#EpiscopalResurrection #G78 – Postlude: “Autoimmune Church?”

By the Rev. Ken Howard

For the last week or so, I have been writing and posting a series of blog posts on the Episcopal Resurrection movement: one post on the Memorial to the Church and ten on the enabling resolutions. No small feat, that, considering that my “day job” is leading a still-growing, mature church plant.

Last night I put the last post – and then myself – to bed. As I drifted off into dream land, I realized that I had two worries:

1. That the resolutions would not pass.
2. That the resolutions would not be sufficient. 

In either case, it would be a sign that we are suffering from “Auto-Immune Church Syndrome.”

The medical definition of autoimmunity, one of the least-understood of human pathologies, is when the body mistakes perfectly healthy cells, tissues, or organs of the body for pathogenic threats, causing the body’s immune system to attacked the perceived “invaders,” and either kill them and/or expel them. Examples include, Chrone’s disease, Type I diabetes, multiple sclerosis, and rheumatoid arthritis.

Auto-Immune Church Syndrome happens when a church has been sick for so long that its begins to think of its condition as normal, simply because it has become the status quo: one that feels like homeostasis, even though it is really an almost imperceptibly slow slide into death. When agents of healthy change come into an autoimmune church, they are perceived (correctly) as a threat to things as they are, which activates the church’s immune system, which removes those threats from the body.

So my first fear is that the body that is the Episcopal Church will (rightly) view the enabling resolutions sponsored by the Episcopal Resurrection movement as a threat to things as they are and eliminate them: voting them down before they the can do any “damage” to current, longstanding yet not quite healthy, status quo.

My second fear is that the Episcopal Resurrection resolutions will pass but the church’s antibodies, now alerted to the perceived invaders, will weaken them (with “to the extent possible” language) in the process of passing them, or find ways to co-opt them after the fact. To some degree, this is what happened with the Taskforce for Reimagining the Episcopal Church (TREC), to the point that the final recommendations were not substantial nor specific enough to turn the Titanic away from the iceberg. And while these nine resolutions are a great start, they do not cover all the things that currently hold the people of the church back from taking the risks necessary for the church to move from death into life.

One example: the Title IV disciplinary process badly needs amending. The categories of offenses (e.g., “Conduct unbecoming a clergy”) and complainants (e.g., family members of alleged victims) are big enough to drive a Mack truck through. The conditions of the investigation (e.g., the accused is sworn to confidentiality but the accuser is not) are way out of balance. And there is no easy way to identify and dispense with specious accusations, and no provision for penalizing those who make specious accusations. Which means that those of us who push boundaries, experiment, and explore new ways of doing and being church are much more likely to find ourselves dealing with specious charges of “conduct unbecoming” than those who place a premium on playing it safe and offending no one. I can tell you from personal experience that it can be a huge distraction and enough to make on think twice about sticking out one’s neck.

Ultimately, changing structures, processes, and rules, while necessary steps, in themselves are never sufficient to make change. That will require thousands of leaders – and their people – opening their hearts to change. As I and others have said elsewhere before the church can experience resurrection, there is much that we must let die.

Still, for all it’s faults, I love this church, and I pray for its resurrection…

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A Letter to the Church

How baffling you are, oh Church,

and yet how I love you!

How you have made me suffer,

and yet how much I owe you!

I would like to see you destroyed,

and yet I need your presence.

You have given me so much scandal

and yet you have made me understand what sanctity is.

I have seen nothing in the world

more devoted to obscurity, more compromised, more false,

and yet I have touched nothing

more pure, more generous, more beautiful.

How often I have wanted to shut the doors of my soul in your face,

and how often I have prayed to die in the safety of your arms.

No, I cannot free myself from you,

because I am you, though not completely.

And besides, where would I go?

Would I establish another?

I would not be able to establish it without the same faults,

for they are the same faults I carry in me.

And if I did establish another,

it would be my Church, not the Church of Christ.

And I am old enough to know

that I am no better than anyone else.

– by Carlo Carreto, from The God Who Comes

Related articles

• Episcopal Resurrection – a series of posts on a new movement

Pentecost: When Hurry Hung Suspended & Time Stood Still

“God did not invent hurry”
– an old Russian proverb

I’ve always thought it ironic that the origin of the proverb “God did not event hurry” was Russian. Actually, the Finnish claim the proverb, too, so maybe the Russians stole it for the express purpose of pun-ishing the Finns. But whatever the provenance of the proverb, I believe it brings us great wisdom just in time for Pentecost.

Pentecost is the Sunday on which we celebrate birth of the Church: when we remember the day on which the Holy Spirit fell upon the disciples who had gathered in Jerusalem, as Jesus had promised she would, when he expressly told him to go there and wait.  Pentecost is also the name of the Jewish holy day on which they had gathered and on which the Holy Spirit made her promised appearance.

Some crazy things happened on that day, the way the disciples describe it: a mighty wind, doves descending, tongues of fire on people’s heads, hearing and understanding people of other tongues like they were speaking your own language. I’ve seen it depicted so many different ways in so many different icons and illustrations. But one icon caught my attention and hasn’t yet let go. Not only did it show the disciples with fire erupting from the top of their heads, but also depicted them suspended in mid-air, with their toes inches above the floor. It was as if God had lifted them up into a timeless eternity, in which time – and with it the busy-ness of the world around them – came to a halt. For a few-second-long eternity…they were in God’s time.

What would I give for that experience? What would you give? If anything, it seems like time today is running in the opposite direction: faster and faster and faster, until it leaves us feeling stretched so thin, that we feel like we are being drawn into a black hole of busy-ness. We, our friends, our spouses, and our families are so over-scheduled that we seem to be playing tag-team with ourselves, with requests for new dates and times coming at us so fast that half of them don’t even make it to our calendars, with tidal waves of emails and Facebook notifications and Tweets coming at us so fast that sometimes we just seem to sink beneath them until we come up gasping for breath and finding out that the vast majority were requests for your time and attention that have been “overtaken by events.”

It used to be that we could schedule a church social or educational event mid-week and people would actually come. Now, with extracurricular demands on our time – and especially our children’s time – we can’t even count on people being free for church on Sunday mornings. We keep getting the message from the culture around us that unless we get our children into the right soccer, swim, drama, or T-Ball club by age three, we can throw away any thought of them attending any decent college someday. We feel like we are being driven before gale force winds that we can never get ahead of.

I’m not sure what the solution is. People don’t even have the time to read all their emails (and yes, I know we in the church often contribute to that flood), and even when they do read them, don’t have the time to respond to them, let alone transfer the church event dates to which they refer (events from which we or our children could benefit and which we would really like to attend) onto their calendars. Maybe it’s a call for us to be more of intentional and discerning in our choosing. Maybe we have to totally re-think the way we schedule church. Maybe we just have to wait a while until God brings us an answer.

Meanwhile, I invite you to claim next Sunday (May 24) as a time of timelessness.

A Jewish-Christian marriage ceremony, a Washingtonian article, and a Reflection on Modern Culture

The Rev. Ken Howard, a Jewish Christian and an Episcopal priest, blesses Elena Taube (another Jewish Christian) and Paul Bailey under an improvised huppah at the Washington National Cathedral.

By Ken Howard

Late last year, I performed a Jewish-Christian marriage ceremony at the Washington National Cathedral (that’s me in the kippah and tallit on the right – I’m a Jewish Christian myself). Elena Taube and Paul Bailey, the prospective bride and groom, were a delightful couple. And the service was great fun (especially the part where I snuck a huppah into the Cathedral, disguised as my tallit… Yep, we bad).

---

Editor’s Note:
In response to those who have asked the difference
between the terms “Jewish Christian” and “Messianic Jew,”
the meanings are roughly equivalent:
a Jewish follower of Jesus Christ (Hebrew: Y’shua ha-Mashiach),
who believes that following Jesus as the Messiah (or Christ)
does not negate his Jewishness.
My preference for the term Jewish Christian
has more to do with clarity than meaning.
More on this topic is available in my two books,
Paradoxy:
Creating Christian Community Beyond Us and Them
and
Excommunicating the Faithful:
Jewish Christianity in the Early Church.

---

Earlier this week, Washingtonian Magazine published pictures of the wedding in its “Real Weddings” section. I thought it was great fun seeing the pictures in print. As usual, I posted them on Facebook, where a colleague observed an interesting omission. See if you can pick find it in the list below, copied directly from the original article…

Ceremony: Washington National Cathedral

Cocktail Party Venue: National Cathedral School

Reception Venue: The Mayflower Renaissance Washington, DC Hotel

Photographer: Susie & Becky Photography

Bride’s Gown: Custom designed

Groom’s Tux: Calvin Klein

Hair: Get Gorgeous Hair & Makeup By Zia

Makeup: Pakito Internacional

Event Coordinator: Washington National Cathedral, Schelle Be Done, The Mayflower Renaissance Washington, DC Hotel

Cake: Fluffy Thoughts Cakes

Florist: Washington National Cathedral, Blanca Zelaya, and Bergeron’s Florist

Caterers: Flik International and The Mayflower Renaissance Washington, DC Hotel

Transportation: ABC Limo Service

Videographer: Michael Brazda Films

Music/Entertainment: Washington National Cathedral organist, Violin Dreams, and Night & Day

Did you find it?

Bingo! 

Yup! The list included the names of everyone involved in preparing for and carrying out the event, right down to the person who baked the wedding cake (which was beautiful and quite tasty, I must say), with one omission: the officiant who presided over the ceremony…me.

Now, I really don’t crave publicity. What I enjoy is the pre-marital work with the couple, and helping them make choices about which prayers and readings from Scripture best express the their thoughts, prayers, and dreams about their marriage and their future life together as a couple. Seeing the pictures in the Washingtonian was fun, but for me they were the “icing on the cake,” as it were, rather than the main course.

But as I reflected on it, I did think my colleague had a point: not about about the ceremony (which was a profound and joyful event), nor about the couple (Elena and Paul were involved with me in the preparing themselves and the ceremony for the better part of a year), but about the culture. In modern culture, faith is relegated to an afterthought, if thought about at all. Nowhere is this more evident than in modern weddings, where the officiant and the church are often booked last, after the Caribbean island honeymoon reservations and the cruise ship. In that context, it makes a certain upside-down sense, doesn’t it? I mean, who remembers the name of the captain of the cruise ship, right?

It’s also become more and more evident during the marriage ceremony itself. I’ve had wedding coordinators attempt to advise me on which stole I should wear (so as not to clash with the bridal gown). I’ve had photographers kneel in the aisle, stopping the procession, just to get a picture-perfect “here comes the bride photo” and try (unsuccessfully) to step behind me during the vows in an attempt to get an “over-the-shoulder” (my shoulder) shot of the bride and groom exchanging rings [I banished him from working in my church again]. I’ve even had a wedding in which the bride’s mom set up not one, but two video cameras to capture the blessed day “for posterity,” which made the shy bride so anxious that when she walked down the aisle, as she passed her mom, she projectile vomited and fainted (to this day, the couple still watches the video and laughs, having defeated Momzilla’s plans). My point is that, as the culture has shifted, some weddings have developed the “who’s she wearing” feel of the red carpet at the Academy Awards, than a sacramental act.

Oddly, while separation of Church and State is an issue that provokes controversy in almost every other area of public life, weddings seem to be the one public act that gets a pass. Yet over the 20 years I have been ordained I have become more and more theologically uncomfortable with acting as an “agent of the state,” in performing marriages: a role I cannot play in any other area. Another reason my quasi-public official role discomforts me is that is it obscures what for me is the most important role I play in the ceremony: pronouncing God’s blessing upon the marriage. And more importantly, it obscures the real role the couple play in the marriage. Theologically, neither I nor the State perform the sacrament of marriage. Rather, the couple themselves perform the sacrament with their vows.

That’s why more and more, I am suggesting that the couple first go get married at the Justice of the Peace, then come to the church for what we call “the blessing of a civil marriage.” Because then the couple know what real reason they are coming to the Church to receive: the blessing of God and the prayers of their community of faith.

Related articles

• Real Wedding: Elena Taube and Paul Bailey
• Israeli Media Takes a Positive Look at Messianic Jews

An Experiment in Year Round Stewardship

By Ken Howard, part of the Vestry Papers issue on Sharing Our Gifts (September 2014)

“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over,
and expecting different results.”
Albert Einstein

St. Nicholas’ year-round stewardship experiment has centered on quarterly ‘town hall’ meetings.

Like many – if not most – Episcopal parishes, my congregation has never been completely satisfied with our stewardship program. Despite frequent, intentional experimentation with a variety of approaches since our founding in 1995, we have continued to feel a “disconnect” between the way we describe stewardship and the way we facilitate decisions about giving.

We talk about stewardship as a lifelong, year-round process of thoughtful and prayerful individual and congregational discernment, based on our responsibility to God and our responsibility to each other (our neighbor in the context of the congregation). Yet in practice our programmatic efforts to provide stewardship education and facilitate stewardship discernment and decisions have been limited almost entirely to a single, intensive campaign conducted in the fall of each year. Despite earnest desires and repeated plans, a truly year-round steward program never seemed to materialize.

Reflecting on this conundrum, we realized that no matter how we adjusted the content, process, timing, or title of this annual giving campaign (we no longer call it a pledge drive), this campaign-centered approach to stewardship has consistently produced effects inconsistent with our intentions. It reduced the congregation’s sense of responsibility and sense of stewardship as a way of life by reducing their opportunities to discuss, discern, and decide about stewardship practice. It increased the anxiety of parish leadership about the financial health of the congregation by reducing their opportunities to dialogue with the congregation regarding the congregation’s finances (and this anxiety bleeds back out into the congregation). It made our best efforts to make stewardship “not all about money” seem like make believe, and our most heartfelt theological explanations of stewardship sound like a cover story for getting into peoples’ wallets. And by the time the campaign was “put to bed” each year, there remained neither the energy nor the appetite for building a year-round program on top of it.

Finally, after asking “Why?” enough times, we came to see the “elephant in the room.” The problem was the campaign-based stewardship model itself: as long as the annual giving campaign lived, a truly year-round stewardship program would not be born. So we decided it was time to stop doing what wasn’t working. Taking a decision that was simultaneously exciting and scary, our vestry, with the support of our finance committee, voted to kill our annual giving campaign.

“And now for something completely different.”
Monty Python

Can you study the Bible by reading the Qur’an?

In Genesis…

Illustration by Owen Jones from “The History of Joseph and His Brethren” (Day & Son, 1869). Scanned and archived at http://www.OldBookArt.com where it was marked as Public Domain. Text from Book: Now Israel loved Joseph more than all his children, because he was the son of his old age, and he made him a coat of many colours. Genesis, C.XXXVII. V. 3.

Joseph is Jacob’s youngest son to his fourth baby-mama Rachel, who followed Leah, Bilhah, and Zilpah…

…got to love that biblical and traditional view of marriage!

Parents aren’t supposed to have favorites, but Jacob really adores Joseph and makes him a fabulous coat. There seems to be a pattern of spoiled, youngest child behavior from Joseph because he brags to his brothers about a dream he had wherein they were all working for him! To top his own dream, Joseph has another where not only do his older brothers bow to him, but also the sun, the moon, and the stars.

Jacob tells Joseph to keep it down, but the damage is done. One day Jacob sends Joseph out into the fields to get his brothers, but upon seeing him prancing through the meadow in his Technicolor princess dress,[1] they plot to kill him.

Don’t worry, they don’t actually kill him, they just tear off his coat, sell him as a slave to some passersby, and pretend that a wild animal devoured him.

They’re not the greatest big brothers, nor are they very good sons; Jacob is totally destroyed by the news.

Why I Think the Word “Heretic” Should Take an Extended Vacation

by Ken Howard

 

Lord Sandwich: 

“I have heard frequent use of the words Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy: but I confess myself at a loss know precisely what they mean.”

Lord Warburton: 

“It’s very simple old chap. Orthodoxy is my doxy. Heterodoxy is anyone else’s doxy.”

 

An exchange between John Montagu, Earl of Sandwich, and William Warburton, Bishop of Gloucester, in the House of Lords in the mid-18^th century debates on the “Test Laws.”

 

I am writing today’s post to explain my thoughts to a long time friend and associate. Brad and I go way back. We share great respect and affection for one another despite the fact that sometimes it seems we agree on little beyond the acknowledgement that we are brothers in Christ.  I am writing to explain why I believe that the way many of my brothers and sisters in Christ are using the term “heretic” is not only wrong, but very injurious to the body of Christ.  I am not writing as a conservative Christian or a liberal Christian.  I reject those terms as a false dichotomy. For me, following Jesus Christ is enough.  And so in this post I do not speak for or against either “side,” but as one Christ-follower to another, and to any who want to listen in (and even comment) as fellow Christ-follower. I speak only for myself, and only to explain humbly what is at the heart of the matter for me, as my understanding of Scripture, the love of Christ, the guidance of the Holy Spirit, and the grace of God have led me thus far.

I should say at the outset that is topic of heresy is personal to me.  As a Jewish-Christian, I have had a great interest and have done a great deal of research on Jewish Christianity in the early Church, including an extensive research thesis on the topic during seminary. What I discovered in my research has shaped my thinking on orthodoxy and heresy ever since. From at least the 4^th Century on, my Jewish Christian forebears have borne the brunt of the organized Church’s misuse of the terms. Some, like the Nazarene Jewish Christians, were declared heretical at Nicaea and excommunicated as a group not long thereafter on the virulent anti-Jewish insistence of Emperor Constantine. During the Spanish Inquisition, hundreds, if not thousands, of Jewish Christian “Conversos” were labeled as heretics, interrogated/tortured, and executed because the Church didn’t trust their conversions. Even in my seminary days, a respected professor of liturgics argued that combining Jewish and Christian worship elements was “heterodox.” To which I replied, “Christ our Passover?”

So what follows, is my argument against the use of the term, “heretic.”

A Prayer for Fathers

 

By Ken Howard

Our Father in heaven,
we thank you for our earthly fathers,
and for all who have been as fathers to us,
for all they mean or have meant to us,
and for what our fathers are meant to give us:
strength when we need comforting,
tenderness when we are wounded,
patience when we’re difficult,
wisdom when we can’t see the way,
and love at all times,
so that, through them, we get a glimpse
of how you, our heavenly Father, care about us.

 

Loving God,
bless with your fatherly love
those for whom this day is bittersweet:
those whose fathers have died or who have never known their fathers,
those fathers who have lost children but still treasure them in their hearts,
those who desired to have children of their own to treasure but could not,
those whose relationship with their children or their fathers is difficult,
those who lacked good fatherly role models, yet work to become good fathers,
those who recognize their shortcomings as fathers and seek to make amends,
those who seek to be a presence in their children’s lives despite broken marriages.
Strengthen them by your love that they may become
the loving, caring persons they are meant to be,
through Christ our Lord.

Amen.

 

Related articles

• The Message: A Prayer for Fathers

Is the Church Dying? Or Not? (and the answer is…)

By the Rev. Ken Howard

this article was published on Episcopal Church Foundation’s Vital Posts blog on 6/11/14

The church blogosphere is heating up.  The topic is death… the death of the Church.  Or to be more accurate, the issue is a question:  “Is the Church dying? Or not?”

Of course, everyone has an opinion (including me), and as a colleague of mine once said, “not a thought goes unpublished.”  I must have read a half-dozen blog posts (at least) on the topic in the last several weeks alone…even tossed in a couple of my own. Opinions run the gamut. Some of my friends say, “Yes.” Some of my friends say, “No.” Some of my friends say, “Maybe so.”

The latest one I read, moments ago, by the Rev. Jason Cox of St. Columba’s, D.C., was entitled, “The Church Isn’t Dying, Christendom Is.”  He makes some good points, among them that (a) we are way too anxious about this “dying church” business and (b) good riddance to Christendom, which never was about the kingdom of God anyway but rather about the institutional Church getting into bed with the Powers That Be.

I come down a bit differently on this. (I know…you wouldn’t have it any other way.)

As usual, in large part I agree with my friends…on both sides. I say “The Church is ALWAYS Dying” and “The Church will NEVER die.”

Here are a few facts:

• Fact:  Churches die. About 3,500 churches die each year in the U.S. alone. If it wasn’t for the 4,000 new churches that are born each year, we’d be in deep trouble.
• Fact:  Denominations die. Actually, they split and the two parts die to each other. Worldwide, such schisms are creating new denominations faster than the rate at which we baptize new Christians.
• Fact:  Ways of doing church die. Christendom is dead. It’s just that we haven’t gotten around to burying it, because sometimes we wish we still had that kind of power and influence.
• Fact:  Change is death. Yes, the Church is changing, but change often feels like death…because it is death: the death of a way of life. That’s why change is so hard:  it reminds us of our mortality.
• Fact:  Some churches would rather die than change. Many of the churches that have closed didn’t have to die. They might have lived on if they had been able to adapt to their changing context, but they could not bring themselves to face that kind of change.
• Fact: Some churches die but pretend to be alive. Often, this happens because they are cursed with wealth. But churches do not live by endowments alone, but by hearing and acting on the word of God.

And here are a few truths:

• Truth: Death is not failure (and failure is not death).  Unfortunately, both tend to be taboos in the institutional church:  uncomfortable topics about which about which we do not speak, perhaps because we view them with guilt or shame. But closing a church can be a healthy and even a courageous thing to do, if done well. No dishonor in serving a life worth celebrating, then dying. Meanwhile, failure can be a source of great learning and even a road to great success, but only if we talk about it. And if we avoid failure as way of life, we also avoid taking the risks that might lead us to greater life. To put a different spin on Apollo 13, “Failure is not an option…It’s a prerequisite.”
• Truth:  Death is nothing to be afraid of.  If the Church believes its own teaching that death is the gate to eternal life, what do we as congregations and leaders of congregations have to fear? We are in the death-and-resurrection business for God’s sake (literally). Death ought to hold no power over our God-gifted capacity to live.
• Truth:  Churches may die but the Church cannot die.  It is the love of Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit that gives life to the Church.  Our individual churches are temporal communities but the Body of Christ is eternal.  It is not the job of churches not to die…only to be faithful.

So, is the Church dying?  Or not?

The answer, of course, is “Yes.”

But the real question is, “How can we help our churches continually die in such a way as to be continually reborn?”

Related Articles

• Adapt or Die in ECF Vital Parishes by Ken Howard
• Are You Leading a Zombie Parish? in Paradoxical Thoughts by Ken Howard
• The Church is (Not) Dying in digitaljasonevens by Jason Evans
• The Church Isn’t Dying, Christendom Is in EDOW Blog by Jason Cox
• The Church must die so Christianity can thrive in Telling Secrets by Elizabeth Kaeton
• The State of the Church in America: Hint: It’s Not Dying in Christianity Today by Ed Setzer
• Statistics Don’t Tell the Whole Story When It Comes to Church Attendance in ChurchLeaders by Staff Writer
• What Needs to Die in the Church in DirtySexyMinistry by Laurie Brock
• Why Nobody Wants to Go to Church Anymore in The Huffington Post by Steve McSwain

Related Books

• Autopsy of a Deceased Church: 12 Ways to Keep Yours Alive by Thom S. Rainer
• The Death of Christian Culture by John Senior
• Death of the Church by Mike Regele
• Paradoxy: Creating Christian Community Beyond Us and Them by Ken Howard
• Why Nobody Wants to Go to Church Anymore by Thom & Joni Schultz

Related articles

• Is ‘Christian Europe’ a thing of the past?
• Book Review: Thom S. Rainer, Autopsy of a Deceased Church
• The Nature and Future of Protestantism
• The Church Is Bigger Than Your Church
• Today’s Church: Dying a Slow Death

Book Review: “Healing the Divide: Recovering Christianity’s Mystic Roots” (Amos Smith)

Several months ago, in one of those occasions of serendipity, I made Amos Smith’s acquaintance via social media (first LinkedIn, then Facebook). We discovered, almost by accident, that we shared a common interest in power of the Paradox of Jesus, as articulated by Christ followers in the early Church, to heal the divide between various versions of conservative and liberal Christianity. While I plumbed the depths of the early Pauline and Nazarene Jesus movements, Amos mined the riches of the Alexandrian mystics.

Smith has the heart of a pastor, the mind of a mystic, and the passion of an evangelist and it shows in his writing. He writes in a jargon-less style that is at the same time understandable to average lay person and satisfying for the deepest diving theologian. He exposes both the dualistic thinking of modern day fundamentalism and the wishy-washy, all-religions-are-the-same thinking of New Age spirituality and shows how it may be possible to find a common place to stand by understanding and appreciating the paradox inherent in the incarnation of Jesus Christ.

Healing the Divide is not a “quick read.” You need to need to allow time to contemplate the questions and issues Smith raises. It would be quite a productive study for books study and discussion group, with reflection question built into the text. Either way, it’s one of those books that the more time you spend with it, the more depths it will reveal..

I strongly recommend it!

click here to order a copy of Healing the Divide

Ken Howard is the author of another book about paradox: “Paradoxy: Creating Christian Community Beyond Us and Them.”

Water Sources

By The Rev’d Curtis Farr

Easter 6A

When I visited Las Vegas for the first time last October, I stood on the strip and marveled at the awesomeness of Caesar’s Palace, the magnificence of the Venetian, and the size of everything in this bizarre metropolis of extravagance. I thought to myself, “This place is the embodiment of everything I am against—the excessive worship of wealth, sex, and reckless behavior. And yet, wow…there’s something wonderful about it all—ooo look! Fountains!

I imagine that the Apostle Paul feels this way as he wanders around Athens, gazing at the impressive architecture and at the abundance of golden statues of the posse of gods. Paul is distressed at the site of it, but a small part of him gets it and maybe even appreciates the grandiosity. Still, he’s on a mission to speak about the richness of life that God offers to all mortals—not just ones who live in spectacular settings or possess tremendous wealth or build statues to the gods of wind and rain and the kitchen sink. He’s on a mission to remind everyone that the things of our world are not the makings of abundant life; God is one in whom we “live and move and have our being.”

Where I think this conversation can go wrong is when Paul’s type of mission turns into inspiration for moralizing. Yes, a golden statue can be the object of one’s idolatry, and yes, the pursuit of ridiculous wealth can become one’s god, but so can the attempt to be obnoxiously moral or painfully superior.

It is a delicate balance to try and seek authentic relationship with God without turning our means of pursuit into the object of that relationship; as soon as we think we have found the way to God, we lose our way and forget that God is a parent to all of us.

To put it another way, I’ll borrow an analogy a mentor of mine uses; he uses it for evangelism, but I’m going to do a remix.

If we are fish, God is the water in which we live. God is not the water in one pond, one lake, or one ocean; God is the water. We find water where we find it—from the garden hose, the shower, or the creek near our house. But it is from a place of naiveté that anyone would imagine that God is only the water from the garden hose, only the water from the shower, or only the water from the creek by our house.

As we come across these new “sources of water” in churches or other communities, in liturgies, in the Bible, in knowledge or scientific discover, in solidarity movements, in politics, in personal relationships, in art, in nature, or in any number of things, it is helpful to remember that we can deepen our relationship with God in those things, but we can also tread into the shallow waters of idolatry quite quickly.

Authentic relationship with God is a lifelong process that probably extends beyond what we know life to be. Through all of the places and things with which we encounter and engage, God is present, and through those things God may be glorified, even in—ooo look! Fountains!

The Rev’d Curtis Farr is the assistant rector of St. James’s Episcopal Church in West Hartford, Connecticut. He offers reflections on the lectionary readings for the upcoming Sunday. His website is www.FatherFarr.com, and his Tumblr blog is www.BowingToMystery.com.