is it too much to suggest that they were guided by Thomas’ leadership?

That the one who insisted on a radical equality of experience –

I want to touch his wounds also –

Also insisted on a radical equality of possession, of wealth, of fellowship?

The question “Who does the church belong to?”

Is closely related to the question “Who would miss the church if it were gone?”

Certainly we would.

But our circle of fellowship has to extend to everyone who comes through these doors –

Not just the people who come here on Sunday morning –

We need to answer the questions “Why are we still open? and “Why are we here”

With the reality that Family and Children’s Agency needs us,

That the 12 step programs that meet here save lives,

We need to fully become a DREAM team and not a GOD squad –

We need to participate in God’s mission rather than the church’s mission, to borrow a phrase from Bishop Douglas –

Maybe then we will understand, like Thomas, the incredible evangelistic force of the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Maybe then we will know that the Church belongs to everyone,

To all of us,

But really most of all to the one who would miss it the most if it were gone:

Our bridegroom, Jesus Christ

We are here to share in God’s fellowship,

The fellowship which 1 John tells us has been from the beginning and is now is the same that always will be,

The love that Jesus Christ shares with his Father in heaven through the power of the Holy Spirit,

The love that is God that is very life itself,

The risen life that insists on radical equality of fellowship with everyone we meet,

With everyone who comes through these doors.

As we approach this table, unworthy even to gather up its crumbs,

May God make us worthy to know the risen Jesus as our Lord and our God,

And to go forth in the power of the Spirit witness to how we, like Thomas, have been changed.

Amen.

Tenebrae: Service of Shadows

Holy Week.

I keep hearing people say "Happy Easter!" and my only thought is: Wow.  It's still a long time until Easter.

Last night we observed the service of Tenebrae.  Normally a service of shadows cast from extinguished candles and the anguish of Jeremiah's Lamentations, we combined the structure of the service with words and images from the Civil Rights movement, the Arab Spring, and Hurricane Katrina.  The result was an overwhelming cascade of images and emotions forcing us all to consider how the world we live in is a world of crucifixion, not a world of delight in which Jesus happened to be crucified.

The following is the (207 word) reflection I gave.

(It makes more sense if you have the context of the readings from the whole service.   It has even more power if you get the context of my other Chapel Ministers who gave reflections as well.  One student asked how long (if) we had planned our reflections together, because they were so coherent and harmonious.  We hadn't, actually.  We called it groupness, teamwork, truth, the Holy Spirit.)

What was shocking to me was my experience of preaching.  I was saying to my wife last night that normally I (think I) preach more like a poet.  Emphasis on breath and pause and silence; attention to the specific meanings of words and their interplay.  That is what made my Advent sermon so special to me, was that I exercised my poetic gifts that often remain dormant in the rush of hundreds of other things.  You can judge my poetry for it's value separately from considering that it has been since high school one of the chief ways I process faith and emotion.

Last night's experience of preaching - even though it was very short - was one where I felt completely out of control of my delivery.  I felt something like anger coursing through me as I spoke.  There was a force, a power, something HUGE within me as I delivered the word.  My wife suggested that it was the Holy Spirit taking control of my words, and I was glad someone else reflected that back to me.  It was incredible, frightening, and I'll be processing those feelings for a long time.  Perhaps it is the mystical experience I have in some ways craved for a long time as a confirmation of the calling I have claimed but never, in the literal sense, heard.

Tenebrae: Nocturn 3

“God has allowed me to go up to the mountain.

I’ve seen the Promised Land.      

I may not get there with you.

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.”

Moses saw the Promised Land from the mountain, yet he died and did not enter into it.

Stephen saw the heavens open, even between the flying stones.

Jesus was willing to be betrayed, to be given into the hands of sinners, and to suffer death upon the cross.

Jesus became obedient to death.

It is easy to believe there is a promised land.

It is quite another thing to see it.

It is easy to speak of God’s power.

Resurrection.  HALLE-

It is not the time to speak of God’s power.

Now is the time to be dissatisfied.

Now is the time to become incarnate

As Jesus,

 to the world of suffering.

Incarnational love is not what we choose instead of death.

Choosing to love in the world of crucifixion is choosing TO die.

Now is the time to speak of the most awesome human power, revealed by Jesus himself:

The ability to rush headlong into the darkness of death.

To enter into the Promised Land.

Uncertainty

I certainly didn't expect to come to the shadow of Canterbury Cathedral and do so much blogging, but we have free time built in to our schedule where it feels weird to be doing homework, and the atmosphere itself invites reflection.  Especially at 3 degrees Celsius and rain outside; and me without waterproof shoes or a coat!  I'll go out for cream tea later and just stay there :-)  Well... if the Trappist has scones again, which they didn't yesterday :-(

Anyway, I just wanted to come out here and reflect on my own sense of anxiety as I contemplate checking my e-mail, where my notice from Teach For America awaits.  E-mails were supposed to go out at 6 EST last night, which means if I had stayed up another 20 minutes last night I would have gotten it before going to bed, but I chose to sleep instead and find out in the morning; but if my wife had been available (again, after 20 more minutes she probably would have been) I might have just checked then.

I just don't like finding out about decisions like this.  Something about the im-personable-ness of e-mail really puts me off it.  Some of you will recall how I waited for three days to get my Seminary mailing rather than log into my online application account and find out if I'd been accepted.  I just don't like the internet; finding out in a physical object that I hold in my hands feels more real.

I realized also this morning that it probably has something to do with my Advent spirituality.  I don't mind waiting, really.  And, because I wait, I don't get quite as invested in the outcome; rather, I remember that my identity does not at all rest on the decision of a seminary admissions committee or the human relations department at Teach For America.  I am still a husband and a son and a friend whether I got in or I did not.  I'm still on pilgrimage in Canterbury Cathedral.  I still have a week to look forward to in Edinburgh and London with my wife.  I'll still have moments of laughter and honest intimacy with my classmates in the coming days.  I often think that personality is as much a matter of habit as anything else, and getting into TFA or not getting in can't change my habits.  In fact, choosing to wait until at least 10:36 this morning (the time it is now) is confirming a habit that I have made uniquely mine rather than displacing it.

So, I'll leave with the following exercise:

What happens if I get into TFA?  I'll feel like I have some insurance.  I have an option for a job for next year, and one that makes financial sense.  At any rate, that is, if my wife got in as well.  I will have succeeded at something I put my mind to, been accepted for something I applied too.  I'll feel successful, accomplished, talented (don't those things make good idols?).

What happens if I don't get into TFA?  I'll feel serious rejection, possibly for the first time in my life (The honors program at my college?  Not getting into Boston College?  In hindsight, I'm grateful for both of those things.  God knew what was up, even if I was mad about it).  But with regards to the future, I will have to deal with uncertainty and doubt.  What is God's plan?  Where am I supposed to go?  What am I supposed to do?  Who am I supposed to be?

And then it dawned on me: I'm dealing with that right now.  By choosing to wait, by praying, by trying to refuse the sins of despair and fear, and accept God's offer of hope.  I do believe - help my unbelief!

Of course, all this emotional processing is less than half of the real story.  My wife has already heard, and we will make our decision together.  Nothing about whether I get in or not matters without whether or not she did.  That's maybe the hardest part - knowing that we'll process this together next week, but all we have for now is Skype (lame).  I'm so grateful that we have each other, and we'll get to move forward to whatever comes together.  I'd much rather have that be my identity than to default to my own idea of success!

Now, before you get the idea that this whole exercise means I hope I don't get in... that's not quite the case.  But it helps me not to fear it so much, even if it will hurt.

Canterbury Candlelight

Fingers fused by flame-burnt wax waning down
From white walls. Light holds angels dim at hand.
I wait.  Linger.  Watch them go before me.
I follow, slowly.  They wait for me, led
In pause by our patient priest.  I join in.
I could have cried.  The candle-bearing
Pilgrims paced each other to the rose-floor,
Symbol for communion breaking us all
Outside the lines.  North has no primate.  He
Takes his own seat, not Augustine's throne.  Love
Empties pride. I sign the cross on my head.
The Dean has left me here alone not sure
If I'll actually follow fellow pilgrims to bed.
The alter is left lit.  My wait is pure.

Pilgrimage, Day One

The first thing I should say is that I'm exhausted, and I'd much rather just go to sleep.  Yes, local time is only 8:59 p.m. but sleep has been hard to come by.  I snatched maybe three hours on the plane, and took a half-hour nap this afternoon... By my count, that makes 3.5 hours of sleep in the last 31.  I normally sleep 8 / 24, so...

However, I know from other experiences that if I don't make some attempt to capture my experiences in writing now, I won't do it... and my memory will be much less apt to keep it all in proper order.

Some of the travel details are pretty meaningless: I watched Black Swan on the plane and found it less terrifying than I thought I would; we sat on the tarmac for what seemed like an eternity but we had an 81 mph tailwind and still made it earlier than our eta; there was nothing to distinguish England from America for the first 45 minutes we were here (well, the first 45 minutes out of customs, anyway) until we saw a British flag.  Otherwise, we pretty much could have still been in New England (haha).

What I have already appreciated most about being on this trip is the chance it has given me to engage my classmates in long and meaningful conversations.  I have such a terribly frenetic pace to my time actually at the Divinity school, pilgrimage has - as it is supposed to - really allowed me to slow down.  I spent the bus ride from school to JFK talking with my friend Matt about church, evangelism, and biblical preaching.  I got to catch up with my friend Emily on the plane, hearing all about her new  relationship and catching her up about what my wife and I might be doing in the next few years (short answer: we don't really know).  I spent the bus ride from Heathrow to Canterbury talking with Otis about theosis and salvation, the Episcopal Church in America's lack of narrative for its vision / mission, and trying to give an account for why I have remained in the Episcopal program, which was much harder to do in words than I would have guessed.  I got to tell my friend Megan all about the future plans my wife and I - as already established - might or might not have.  And that over pints of cider!

Even more than that, though, I think has been the time around meals.  I have gotten to participate in the small talk of my class, the rambling conversations where complaints and points of view and idiosyncrasies come to the fore.  More than anything else I miss those kinds of conversations because of my frenetic pace, the small grist for the mill of community.  I'm there for the big events, but I miss out on the perspectives plural of my classmates because I'm not around while they are processing them on a day-to-day basis.  I'm always rushing off to my own events.  It's not a pattern I like, neither one I can necessarily change; but I'm aware of it in a fresh way, and it's nice to pause from it this week.  I think it may become my unofficial goal for the week to speak meaningfully to each of my classmates about what they have meant to me over the last three years.  However, that might also take the form of letters at graduation (as it did in high school).

Canterbury is beautiful, and hopefully I will post some pictures in the next few days.  I'll just need to buy a camera and a plug adaptor so I can plug my computer in!  Ah, the joys of traveling :-)

A rope of four strands?

Today in Bible study our leader gave us a summary of Martin Luther's short work on prayer, originally penned as a letter to his barber.  I tend to love Luther when I actually sit down and read him, and today was no exception... although we weren't actually reading him.

One of the sections on prayer that we were given was this: "Luther recommended using Scripture (especially the Ten Commandments and the Lord's Prayer), The Apostle's Creed, and the Catechism to connect doctrine and devotion.  He commends a fourfold process:
a. What does this passage teach?
b. For what can I give thanks in this passage?
c. What must I confess in this passage?
d. How does this passage lead me to pray for myself and others.

Out leader then had us apply this principle using the Lord's prayer.  Broken up into seven sections, he assigned each of us a section to meditate on for five minutes, and then compose a prayer based on our meditation.  I really appreciated this exercise; it forced me to name some very personal things instead of feeding off of a conversation and not really expressing my own inward thoughts, as graduate school (or at least seminary) conversations lead you to do sometimes, I feel.

My section was "Our Father, which art in heaven."  This was the prayer I wrote:

God, thank you for being Our Father.  For loving us as your little children, ones whose life springs from you and in whom is all your delight.  Thank you that you are always quick to rush to our aid when we ask you for help, for what we cannot do ourselves.  Thank you that you have prepared a place for us, that you are always ready to welcome us home.

Father, forgive me for I have sinned.   I have grown apart from my brothers and sisters.  I think of you as my father, not our father.  Forgive me also for expecting to find you on earth and not in heaven.  I want, I confess, to see you tamed, earthbound, responding quickly to my expectations and not your holy glory and power.  Father, give me back to my sisters and brothers, that I may find in them what I long for in you, that I may be free to see you as you truly are.

Father, help us remember that we are your children.  Fill us with a sense of your holy identity, and draw us together.

Amen.

Memory Is Where I Live

I was telling a friend this evening that possibly the best sign that I shouldn't do a PhD program anytime soon is that I think most PhD programs sound really exciting and cool (at least for a minute!).  My inability to focus on any one - NT? OT? Hermeneutics?  Theology and the Arts?  Sociology of Religion? - is a good indicator that I'm not ready to dive into any single track for the next 4-7 years.  I'm also not ready to continue to be a full-time student; I just need a break.

However, the one idea for a program that has stuck with me since my second semester at Divinity School would be to do a theological account of memory.  My Medieval Theology professor gave a lecture on John of the Cross and his tripartite division of the soul, and how he related each bit of the soul to one of the three theological virtues: the will to love, the intellect to faith, and memory to hope.  Ever since then I have wanted to write a poem / book that centers on the phrase "The currents between memory and hope are longing..."  It's possible that John of the Cross relates those two because they both have to do with time, but I think memory and hope are similar because they are both primarily about longing. 

One of the reasons this topic sticks out to me as an exciting ground for further study is that memory is usually a degraded concept in the culture as I view it.  Practices of memory are rare, and everything is focused on the now or the near future rather than the past.  Nostalgic is term used to insult those who can't deal with the present, the ones who would rather live in the past.

It's not living in the past, but I do often find myself living in my memory; or, rather, living from my memory.  Certainly, everyone makes it through the day (as Joseph Butler talks about in his Analogy of Religion, the only point I really remember from that dense text) because of the patterns and habits and expectations they form from remembered experience.  More than that, however, I find the energy to build new relationships because I remember the rewards of old ones.  I speak my prayers with the hope of prayers answered in the past.  Memory at every moment influences my present and helps me dream the future.

I write this post tonight because I'm lonely and nostalgic, which have put me in a certain mood; but I don't think being in this mood is a bad thing.  Melancholia is part of who I am, part of who I choose to be, part of what makes me (and everyone else) unique.  But let me say more about what I mean by being lonely...

The reason for my nostalgia in this case is that at the Divinity Drama show tonight, the final sketch was about a senior's angst about what comes after graduation (and the constant stream of people asking him what he was doing after graduation!).  As he and his friend took a moment to slow down and remember all the experiences that made their time at Divinity School so valuable, I realized that I couldn't necessarily pick which friend I would do that with.  Both my previous graduations involved tearful goodbyes to friends I didn't think I knew how to live without - thankfully, I learned I didn't have to, even if I did have to adjust to missing their daily presence in my life.  Those times in my life were marked by a practical intimacy forced by the constant friction of being in each others face every day, whether for meals or classes or worship or homework or conversation and fellowship.  It was difficult at first, but grew to be as comfortable as a security blanket, the source from which all my achievements drew confidence, courage and joy. 

Now, though, I don't know that I have a friend that close at the Divinity school.  Part of it is the unique set of challenges that come with making relationships during graduate school, or so I tell myself.  But I realized another part of it as I prayed my way home tonight: my loneliness is the existential weight of my overcommited toobusy schedule.  I'm taking 5.5 classes, I have two internships, and in case you forgot I'm also married.  A friend I have tried a similar schedule last year and failed to maintain it - he had to quit something.  I can name my schedule as "unsustainable" or even "insane," but I won't quit anything.  Is it pride?  Arrogance?  Graduation requirements?  Ambition?  I'm not sure.  All of these, certainly.

I think it also represents something I vowed in high school would never be true of me: the "adult" change from a focus on relationships to achievements.  I have unaware made a set of choices that will let me graduate with a very impressive resume, but have taken away from my ability to invest and be invested in by my peers.  If I'm not sure how I feel about the effects of that choice on a daily basis, I know it is not the methodology I want to use to make decisions in the future.  That isn't who I believe I am, but it seems to be who I have been being.

Well, my wife has just arrived home, so I shall end my post here.  I didn't expect to come to this place at all, but I'm not surprised to find myself here.  This moment of self-realization / confession is one I hope to remember as I move forward into the next phase of my life (whatever that may be).

For now, know that I am longing.  Longing for rest in God, and longing for the deep fellowship of intimacy with friends.  Go in peace, and pray for me (a sinner).