BARSABBAS AND MATTHIAS: THE PATRON SAINTS OF ELECTIONS

(a sermon for 20 May 2012)

“They proposed two, Joseph called Barsabbas,… and Matthias.

 Then they prayed,… and they cast lots for them, and the lot fell on Matthias,

and he was added to the eleven apostles.”

Acts 1:23, 26

If Garrison Keillor were beginning this sermon right now, he might say, “It has not been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon.”

As many of you know, the Episcopal Diocese of Atlanta has been hosting an exhausting series of evening meetings this week, a week called “Walkabout Week.”

On June 2, in two weeks, the diocese will convene for the special election of a new bishop for the diocese. Six candidates have been formally offered for election, and they are six very fine people. I say that a bit modestly, for, as you know, I am one of those six candidates.

As a way for parishioners and delegates to get to know the candidates, all six candidates came together this past week. We spent each night in the same hotel in downtown Atlanta, and we spent each day visiting a different part of the diocese.

On Monday, we were at Camp Mikell, way up in northeast Georgia, in Toccoa. On Tuesday, we were here at the Cathedral and at the diocesan offices. On Wednesday, we were at the delightful Church of the Holy Comforter, in east Atlanta. On Thursday, we were at Emmaus House, and on Friday, we were at Church of the Holy Cross, in Decatur.

The evenings were far more grueling. The main feature of Walkabout Week is a series of evening question and answer sessions. For three and half hours each night, always in a different church of the diocese, the candidates walked from room to room to room and answered open questions from visitors and delegates.

Many of you from the Cathedral were there, and I thank you so much for supporting this process. We were in Gainesville on Monday night, at St. Luke’s Atlanta on Tuesday night, in Macon on Wednesday night, in Roswell on Thursday night, and in Rome on Friday night.

Each night, faithful members of the Diocese of Atlanta asked us questions. Many questions were excellent. People asked us about our vision for the diocese, about our prayer lives, about our strengths and weaknesses, about all sorts of things. Some of the questions were also bizarre, and I don’t want to repeat them! We had to be prepared for anything.

It reminded me, a bit, of standing in the receiving line after each service here at the Cathedral. When many of you come up to me, and to the other priests, after the service, we have no idea what you are going to say. Sometimes it is, “nice sermon!” but other times you are commenting on something which is the furthest thing from our minds. We have to think fast! (But you always say something good!)

All in all, this was grueling week, and the six candidates –plus our spouses—are exhausted. In fact, the spouses may have suffered the most. They had to listen to the same answers in 28 different sessions! It is an exhausting process.  

Maybe the best question I received was this: “Do you know any better way to choose a bishop?” My answer was, “Yes, put all six candidates in the same room, and have them decide who among them should be the bishop!”

But this is our process. This is the process that the Episcopal Church uses these days to seek, discern, and elect a new bishop of the church.

It was not like this a generation ago, and it probably will not be like this in the next generation. Every generation, and every area of the church, every region and diocese and country, has its own process.

In many of the Anglican churches across the world, new bishops are chosen by the existing bishops. It is the bishops only who get together and decide among themselves who the next bishop of an area or diocese will be. They choose who will join them in the House of Bishops. In the Church of England, bishops are also appointed, but by special commissions, including the state officials; and it is ultimately the Queen who issues the call.

In The Episcopal Church, here in the United States, the procedure involves a much more democratic process, much like the secular political process of the United States. Laypeople and clergy elect and choose new bishops.

In today’s first lesson, from the book of The Acts of the Apostles, we read of still another model: the earliest record of choosing apostolic leaders in the Christian Church. In this passage, the apostles are gathered in Jerusalem seeking to do the right thing for the continuation of their identity and ministry. For them, the primary need was clear. They needed a twelfth member of the apostolic ministry. They needed twelve apostles.

Jesus, it seems, had made sure the number was twelve. At least that is the record of a couple of the gospel evangelists. The gospels are a bit unclear as to the exact names of the twelve; the actual names differ in the gospels. But no matter.

According to Luke, the writer of Acts, the apostles needed a twelfth. So, first they chose the finalists. They chose two nominees from among all the people who had been with them from the beginning, nominees who would be authentic witnesses to the resurrection of Jesus. They nominated Barsabbas and Matthias.

They prayed. Then, they simply chose lots.

This morning, I want to salute those two men, who were willing to let their names go forward in the search process: Barsabbas and Matthias. For me, these two saints are the patron saints of elections.

Like all nominees, they were willing to be public with their possibility. Each one knew, I am sure, that he might not be chosen. But they were honored. More importantly, they were willing to be vulnerable, to be exposed, to be critiqued and analyzed.

This is the key feature of public nomination; they were willing to be vulnerable. That is what the six candidates for election in the Diocese of Atlanta are doing. We are willing to be public, willing to make an offering of ourselves for the greater common good. That means sacrificing some privacy, letting people comment on us, letting people ask us all sorts of questions.

In fact, it means sacrificing a lot of privacy. We know that people are saying all sorts of things about us. Some of it is accurate and true and good. Some of it is downright inaccurate and misleading and even pernicious. But that is the way of human curiosity, human speculation, and it is certainly the way of human politics.

The six of us, the six candidates, and our spouses, all spent considerable time together this past week, and I think I can say that we enjoyed each other. We like each other! God has worked in each of us to bring us to this point, and we share lots of things in common. It has been fun for us to be priests in the Episcopal Church.

Maybe the most important thing we share, even though we never said this exactly, is a willingness to lose. We share a willingness to lose.

People who offer themselves for election always know that there is a distinct possibility that we will lose the election. I believe that is an important offering to the church. The offering of loss. The offering that, yes, I might lose. And that will be okay.

For me, Barsabbas and Matthias, those first two nominees for apostolic leadership in the church, are the patron saints of elections. I suppose that they both knew they might not be chosen. But they let their names stand, anyway.

And the name of Barsabbas was not chosen. He, then, might be called the patron saint of losers. According to the record of history, he lost. Alas, this is the only time in the New Testament that his name is even mentioned. There is a small legend about what might have happened to him, but nothing of any substance. He lost, and nothing more is heard about him.

I salute Barsabbas this morning, about whom we know nothing more than that he lost the election. He is the patron saint of losers.

But, here’s the thing. What about the winner, the man whose name was chosen? What about Matthias, whose name was chosen, by lot, who became the twelfth apostle? Is he, therefore, to be remembered as the patron saint of winners?

Well, it turns out that, alas, this is the only time in the New Testament that his name is even mentioned, too! With him, too, there is a small legend about what might have happened to him, but nothing of any substance. He actually won, and yet nothing more is heard about him.

Barsabbas lost, and nothing more is heard about him. Matthias won, and nothing more is heard about him, either. Whether they won or lost, nothing more was heard about them. They began an apostolic succession, but their lives were not remembered. Maybe, apostolic leadership is not about being remembered individually.

And it’s not just apostolic leadership, but leadership of any kind. I salute all those who offer themselves for service, whether it is in the church, or elsewhere for the common good. You who run for election anywhere, you who want to be leaders, you who sacrifice your privacy for the greater good anywhere. Your willingness to lose is, actually, a good example to all of us. To follow in the steps of the apostles is to be willing to lose yourself. To be willing to lose is the best form of Christian leadership. Christian leadership is being willing to lose.

Apostolic leadership, then, witnesses to something beyond individual identity, beyond individual pride, beyond whether one wins or loses. Apostolic succession is about witnessing to the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, a pattern of life that guides the Christian Church from generation to generation.

Finally, in Christ, there are no winners or losers. There is only the Body of Christ, with its many faithful members.  The words of the blessed apostle Paul are the words of a true leader: “We do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves. If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so, then, whether we live or whether we die; we are the Lord’s.” (Romans 14.7-8).

AMEN.

THE MOCKINGBIRD IS THE PENTECOST BIRD

At Pentecost, when the Christian Church remembers the day on which the disciples  “were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability” (Acts 2:4), I think of the mockingbird.

I have heard mockingbirds all my life, chortling in the morning dawn, in the heat of mid- day, and late into the night. The mockingbird song greets me everywhere, and what a song it is. Most of you have heard it, even if you cannot identify it. The mockingbird is the source of that incessant chattering, more chattering than the most obnoxious human gossip you know.

In fact, however, the mockingbird loves to imitate other songs. He sings what he hears. Some say that mature mockingbirds know over five hundred songs. He is not mocking those songs; he is just imitating them. He is miming; mimus polygottus is his biological name. The Spanish language has the bird named right: “centzontle,” they call it, “the bird of four hundred songs.”

I talked with a shop owner once who said that a mockingbird outside his store had learned to imitate the sound of the UPS truck backing up. Then, the bird learned to imitate all the various rings on people’s cell phones. Surely in the American south, there is no bird heard more incessantly and frequently. It is the state bird of Florida, Arkansas, Tennessee, Texas, and Mississippi. Just like the Parthians, Medes, Elamites, Cretans, and Arabs, on the Feast of Pentecost.

What a pity that the mockingbird is named for mocking, for I believe the melody that winds its way through song after song is a song of praise. I believe the mockingbird is essentially a joyful bird (except maybe for that obnoxious crooner at night, looking for a mate). So, on Pentecost Sunday in the Church, I want to re-name the mockingbird, the Pentecost Bird.

The mockingbird is the Pentecost Bird. Not because of its colors (it wears no flaming wings of fire), but because of its song, its one song that is really a collection of songs. Listen to it wag this way, and then that. The mockingbird’s songs are the collected songs of the entire earth. They are babbling songs from Babel. Those collected songs are the voices, the languages, of everyone.

Imagine that you could hear, in one moment, all the incredible sounds occurring right now, on earth. It would sound much like the opening seconds of that tremendous movie, The Matrix. Even if you have not watched the entire movie, listen to those first seconds of The Matrix, when the sounds occurring all over the earth are heard at once. The cacophony is overwhelming, but also exhilarating. It is the glorious collected babble of ancient Babel.

Much of what happens in the church sounds like cacophony. Listen to all the voices that the church collects. Sobs wail out along with laughter. Praise and glory sing right alongside complaint and anxiety. Inquiry and wonder provide harmony to dogma and creed.

Ah! The church!  It is the sound of the mockingbird at nine o’clock in the morning. To the outside ear, perhaps the untrained ear, the song sounds like a drunken chorus; the singers must be filled with new wine. Even if it were nine o’clock in the evening, the song would sound like some sort of intricate jazz number, with melodies and improvisations ricocheting all around us.

The miracle of Pentecost occurs when these sounds do not sound chaotic, but lovely. It is as if the rushing wind of a new morning has brought another listening chamber to us, perhaps another sanctuary, where all these voices and songs do not clatter and clash with one another; rather they dance together in a new reality. The miracle of Pentecost is the reversal of Babel. The miracle of Pentecost is the miracle that holds the church together; no matter what the language, we hear the power and grace of God.

We hear in the book of Acts that the folks on the outside sneered at the disciples. But the Greek word is not “sneered.” The King James Version of the bible gets the translation right; the outsiders were “mocking” the Christians. “They are drunk with new wine!” they mocked.

Oh, would that the church was drunk with new wine, chattering wildly about the praises of God. Not mocking. Mocking occurs when one does not trust the Spirit. To mock means to not believe the power of God’s Spirit. We are meant to be not the mockers, but the singers. We are meant to be not mockingbirds, but Pentecost Birds, singing wildly and jauntily.

Pentecost people are meant to imitate the songs of people praising God, no matter what language they may be speaking. For, ultimately, our baptism is about imitation; we are meant to be imitators of Christ. Will we imitate the songs of praise and glory?  Or will we just imitate the clanging anxiety of a truck backing up? When we ring someone up on our cell phone, do we have something blessed to say?

On the Day of Pentecost, I want to sing good songs, songs that come from every language and voice and tradition of the world, but which say one thing: God is praised. God is blessed in all of creation. That is what the mockingbird sings every day. That is what Pentecost Birds sing every day. Let us join them.

AT THE EASTER VIGIL

The sky is still deep dark    When pinpoints of people, like stars,    One by one, in quiet procession,    Precede the dawn.       White hot Vega gazes down from overhead,    And Arcturus shepherds us into a circle    Around the slight spark,    And now a fire, rising from Good Friday.    When the bonfire roars, a bright blindness    Transfixes our eyes, and flames,     Rise still higher    Until they cast a golden crown around    Every face there.    In that moment, I see no bodies    Or fine clothes, or Easter bonnets,    For they are still hidden in the darkness,    Buried with the rest of our worries    And evening pains, and Saturday graves.    I see only faces, beautiful icons    Glistening in resurrection glory,    In moist anticipation of baptism,    Just before sunrise.    It is the only time we can ever look     Directly at the sun,    When it is on the horizon,    At the edge,    Of something new.

TEARS AT THE GRAVE - TEARS IN HEAVEN

(a sermon for Easter Sunday, 8 April 2012. John 20:1-18)

What did you bring to the grave this morning?

Beloved John, the disciple whom Jesus loved, brought his beauty and his youth to the grave. He was young and fast, and he outran Peter to the tomb. He peered into the open tomb; but he seemed, maybe, too young, maybe too innocent, to have the courage to go in.

Peter, the impulsive one, brought his “bull-in-a-china-shop” mentality to the grave. Even though he was outrun by John, Peter blasted right by John at the entrance; and it was impetuous Peter who entered the tomb first.

Mary, Mary Magdalene, brought her tears. While the officious men investigated, Mary stood apart in tears.

Today, each of us comes to this holy place in different ways. Some of us are John, young and beautiful. Maybe we run fast everywhere, from place to place, from fad to fad. We get there first, whatever that means.

Some of us are Peter, ahh!, blessed Peter, the impulsive Peter. We are ready to walk on water one minute, and we are sinking fast the next. We promise our allegiance one day, and the next day we deny our love three times, back to back to back.

Today, I want to speak to those of us who are like Mary, Mary Magdalene. Mary Magdalene brings tears to the grave on Easter morning. I know it’s Easter. And many of us are dressed in our finest clothes and smiles. We want to laugh, don’t worry, and be happy.

But some of us have been crying this day, already, and this past week, and this past year. Just last Monday, at the beginning of Holy Week, many of us mourned a tragic death in the Cathedral community. One of our newest nursery workers, twenty years old, was struck by a car and killed; her family and our parish community began this past week in tears.

Some of us across Atlanta have just learned that our school is closing. Others of us are going through painful separation, and even divorce. During the past year, this Cathedral parish buried several children; we also lost some hopes, some anticipated futures. Others of us have suffered illnesses, cancers, and we have lost parts of our bodies. Those losses, those memories, provoke tears in us.

And, of course, some of our tears come from this annual explosion of pollen everywhere! Hickory and oak, grasses and lilies, pine and poplar; we are crying from it. Easter is a time for tears! I propose that we make them Holy Tears!

Holy tears are not at all restricted to women. I remember one of the first parishioners I ever visited, a tough old man, but who adored both his fine stereo system, and Beethoven. When Bethoven played, he would immediately begin apologizing for his tears. But those tears were a gift for me.

Last week, as I was studying the famous movie actor, Clint Eastwood, and the morality of his movies, I ran across this question: Do any of the tough characters Clint Eastwood has played, ever cry? Well, yes, they do. The Outlaw Josie Wales. And standing over the Million Dollar Baby, after turning off the respirator, Cint Eastwood cries. And, at the end of the movie, Gran Torino, when Walt Kowalski’s next door immigrant friend has been savagely beaten, there is a tear, a tear, in Clint Eastwood’s eye. That tear will lead to us his laying down his life for the people he loves, and then a resurrection of them.

In the Bible, almost every single one of the main characters is recorded to have cried. Abraham, Hannah, Esau. Jeremiah, David, Paul, Peter. Even Jesus. The shortest verse in the Bible says, simply, “Jesus wept.”

Where was Jesus when he was crying? He was going to a grave. He was mourning the death of his friend, Lazarus, at the tomb. Jesus wept.

So, Jesus, too, knows what it is like to bring tears to the grave. Mary Magdalene brings them that first Easter morning. After Peter and John leave, the only person remaining with Mary seems to be an anonymous gardener, at least so he seems to Mary. She does not recognize that the gardener is actually Jesus himself.

Look again at the story. When does Mary recognize that it is actually Jesus? Her recognition occurs when Jesus looks at her and says her name. “Mary.” When she hears her name spoken, in that deep and knowing and holy way, she knows that it can only be Jesus. When she is named, the Resurrection has happened. She is in heaven.

All the greats know how to cry. It happened to one the great guitar players of our generation, Eric Clapton, when he suffered surely one of the great tragedies of any human being, the loss of one’s child. His son, his only son actually, at four years old, fell out of the window of a high-rise building and died. It did not happen at Clapton’s house; it was a tragic accident. Eric Clapton’s immense grief became expressed in his song, called, “Tears in Heaven.”

“Would you know my name?” he asked, “Would you feel the same, if I saw you in heaven?” Would you know my name in heaven?” In the song, Clapton concluded that there are no tears in heaven, but I believe he may be wrong about that.

Are there tears in heaven? Of course there are. Tears might actually be our entry into heaven.

What is heaven, if not the presence of God? What is heaven, if not the presence of Someone who has died, and yet who lives? What is heaven, if not the voice of Jesus Christ, resurrected, truthfully speaking our name?

Maybe it was the soul of Mary Magdalene, her subconscious, asking the same question, “Would you know my name, if I saw you in heaven?” And Jesus said to the crying woman, “Mary.” Immediately, she was in a new place; she was in the kingdom of heaven. She was with Jesus.

So it is that the first person to recognize the resurrection of Jesus Christ, our Lord, was crying. That person was Mary Magdalene. In England, her “last name” so to speak, is not pronounced “Magdalene.” It is pronounced “maudlin,” which has come to mean tears, maybe even excessive tears.

In the seventh century, A.D., St John Climacus, that is, St. John of the Ladder, compared tears to baptism. Tears are so soul-cleansing, he said, that they are like a second baptism. Someone said, “We wash the body with soap; we wash our souls with tears.”

At Easter, then, today, as we renew our first baptismal vows, it is good also to remember our tears, and all the ways that our souls are cleansed with the tears of a second baptism.

The Resurrection does not avoid tears. It seeks them out. The people who cry are the people who can see Jesus. And don’t be afraid of tears. Tears are where Jesus shows up. Bring your tears to the grave this morning, and you will find resurrection.

Yes, if we want proof of the resurrection, we will not find it any history or science book. If we want evidence of new life in Jesus, look for people who have cried. Look for people who are singing to their children in heaven. Look for Walt Kowalski, a tough man with a tear in his eye who lays down his life for the people he loves.

Psalm 126:5 says that “Those who sow in tears will reap with songs of joy.” If you have sown with tears, you deserve to sing with joy today. “Welcome happy morning, age to age shall say.” Tears are sown, and we are reaping joy.

Tears are not just signs of sadness, or signs of sorrow. Tears are signs of life. We are alive when we cry, alive to the Resurrection, alive to the reality of seeing Jesus Christ our Lord.

Alleluia. Christ is risen!

The Lord is risen, indeed! Alleluia.

(also see this sermon on the Cathedral of St. Philip web site here.)

"GODS WITHOUT MEN" AND OUR SEARCH FOR GOD

Watch closely, and we can see the search for God most everywhere. Sometimes that search strikes us as crazy, and sometimes that search is dazzlingly beautiful. Sometimes, that search is most clearly articulated by people who confess no particular Christian faith at all. I am most appreciative, then, for the self-identified atheist, Hari Kunzru, and his wonderful new book, Gods Without Men.

Doug Coupland, in the New York Times, calls Kunzru's book part of a new literary genre (NY Times, March 8, 2012), an exploration which transcends our usual notions of time and space. I like that kind of exploration, because it points out our human limits. The exploration of human limits is a critical part of the spiritual quest. Then, when we pay attention to actual words and actual places, we engage also in a religious quest; we make those words and places holy.

Kunzru’s book is about many things: space and time, Wall Street excess, autism, cultural differences, UFO cults, the desert of the American West, even love. But it is also about one place: a (fictitious) three-fingered rock formation somewhere around the Mojave Desert. Kunzru’s characters, some of whom are human and some of whom are not, arrive at this formation during different historical times. Coyotes, Native Americans, Spanish missionary priests, UFO cults, aged rock musicians, hippies, American military personnel, all end up there. But the characters whose journeys are most studied are a young married Manhattan couple, one of whom is American Jewish and the other of whom is immigrant Punjabi; Lisa and Jaz  have a severely autistic son.

Of course, I will not reveal too much of the story. In fact, one might debate with me what the story actually is. Perhaps the story is how one character, Schmidt, understood his work: “The shape of his project was becoming clear: how to connect the mysteries of technology with those of the spirit” (Gods Without Men, Kunzru, page 11). Or maybe the story is about how one character describes some New York art in a glass case: “There’s a tradition that says the world has shattered, that what once was whole and beautiful is now just scattered fragments. Much is irreparable, but a few of these fragments contain faint traces of the former state of things, and if you find them and uncover the sparks hidden inside, perhaps at last you’ll piece together the fallen world. This is just a glass case of wreckage. But it has presence. It’s redemptive. It is part of something larger than itself.” (page 137).

Later the same character, a Wall Street quantitative analyst, says: “There are certain things you can’t look at directly. You need to trick them into revealing themselves. That’s what we’re doing with [this financial model]. We’re juxtaposing things, listening for echoes. …Parapraxes. Cosmic slips of the tongue. They’re the key to the locked door. They’ll help us discover it….The face of God. What else would we be looking for?” (page 138).

“You need to trick them…” Indeed, the novel begins with a coyote, the trickster; and coyotes also play a significant role in the novel. Remember, then, that “coyote” and “trickster” are also roles that have been assigned to “Hermes,” the god of interpretation, the messenger of the gods to humanity. The hermeneutical task of interpretation takes its name from a trickster.

Ultimately, I believe the story line can be reduced to a question that one earnest local girl asks the visiting musician: “Tell me something,” she said. “Are you out here looking for lights?” (page 28).  Yes, these characters, like all of us, are out there looking for lights. Wherever we are, right now, we are looking for lights. 

Some places, over time, have become sources of light for us. Hari Kunzru’s book makes the implicit point that those places of light are often where we meet limits. Jaz’s search, for instance, began to be clear when he was at MIT graduate school, in “the field of quantum probability, where he worked on reconciling competing mathematical descriptions of the physical world, attempting to understand life at a scale where precision dissolved in indeterminancy” (page 58).

Finally, the place Jaz and Lisa are drawn to is only an absence: “Ahead of them lay only a vast emptiness, absence. There was nothing out there at all” (page 381). The ultimate limit. This limit, a via negativa, leads to my favorite definition for God, most famously worded by Saint Anselm of Canterbury in the twelfth century: “God is that greater than which nothing can be conceived.” God is that place where our human capacity fails; God is at the limits of our human experience. God is greater. Those are the places I call holy. They are holy because so many of us, of so many wildly various perspectives and types, have found truth and light there.

Maybe you know where I am going here. Yes, I am going to Church. The Church is holy because people have found holiness here, generation after generation. For Kunzru’s characters, the holy place is an odd three-fingered rock formation (the priest inevitably interprets it as the Trinity). Again, Kunzru, the author, has publicly identified himself as atheist; but he provides quite a friendly study for how people come to identify holy places.

For Christians trying to be faithful in the twenty-first century, Church will be the place where we meet limits and light – a place of re-discovery, though it may not be a physical structure at all. We will go there when all the other tricks of the world – both ancient and modern—have gradually failed to satisfy us. Like the characters in Gods Without Men, none of us is perfect. In fact, we are rather mistaken, dirty, and forlorn. Nevertheless, the Holy finds us. The Holy finds us when we reach certain limits.  In the Christian Church, the Christian Community, we witness to that search, we witness to those limits, and we witness to a love that transcends time and space.

So it is that Lisa says, “She felt like she’d been destroyed and rebuilt again. She felt, if she had to give a name to her feeling, symbolic, as if she now stood for something greater and more significant than herself, stood for the knowledge of limits, was—no, not God’s representative, nothing so grandiose or egotistical—just one of His signposts, a person in the crowd whose life story pointed toward Him, showed the way out of the vanities of this world and into reverence for the unknowable, impenetrable beyond” (page 359).

 

 

Yes. God is that greater than which nothing can be conceived.


(This article originally appeared in Episcopal Cafe, on 23 March 2012. Check it out.)

LENT ALONG THE CHATTAHOOCHEE RIVER

We had a heap of storms last Friday night, and I pray for those who suffered from the tornadoes and from the stiff winds – and just from the plain old fear that this season annually brings upon us. I know some families who were hunkering down in their basements last Friday night. Even for those who escaped misfortune, the experience of tornadoes in their neighborhood is just scary.

However, after the cold front and fierce winds had come through, I knew on Saturday morning what I had to do. I had to get out and walk along the Chattahoochee River. We hadn’t had that much rain in the Atlanta area for a while, and I knew the river would be filled and flowing mightily.

And it was beautiful. The river was a deep clay-red, and foamy, like some kind of chocolate froth that they serve in our local coffee shops. I saw none of the bare rocks out in the river, rocks where the Canadian geese usually laze about. Those rocks were completely covered, creating dips and lifts, eddies and waves, which would have been great fun if I were in a canoe. Huge limbs, and even a tree trunk or two, were careening down river at the same speed as the water; they would not have been fun if I were in a canoe.

I walked my usual routes, watching hawks of all shapes circling over the water. A great blue heron loped its wings upwind. I saw, but didn’t hear, the distinctive pileated woodpecker dashing through the woods. And cardinals. I couldn’t believe how many pairs of cardinals were flirting in the bushes. Despite the cooler morning, it really was close to a Spring day; the birds are coupling up!

As most of you know, the word “Chattahoochee” means “painted river” in the native Muskogean language of this area. The “paint” or “marks” may refer to all the granite outcroppings. But I suggest that there are various ways in which our major river is painted. On Saturday of the First Week of Lent, I saw some furious painting. Obviously, the storms and rain began the fury. But the river itself then seemed to consist of paint, that lovely Georgia clay type of paint that sticks to your shoes and jeans. The high river was painting the banks again, leaving traces of trash, of course, but also leaving traces of nourishment and reinvigoration. The birds were enjoying that reinvigoration.

Sometimes our Lenten journeys are furious; they are forced upon us by winds beyond our control: loss or betrayal or pain. Sometimes we take on disciplines, like fasting or abstaining from alcohol or certain foods, and they produce furious conflict in us. But they also take out the trash.

Every one of our Lenten journeys begins with paint; we paint our foreheads with the ashes that remind us we are dust. And to dust we shall return. Maybe Lent along the Chattahoochee River doesn’t use ashes, but uses Georgia red clay instead. “Remember that you are clay and to clay you shall return.” And if you do anything interesting at all in Georgia, anything that is truly down-to-earth, you are going to have clay all over you.

If my Lenten journey is as faithful as my walk along the Chattahoochee River after a major storm, then I will see some trash, but I will also see some new life. I will see some furious waves, but I will also see birds pairing up for Spring. I will get dirty, painted with red clay, but I will also be nourished by that same dirt. My soul will grow.

Storms always hit the Southeast during Lent. They are scary and wild, sort of like a forty-day wilderness experience. But they also cause new water to flow. That water paints us with old clay and new soul.

(This article originally appeared on 7 March 2012 at Episcopal Cafe. Check it out. )

LENT WITHOUT RELIGION?

As Lent approaches, I was quite intrigued by the lengthy article, “Religion for Everyone,” by Alain de Botton, which appeared in The Wall Street Journal this past Saturday, February 18, 2012. Surely his book on the same subject expounds his argument; but clearly proposes that non-religious and secular people might learn something about “community’ from the Christian tradition.

Indeed, the article seems to urge a non-religious religion! He says “I, for one, believe that it is possible to reclaim our sense of community—and that we can do so, moreover, without having to build upon a religious foundation.” Hence, a “Religion for Everyone.”

I have two reactions. First, I certainly welcome the positive acknowledgements from De Botton:  He says, “Everyone stands to learn something from the ways in which religion delivers sermons, promotes morality, engenders a spirit of community, inspires travel, trains minds and encourages gratitude at the beauty of life. In a world beset by fundamentalists of both the believing and the secular variety, it must be possible to balance a rejection of religious faith with a selective reverence for religious rituals and concepts.

Religion serves two central needs that secular society has not been able to meet with any particular skill: first, the need to live together in harmonious communities, despite our deeply-rooted selfish and violent impulses; second, the need to cope with the pain that arises from professional failure, troubled relationships, the death of loved ones and our own decay and demise.”

This is good and serious stuff. My second reaction, however, is to question whether the same sort of community that the Church has grown would be available to people who do not, or cannot, share participation in the specific Christian tradition. I remember a non-believing friend of mine, for instance, who spoke to me about church. “My church,” he said, “is the folk dancing group I meet with every Friday evening. We are a close and committed group. We care for each other, and dancing is our common ritual each week.” I think I knew what he meant, but I hope that the Christian Church is much sturdier than that.

Perhaps De Botton has the same sort of thing in mind when he proposes some sort of Agape Restaurant. He is right that eating together develops deep and ritual connection. But the Christian religion, in its history and complexity, contains much more than just dancing and eating. It is both those activities (well, we could use more dancing); and it is also story, and teaching, and service, and building, and prayer, and history, and pain, and wonder, and…the Transcendent. I question whether we can truly find imminent community without a genuine acknowledgement of its opposite: Transcendence.

I am flattered, and a bit proud, that someone wants to appreciate, and even to emulate Christian community in our time. But I am skeptical that one feature of Christianity can be genuinely duplicated without including much of our other ancient tradition and practice.

What a surprise, then, to read on the very next day (Sunday, February 20, 2012), a brief editorial in The New York Times that featured a similar argument to that of its “competitor,” The Wall Street Journal!  There, Verlyn Klinkenborg suggested that our culture might practice a kind of Lent without religion; “the idea of Lent can be embraced by all of us, religious or otherwise.” Well! I had the same two reactions.

So, I leave it to Martin Marty to have a definitive reaction here. In Sightings (February 20, 2012), Marty accepts the favorable comments of De Botton, but Marty also proclaims the futility of an enterprise that tries to recreate religion without religion:

“Let me plug my [Martin Marty’s] favorite analysis, George Santayana's words in Reason in Religion. A religion for everyone? He writes:

"Any attempt to speak without speaking any particular language is [just as hopeless as] the attempt to have a religion that shall be no religion in particular. . . . Thus every living and healthy religion has a marked idiosyncrasy. Its power consists in its special and surprising message and in the bias which that revelation gives to life." Its vistas and mysteries propound "another world to live in," and "another world to live in. . . is what we mean by having a religion." (Sightings, February 20, 2012)

I agree with George Santayana through Martin Marty! Yes, every healthy religion has its marked idiosyncrasies, and its weaknesses. But it is our religion, our language, our life. Churches, and synagogues, and mosques offer the world another world.

In that spirit, I invite you to enter this season of our Christian life, this season of Lent. Come to Church, where we will engage in holy community yet again. We will hear as full a presentation of the Christian story as we can, in forty holy days: pilgrimage, suffering, death, resurrection. Yes, we will eat together, too. We will be participating in a holy community that is both intimate and transcendent: the fullness of Christian Incarnation.

MY LOVES AND MY CALLS

Dear Friends: This week, the Diocese of Atlanta will announce that I am among several nominees for election as the next Bishop of Atlanta. I am truly honored to be among some excellent priests in that assembly. The nomination is an honor for me, but I know that my nomination might present questions in the church as to why in the world I am doing this!

Let me explain, then, something of my own prayer and discernment during the last several months, as the Nominating Committee has been discussing this possibility with me. The prospect of running for bishop is a daunting one; as you know, I consented to nomination last year in Washington, D.C., and I was not elected. The emotional and spiritual twists of our Church’s episcopal election processes are grueling and very public. But this process is the process we have. Furthermore, I have am thriving and enjoying my vocation as Dean of the Cathedral of St. Philip, a position which I consider one of the finest in the Church. I love it here, and this parish community blesses me.

However, the prospect of being bishop for the Diocese of Atlanta has also excited me. When I ran for bishop last year, I found myself actually having lots of ideas and vision for what a bishop can be in The Episcopal Church. Moreover, I love, not just Atlanta, but the entire Diocese of Atlanta. I grew up in Coweta County. I spent some formative years in Episcopal youth groups from Rome to Gainesville. My discernment about this position has been sincere and serious.

One of my own spiritual practices during periods of discernment is to “contemplate my loves.” As I face a major decision, I ask: Who, and what, do I love? I pray, that, as I consider my loves, God’s direction becomes clearer for the calls in my life. Where God is calling me has something to do with my loves.

So, first of all, I truly love my family – my wife, of course, who has been companion and friend with me for over 35 years now. Together, we have our own children, their wonderful spouses, and their friends; and we have wider family, throughout Georgia and in Maryland. Both my parents still live on the land where I grew up, outside Newnan. Those are dear commitments for us. I am blessed with several close circles of friends, too; we have broken a lot of bread together (Will Campbell once said that a friend is someone you’ve “spilled a lot of salt with.”).

I also truly love the parish of the Cathedral of St. Philip. We, too, have spilled a lot of salt together (and bread and wine!). I love Atlanta, one of the great cities of our country. But I also love small towns, which have more varieties of people than outsiders realize. I love the outdoors, where I grew up; I love being outside, under the stars, in the woods, walking in fields.

I also love outsiders. I pay attention to people who seem outside the system, perhaps forgotten or ignored. My ministry as a priest has been drawn to the outsiders and to the marginalized. I love to write. I love to teach. I love to preach. I love to experience God in new places, and in new people.

Finally, I actually love The Episcopal Church. This Church has blessed me. Of course, the Church has not always been good to me, and I have often disagreed with The Episcopal Church. But I love this Church, and I believe we have something powerful and graceful to offer the wider world.

So, with the consideration of these loves, I believe that God is calling me to imagine being Bishop of Atlanta – at least to be part of the nomination and election process. The church needs me to offer my gifts and ministry –and my loves—to a wider system; and I need to offer them, too. I know I might not be elected. That particular call is not clear yet, but this first part is.

The motto of my old school, Berkeley Divinity School at Yale, is “in illa quae ultra sunt” – Into The Regions Beyond.” That phrase meant both our mission and the place where we meet God. I pray God will meet me, too, as I accept an invitation to explore the “regions beyond.”  Please pray with me – for ourselves, for the Diocese of Atlanta, and for the world. Thank you.

WHO'S NUMBER ONE?

(written 5 February 2012)

Who is number one this week? The question has become relentless.

Political candidates, of course, and their most committed supporters, are obsessed with the question. And there seems to be no escape. Every day, someone is conducting, or releasing, another type of poll. Who is number one with this group, or that demographic, or that region?

Our media distributors sell magazines and television shows and internet sites because of our temptation for rankings and lists. So we have show after show devoted to some sort of competition –from challenging mental games to goofy survival gimmicks. (We even have television shows about the best television shows.) Sometimes I think that our political debates this year have resembled television game shows.

My former colleague at the Cathedral of St. Philip, Elizabeth Rechter, once delivered a memorable sermon in which she lamented our culture’s obsession with lists. She did not want another article labeled “Best of…,” she said, as if everybody, and everything, in the world were being ranked.

Our current lust for competition can be exhausting. It might be because our culture uses politics and sports as the wrong sort of model, a model that is too limited. In most political campaigns, and in most sports events, we dramatize and exalt only one human winner. In a league, for instance, of thirty-two teams, all with excellent players, only one team will win the final game. Thus, at the conclusion of the Super Bowl this Sunday, one team will feel like a loser, even though thirty other teams wish they had been there. Competition can depress us if we believe there is only one human winner.

Competition is truly dangerous when our desire to win includes destroying our competitor. We have all seen that reality. Competition can also be dangerous when it motivates theft, lying, or cheating. We have all seen those realities, too, perhaps in certain financial circumstances. The drive to win, at any cost, can also drive some people to lose their humanity.

But there are healthy elements of “competition!” In the best sense of the word, a competitor is someone we “strive with.” To compete with someone is to strive toward a goal, with another person, not against another person. With, not against. A true competitor brings out the best in our own gifts and talents. Sometimes the runner will not run so fast alone as she does when with someone, when another competitor is matching her stride for stride.

I, for one, do not mind some of the displays of religious faith on the athletic field year after year. Of course, I believe some of those displays can be rude and arrogant and condescending – just like some religion can! But sometimes, the displays can be reminders that no one, not one of us, is actually “number one.” If an athlete points to the sky after a touchdown, perhaps that gesture can mean, “ The real Number One is up there, not down here!” Maybe the losing team should start pointing to the sky, too, after the score, as if to say, “The real Number One is up there, not down here!”

I pray for all those who strive, whether they be candidates or athletes, bankers or business executives, even lovers or siblings. I hope we all strive for things, and I hope we all strive for truly good things. At their best, competitors help us to do that; they help us to see a larger reality, a larger goal, even a common goal, a common good. Competitors often become our best friends when we realize how much we have in common. Competitors can also be our best friends when they help us to see that “the real Number One” is larger than we are.

WHERE ARE ALL THE STARS? (a tribute to Conrad Aiken...)

(a tribute to Conrad Aiken’s “ONE STAR FELL AND ANOTHER”)

Where are all the stars?

Just twelve days ago, they were all over the place! On the tops of our Christmas trees, adorning mantle pieces and little girls’ angel costumes, decked across our yards, hanging from rearview mirrors. I saw them everywhere!

Now, one by one, those dramatic stars seem to have made their departure. Some crashed from the tree before we could catch them. Others are now carefully stored away for next year. The stars on our houses, on our pageant costumes, those strewn across our living rooms, are all likewise put away.

Thus, I find it odd that, as Epiphany arrives in our Christian calendar, all our stars have disappeared. Epiphany, of course, is meant to be the remembrance of three wise men following a star to the infant Jesus. Thus, Jesus is made real even to foreign travelers, to people who were different from his people, even to people who may have believed differently from his people. We Christians claim to follow the star, too, and to make it real to the world.

Yet, as the Feast of Epiphany arrives, many of our stars are gone. Even if we have a big bash on Epiphany night, we rarely keep any star visible after that night. Last week, my wife and I spent some time stargazing, out where the sky was cold and crisp. All we saw were stars, thousands of them, some still, and others shooting across the horizon. Oh, that our world could be so full of stars throughout the year!

I remembered this strong poem, from Conrad Aiken (from Savannah, the first Georgia-born winner of a Pulitzer Prize), in which he urges us to be prodigal with our stars – with our words and with our gifts.

One star fell and another as we walked.

Lifting his hand towards the west, he said--

--How prodigal that sky is of its stars!

They fall and fall, and still the sky is sky.

Two more have gone, but heaven is heaven still.

Then let us not be precious of our thought,

Nor of our words, nor hoard them up as though

We thought our minds a heaven which might change

And lose its virtue, when the word had fallen.

Let us be prodigal, as heaven is:

Lose what we lose, and give what we may give,--

Ourselves are still the same. Lost you a planet--?

Is Saturn gone? Then let him take his rings

Into the Limbo of forgotten things.

O little foplings of the pride of mind,

Who wrap the phrase in lavender, and keep it

In order to display it: and you, who save our loves

As if we had not worlds of love enough--!

Let us be reckless of our words and worlds,

And spend them freely as the tree his leaves;

And give them where the giving is most blest.

What should we save them for,--a night of frost? . . .

All lost for nothing, and ourselves a ghost.

                                                                                    (Conrad Aiken, 1935)

At Christmas, we have celebrated giving. Maybe the season of Epiphany is about giving away stars. Maybe we are supposed to be giving away stars as often as God gives things away. If so, we can trust that even if the stars fall, “still the sky is sky. Two more have gone, but heaven is heaven still.”

May the Spirit of Epiphany giving be with you, and with all of us, throughout this year. Yes, let us be reckless, lavish, with our gifts of love, with our “words and worlds, and spend them freely as the tree his leaves; and give them where the giving is most blest.” 

AT CHRISTMAS, GOD OCCUPIES US --THERE IS NO REHEARSAL, AND EVERYTHING IS A REHEARSAL

A Sermon For Christmas Eve
24 December 2011

We all have our favorite Christmas Pageant story. A few hours ago, in this very church, hundreds of children gathered to re-enact the Christmas story, and many more hundreds of parents and friends looked on with tears and laughter and pride. As usual, it was crazy, chaotic, and beautiful.

There are four gospels in the New Testament, and, thus, four very different ways of telling the mystery of the birth of Jesus. But if you know church life at all, you know there is a fifth way of witnessing the birth of Jesus, a fifth gospel: the Christmas Pageant!

Children, it turns out, do a fine job of proclaiming mystery. They don’t have to know exactly what the words mean. The Holy Spirit came upon Mary, and she conceived a bore a child. Do not be afraid. Shepherds walk in dressed in old bathrobes. Everybody wants to be a king with Christmas presents. And all the friendly beasts are with us. And then we all walk out singing “Joy to the World.” The story works, and it hardly needs a rehearsal at all.

About a month ago, I saw a sad church bulletin, from a church with apparently very few children involved. “Notice,” it said, “A small skit will be presented at the early service on Christmas Eve. Children are needed.” How sad, I thought, that they even needed to ask, as if children were not already whining and pining to be in the pageant. But then the notice shocked me further: “Three Rehearsals Required.”

Three rehearsals? What is the need for that? I know churches with great Christmas Pageants who have no rehearsals at all. In fact, they pride themselves on that fact, as well they should.

Well, I do remember one particular church which definitely needed a pageant rehearsal. They did not have many children in their congregation either, and so the pageant turned into a way for the adults to showcase their design and theatre skill. The organist was maybe the most clever and mischievous person of the bunch. Not only had he rigged the organ to evoke strange sounds at certain points in the pageant, but he rigged up a zip line. Yes, unbeknownst to none but the most observant parishioner, he had rigged up a cable running from the back balcony right above the middle aisle, and right down to the manger where the baby Jesus would lie.

“The time came for her to deliver her child,” recited the young narrator; and, with that, a papier-mache Holy Spirit dove came flying down the cable from the back balcony, straight down to a spot somewhere between Mary and a manger. No need trying to explain the mystery of the Virgin Birth to those youngsters! They got it.

Apart from the true extravaganzas, no rehearsals are required for the Christmas Pageant. For, how do you rehearse what to do when two shepherds start hitting each other with their crooks? How could we possibly rehearse for the moment when Susie does not like her angel costume and wants the one that Janey is wearing? How do you rehearse for the moment when King Melchior trips on the steps and spills frankincense all over the baby Jesus? How do you rehearse for disciplining the boys in the back who, when the lights are dim, are singing, “Silent Night, Holy Night, Shepherds quack, at the sight”?

For that matter, how could we possibly rehearse for what really happens when life begins, or when an unexpected pregnancy occurs? How do we rehearse for the night when we have no place to sleep in peace? How do we rehearse for the times in life when the inn has no room for us? How do we rehearse for those ugly things that occur after Christmas morning, for instance: Herod slaughtering the holy and innocent children of the land?

Most of us in life do not get a rehearsal. When the first time comes to really change the diaper, we don’t get a rehearsal. On the first day the child comes home crying from school, we don’t get a rehearsal. When our teen-ager misses his, or her, first curfew. When our new boss is upset with us for the first time.

When we ourselves are asked to give the speech, when we have to step up to the plate, …..we do not get a rehearsal. When our lover is sick, we do not have the luxury of a rehearsal. When our mother dies, we do not get to rehearse the event first.

When the time came for the child to be born….there was no rehearsal.

We do not get a rehearsal; and yet, every time we invoke the Holy Spirit, every time we cry out to the divine for help, we are practicing. Every time we trudge on through disappointment, we are practicing. Every time we suffer loss, we are practicing.

There is no rehearsal. And yet, everything we do is a rehearsal. A rehearsal for the realization of love.

Our being present tonight, here in this church, in churches across the world tonight, in churches across the world every Sunday, is practice. It is rehearsing.

Because Jesus showed up one day, unannounced, in a forlorn and forgotten place, because Jesus showed up there – Jesus can show up anywhere. And Jesus does show up  -- unannounced  and unrehearsed. Un-choreographed and un-vergered. Jesus does not wait for things to be perfect before he arrives; he shows up in the imperfected things.

In other words, Jesus shows up all the time. In that sickness of our child. In that death of our father. Even in that broken commitment, that divorce, in that lost election, that failed deal, that cracked contract.

“There is a crack, a crack, in everything,” sings my old hero, Leonard Cohen:

“Ring the bells that still can ring.

Forget your perfect offering.
There is a crack in everything.
That’s how the light gets in.”   

[from Leonard Cohen, “Anthem,” and the album, The Future, 1992.]

There are lots of cracks in the world right now. There are cracks in our once reliable institutions and countries. This year, the Occupy Movement people seem to be finding those cracks; and their presence in our parks and streets is presenting some true moral dilemmas.

And at our churches. The presence of the Occupy movement at some of our churches is truly presenting a justice dilemma. For the Church really does exist to serve the poor and the disenfranchised. Our natural inclination is for the outcast; our call is to lift up the lowly and to fill the hungry with good things. What happens, then, when our churches, too, are vulnerable to the charge of serving the system instead of serving the poor? Yes, it is true that we occupy several things. We occupy both a position of wealth and resources and a humble history of serving the poor. What happens when our churches become the tension point, and maybe the cracking point, between social justice and social order?

Maybe love happens. This Christmas, we remember that we are all vulnerable. We are vulnerable to the charges of expediency and imperfection. We crack and sometimes break. Like an ordinary Christmas Pageant, we are both cracked and beautiful.

Yes, we Christians occupy several tensions. But we Christians are ourselves also occupied. And our occupation is the salvation of the world tonight.

The original Occupier is the God who came un-invited, and barely announced, into humanity over two thousand years ago. The original Occupier came into the world not with violence or fanfare, but in humility and surrender.

Imagine what God gives up in order to enter the reality of humanity. It is a surrender, even a sacrifice, so that the world might be saved, so that the world might learn love. Christmas is about God lowering himself to occupy humanity itself; and it is a descent which saves the world.

Tonight, we remember that God has honored humanity by occupying us, by becoming one of us, and so, person by person, becoming love in the world.

With God in us, Emmanuel, we have the choice tonight of who we will occupy. With whom will we be in relationship? What structures and organizations will we choose, and within which we can change the world? For we all must occupy something; we all serve from particular relationships, particular structures, even particular corporations.

We don’t get to rehearse which relationships and structures work best. Even God did not get to rehearse. God simply chose. And God chose humanity. God chose us. It is up to us, now, to keep the Christmas Pageant going, to continue the drama of love being born into the world. Our lives are the drama. We are the Christmas Pageant that has no rehearsal.

There are not just four ways, or five ways, of proclaiming the mystery of the birth of Jesus. There are millions of ways. You! You and I, are occupied by the love of God tonight. Rehearse! Practice, and that love grows a million times into the world around us. Joy to the world! The Lord is come!

AMEN.

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