BURNING BUSHES

On the Saturday before the Third Sunday in Lent, I stood around helping my brother burn off some of the woods. My father was there, too. My brother-in-law, my mother, my wife were there. A family afternoon. Burning the woods is a regular affair on the farm where I grew up. I was glad to turn aside that day.

My brother had a nifty device filled with two-thirds diesel and one-third regular gasoline. When lit, its twisted nozzle functioned like a flame thrower, but it really just dripped fire out into the pine straw and bushes and sweet gum saplings. We always have to get rid of the sweet gums. My brother had already driven around the designated patch of woods with his tractor and plow, carving out a shallow fire line.

Burning the woods is critical to clearing out the underbrush that might start another, more serious, fire in those woods. But its main accomplishment is to clear out the underbrush for more birdlife and wildlife, and to provide for sturdier pines and primary trees.

We watched the wind, and we set the fire on the leeward side. That way, the fire would stay controlled and burn backwards into the wind. Fire likes to feed into the wind, probably like all of us do. And fire really does start quickly. I watched with my folks, mesmerized by the sheer chemical reaction spreading before us. We talked randomly about whatever was on our minds. Younger folks might call it "hanging out." Hanging out is much more enthralling when a fire is burning before you.

Occasional sparks drifted out over the fire line, and we put them out. A few of the larger pines caught fire at their bases. The water from the back of my fathers's four-wheeler put it out easily. That four-wheeler is really a mule, but it's a different sort of mule from the one that trudged through these same fields so long ago.

We heard a pileated woodpecker and then saw it sail through the glade in front of us. We listened to still another flock of sandhill cranes, but we never saw them, above the thick pines towering over us. We wondered why several deer sat nonchalantly in a nearby thicket, watching us, but never running away. Too many tame deer these days.

The next day I was at church, hearing about Moses, who turned aside from tending his family's flocks one day. He watched a bush being burned and yet not being consumed, He heard an angel remind him of his father's God. "I am who I am," Yahweh said. Holy ground.

Holy ground is where fathers and sons can stand around together. Mothers and daughters, too. With nothing important to do except burn something. With nothing important to say, except maybe "It is what it is." The standing around is more fascinating than the words. Something powerful is burning all around us. It burns, but it does not consume. Instead, it enthralls and inspires. Fire destroys the straw, but it germinates the seed. Fire creates fertility. Burning bushes makes for holy ground.

(this piece was orginally posted at Episcopal Cafe. Check it out!)

THE PARABLE OF THE PRODIGAL AND THE LOST

Many people have admired Rembrandt's portrayal of the Return of the Prodigal Son. Fewer people have noticed another Rembrandt perspective, of The Prodigal in the Tavern. Centuries ago, the masterpiece "Parable of the Prodigal Son" --with its various scenes of sin and grace-- afforded proper artists a chance to paint rather risque scenes. Rembrandt is said to have inserted his own image as the prodigal in the tavern.

THE PARABLE OF THE PRODIGAL AND THE LOST

a sermon of 14 March 2010
The Cathedral of St. Philip
Atlanta, Georgia

There was a man who had two sons. --Luke 15:11-32

Children’s Sunday schools across the world have learned this story as the parable of the prodigal son. The impatient and impudent younger son asks his father for a premature distribution of his inheritance. The younger son becomes “prodigal,” a new word for most Sunday Schoolers; we were taught it meant lavishly extravagant, profligate, irresponsibly wasteful, maybe irrationally exuberant. A prodigal person is not careful; he doesn’t care if he loses everything.

Thus, the younger son travels to a far off country, where, apparently, he spends everything he has. He does lose everything. He has been so irrationally exuberant that he finds himself desperately hungry, feeding the unclean swine of the region. He begins to envy what the pigs are eating. But he finds himself, scripture says; he “came to himself.” That is one of the several lovely phrases of this familiar parable; the younger son “came to himself.” Maybe he grows up. He decides to return to his father, with words of sturdy repentance on his lips.

The parable might have ended here, with an ending that would have suited moralists and Sunday School teachers for centuries. Don’t be irrationally exuberant, impatient and impudent. Don’t ask for something that isn’t yours yet. Don’t squander your life in dissolute living. That’s a fine lesson!

But the parable does not end there. Suddenly, the word “prodigal” begins to describe, not the younger son, but the father. While the younger son was returning, but still far off, it is the father who becomes irrationally exuberant. He is “filled with compassion,” another lovely phrase in this parable. “Filled with compassion,” means he was loving from his guts. He was moved, deeply moved.

It is the father who is prodigal now, lavishly extravagant, running to his younger son and throwing his arms around him. The father calls for the best robe, the finest formal dinner jacket. He calls for a ring. He wants sandals to adorn the very feet which had wandered into perdition.

And wait, there’s more! Like a late-night television commercial, “Wait! Wait! There’s more!” He summons for the fatted calf, the best one, one that every family was nurturing for the finest celebration. No “time-out chair” for this returning, repentant child. The father doesn’t care if he loses all his property again, for this guest of honor.

So it is that older Christians, past childhood Sunday School age, begin to call this story “the parable of the prodigal father.” That father represents the unsearchable grace of God, a grace that rejoices prodigally, pours itself out lavishly, when a lost child returns.

Once again, the parable could end there, and it would be a tremendous example of the grace of God. But the parable does not end there.

There is another brother, the older brother. Ah, what sadness for the older brother. His is a disconsolation that resounds through the Hebrew and Christian scriptures. All through the Bible, older brothers lose the blessing of God.

I must confess personally that this pattern of scripture loses me, for I am an older brother myself. So I notice sharply that almost every older brother of scripture loses the blessing of God. The pattern starts with the very first older brother of scripture, Cain. Remember Cain? Cain is a tiller of the ground, and Abel, his younger brother is a keeper of sheep. Genesis says quite openly that the Lord had regard for Abel and his offering, but not for the older brother Cain’s offering. Cain becomes so angry that he kills his younger brother Abel.

Esau is the older twin brother of Jacob, but he loses his blessing to younger brother; Jacob retains the blessing even though he achieved it by deception! Later, the older sons of Jacob are not nearly so blessed as Joseph, a younger son, or even as blessed as Benjamin, the very youngest son, whom his father apparently loved the most. When Israel is searching for a king, the prophet Samuel studies all the older sons of Jesse, but he finally gets word from God that it will be the youngest son of Jesse, young David, who will be king.

Finally, the pattern reaches a climax with Jesus’s parable of the prodigal son and prodigal father. There is an elder son in the parable, who becomes angry and refuses to go into the house where music and dancing and all sorts of commotion are occurring. They are calling it celebration. But the older son is devastated. And his accusation against his father is devastating.

“Listen,” he says to his father, “for all these years I worked like a slave for you! Like a slave. I followed all the rules and customs and traditions. I was not the impatient one who weaseled an early inheritance out of you. I never disobeyed. I never disobeyed one of your commands. But you, you never even gave me a common goat, much less the fatted calf. You never even offered me one of the common goats that I might celebrate with my friends.”

“But when this son of yours comes back. This son of yours – for I am not even sure he is my brother anymore—when he comes back after having over-consumed everything. That money he spent was yours! He spent it on prostitutes! When he comes back, you kill the fatted calf for him. What is this?”

The prodigal father replies that the older son is always with him, and he says “All that is mine is yours.” But we do not hear again from the older son. The parable leaves him with wasteful and irresponsible bitterness. Perhaps he, too, the older son, is a prodigal character: irresponsibly lavish with anger and resentment. He was willing to lose everything in his anger. Maybe it is he who is lost, now.

This parable of the prodigal men, two sons and a father, becomes complete only as Christians grow older, from childhood morality, to adult grace, and then to the complexities of family life and group dynamics. When we are young, we relate to the prodigal younger son. When we are older, catching our first glimpses of unmerited grace, we relate to the prodigal, graceful, father. When we begin to develop families and households, when we begin to lead organizations and deal with group dynamics, we discover the older son who is so prodigal with his anger and resentment. How will we act when grace is given to others, but not to us?

Of course, we don’t enjoy identifying with the older brother. We don’t enjoy the older brother at our dinner parties either. But we know he is there. He is here. The older brother is part of every household. In fact, the older brother is probably somewhere inside each one of us.

We have choices in life, and this beautiful parable – a masterpiece parable—presents us a model for several of them. We can choose to presume more than we should. We can choose to squander our life with a premature inheritance. We can choose to come to ourselves. We can choose to return to love. We can choose to welcome home the scoundrel. We can choose to drink that special bottle of wine, the one we have been saving forever. We can choose to drink that special bottle of wine tonight. We can choose to remain outside the house. We can choose to waste and squander our life with bitterness and resentment. We can choose to celebrate.

This parable of the prodigal three men, the parable of the prodigals, is really about us. It is about us at each and every part of our lives. As we learn about money and living. As we learn about repentance and grace. As we learn about anger and resentment. As we risk losing things. And then as we do lose things in life and then find them again.

And the older we get in life, the more things we lose. The father in this parable lost a younger son, lost his property, and then it looks like he may have lost an older son. But he gets them back. And he gets them back with a grace that defies explanation.

Does God ever lose things? Apparently, God does. This parable of Jesus, the parable of the prodigal, occurs as the first of three stories that Jesus tells in Luke, chapter fifteen, about lost things. One sheep out of a hundred is lost, but heaven searches for that lost one. A woman loses just one of ten silver coins, and turns the house upside down looking for that one coin. When she finds it, she calls all the neighbors over for a party; “rejoice with me!’ she says.

Those are the two stories Jesus tells before he tells this one, not about a lost sheep or a lost coin, but about a lost son, maybe two lost sons. Maybe losing things is a part of life, and a part of the Christian life.

If so, then finding things is also a part of life, and a part of the Christian life. God really does want us to be a rejoicing community. We are meant to be celebrating people. We are meant to be lavishly extravagant in our celebrating.

“Child, you are always with me, even if you seem to be lost right now. All that is mine is yours, even if you resent how I use it, and even if someone else claims something too soon and even if that someone squanders it all. All that is mine is yours, what I lose and what I find. But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.”

Jesus talked a lot about losing things. And, then, even he was lost. But in Christ, lost things are found. In Christ, the dead come to life.

The Very Reverend Samuel G. Candler
Dean of the Cathedral of St. Philip

THE SEARCH FOR THE HISTORICAL JESUS

 

Who is the real Jesus? I am having great fun reviewing The Historical Jesus search on Sunday mornings at the Cathedral of St. Philip !! 

(The podcast is at http://www.stphilipscathedral.org/sermons_Candler.html)

ARTISTS NEED ENCOURAGEMENT -- AND WE ALL DO!

I play piano on occasion, and I love it. People who hear me play, or watch me play, realize soon enough that I love it. What people may not understand, however, is the anxiety I carry with me whenever I play piano in public.

At one time, I intended to play jazz piano in life, or to compose, or to do both. That anxiety, still present today, is probably the reason I decided, long ago, that I would not make the piano my vocation. Another reason I withdrew from a musical vocation, however, is that I considered myself simply not good enough. I love to play piano, but I have much more fun playing as an amateur, with the piano as an avocation -- not a vocation.

Even today, when my dear wife hears me play piano at home and says to me, "You really are very good," I think she says that only because she is supposed to; she is an encourager from begining to end. I know all the mistakes I am playing, and I know how far short my performance falls -- and I am not even a professional critic!

On the other hand, I tell my wife, I actually need those words of encouragement. Even if I have heard them before, even if I know the words might become routine from people who love me, still something inside me craves the attention and even applause.

Thus, I was encouraged to read a column from Terry Teachout, in the Wall Street Journal, 6 March 2010 ("The Unsure Artist"), who speaks about the longing for positive reinforcement, encouragement, that most artists seem to carry with them. Again, fortunately, I do not count myself a professional artist; but I do know there is something artistic about me, in both my music and my priesthood.

Teachout speaks about the great jazz clarinetist, Bennie Goodman, and his daring decision to play jazz at Carnegie Hall in 1938. Why take that daring leap? For Teachout, "the answer, I suspect, is because Goodman, for all his popularity, was deeply unsure of his musical worth and longed for the cultural legitimacy that a sucessful appearance at Carnegie Hall would confer." Teachout continues that "few artists, no matter how celebrated they may be, are strangers to fear and uncertainty."  He mentions John Keats (who died claiming that he had left no immortal work behind him) and Benjamin Britten (who, supposedly, threw up every time he played the piano in public).

Finally, we hear what Orson Welles told Peter Bogdanovich, "A bad word from a colleague can darken a whole day; we need encouragement a lot more than we admit, even to ourselves."

Each of us is an artist, in some way. Each of us shows up, at some place in life, to add our work and creativity to the situation at hand. Whether we actually call ourselves "artists," or not, all of us carry anxiety and uncertainty with us through life. The words of Orson Welles are words for us us no matter what our vocation is. We need encouragement! It takes, perhaps, ten words of positive encouragement to overwhelm one word of negative anxiety.

I Salute "Beach Attitudes" by Robert Dana

(Robert Dana died a few weeks ago. Blessed be he, and blessed be his poetry.)

BEACH ATTITUDES

by Robert Dana


Blessed is the beach, survivor of tides.

And blessed the litter of crown conchs and pen shells, the dead
blue crab in all its electric raiment.

Blessed the nunneries of skimmers,
scuttering and rising, wheeling and falling and settling, ruffling
their red and black-and-white habits.

And blessed be the pacemakers and the peacemakers,

the slow striders, the arthritic joggers, scarred and bent under
their histories, for they're here at last by the sunlit sea.

Blessed Peoria and Manhattan, Ottawa and Green Bay, Pittsburgh,
Dresden.

And blessed their children.

And blessed the lovers for they shall have one perfect day.

Blessed be the dolphin out beyond the furthest buoy,
slaughtering the bright leapers,
for they shall have full bellies.

Blessed, too, the cormorant and the osprey and the pelican
for they are the cherubim and seraphim and archangel.

And blessed be the gull, open throated, screeching, scolding
me to my face,

for he shall have his own place returned to him.
And the glossy lip of the long wave shall have the last kiss.


"Beach Attitudes" by Robert Dana, from The Other. © Anhinga Press, 2008.