Ashes and Attitude

“Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them…” —Matthew 6:1

I spend every Sunday in a different parish. Large or small, urban or suburban or rural, high church or low, evangelical or catholic, formal or informal, enthusiastically charismatic or rather more reserved, “orthodox” or “progressive,” liberal or conservative—they are all Episcopal Churches. They are all scattered across the mountains, valleys, and plains of Colorado. They come in all shapes and sizes, either subtle or not so subtle in variation, and I tell people regularly that I wish that they could see what I see—all the many and various ways in which God’s people are listening to the voice of God, responding to the movement of the Spirit, and seeking to live ever more fully out of that living relationship with the living God that is ours to share. Those visitations are one of the joys of my vocation, and they have made at times for some interesting and unexpected insights.

Not too many years ago during the course of a Sunday visitation, I was invited to lead a parish forum between services—nothing unusual, just an informal gathering of folks in the parish hall, an opportunity to have a cup of coffee and to share some conversation as a group with me, the bishop. This Sunday the conversation moved almost immediately to those difficult and controversial issues with which our denomination, like many others, has been wrestling for many years now—namely, issues of human sexuality and Christian faith. It was not a particularly difficult conversation. The parish was decidedly on the more liberal side of the fence. The questions and comments were honest, forthright and heartfelt. We were not in fact in any significant disagreement—with the exception that I was trying faithfully to reflect into the conversation some of the concerns that I was hearing from the more conservative voices in the diocese and to articulate some of the more conservative principles of the faith to which I myself hold. Still something wasn’t sitting quite right. There was something in the air so to speak, something I couldn’t quite put my finger on—a certain unspoken irritability or anger behind the words it seemed, a certain inflexible insistence in tone or attitude, a willfulness even, bordering perhaps on arrogance, that was at worst dismissive but at best simply cut off rather than opened up the possibility of deeper discovery and insight.

There was no ostensible disagreement, but it was I thought all rather disappointing. The underlying dynamic of the conversation was, to my thinking, all too familiar.

As I drove away, I found myself wondering where I might have had this experience before. It was all too close. “Where have I had this feeling?” I asked myself. Then it hit me. It was just one week earlier, just the previous Sunday, in a very different congregation to be sure, a very conservative congregation in fact, in which, during the course of the morning, the looks and the body language and the undertone were all much the same, all quite telling and revealing, only this time in this conversation we weren’t even talking about controversial subjects. Even so, it was all very much the same in tone and disposition—the same thinly veiled anger, a similar rigidity that could have been equally born out of fear or hurt or conviction or pride, all of it understandable in many ways, but all of it still displaying an unwillingness to risk the humility and vulnerability of that deeper engagement that leads in the end to wisdom and true compassion.

It was remarkable, I thought. Conservatives one week. Liberals the next The content was different. The positions were different. But the attitude was very much the same. As I drove home, I could hear the words of a friend of mine—a Mennonite from Iowa—echoing in my mind. Some years earlier he had shared a lay person’s perspective with a group of clergy. “I just want you to know,” he said with great honesty and compassion, “that from where I sit in the pews, I just can’t tell the difference.” He paused for a moment, and when he continued he spoke very quietly. “I can’t tell the difference,” he said gently, “between an angry, self-righteous liberal and an angry, self-righteous conservative.”

Hardness of heart, it would seem, is neither described by nor limited to theological position or party affiliation. In the kingdom of God, it would seem, attitude counts.

This should not be news. Evagrius Ponticus, the first of the early desert monks to write extensively on spirituality, put it this way in the fourth century. “The soul in this world who is full of gentleness is worth more than a monk full of passion and anger.”[1] Or, as Jesus put it even as he warned his disciples of the dangerous self-inflation lurking in practices of public piety, “Blessed are the poor in spirit…blessed are the meek…blessed are the merciful…blessed are the pure in heart.” The disposition of the heart does matter. In this, Jesus says, “is the kingdom of heaven.”[2] While anger or insistence or willfulness or shear force of ego may carry the argument of the day, only compassion has the capacity to transform human hearts.

The ministry of reconciliation given to us by Jesus cannot, will not, be accomplished otherwise.

Thus we begin this season of intentional self-examination, praying in effect for that attitude adjustment of the heart that we are powerless to effect within ourselves but is indeed the fruit of the spirit of God moving deeply within us—interceding, as Paul would say, “with sighs too deep for words”—to the degree, of course, that we are willing to create space and to give God room. [3]

Remember. Remember. Remember. Remember.

Remember, we hear on this Ash Wednesday, that you are dust. Remember that you shall return to dust. Those words are not simply an admission of our mortality. They are, even more importantly, an acknowledgment of the absolute reign of God—a reminder that we do not possess anything, that our life is not ours, that none of us has room to boast, and that we will always do well to hold fast to the truth that apart from Love we are nothing.

[1] Cited from Owen Chadwick’s introduction to John Cassian: Conferences (New York: Paulist Press, The Classics of Western Spirituality, 1985), page 11.
[2] Matthew 5:3-10
[3] Romans 8:26

The Invitation of the Christ Child

It’s the middle of the night and the baby is crying.

I am a new father and my mind is filled with ideal images of parenthood. I want very much to do the right thing, to share the obligations of parenting with my wife, to take my fair turn by responding to the need at hand, and so I throw back the covers, crawl out of bed in the darkness, and find my way across the room to the crib, all the while considering myself to be a good father, maybe even exceptional.

It’s somewhere around 3:00 o’clock in the morning. I am in graduate school. We are living in a small apartment in Connecticut. I have been up late studying already, and in a few hours I have a major exam to write. I am not particularly worried (at least not yet) because, I believe, babies cannot be that complicated. Right? After all the checklist is pretty minimal—a bottle, a clean diaper, a gentle rocking in the rocking chair, accompanied perhaps by some soothing, cooing kinds of sounds. In my estimation, the baby will soon be back in the crib sleeping contentedly, and I will be back in bed resting up for the day to come.

On this particular night, however, reality comes into play.

Bottle? Yes. Clean diaper? No problem. Rocking in the rocking chair? Check. Gentle cooing sounds whispered softly into the baby’s ear? You bet. There is, if I remember correctly, even some attempt at singing. The response? Well, how shall I say this, not optimal. Somehow in spite of my best efforts, our firstborn child, our oldest son, simply will not be satisfied. While I whisper quiet soothing sounds into his ear, he returns rather more audible sounds back into mine. And no amount of adjusting, re-wrapping of the blanket, or altering of positions makes any difference. This particular act of parenting, as is often the case with acts of parenting, just isn’t going according to plan. Even prayer does not seem to have any immediate effect.

As anyone who has spent any amount of time lying awake at night understands, that composted blend of anxiety and worry and silence and darkness when mixed together with a sense of fatigue and powerlessness is often the soil in which divine insight and wisdom grow. And this was my small but very real epiphany that night. Having exhausted all possible courses of action, I was no longer so confident in my parenting skills. Thinking about the exam that I would be taking in only a few short hours, I was becoming increasingly resentful. I was holding a treasure. I was cradling an absolute miracle in my arms to be sure. But the treasure was noisy, and the miracle was not cooperating with my desires.

“I do not know how to love this child,” I prayed with quiet frustration as we rocked together in the darkness.

“But you are,” came the response—not words, just awareness, as clear as day. It was not, I realized, a matter of how I was feeling, it was instead a matter of what I was doing.

That was it. The revelation—that love is not a feeling but an act of will, a deliberate choice that we make to use our knowledge, our skill, our time, our money, our heart, our bodies, whatever resources we have at our disposal, to give life to another, and in so doing, to give life to all.

There is nothing more important.

Tonight we celebrate the birth of another child, Jesus of Nazareth. The world into which he was born was not significantly different than ours. Imperialism, colonialism, political intrigue, tribal and ethnic rivalries, territorial disputes, military action and violence, gross economic disparity, the unequal distribution of precious resources, the deep social divisions of classism and racism, much of it sadly rationalized and justified in the name of religion, were all as much a part of the cultural and political landscape then as they are now. Suffering and loss accompanied by the desire and deep longing for something more transcendent described then as today (I am sure of it) the topography of the human heart. Jesus’ birth was no different than countless births before—the pain and precariousness of labor followed by a child’s gasping for air, a few precious tentative breaths, everybody beginning to relax for the moment, relief for the time being, but still no guarantees for the future. There was nothing exceptional here, and by in large, no one noticed.

But of this birth Luke says something startling—that angels sang, that the glory of God was revealed, that those who noticed (just a handful of shepherds really) came to see that earth and heaven were actually joined.[1] Of this child amazing claims, the fulfillment of ancient prophesies, would come to be made—that he would be called wonderful counselor, prince of peace, God with us.[2] Concerning this baby born in obscurity in the Judean countryside, John would say simply but pointedly that he was “the light”—“the true light, which enlightens everyone, [that] was coming into the world.”[3] They are amazing claims to be sure, but the biblical narrative is clear. Although it is just the story of a birth, the birth of a single human life, this life would be one in whom and through whom some would come to see the deepest reality of every human life—that every human life is, from the beginning and in every way, absolutely, completely, utterly divine. To paraphrase Iraneaus of Lyons, “The human being fully alive is the glory of God.”

The corruption, the poverty, the violence, the suffering, the evil of our world that we seem to consider inevitable, persists only because of our own denial and willful indifference to that divine vision. But the birth we celebrate tonight represents an amazing and grace-filled invitation to consider an alternative path—to see and to know ourselves and those around us for who we really are: the light of the world, the very image and likeness of the divine, instruments of peace, wonderful counselors, God with us. The birth of Jesus constitutes a call to open our eyes, to look deeply, to be amazed, and to respond accordingly in humility, wonder, and love. This night is not about sentimentality but about a renewed vision of life itself and about choosing wisely and courageously to use whatever we have, indeed all that we have, to claim that vision by giving life not just to a select few of our own choosing but to all.

It is the middle of the night to be sure. Even now our world is crying out. But guess what. However we may feel about it, the miracle has already been entrusted into our hands. The choice to love is ours.

[1] Luke 2:8-14
[2] Isaiah 9:6; 7:14
[3] John 1:9

Do We Really Need A Communion?

As the bishops of the worldwide Anglican Communion prepare to gather next month at the Lambeth Conference -- a gathering held only once every 10 years -- many people are waiting to see if our global Communion of 38 independent churches can remain unified in the face of deep disagreements, ostensibly over issues of human sexuality.

But the real question is not can we stay together, but do we really want or need unity within the Anglican Communion?

The question is not new.

In 1988, as Anglican bishops gathered for the Lambeth Conference and as religious and secular media speculated about the possible dissolution of the Anglican Communion, Archbishop of Canterbury Robert Runcie raised the same question: "Do we actually need a worldwide Communion?" The issue then was the ordination of women, and specifically the expected consecration of the first woman bishop, Barbara Harris, who was elected bishop suffragan in Massachusetts in September 1988. The question was as pertinent then as it is now, and it is the primary question that must be answered before our Communion can begin to resolve any of the divisive issues that are before us.

This week, the conservative leadership of the Global Anglican Future Conference, meeting in Jerusalem, released a document declaring that "there is no longer any hope...for a unified Communion" and that the cost of unity is too high. At the same time, other conservative voices, like Durham Bishop N.T. Wright, claim equally solid evangelical credentials and argue that "the ship hasn't sunk yet," making a case for staying in relationship and bringing their voices to the table in order to strengthen and renew the mission of the church. Ironically, the liberal spectrum can be seen having much the same debate.

But the issue is not simply about sexuality.

The Anglican Communion has changed and so has the world around it. The center of gravity of global Christianity has shifted from north to south. The greatest growth in membership in Anglican churches in our time has taken place in the churches of Africa. There is no question that Anglicanism has moved from being a loose assortment of colonial churches into a new post-colonial configuration of independent national churches with indigenous leadership wanting and needing to make their voices heard. Overlay that with the glaring economic disparity between the first and third worlds. Mix in the unilateral foreign policy exercised by the West. Combine it with the inter-religious, cultural, racial, and political tensions in every region of the world. Set it all in a context of globalism. Is it any surprise that there are tensions, disagreements, and conflict in our Communion?

Even so, the question remains: is it worth it? Do we really need a worldwide Communion?

The answer, I believe, is a resounding and heartfelt "yes."

No one finds God alone. The intricate web of relationships that form our global Communion provide an invaluable network of mutual benefit, often bringing desperately needed resources into remote communities that others either cannot or will not reach, often making the difference quite literally between life and death. Those same relationships call us all out of our self-limited little worlds, cracking open our hearts and minds, challenging and compelling us as a kind of corrective, to see and to understand the full spectrum of Christian witness that often takes place under circumstances and with a kind of courage that many of us cannot begin to understand.

Do we have differences? Certainly. But as Archbishop Runcie observed, "it is only by being in communion together that diversity and difference have value." Do those differences challenge us? Unquestionably. But those same challenges, by the grace of God, form the very crucible of our own transformation.

Communion, in other words, is not our gift to God. It is God's gift to us.

Only to the degree to which we learn to empty our selves in humility for the sake of "the other" do we bear witness to the cross, the very mind of Christ, showing forth the true nature of divine love. Only to the degree that we willingly embrace "the other" do we reveal the unity of the new humanity that God intends for all humankind.

In the kingdom of God, we can never give up on one another. When it comes to the mission of the Church, in the deepest sense of that calling, no one is off the hook.

We live in a world plagued by division, conflict, and violence, much of it rationalized, justified, and glorified in the name of God. Indeed our world is starving for a more transcendent vision of itself. So how about something new? How about a global Communion that reveals a deeply challenging but wonderfully divine truth. Archbishop Runcie said in 1988, "that without relationship difference only divides." But I would add, that in relationship difference actually redeems.

Too Much Religion?

That’s what I said, firmly, clearly, with great conviction, and with no small amount of irritation. “Too much religion.” And I said it of all places in Jerusalem, the Holy City, just outside the doors of the Church of the Holy Sephulchre.

I was traveling at the time with a group of high school students. We were on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. They had prepared a liturgy with prayers, reflections, and the appropriate readings from scripture, and we had walked the Via Dolorosa like so many other groups had done before us, stopping along the way, marking the Stations of the Cross, as we followed in the footsteps of Jesus.

It was not without incident, however. For along the way we had been taunted relentlessly by school children. Other passersby by simply spat on the ground in our direction in disgust. The Calvary Chapel was a veritable Eucharistic assembly line as one group followed so closely upon the heels of another that the altar was being literally cleared and set at the same time while people cued up to put their hand through a hole in a piece of plexiglass in order to touch the rock on which Jesus was crucified. Guards angrily told us not to pray even in a whisper at the last Station of the Cross, fearful that we would disturb a gathering of bishops in the main part of the church. And as we departed under the watchful eyes of security cameras and guards bearing machine guns, I watched a woman, on her knees, bent over a well-worn stone near the doors, caressing the stone, weeping copiously over it, kissing it repeatedly, and rocking back and forth in some kind of despair and agony (or ecstasy, I couldn’t tell which). It was, I thought, a religious experience of a “different” sort. And having seen any number of strange displays of religious behavior already on the same trip, it was, all of it, the proverbial straw that broke this camel’s back. And that’s when I said it, right when Tom Shaw came up to me expectantly, eager to know my reaction to this my first visit to this great religious shrine. He said, raising his eyebrows and with the slightest of grins on his face, “Well, what do you think?” And that’s when I said it, without thinking, without hesitation, and with no small amount of irritation.

“Too much religion.” I said it plainly but forcefully. I wasn’t particularly angry, rather just disappointed and saddened. I thought that all of it simply missed the mark: failed to make apparent the absolute goodness, the unbounded Love, that is God.

It is always sad to observe the many and varied ways in which religious faith is co-opted and used to rationalize and to justify and glorify our own agendas. There is always the temptation before us that we mistake the vehicles of faith for faith itself and thereby lose track not only of God but of ourselves in the process. Religious affiliation, theological preference, length of tenure, number of books read, degrees earned, work experience or skill sets acquired—none of it provides any particular safeguard or immunity. The false-self, it seems, is more than happy to play itself out in any venue it is given. Liberal or conservative, progressive or orthodox, Christian, Muslim, or Jew—whatever self-selected, or otherwise imposed, label we wear, the temptation is always there that we subvert the purposes of the divine will to a will of our own making. And the more engaged or the more involved we become with the Church, I dare say, the greater the risk.

It is an inescapable truth, both a wonderful and wonderfully frustrating truth, that puts every one of us on the same very level playing field. This truth: that God insists that we accept God on God’s terms.

“Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing,” Jesus says to the people in the synagogue in Nazareth.[1] And they are pleased and amazed at the graciousness of his words. And at the same moment, somehow in the course of trying to take in Jesus’ words, somehow in the course of trying to appropriate the experience of Jesus, they miss the mark. They fail to see the divine presence, the Word incarnate, the wonderfully life-giving and freeing Good News, among them. They get it completely and they don’t get it at all and all at the same time. As it is in our own lives, it is not entirely clear quite how it happens, but happen it does. Amazement turns to rage and rage turns to violence and here, at the very beginning of Luke’s gospel, before his ministry has even begun to gain much traction, Jesus, the very Light of God that is shining into the world, is driven out. And then this cryptic and cautionary phrase from Luke: “But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way.”[2]

There it is, at the very beginning of our relationship with Jesus just as it is at the end. God insists that we accept God on God’s terms. Which is why this season (with its invitation to simplicity) and this Holy Week (with its invitation to walk in the self-emptying way of the cross) is not only important but necessary.

I will never forget the first Maundy Thursday service I attended—1974, Trinity Church, Fort Worth, Texas. I knew it had something to do with the last supper. I had heard that the altar would be stripped. I had been told that the service would end in silence, that the church would remain open for prayer all night, and that it all had something to do with keeping watch with Jesus in the garden. But even so, it caught me completely by surprise.

At the end of the service, the lights were dimmed, and in complete silence two of the clergy began to remove things from the altar—slowly, deliberately, reverently, just one thing at a time. First the communion vessels—paten and chalice, burse and veil, purificators and corporal, each silently taken away to the sacristy. Then came the candles and the candelabra. Then the fair linen on the altar. Then the lining under the fair linen. Then the superfrontal. Then the frontal. Each of them carefully rolled up or folded. I didn’t know frankly that there were so many layers of things on an altar. I sat in silence watching. And each time I thought they were done, it seemed that there was yet one more thing to be taken away until there was nothing left but the bare stone of the altar. But even then there was more. They started taking the cushions from the seats, the kneelers from the altar rail, the chairs in the sanctuary—each of them carried away in the same silent rhythm. It seemed relentless. They took away the books—the prayer books and the missal. They even took away the bible itself. Surely, I thought, they must be done. It seemed, in a sense, to be almost too much. Then came the aumbry—the doors left wide open, the curtains removed, the sacrament gone; it was simply empty, vacant, like a house robbed it seemed. And even then there was more to be taken away. One of the clergy came back out with a ladder—a ladder of all things; something you would buy at Home Depot. It was so pedestrian. He set it up unceremoniously and climbed up to the sanctuary light. I thought he was simply going to blow it out, which he did, but then he reached up, took hold of the chain, unhooked it, and took it away. Even the light was taken away.

It was finished. The service had ended, and people began to shuffle silently out of the church. But I could not move. The doors were wide open. A warm Texas breeze was blowing ever so gently into the Church. I could hear the traffic on South University Boulevard passing by. There was, I knew, a whole world out there through those doors, and yet I could not move. I could not move. I didn’t have the language for it at the time. Indeed it was then, and still is, beyond words. It was as if my heart, like the altar, had been stripped too, all the clutter and accumulation silently, deliberately, reverently stripped so that I, like the sanctuary, was left empty. And in that space there was in some inexplicable yet wonderful way, Jesus—only Jesus, God alone, pure unbounded Love, and there was no place else to be.

Would that these glimpses, these grace-filled foretastes of the heavenly banquet, last longer. But this, I believe, is what God does with us. This, I believe, is the activity of the Holy Spirit working within us, indeed working within the Church itself—always interceding, as Paul puts it, with “sighs too deep for words”[3]—silently, deliberately, relentless, reverently, stripping away the clutter and accumulation that we all too easily place upon the altars of our hearts; stripping away those things that we mistake for God but are not God; clearing it out, removing it from within us and among us, so that we might come to see, to really see God for who God is.

Which brings me to the cross that is the heart of this Holy Week, the cross that is itself the promise of new life. It’s a good place for us to be as we clergy renew our life’s vows and are thereby put in mind of the things to which we give our hearts, our selves, our souls, our bodies. What do you see? What do you see when you look at the cross? Just Jesus. Jesus alone. Absolutely stripped. Nothing else. His face bloodied and beaten by a sinful and broken humanity, to be sure. But more. The very image and likeness of God fully revealed: skin and bone, flesh and blood, the fullness of our humanity, heart, mind, body, soul, given up, given over, poured out completely, given fully for the other, the fulfillment of the Law, pure unbounded Love.

That, my sisters and brothers, is not too much religion. It is the Way.


[1] Luke 4:21
[2] Luke 4:30
[3] Romans 8:26