Reading for Life

At the end of February, on a Sunday afternoon replete with light and air prefiguring spring, I sit down to read. Immediately I stumble on words and make little progress. It is not for want of comprehending the words. Yet I cannot follow them to habit in reading, to inhabit reading. It is a longstanding problem for me, odd for one who claims to relish this activity. When I have to read this or that, I balk in starting and progressing, regardless of the material, of my interest. I often put it aside and pick up something else, to avoid “have to” for “want to” in reading. How often this warp in inclination and action has resulted in being ill-prepared for obligations otherwise willingly undertaken, such as classes and papers in graduate school, yet certainly not limited to that and then. When reading is primarily or entirely “have to,” I remain outside, marking and resisting the constraint of time and space. The good burdens. When reading is primarily or entirely “want to,” I step inside, absorbed in opening of time and space. The good allures. I fully realize there is considerable “have to” in this life, this world, to survive and to do well, especially for others. I know I have to do better in acknowledging this, in recognizing my inclination and pattern, in seeking good not habitually my own. Amid all this I yet find hours and places, truly and graciously given, to being lost in reading’s wonder. And more, I long for that life, that world, to come, of Sunday all day, of winter to spring, suffused and fragranced with light and air, wherein to lose and find myself in reading a Logos unending.

Life as Gift

In creation we move from non-being to life. In redemption we move from death to life. Or rather, in creation and redemption we are brought from non-being and death to life. How true and manifest this is in creation. It is equally so in redemption. We cannot make ourselves from nothing. We cannot raise ourselves from death. From beginning to end and all between, we have life from God as good and gracious gift, tendered in love.

Moved as the Trees

Late in February, this day begins at 5:00 a.m. with a liturgy for morning prayer from the Northumbria Community. A single light at lowest setting defines the room sufficiently. Outside, well before twilight and dawn, darkness reduces details to forms and hints of things.

"In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit."

Today, rather than pushing ahead with the next words in the liturgy, I pause and close my eyes after reading this invocation. A gust of wind animates the bare limbs of the poplars and beeches near the house, that they toss and sound the unseen, the unheard. I become mindful of presence, wholly other yet intimate, and I am moved as the trees.

Achievement or Gift?

"I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, 'Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son: treat me like one of your hired hands.' " (Luke 15:18-19.)

Yet the father called him "son." The father treated him so, even before the son had reached home and confessed. For the father ran to the son, far off, to embrace and kiss him: overtures of love and signs of peace, father to son. The father knew well what the son had done to him in leaving, but he did not start with the question whether the son was worthy or not. The father started with the relationship: parent and child. The father started with the son as son, as child, beloved in intimate and incontrovertible familial relationship, before any performance or achievement of the child. On this basis the father, rising from his sorrow and loss, went to the son to assure him of home.

So it is with God, with us as God’s children. We have life from the beginning entirely as gift. Then when we depart from God, from this gift, for the trough of a far country, God, grieved and aggrieved, yet comes to embrace and kiss us, to clothe us with riches of love and peace, parent to child, renewed and restored; the sacrifice, worthwhile. And thus we have life in the end entirely as gift, as grace, as festival beyond measure.

A Confessional Meditation for Lent, Adapted from "The Book of Common Prayer"

Most merciful God,
I confess that I have sinned against you
     in thought
          by what I have done
          and by what I have left undone,
          thus not loving you with my whole heart
          and not loving my neighbor as myself;
     in word
          by what I have done
          and by what I have left undone,
          thus not loving you with my whole heart
          and not loving my neighbor as myself;
     in deed
          by what I have done
          and by what I have left undone,
          thus not loving you with my whole heart
          and not loving my neighbor as myself.
I am truly sorry, and I humbly repent.
Have mercy on me, and forgive me;
     that I may delight in your will
     and walk in your ways,
     to the glory of your Name. Amen.

Some Thoughts on Galatians 6:11-18

Coming to the end of his letter to the Galatian Christians, Paul summarized in his own handwriting his primary purposes in writing. Apparently an amanuensis or secretary had written down Paul’s thoughts to this point. Now Paul took over to emphasize his message.

Advertising, marketing, and public relations inundate our culture: business; education; politics; sports; and even churches. What appeals to people? How can our product, service, or idea be packaged and presented attractively to draw people in and win them over to make the purchase or join our side? How can we tailor language and image to lower resistance, touch a felt need, and sometimes even beguile?

Let us then read carefully the end of this letter. What message did Paul emphasize to the Galatians and indeed to all to whom he witnessed? Crucifixion! Paul pledged to advertise, market, and publicly relate nothing more nor less than the crucifixion of Jesus, and the critical need for us to be incorporated into Jesus’ crucifixion: “May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world” (Galatians 6:14).

This is the gospel: the cross of Jesus Christ! No one in Jesus’ day would have understood a cross as a piece of jewelry, a gilded symbol on a Bible or prayer book, a brilliant stained glass image, or anything of beauty. With deep shudders, they would have known a cross to be one of the most horrible evils invented and exacted by human beings on other human beings.

This – Jesus’ death by torture at the hands of political and religious powers, all because of our sin – is what Paul straightforwardly proclaimed in person and by letter. The saving death of Jesus is the one and only good news, above and even against all financial, philosophical, political, psychological, or spiritual advertisements to some other “good news” or good thing that will revolutionize our lives and satisfy us in heart, mind, or body. The only news that counts as truly good, as Paul affirmed and embodied, is new creation through death and resurrection in Jesus.

When we speak and act in the name of Jesus, what message do we live and present as God’s good news for us and for all people?

Some Thoughts on Philippians 2:1-13 and Lent

We have in this reading one of the great passages in Scripture. Here Paul tenderly yet passionately urged Christians in Philippi (in Macedonia) to follow the example of Jesus by experiencing and practicing a deep, humble love among themselves. We do well to mine the ore of this passage with a strong desire to possess its riches. In it we will find not the world’s riches but heaven’s.

Philippi was a significant city in the first century A.D. With a wide diversity of people, ideas, and religious practices, it straddled a major road between the western and eastern spheres of the Roman empire. In this swirl of forces, the Philippian Christians suffered because of their allegiance to Jesus. Such pressure on them raised the specter of ill will and conflict in their community. Paul, aware of this, exhorted them to be united with each other in love even as they were united with Jesus.

The pattern for living out this unity is found in Jesus himself. With a stark beauty, today’s passage describes this pattern in the divinity and humanity of the person and life of Jesus – what in theology is called Christology. Now Paul primarily wrote this passage not to instruct in theology or Christology. He wrote to instruct in life. However, the life instruction depended on the Christology.

The Christology is this. Jesus was fully divine. Yet he did not “grasp” divinity such that he felt no compassion toward sinful, broken humankind. Rather, he humbled himself to enter human life truly and fully – what we call the incarnation. He so humbled himself (the Greek in verse 7 can be translated “slave” as equally as “servant”) that, to love God and us faithfully, he willingly suffered the most excruciating and abasing death the ancient world knew.

The life instruction is this. If Jesus so humbled himself in love to bind himself to us and us to God, and if we say we are united with him, we should live specifically, concretely in love as he did. We should live in such deep, humble love for others that we turn our back on all self-centeredness and selfishness in order to serve others first, to put others’ interests before our own. If this passage does not turn us from the pursuit of worldly ambition, wealth, and self-importance, what will?

As we set our faces toward Jerusalem this Lent, may we – “through self-examination and repentance, by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God’s holy Word” (Ash Wednesday liturgy, Book of Common Prayer) – lay aside ourselves to love and follow the example of our savior and lord, humbled and crucified for us.

Renewing Our Repentance

Reading in the Ash Wednesday service in the Book of Common Prayer, I am taken by these words: “…and of the need which all Christians continually have to renew their repentance and faith.”

The admonition to renew our repentance continually is striking. We could construe this to mean a series of acts of repentance, occasioned by acts of sin. This understanding is of course true as, however regretfully, we will certainly sin against God and neighbor from time to time. In this sense at a minimum the admonition is true and compelling.

At the same time, I believe we can understand the admonition more deeply, strikingly, and compellingly if we go further to locate repentance not solely or even chiefly in the act but in the posture of being, the posture of spirit. Understood and lived most profoundly and essentially then, continual renewal of repentance consists of the core disposition or quality of our being, our person.

This corresponds intimately and inextricably with the nature of faith and the continual renewal of faith. For surely faith, while including and motivating acts, signifies most deeply the basic disposition or posture of our self in relation to God.

Repentance then is not merely something we do occasionally. Repentance is something we essentially are in this world. Hence, it is something we are continually.

What then does it mean to live in a posture of repentance? Much could be said here, but let me point to a few principles which should characterize living in a posture of repentance.

• Whenever we identify sin in another, we must in the same moment acknowledge and regret our own implication in sin. In general we stand implicated in sin, and in particular we often stand implicated in the specific sin we have identified, at least in potential and sometimes in fact.
  

• Indeed, we are far more ready to see our own sin first, before we ever see sin in others.
  

• We do not presume our own immunity from sin, whether sin in general or sins in particular. The language of confidence in our own purity is strange and alien to us.
  

• We do not presume mastery over our own sin, whether sin in general or sins in particular.
  

• Because of our frailty and perversity in relation to sin, both potentially and actually, we live continuously in sheer dependence on the gracious mercy of God. We do not presume to stand in God’s presence with confidence in our own rightness.
  

These are but a few spiritual and moral principles which will mark our lives to the extent we take to heart the admonition of the need we have to renew our repentance continually. Yet if we can live them in the very posture of our being, in Lent and all seasons, they will take us far along the path that leads from the garden closed behind us to the city of the Lamb awaiting us.