TO FEED, TO DANCE, TO SING!

TO FEED, TO DANCE, TO SING!

A Sermon Preached at the National Cathedral, Washington, DC (video here)
18 April 2010
The Third Sunday of Easter – Year C

“Do you love me? Feed my sheep.”

Grace to you, and peace, in Jesus Christ our Lord! I bring you grace, especially, from the people of my home parish, the Cathedral of St. Philip, in Atlanta, Georgia. And I especially welcome the grace represented by my fellow deans from cathedrals across North America, gathered here at the National Cathedral for the annual North American Conference of Cathedral Deans. We are grateful for the hospitality of the Dean of this cathedral, my old friend Sam Lloyd, and his wife, Marguerite; and I thank the Bishop of Washington, John Chane, another old friend.

When Sam Lloyd invited me to preach today, he mentioned that he was asking me because I “have been doing this dean thing for quite a while.” And he’s right. I have been dean for quite a while, for sixteen years, for two different cathedrals, two different cities, and – at last count—for six or seven different bishops.

Six or seven different bishops! If you count people who were elected bishop but not consecrated, I have worked with seven different bishop types. (If you count standing committees, who were canonically in charge when the bishop’s office was vacant….well.)

This morning, I want to talk first about being a dean in the Episcopal Church. It is simple. Being dean of a cathedral is about dancing. And the first dance that captures our curiosity is the dance between bishop and dean. We have all heard that the relationship between dean and bishop can be awkward, notoriously so. Every cathedral has some variation in its governance, and every dean and bishop is different. What is the same is that successful deans and bishops know how to dance with each other.

But deans dance with a lot of people. We dance with congregations. We dance with cities. We dance with bishops. We dance with churches outside the country. We dance with persons outside the Church. We move from step to step. Sometimes we lead. Sometimes we follow. We look beautifully elegant one moment. The next moment we stumble in the mud. Sometimes we go where we wish; sometimes we go where we do not wish.

I mention dancing today because I think Jesus and Peter knew how to dance with each other. I do not mean walking on the water and then sinking in the water. I mean all their delightful and passionate negotiations between initiative and obedience. Perhaps the most curious example of their “dancing” is this famous “feed my sheep” passage in today’s gospel, when Peter and Jesus do a little linguistic dance with each other.

Many of you here this morning are churchgoers, and you have probably heard the story before. After breakfast one day, Jesus asks Peter, “Do you love me more than these?” Peter responds, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.” Jesus says, “Feed my lambs.” Then the interchange is repeated. A second time, Jesus asks, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” Peter says, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” Jesus says, “Tend my sheep.”

Finally, a third time Jesus asks Peter, “Do you love me?” He is starting to sound like a teenaged lover at the dance. This time, Peter feels hurt because Jesus has asked him a third time, “Do you love me?” Peter says, “Lord, you know everything; you know I love you.” Jesus says a third time, “Feed my sheep.”

Those of you who have heard comment on this passage over the years, probably know that this conversation is actually a bit more complicated than the translation indicates. Since the beginning of Christendom, we have noted that Jesus and Peter are actually using different Greek words for “love.” When Jesus asks Peter the first two times about loving him, Jesus is using the lofty, divine word for “love,” the word agape. But Peter is responding, “Yes I love you,” with another word for love, the Greek word phileo.

“Do you love me with divine, self-giving love?” Jesus is asking Peter. Peter is responding, “Yes, I love you with brotherly love.” At the third question, Jesus actually changes to phileo, –brotherly love, instead of divine love—and, according to some, this is what hurts Peter.

Might there be some hidden meaning in the contrast between the two words? Some Dan Brown secret? Yes, there could be. C. S. Lewis wrote a masterpiece describing four different Greek words for love; it was the book, The Four Loves. For Lewis, each word for love has a holy component.

But what makes this linguistic dance such a delight is that the word “love” is not the only word used in two different ways in the passage. In this marvelous passage, there are not only two different words used for “love,” but also two different words used for “sheep” or “lambs,” and two different words used for the verb “to know,” and even two different words used for “tend” or “feed.” If we are not careful, we will trip over all sorts of translations here. Or we can be so confused, we will sit in our chairs like wallflowers.

No. I am among those who believe that there is no hidden meaning in the various translations of the word “love” here, or in the other words either. It is a dance with many steps; sometimes the feet go one way, and sometimes the feet go another way.

When Peter heard Jesus ask the question, “Do you love me?” he probably heard every note and overtone and variation of meaning that the word contained. And he saw every hue in the color of love. Every minister of the gospel, every follower of God, whether you are lay person, deacon, priest, or bishop, hears that same question: “Do you love me?” And it is fair, it is part of the dance, to interpret that question in all sorts of ways.

Every one of us, even when we have studied the classical definitions – eros, agape, philio, storge—has a different definition of what it means to love. No matter how we interpret the question, the directive of Jesus is the same: Feed my sheep. Take care of my people. Love my people. No matter how we might trip and tangle ourselves in the question, the directive of Jesus is the same. Feed my sheep. No matter how many web sites and news sources we visit, the directive of Jesus is the same. Feed my sheep.

Remember, everyone in this room is a minister. Everyone in this room is called to feed somebody. But we will all feed differently. Some of you feed with exquisite recipes and fine spices. Some of you feed with the latest in nutritious organics. Some of you feed with the same delightful dishes your mother, your grandmother, taught you long ago

Good cooking is like good dancing. It doesn’t happen by magic. It takes work. It takes exercise. It takes practice. Cooking does not come without knowing ingredients and chemistry – how this taste reacts with that spice, how long it takes for bread to rise. “Feed my sheep” means taking the time to learn how to do it well.

Feeding others, like dancing, then, is really an art. From the basic moves and skills, one composes a masterpiece.

I actually don’t cook very well, though I sure love to do it. My wife says I don’t dance very well, either; but I sure love to do it. Personally, my art is music; and every musician knows that, first, we learn our scales. Jazz is wonderful that way. Jazz requires me to learn my scales and then play from my heart. (That’s also a lot like being a priest.) It is an art.

In this city, politics, at its best, is the art. I am aware that, earlier this week, some forty-seven heads of state were negotiating here, dancing maybe, in the interest of nuclear security and peace.

We live for those moments when that mysterious mix of practice and love reaches a certain point that we call Spirit. You know that moment when the meal becomes exquisite, when the dancers are suddenly exalted, when the music transports our souls, when politics actually becomes beloved community. We call those moments holy. We call that point life-giving.

T. S. Eliott called it “the dance along the artery…at the still point, there the dance is…”

It takes a lot of love to learn the scales, to learn the steps, to learn the recipes. That’s why Christian do so much better when we actually love something. Christians do better when we love to dance, when we love to cook, when we love to feed – when we love our people, when we love Jesus.

“Feed my sheep” is the directive of Jesus for anyone, anyone, who wants to follow in the footsteps of Jesus and Peter. “Do you love me?” Jesus asked. “Do you love God?”

Then feed somebody. And feed them well. Learn about recipes and tastes. And learn about nutrition! Feed people with something worthwhile!

Do you love God? Then sing with somebody. Practice your scales. Use your head. And then let your heart go free!

Do you love God? Then dance with somebody. Learn some steps together. Learn to give and to take, to lead and to follow.

Dance with congregations and cities, local dioceses and overseas missions. Feed families and lovers. It doesn’t matter which word for love that you use. Love God and love your neighbor.

AMEN.
The Very Reverend Samuel G. Candler
Dean of the Cathedral of St. Philip, Atlanta, Georgia
For the National Cathedral in Washington, DC

EASTER IN 3-D !! (or BELIEVING SIX IMPOSSIBLE THINGS BEFORE BREAKFAST)

EASTER IN 3-D !!

(or BELIEVING SIX IMPOSSIBLE THINGS BEFORE BREAKFAST



Why do you look for the living among the dead? –Luke 24:5

(a sermon for Easter, 2010. This sermon works better when the preacher wears 3-D movie glasses during the first paragraph!)

Welcome to Easter in 3-D! Yes, this has been a year in which three dimensional movies are making a comeback. Today some of us come back to church, and what we see is Easter in 3-D!

Like many of you, I had to see Johnny Depp in the new 3-D production of Alice in Wonderland. What movement! What realism! The movie combined all sorts of Lewis Carroll images and quotations, delights and imaginations. At one point, Alice turns to the Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp) and says, “Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

Hah! But those lines are not actually in the original book, Alice in Wonderland. Historically, those lines are actually in Lewis Carroll’s second book about Alice, called Through the Looking Glass. Alice is actually complaining to the White Queen. “There’s no use trying,” Alice says to the White Queen. “There’s no use trying,” she says, “one can’t believe impossible things.” “One cannot believe impossible things.”

But the White Queen responds, “I daresay you haven’t had much practice. When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

It’s really the White Queen who says these delightful lines, but no matter. The movie takes liberties with the book, and that is fine with me. In fact, it’s better that way. Six impossible things before breakfast. The lines are supposed to be non-sensical and illogical. That’s their alluring delight.

Six impossible things before breakfast.

On this Easter Sunday, we have something in common with Alice. For one, we, too, will probably see a white rabbit today! But, more importantly, on this Easter Sunday, we are gathering to proclaim something impossible, belief in an impossible thing, belief in an impossible truth.

Alleluia! Christ is risen!
The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!

A few days ago, we heard Pontius Pilate ask the question, “What is truth?” Or was it two thousand years ago he asked that? “What is truth?”

Some of us ask that question every day. Or every night when we are churning through the television channels looking for something of interest. Many of us have graduated from channel surfing to web surfing. It is the internet, now, that has an answer to every question we can possibly ask. And what a wonderland of truth seems to be out there!

Everybody seems to have some new truth they are peddling. No matter how ridiculous the claim is, someone will justify it by saying, “Well, I read it on the internet,” implying that there must be some support for the newest theory on who killed JFK. On the internet, there is a flat earth society on one site. At another site, there are purported photographs of archaeologists examining huge human bones, said to be the actual bones of prehistoric giants, thus proving the Genesis account that giant human beings once inhabited the earth.

The internet reminds me of the old court square surrounding the county courthouse where I grew up. There were all sorts of people, always hanging around there; but not everything said there had the same value. “I heard it at the court square,” had about the same value as saying today, “I saw it on the Internet.” Or “I heard it at Speakers Corner in Hyde Park.”

“What is truth?” Pontius Pilate asked at his court square.

In this world of so many competing claims for truth, what is it that we proclaim today? “Alleluia! Christ is risen!” Is this just another impossible thing we are being asked to believe before breakfast?

Scholars and sceptics have searched for Jesus’s historical absolutes for generations. They look for simplistic absolutes. Was there even a historical Jesus? Can we describe exactly the details of the historical Jesus? Did the resurrection happen? Did it happen in the exact way that the gospels say it did?

Well, the best accounts of Jesus and Resurrection -- the four gospels-- all have different perspectives on how it happened. Then, St. Paul has even more accounts of how Jesus showed up after he was dead. The texts themselves differ. Can we prove the truth of the Resurrection by studying these texts over and over again?

I believe not. I do not believe the Resurrection can be proven historically, because historical proof is two dimensional. The so-called searches for the historical Jesus are similarly limited, like two dimensional realities. Two dimensional reality is true, but it is incomplete in compared with 3-D!

The Resurrection is three dimensional. In fact, the Resurrection is probably four dimensional and five dimensional. The Resurrection is bigger than any dimension we might use to measure it.

When the women friends of Jesus showed up at the tomb on that first Easter morning, they did not see a historical body at all. They saw two men –angels, I believe – in dazzling clothes; and the angels asked them a critical question, “Why do you seek the living among the dead?”

That’s the question I ask today. Why do we persist in seeking out life from places that are dead? We wake up lonely in the night and stroll through two hundred television channels. We surf page to page on the internet. We cruise from bar to nightclub to restaurant, searching for the next trendy spot. We buy this car, move to that house, dress in these clothes, go to that school, even give to that charity, thinking that maybe this endeavor will finally offer me truth, offer me satisfaction. Why do you seek the living among the dead?

The Resurrection of Jesus will never be proven by poring back over old literature and ancient texts. Oh, I love those texts as much as the next person; in fact, I probably love them more than most people. I actually love the bible.

But the bible does not prove Resurrection. The bible is only two dimensional. It is not wrong; it is just limited to two dimensions. The power of scripture is that it points to something else. The power of the bible is that offers something to our imagination. It inspires us to see another dimension.

Are we supposed to believe impossible things? Yes, because what is impossible in one dimension is very much possible in another dimension.

Mathematicians and physicists know this is true. Martin Gardner used to write regular columns about logic and mathematical puzzles in the magazine Scientific American. They were delightful because they pointed to another reality. People may not realize that Martin Gardner is actually a Lewis Carroll scholar, too. In fact, Lewis Carroll, the author of Alice in Wonderland, was himself a mathematics professor, at Oxford.

Martin Gardner, the present-day mathematician, wrote a masterpiece called The Annotated Alice, full of notes and comments about Alice in Wonderland. It was that book and its notes that first pointed me to the old quotation of a second century Christian theologian named Tertullian. Gardner didn’t get it quite right: “I believe, because it is absurd,” he quoted.

What Tertullian actually said, in the second century, was “The Son of God was buried, and rose again. It is certain, because impossible.” It is certain, because impossible. The resurrection of Jesus is impossible in one dimension. But in another dimension, it is certain.

Today, Easter Sunday, we believe an impossible truth: Life comes from death. We are not here merely to say something historical about Jesus, that somehow his body was resuscitated from the dead. The Resurrection of Jesus does not mean the Resuscitation of Jesus. We are not here merely to say something about what has happened in the past. We are here proclaiming something about the present, right now, right in front of us.

So, today, we do not say “Alleluia, Christ WAS risen!” We say “Alleluia, Christ IS risen.” Right now. Christ is risen!

We are not proclaiming the Resurrection of Christ in the past, based on two-dimensional texts (though we do belive that). We are proclaiming the Resurrection of Christ in the present, in full array before us, in living 3-D!

You ask, Where is this three dimensional resurrection? It is all around you. The living community of faith is the real 3-D. People are the real 3-D. Simply reading about something is two dimensional; living it out is three dimensional. Even seeing a movie – even seeing a movie in 3-D! – is two dimensional. Even the virtual reality of internet is two dimensional. Living it out is three dimensional.

Why do you seek the living among the dead? Why do we seek the truth in things that do not give us life?

We find truth in communities of resurrection; and that is the claim I make this morning for the Christian church. At our best, we are a community of resurrection. The best proof of the Resurrection of Christ is not the bible. The best proof of the Resurrection of Christ is the Christian Church, the Body of Christ! We believe in death; and we also believe in life.

Sure, the Christian Church has problems. Sure, we have differences of opinion. We have various perspectives and angles! The very scriptures that we use to inspire our souls are full of various perspectives and differences.

But we live in Resurrection. We believe that Jesus died, and we believe that Jesus is risen. We believe in death and we believe in life. That’s why we observe both Good Friday and Easter. That’s why we sing hymns at funerals. That’s why we search through earthquake debris for signs of life. That’s why the Church builds great schools for intellectual achievement and hospitals for the sick. It is the Church who takes dinner to those who mourn.

Today, we do look for the living among the dead. Because we live in another dimension.We have met Jesus our Lord. We have met the risen Christ before, and we will meet the risen Christ again. We have not just read about Easter. We have seen in Easter in 3-D, in living flesh and blood!

Alleluia! Christ is risen!
The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!

AMEN.

Deep Thanks on Holy Saturday

Deep Thanks to beautiful church workers across the world today! Many have spent Holy Saturday setting up altars, arranging flowers, polishing, cleaning, washing, cutting grass, rehearsing music, yes-and even writing sermons, preparing for so many others to enjoy Easter tomorrow. Blessings to all of you! Practically speaking, Holy Saturday is actually a marvelously holy day of preparation in the Christian Church.

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.

Sam Candler Plays Austin, Texas

Sam Plays Austin, Texas:

My thanks to Bill Sachs (and my new friend Taylor Mundy) who talked me into playing, and bribed the regular pianists into letting me, at "Pete's Dueling Piano Bar" in Austin, Texas. My daughter, who just played at Eddie's Attic in Decatur, Georgia was impressed. I feel cool again!

Ash Wednesday Haiku

To church for ashes
Today, signs of earth, dust, signs
We are down to earth.



(May God bless us today
In a down to earth way)
Sam Candler

LUX ET VERITAS

Lisa Miller continues to write truly informed pieces about religion in Newsweek magazine. I salute her essay this week (Newsweek, Feb. 11, 2010 ), wherein she investigates the internal professorial disputes at Harvard University and whether their revision of curriculum might include a course called "Reason and Faith." She notes that Harvard University includes no "Department of Religion."

At one point, she notes that "Harvard's distaste for engaging with religion as an academic subject is particularly ironic, given that it was founded in 1636 as a training ground for Christian ministers. According to the office of the president, Veritas was only officially adopted as its motto in 1843..."

Thus, I am proud to be a graduate of the divinity school at Yale University, whose motto is not simply "Veritas," but "Lux et Veritas." Light and Truth! There is a truth deeper even than rational truth. At its best, that deeper truth does not contradict rational truth; in fact, that deeper truth --Light!-- leads and inspires all good critique and all good rationality.

Honest Communication can Strengthen Bonds of Affection

The speed of modern communication has contributed both to the strengthening of bonds of affection, and to the frazzling of such bonds, among Anglican Christians. So it is that others in the Anglican Communion of Churches have taken increased notice of recent General Conventions of The Episcopal Church. In turn, we in The Episcopal Church can also follow the proceedings of the General Synod of the Church of England. Unfortunately, we often monitor each other only by reading broadsides and blogs; the crude generalities there have often been damaging.

As The General Synod of the Church of England proceeds this week, one particular motion for consideration urges the Church of England to develop a relationship with the "Anglican Church of North America." That group, of course, consists mostly of dis-affected former members of The Episcopal Church. The paper seems to make inaccurate claims about The Episcopal Church.

However, I salute the work of Simon Sarmiento in the Church of England, who has written a careful refutation of those claims. His paper can be found here, at his blog, Thinking Anglicans.  I also salute Tobias Haller, who seems to have assisted Sarmiento, and who has written his own note to General Synod of the Church of England on his blog, here.

It takes effort to maintain bonds of affection, and part of that effort involves speaking truthfully, communicating honestly. It means being present with our brothers and sisters, no matter what the issue is. I understand and appreciate disagreement. But I appreciate even more those who take the time to set the record straight. Let us pray that our bonds of affection will enable us to speak the truth in love, more and more.

ON FRANNY AND ZOOEY: HERE'S TO J.D. SALINGER

J. D. Salinger has died, and I must mark the moment by praising one of the finest books I have ever read. It is not The Catcher in the Rye, easily the most notorious of Salinger's slight body of work. It is the small volume, Franny and Zooey (see here for a helpful summary).

Speaking of "small volume," note the very opening words, in the overly modest front inscription:

As nearly as possible in the spirit of Matthew Salinger, age one, urging a luncheon companion to accept a cool lima bean, I urge my editor, mentor and (heaven help him) closest friend, William Shawn, "genius domus" of "The New Yorker," lover of the long shot, protector of the unprolific, defender of the hopelessly flamboyant, most unreasonably modest of born artist-editors, to accept this pretty skimpy-looking book.

Who can resist reading the book which begins like that? Franny and Zooey is a book about prayer and breakdown, about family intimacy and public audience, about morons and geniuses, about identity and integrity, all set in the long weekend of an earnest college student around 1955.

Franny is learning to pray the Jesus Prayer and carrying around another slim volume, The Way of a Pilgrim. Zooey is her lovable and faithful brother, who tries to comfort her when she appears to be cracking up. There are other members of this highly educated and intelligent family.

It is the passage at the very end of the book that has stayed in my conscience for most of my life. Zooey is speaking on the telephone to Franny, but he has pretended to be another brother, named Buddy. Franny sees through the deception, but the conversation continues. Zooey quotes another older brother, named Seymour. Thus, using telephone and ruse and quotation of other people, Salinger confuses the very stability of identity. Who is actually doing the talking? (Add to this that the narrator of the book is actually the brother named "Buddy").

It does not matter who is doing the talking, Salinger seems to be implying, in a spectacularly Buddhist "non-identity" way. It is the advice of the older brother, Seymour, that becomes important -- important to writers and actors and anyone who is an artist. I daresay that the notion of "artist" here means any person of integrity in the world. Seymour had told Zooey always to shine his shoes before he appeared on the television game show "Wise Child" (on which show all the children had appeared at one time or another), this despite the fact that no one could ever see his shoes.

Anyway, I started bitching one night before the broadcast. Seymour'd told me to shine my shoes just as I was going out the door.... I was furious. The studio audience were all morons, the announcer was a moron, the sponsors were morons, and I just damn well wasn't going to shine my shoes for them, I told Seymour. I said they couldn't see them anyway, where we sat. He said to shine them anyway. He said to them for the Fat Lady (Franny and Zooey, Boston: Bantam edition. Little, Brown, and Company, 1961. p. 200).

As Zooey tells this story, and how he obliged in shining his shoes for the Fat Lady, Franny remembers Seymour saying the same kind of thing to her. "He told me, too," she said into the phone, "he told me to be funny for the Fat Lady."

So Zooey continues:

Yes. Yes. Yes. all right. Let me tell you something now, buddy....are you listening? [note that "buddy" is also the name of their other brother, "Buddy" who is narrating the larger story]. I don't care where an actor acts...But I'll tell you a terrible secret--Are you listening to me? There isn't anyone out there who isn't Seymour's Fat Lady. That includes your Professor Tupper, buddy. And all his goddam cousins by the dozens. There isn't anyone anywhere that isn't Seymour's Fat Lady. Don't you know that? Don't you know that goddam secret yet? And don't you know--listen to me now-- don't you know who that Fat Lady really is? ...Ah, buddy. Ah, buddy. It's Christ himself. Christ himself, buddy. (Franny and Zooey, pp. 201-202).

I give nothing away if I say that this passage is at the very end of the book. For joy, apparently, it was all Franny could do to hold the phone, even with both hands. After this, Zooey cannot talk anymore; it is as if words have ended.

As the world knows, J. D. Salinger did not publish much. Apparently, however, he wrote very much. I think of another of Zooey's remarks to Franny: An artist's only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms, not anyone else's (Franny and Zooey, page 199). Here's to you, J. D. Salinger. May your soul rest in peace.

LANNY DAVIS ON BLAMING THE FAR LEFT FOR MASSACHUSETTS RESULTS

Lanny Davis, a loyal Democrat, has written some clear reflections on why Massachusetts voters supported an independent-minded Republican over the Democrat (who, a month ago, was the presumed winner). (see The Wall Street Journal, Wednesday, 20 January, 2010.)

"Somehow, in the last 12 months, we allowed the party of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama to morph into the party of George McGovern (or more accurately, his most ardent supporters) and Howard Dean, who called for the defeat of the Democratic health-care bill if it had neither a public option or Medicare buy-in. (He couldn't possibly have been speaking for the 31 million uninsured people in taking that all-or-nothing position.)"

..."Bottom line: We liberals need to reclaim the Democratic Party with the New Democrat positions of Bill Clinton and the New Politics/bipartisan aspirations of Barack Obama—a party that is willing to meet half-way with conservatives and Republicans even if that means only step-by-step reforms on health care and other issues that do not necessarily involve big-government solutions."

I agree with him that good politics always progresses incrementally. When politicians stretch for too much, too soon, too ambitiously, they will lose.

MEDIA CHARACTERIZATIONS OF ANGLICANISM ARE MISLEADING

An Associated Press story of 16 January 2010, used by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, unfortunately repeats a misleading and simplistic historical claim, that “Anglicans split from Rome in 1534 when English King Henry VIII was refused marriage annulment.” I appreciate any true news story, but it is an error to supply a simplistic historical background to an issue that is religiously complex.


The Anglican Communion of Churches, including the Church of England and the Episcopal Church, has long been different and separate from the Roman Catholic Church. The popular and juicy story of Henry VIII and his obsession for a male heir (not just an annulment from Catherine of Aragon), while fun to repeat, can not be used as the point of separation between Roman and Anglican Christianity.

For instance, kings of England long before Henry VIII called themselves the Head of the Church in England, including William the Conqueror after 1066. Remember, too, that conflict between local versus Roman authority in the Church of England was the reason Thomas a Beckett was murdered in 1170. Finally, readers might recall that the Church of England returned to obedience to the Roman Catholic Church after Henry VIII and his son Edward died, when Queen Mary I ascended the throne in 1533. It was actually Elizabeth I, not Henry VIII, whose rule finally separated the Church of England from the Roman Catholic Church (Elizabeth was not excommunicated by the Pope until 1570).

Today, what is referred to as “The Anglican Church” is more accurately referred to as “The Anglican Communion of Churches,” and not as a centralized and universally hierarchical structure like the Roman Catholic Church. The Anglican Communion of Churches traces its historical roots to England, for sure, but, more importantly, to an ethos of local authority and respect for indigenous spirituality. This is why The Episcopal Church established itself separately from the Church of England in 1789. The Episcopal Church, for better or worse, is not under the authority of the Archbishop of Canterbury; neither are the Churches of Nigeria or Uganda, for better or worse, under the authority of the Church of England or the Archbishop of Canterbury.

One can argue whether this “communion of churches” structure succeeds in proclaiming and serving the Christian gospel, just as one can argue whether a more centralized and universally hierarchical structure like the Roman system succeeds. In fact, I have no problem with the Roman Catholic Church providing a spiritual home for Anglican Christians who want a more centralized ecclesiology (which was the point of the AP story on 16 January 2010).

My own opinion is that God uses both church structures; different gifts of different Christians can be inspired by either structure, or by both systems. However, please do not confuse the two ecclesiologies, either historically in their development, or presently in their contemporary attempts to proclaim the Christian gospel.