Thankful for Community

Last night's focusing sentence for Centering Prayer came from Ephesians 1:15-16:

I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, and for this reason, I do not cease to give thanks for you as I remember you in my prayers.

The person who chose it said she did so because of its description of fellowship rooted in Christ - the love of a people for all the saints (all Christians).

We had some great conversation around this after our silence.  I'm convinced again and again that the heart of Christian life and Christian mission is building relationship.  I also believe that the key to its success is keeping that relationship rooted in Christ.  

A thoguht I often return to in sermons is that it's not important the we just love Jesus.  Our faith life is also shaped by learning to love those whom Jesus loves.

I'm thankful today for the fellowship we share at St. Luke's and my prayer is that we will continue to grow in our recognition of Jesus at the heart of our fellowship and and be drawn further to those whom Jesus loves.

Thoughts on the Death of Osama bin Laden

There is a question in the Talmud (a Jewish commentary on Scripture dating to 1700 years ago) that asks, “Does the Holy One, blessed be He, rejoice at the downfall of the wicked?”  I think that’s a question we all have to explore this week as we mark the death of one of the most heinous people of our time, Osama bin Laden.

My own feelings ran the gamut of surprise, amazement, relief, and hope.  I suspect most of us had similar reactions.  However, once I saw the footage of cheering crowds, I began to feel we were overlooking some fundamental realities.  On the West Coast, where there was more time, there were even street parties and fireworks displays.  My friends on Facebook, clergy included, posted a mixture of joyful posts and prayers for our enemies.

While we can’t deny our feelings, what is an appropriate way to mark this moment as a people of faith?  Was justice served (and this is not a simple question)?  Do we rejoice at the success of the operation?  Do we grieve at the hold violence continues to have on our lives? Or do we stand in solemn silence, perhaps turning over our thoughts to God in prayer?

When the Hebrew slaves escaped Egypt through the parted Red Sea, the sea closed over again and drowned the pursuing armies of Pharaoh.  Safe on the other side, Moses’ sister Miriam danced and Moses sang the song “I will sing to the Lord who is lofty and uplifted, the chariots of Pharaoh and his army has drowned in the Red Sea.” (Exodus 15).  The Talmud says that the angels in heaven also sang hymns of praise to God at the defeat of the enemies of God’s people.  God then rebuked them, asking “How can you sing at the death of my children?”  Even the destruction of those seeking the death of God’s chosen was not beyond God’s grief.  Yet, the people themselves rejoiced, and we sing that hymn of joy each year at the Easter Vigil, and each Thursday during Morning Prayer.

I think the discrepancy in responses between God and God’s people show that it is truly OK to feel relief when something happens that makes one more safe, gives one a chance for a better future, or brings to a close a very painful past. Yet, it is never safe to assume our actions are God’s actions, and history has shown that hatred and violence always seem to find a new champion. 

In the midst of this reality, Jesus calls us to remember the larger reality and orient ourselves accordingly. And this is why we cannot cheer.  Bin Laden has to now stand before divine judgment where all is revealed to him in it's terrible fullness, and it must be a dreadful prospect to stand before God and discover that one’s life has been nothing more than a source of destruction in service to a delusion.

In the writings of the prophet Ezekiel, God asks “Have I any pleasure in the death of the wicked, says the Lord God, and not rather that they should turn from their ways and live?” (Ezekiel 18:23) This history of salvation is the story of a just, holy, and merciful God seeking ways for a broken humanity to be in fellowship with God.  We are never off the hook for our own sins, but God seeks a way for us to move past those sins.

Christ died for the whole world, the just and unjust alike, and it is through Christ’s love and not our own merits that we are given mercy on the Day of Judgment.  It is in this context that Scripture calls us to not only pray for loved ones, and ourselves but for our enemies as well, as Jesus teaches in the Sermon on the Mount:  “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” (Matthew 5:43-44)

The Christian life is about joining our hearts to Christ’s heart, and it is the heart of Christ that loves the whole world, thus we, too, must learn to love the whole world, friend and foe alike.

Whether bin Laden will have the opportunity to repent of his sins and have his soul set aright after death is solely in the hands of God, but the greater witness of our faith story is that God will do anything to give us that opportunity, even die for us, though the final choice to accept that grace is always left up to us.

What we can celebrate is that God is both merciful and just, and that mercy is given to us in Jesus Christ who stands with us on that last day.  In the words of Psalm 107:1, “Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, his mercy endures forever.”  There but for the grace of God, could go any of us.

Prayer for Our Enemies

O God, the Father of all, whose Son commanded us to love our enemies: Lead them and us from prejudice to truth; deliver them and us from hatred, cruelty, and revenge; and in your good time enable us all to stand reconciled before you; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

 - Book of Common Prayer, p. 816

Three Faiths

I'm in New York City through Friday to attend the Trinity Institute program on "Reading Scripture Through Other Eyes." Trinity Institute is run by Trinity Church, Wall Street and is a continuing ed conference offered each year in January.

http://www.trinitywallstreet.org/faith/institute/2011/

Since this year's program is on Scripture, I came into the city early to see the Three Faiths exhibit at the New York Public Library. This exhibit looks at the use of sacred texts by the three Abrahamic faiths: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

http://exhibitions.nypl.org/threefaiths/

The exhibit begins with Revelation and looks at the principle figures who received the revealed texts or who are the subject of the revealed texts: Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed. Then, the displays turn to the Scriptures themselves, commentaries, translations, and use in private prayer and public worship.

The manuscripts on display are gorgeous. My favorite is the Harkness Gospels, which date to pre-917 from Brittany. They are illuminated with lovely early Celtic art.

However, the most profound comment to me was the observation that in private prayer, the individual believer comes closest to encountering the divine and revelation that the authors of the sacred texts experienced.

The Sacred Texts are essential to our developing relationship with God, and they not only give us a portal to the experience of the divine, but they draw us into that intimacy that Moses, Isaiah, Jesus, Paul and all the rest shared in their own friendship with God.

Connecting our Past with our Present

St. Luke's is a congregation that welcomes the visitor and seems to be comfortable, even delighted by, ethnic diversity.  Yet, our forbears were all English immigrant from one town, Stoke-on-Trent, in England.  I've often wondered how the church started grew into the church of today.  It seems the seeds were always there.

Our immigrant forbears weren't welcome in a nearby church, so they started a Sunday School gathering in 1912 that became St. Luke's Episcopal Church.  They were potters in England, so they came to work in the many potteries in our area.  Our worship building was constructed from cast-off bricks retrieved from those potteries, unwanted because they weren't uniform - each a slightly different shade of red and not perfectly square.

Our immigrant founders saw the use of those bricks as a metaphor for the church - a gathering of "all sorts and conditions" of God's people into one holy community.  Yet, compared today, immigrants who were mostly from the same town aren't very diverse.  Why were they so welcome of diversity?

I discovered the answer the other night from this article about the Archbishop of York's visit to Stoke-on-Trent to help them celebrate their centennial.  In it, Dr. John Sentamu, the Archbishop of York, speaks of Stoke-on-Trent's historic commitment to racial inclusivity:

Dr Sentamu, who regularly speaks out in opposition to racism and slavery, particularly in his native Uganda, also reminded guests of the city's historic intolerance of racism.

Referring to Josiah's Wedgwood's campaign against slavery and his production of the anti-slavery medallion, he said: "This city has never stood for racism. Never stood for discrimination."

Dr Sentamu said Stoke-on-Trent was part of "the country's great heritage" and encouraged residents to look to its successes in the past to build its future.

He said: "If you forget your past you will become senile.

"When we build for the future we must do it not with blind optimism but from what we have learned from the past."

This is the medallian struck by Josiah Wedgwood referred to in the article.  It became the most famous 18th century representation of a black person in Europe and helped turn the public against slavery and British involvement in the slave trade.

So, it seems that the towns that merged into Stoke-on-Trent were active in the abolitionist movement of the 18th and 19th centuries that led to the abolition of the slave trade by the British Parliament in 1806. This ethos surely formed the consciences of our forbears, and we are grateful they brought it with them!

The Difference Between Forgiveness and Reconciliation

I'm thinking a lot about this as I've been reading Religion and Reconciliation in South Africa to prepare for my sabbatical in South Africa next spring.  The sabbatical's theme is "Buiding Community Through Reconciliation & Prayer" and I want to see how the churches in South Africa are helping to build community in the wake of apartheid.

As Americans, Christians, and Anglicans, I think we tend to have a very romantic perception of the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in bringing healing and fostering peaceful transition to post-apartheid South Africa.  Yet, as I read more and more South African literature, I'm disocvering a fair amount of ambivalence. 

It appears to be almost universally accepted that the TRC did its job in uncovering the truth of apartheid abuses (although there are some perceptions - distinctly minority -  that the TRC uncovered truths desired by the politcal needs of the time).  But what about Reconciliation?

Of all the Truth commissions that have existed since 1974, South Africa's is the first to include Reconciliation in its mandate.  As a Christian, that excited me no end. As an Episcopalian and Anglican, I burst with pride that Abp Desmond Tutu was it's chair.  But 15 years after the dismantling of apartheid, and after the end of the TRC's work, where does Reconciliation stand?

Chile was the first to includ reconciliation under the mandate of Truth Commission, but their commission's approach was to uncover truth for the purpose of reconciliation.  In other words, telling the truth would be the first step in longer process of healing, but the purpose of truth-telling was not an end of itself, but to make reconciliatio possible.

So, where is South Africa?  I don't know.  I'll know more when I get there.  But I find it a sobering reminder that reconciliation is a process that has to be addressed on many level - individual, community, and institutional among others.

Very perceptively, Audrey Chapman, one of the co-editors of the book Religion & Reconciliation in South Africa, observes that reconciliation is more than just a "willingness to let go of the past and not seek vengeance."  Reconciliation looks to the future as well, with a commitment to repair and re-establish relationships; and, ultimately, "to create and sustain a network of understanding and relationships necessary to shape and support a new and common future."  (p. 13).

So, it seems that truth must come before anything (truth told and accepted by all parties), that forgiveness may draw to a close the power of the past, but that reconciliation is about building a future. So, as I go to South Africa, I will be excited to see what kind of future is being built.

So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! ¹⁸All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation

- 2 Corinthians 5:17-18