Daily Lesson for August 31, 2015

Today's daily lesson comes from Psalm 25 verses 6 and 7:

6 Remember your mercy, O Lord, and your steadfast love,
for they have been from of old.
7 Remember not the sins of my youth or my transgressions;
according to your steadfast love remember me,
for the sake of your goodness, O Lord!

And James 2 verse 13:

"For judgment is without mercy to one who has shown no mercy. Mercy triumphs over judgment."

I have always liked the story of what the archbishop said while sitting for his official portrait.  The artist, trying to make him comfortable, told the archbishop, "Do not worry; I shall treat you justly."  "Oh please do not treat me justly," the archbishop said, "at my age I would much prefer mercy over justice."

In the end, we shall all desire to be treated mercifully rather than justly.  And our plea is the same as that of the psalmist's, that God would remember us not as we have been or are or will be, but rather as He is -- that God would remember us, not according to our deeds, but rather according to His steadfast love and mercy.

St. James wrote, "Mercy triumphs over judgement."

Thank the LORD.

Daily Lesson for August 28, 2015

Today's daily lesson comes from Mark chapter 14 verses 27-30:

27 And Jesus said to them, “You will all fall away, for it is written, ‘I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered.’ 28 But after I am raised up, I will go before you to Galilee.”29 Peter said to him, “Even though they all fall away, I will not.” 30 And Jesus said to him, “Truly, I tell you, this very night, before the rooster crows twice, you will deny me three times.”

Those who read these daily lessons often will know what a an impact my friend Ted had on my life and what loss for me was his passing earlier this year. He came into my life at just the right time. As the old Asian proverb has it, "When the student is ready the teacher will come."  Ted came with his wisdom just when I was ready to receive it.

Today's lesson reminds me of a literally life-changing moment I had with Ted. We were sharing together in a group and I was talking about a struggle I was having with trying to keep peace at church while at the same time trying to be faithful to Christ's teachings about things like poverty, wealth, and the sword.  Another person in the group asked how I would know whether or not I was selling out. I said I felt confident I wasn't going to sell out and compromise the principles of Jesus for the sake of keeping things pacific at church. Ted looked at me with a soul-piercing gaze and prophetic word, "Ryon, you will sell out.  You will compromise. You are not going to live up to the high calling of the Gospel."  Then he closed with the words -- a question -- which changed my life:

"So what?"

Those with ears to hear let them hear.

Daily Lesson for August 27, 2015

Today's daily lesson comes from Psalm 18 verses 25-26:

 With the merciful you show yourself merciful;
with the blameless man you show yourself blameless;
 with the purified you show yourself pure;
and with the crooked you make yourself seem tortuous.

It has been said that in the beginning God created humankind in His own image and likeness, and ever since humankind has been trying to return the favor.

That's a joke; but seriously, how is it that God can seem to become all things to all people?  Is God not the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow?  How can it be then that, as the psalmist says, God can be merciful to some and yet seem torturous to others?

My sense is that perhaps we don't so much make God in our likeness as we do receive Him according to our character.

I am thinking here of what Augustine said about Pharaoh.  How is it that, Augustine asked, that God could harden the heart of Pharaoh?  He answered by drawing a parallel to the sun. The sun melts wax and ice cream but it also dries mud and hardens clay.  How is this possible?  The answer lies in the character and makeup of that which feels the heat.

For some God is a warm and purifying comfort -- full of mercy.  But for others the very thought of God hardens the heart into rock hard bitterness and resentment.  When that happens it may say a lot more about their character and makeup than it does about God's.

Daily Lesson for August 26, 2015

Today's daily lesson comes from Mark chapter 14 verses 3 through 10:

3 And while he was at Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, as he was reclining at table, a woman came with an alabaster flask of ointment of pure nard, very costly, and she broke the flask and poured it over his head. 4 There were some who said to themselves indignantly, “Why was the ointment wasted like that? 5 For this ointment could have been sold for more than three hundred denarii and given to the poor.” And they scolded her. 6 But Jesus said, “Leave her alone. Why do you trouble her? She has done a beautiful thing to me. 7 For you always have the poor with you, and whenever you want, you can do good for them. But you will not always have me. 8 She has done what she could; she has anointed my body beforehand for burial. 9 And truly, I say to you, wherever the gospel is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in memory of her.”
10 Then Judas Iscariot, who was one of the twelve, went to the chief priests in order to betray him to them.

Yesterday I got into a discussion with some friends about the differences between charity and justice, prompted by a book one of us was reading that called into question whether much of the work the church does is of any real use or whether it's just a sort of pablum that makes do-gooders feel even gooder, but doesn't really do anything to solve the actual issues.

As we were talking I remembered some of the criticism that was levied against Mother Teresa for her having cared much for the dying poor in the streets of Calcutta, but not having done much to change the actual situation. It was a criticism with some truth in it I knew, yet still it didn't quite sit right.

Now Jesus' words, spoken about another woman who was criticized for what she did for him just before his own death, come with moral clarity and force: "She has done what she could."

Mother Teresa herself said, "Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love."  The woman who anointed Jesus did not change the fact that Jesus was going to die, but she did what she could; she brought dignity to his death with her small act of great love.

And for that, Jesus said, she was to be remembered -- and not criticized.

Daily Lesson for August 25, 2015

Today's daily lesson comes from Mark chapter 13 verses 32-37:

32 “But concerning that day or that hour, no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. 33 Be on guard, keep awake. For you do not know when the time will come. 34 It is like a man going on a journey, when he leaves home and puts his servants in charge, each with his work, and commands the doorkeeper to stay awake. 35 Therefore stay awake—for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or when the rooster crows, or in the morning—36 lest he come suddenly and find you asleep. 37 And what I say to you I say to all: Stay awake.”

No one knows the day or the time, not the angels, nor even the Son, but only the Father -- and also people trying to sell books.

Okay, that was a little snarky; but it is exasperating that books keep being written about the imminence of the end of the world and the anti-Christ being some possibly identifiable oil magnate in Russia.

This is not what Jesus meant when he said, "Stay awake."

Yes, we are to be awake, and vigilantly watching  for the coming of the Son of Man on the clouds -- in other words, Jesus' metaphorical description for the end of this age and the beginning of the next.  But we are not to be out speculating as to some date or time or precipitating event. That is a waste of time at best and at worst can lead millions astray.  Jesus said, when you see the fig tree get tender and the leaves bloom you know summer is present -- but until then there's no use trying to wish it any closer. Summer is going happen when it happens and no sooner; that's what 5 years of living in Vermont taught me anyway.

Until the final day comes, we need to keep short accounts, say, "I love you," a lot, and don't say or do things or not say or not do things we'll regret. We're to try to live like each day may be our last -- because nobody knows; I mean nobody.

Daily Lesson for Momday, August 24, 2015

Today's daily lesson comes from Acts chapter 26 verses 12-15:

12 "In this connection I journeyed to Damascus with the authority and commission of the chief priests. 13 At midday, O king, I saw on the way a light from heaven, brighter than the sun, that shone around me and those who journeyed with me. 14 And when we had all fallen to the ground, I heard a voice saying to me in the Hebrew language, ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? It is hard for you to kick against the goads.’ 15 And I said, ‘Who are you, Lord?’ And the Lord said, ‘I am Jesus whom you are persecuting."

When we think of Paul's Damascus Road experience we usually think of it only in relation to his conversion to being a follower of Christ; what we often miss, however, is that incredible moment was also the changing of his mind.  It was the day that the "Jew of Jew" Paul, intent on shutting down "the Way" for its purported apostasy, would soon be bringing its good news to the Gentiles.

Of course this was unfathomable to Paul before it happened.  There was no way in the world this could ever be the case. He would resist it with all his might.  But then Jesus spoke: "It is hard for you to kick against the goads."  A stubborn mule will resist prodding (goading) by kicking back.  This was an old farm saying, but even a city boy like Paul knew what it meant. Resistance was going to only bring about more pain.

There are things we accept. There are things we kick against. And there are things we have to have a Damascus Road experience to change our minds about.

But in the end, God gets us to where He wants us to go.

Daily Lesson for August 21, 2015

Today's daily lesson comes from Mark chapter 12 verses 41 through 44:

41 And he sat down opposite the treasury and watched the people putting money into the offering box. Many rich people put in large sums. 42 And a poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which make a penny. 43 And he called his disciples to him and said to them, “Truly, I say to you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the offering box. 44 For they all contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.”

Sometime back a very wealthy man wrote an additional $10,000 check at the end of the year over and above his already substantial pledge.

When I thanked him he told me that has he not given that additional $10,000 he would have ended up in a higher tax bracket and owed Uncle Sam at least that much more. 

"The LORD knows I didn't really give another $10,000 to the church and I want you to know it also."

That's what I call a rich man with integrity.

Daily Lesson for August 20, 2015

Today's daily lesson comes from Mark chapter 12 verses 28 through 31:

28 And one of the scribes came up and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, asked him, “Which commandment is the most important of all?” 29 Jesus answered, “The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 30 And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ 31 The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”

When asked for the single greatest commandment Jesus gave two. Paraphrasing the law and combining two separate commands Jesus said, "Love God and love your neighbor."  In other words, we cannot do the former without doing the latter.  Love must be extended horizontally as well as vertically.

But let us not miss something else very important here. Quoting the book of Leviticus, Jesus said we are to love our neighbor -- as ourselves.  Implied here is a third commandment -- that we love ourselves, that we truly and deeply fall in love with ourselves, and that we learn to do so rightly.

But isn't the love of self our whole problem?  Don't we need to quit loving ourselves and our own selfish ways?  The medieval monk St Bernard of Clairvaux is helpful here. He talked about there being Four Loves. And a good question to end on is which of his Four Loves are you loving with:

1.  The love of self for self sake

2.  The love of God for self sake

3. The love of God for God's sake

4. The love of self for God's sake

Far be it from me to presume to add to the saints, but according to the lesson today perhaps there ought also have been a fifth love:

5. The love of neighbor for neighbor's sake, for God's sake, and for self sake.

That is indeed the greatest commandment - what I would call the summa bonum of Love.

It's good to be back home friends.  

British Evasion #13 -- A Final Post

British Evasion #13 -- Final Reflection

This morning I left my hotel on Grace Church Street and began the first hundred-or-so yard leg of my 4,000 mile journey back stateside. On the way to the station I took a slight detour to have one final look at St Mary Woolnoth Church where John Newton, the author of the hymn Amazing Grace, was pastor three centuries ago.  The doors were just about to be opened to the communicants for morning prayer.  I looked a last time at the wind-buffeted, and now-exhausted-sooted ship on the back of the church, an obvious reference to the many years Newton served as a seafaring captain before taking Anglican orders.  I then glanced down the tiny back alley street of Lombard toward the church clock immortalized in Eliot's The Waste Land.

Upon my departure for England three weeks ago, I asked everyone that they pray I would eat and drink deeply of this experience and that my soul would find spiritual sustenance in the places I would visit and the people I would meet. I give thanks for all the prayers and am pleased they were indeed answered.  My soul is greater for having been on this journey, first together with Irie and later alone, experiencing the history of so many holy places, and having reflected on what it means to be human with so many deep and faithful Christians from around the world.  It was a moveable feast, these past weeks, and I am profoundly grateful for having taken part.

Now I am back at St Mary's, where the feast began, and now also ends. The clock dings.  It is not yet nine as in Eliot's poem; but it is time to go home.

I make my way down to Monument station and am immediately hit with the reality that the last three weeks have not been a feast for all.  I pass by a homeless man still asleep in the underground station. He is cradled in the fetal position inside a sleeping bag with his thumb in his mouth. The homeless have been one of the constant sights I have seen everywhere I have been on this trip.  Their presence has been a constant reminder of the great human need that is always among us; and all along the way of this trip I have been an observer of how they are treated and cared for both by church and society.  This morning, passersby gently drop coins into a folded navy blank set out in front of him.  Someone has offered up a half dozen donuts. In this dimly lit London tunnel, all judgement has ceased.  What is offered before this man -- before this image of God -- is pure human compassion.

I come to the turnstile entrance which leads down into the tube and ask the attendant how I might pay for a single ride to Heathrow with cash rather than credit. She tells me the machine is broken but I can go ahead and get on the train and take it to the terminus and tell the attendant the machine was broken. "They will let you pay there -- or just pass for free."  I am uncertain about this idea knowing that it sounds at best technically illegal; but after a moment's hesitation I decide to risk it because I figure in the end it will be worth writing about either way -- not the least if I am apprehended by a British bobby.  This then sends me into a reflection about all that it has meant for me to write and share my experience abroad with friends back home these last few weeks.

The last Sunday I was at home the lectionary reading was from Mark 6 where Jesus, after an intense season of ministry by his disciples, tells them to "Come away and rest awhile." They are tired and worn and have had no leisure even to eat for themselves the Scripture says.  So they get into their own wind-worn vessel and head across the Sea of Galilee in search of respite.  I told the congregation this really was a coincidence and I was not just cherry picking scripture to justify a getaway across the pond.  I also begged them not to do what the crowd of 5,000 did in the story -- hurrying around the lake to meet Jesus and the disciples when they came ashore for their vacation.  "If you're there waiting for us at the gate when we touch down in London," I told one guy friend from church, "Irie is going to kill you."

But in ways that could not have imagined or perhaps welcomed and which definitely would not have even been possible just a few years ago, the congregation has been here in England with me the whole time -- through the web. Just a couple of days before I left a friend asked me if I was going to be blogging during the trip. I told him I didn't know but was thinking about it. "You should," he said, "because people will like that.  And it'll be good." 

And with that the people had run around the pond to meet us.

If someone had told me that I would write 13 posts about my trip, some of them multiple in parts, and many of them over 10 paragraphs in length I am pretty sure I would have responded that in spite of what my friend said it wouldn't be good.  I was going away, to be apart and rest awhile and the idea that I would be writing this much and having friends encourage me to write more sounds on the face of it far from the whole idea of a sabbatical.  

Yet during the course of the trip I kept thinking of what happened in the story and what Jesus told his disciples when they came ashore and saw 5,000 hungry people in need of their daily bread. "Give them something to eat," he said.  I kept thinking throughout the trip that those words were for me.  And I did my best to keep writing and keep giving something to eat to all those who had come across the pond with me.  And in a mysterious and counter-intuitive way I am not tired at all but in fact deeply rested, and what I had to give not diminished but multiplied, and my soul not hungry but deeply satisfied.

Everything became clear for me while preparing for one of my Oxford classes on Augustine and reading his book On Christian Teaching. In it, Augustine begins with a reflection on the feeding of the 5,000 and its parallel to the process of his writing. He says that he is beginning the work with a word inside him which, but knowing he does not yet have the whole book in mind.  For that, he says, he leaves it to God to provide, likening it to the fish and loaves Jesus provided to the multitude by the Sea.  Augustine says he has only enough to begin to write with, but trusts that in the end it will be enough to end with also -- and even more.  He says this because he believes that in the miracle of God's economy there is always enough of that which is meant to be shared.

My train finally reaches its destination at Heathrow.  I go up the steps and discover one of the gates has been opened and I walk through without paying anything. There is no British bobbie in sight. I have saved £15, which I will use to purchase a few additional gifts for friends back home. 

It is good to receive, I think to myself, and as our Lord said even better to give.  But above all it seems best to both receive and give. This trip, this moveable feast, has definitely been both.

And Jesus took the fish and the bread and he blessed them and he broke them and he gave them to the disciples to give to the multitude.  All were satisfied.  And after it was all said and done and finally time to go home, there were 12 basketsfull leftover.

British Evasion, #12, August, 16, 2015

British Evasion #12

One of the profound joys of these last weeks has been the experience of saints past through the places they inhabited. There is a holiness to these encounters.  Deep calls out to deep as we walk the cobblestone paths they walked and kneel in the wooden pews where they prayed.  Here, the secular becomes sacred and an old sandstone church becomes the site for the mysterious communion of saints.

Saint is a loaded term. Usually when we hear saint we think of those who have died and then been canonized as one truly a saint now in heaven. And I definitely do not mean anything less than that.  But the word saint most originally included all those in the faith together -- living and dead.  The communion of saints is the fellowship we share together which has the power to transcend both space and time.  Here is what Celtic spirituality calls "thin places" -- the sacred site where heaven draws near to earth.

Christ Church, Oxford is a thin place for me -- a place of encounter with the great cloud of witnesses. Here I walk the same stone path John Wesley and William Penn walked as students. I see the after-effects of their weight and the weight of a whole host of others bearing down in certain places, their footsteps quite literally imprinting themselves, sinking even, into worn and weathered stone.  It is a metaphor for what they have all together done to lay their collective mark on the future.

But it is another former student of Christ Church that I have felt most deeply connected to here, one of my great heroes of the faith from the last century -- Trevor Huddleston.

The son of a diplomat, Huddleston was a student here in the 1930s when he watched a mass of marchers -- mostly miners, and dock workers, and other poor, working class people -- make their way through Oxford on the way from South Wales to Westminster.  It was definitive moment for Huddleston, marking a movement away from a world of diplomacy and ivory towers and toward the poor of the earth.  Moved by what he saw, the young Huddleston decided to devote his life to making a difference in the conditions of the world -- which he indeed did.

Upon graduation from Christ Church, Huddleston began the path toward ordination in the Anglican Church and then became a monk within a special order called the Community of the Resurrection. In 1946 the community sent him to Sophiatown, one of the poor, black slums of South Africa, and the place where he would leave his own most indelible footprint.

The poverty and prejudice Huddleston saw in South Africa were at once sobering and also galvanizing. Soon he took up the cause as one of just a few white allies of the black community, speaking out against the rising Apartheid regime and helping to organize against it. The level of Huddleston's political activism was unusual for an Anglican monk and subversive to the powers that were. After 13 years in South Africa the Community of the Resurrection decided Huddleston had gone far enough, and called him back to England for fear he was causing too much trouble.  

But Huddleston's political impact on South Africa had just begun.  After his return to England, he published a book on the injustices he witnessed in South Africa titled Naught for Your Comfort, which landed him on the cover of Life magazine and brought awareness of the problem of Apartheid to millions.  Even as he rose to the rank of bishop and then ultimately Archbishop in the church, Huddleston continued as the most public face of the anti-Aparthied movement in Britain and a persistent gadfly to worldwide leaders and businesses who wished to turn a blind eye to what was happening in South Africa.

To get a sense of just how great Huddleston's contribution Was to the anti-Apartheid movement one only has to read what Nelson Mandela said about him upon Huddleston's death:  "No white person has done more for South Africa than Trevor Huddleston."

Knowing that here in Oxford is where Huddleston first received his call makes it a place not only of study but also of pilgrimage for me. Huddleston is one of the saints I have set before me as a paradigm of ministry.  He was both a pastor and a social reformer, priestly and prophetic -- someone who made a difference in both the lives of individuals and also society as a whole.

There is an image of Huddleston's ministry that speaks profoundly of the kind of priest he was.  It comes from a black South African who was in Huddleston's parish as a child. He said any day Huddleston might be playing in the streets with a gaggle of poor children from the village in the morning, and then in the afternoon receive a visit from a most important dignitary or government official. This is, to me, a picture of ministry in the first order.

That same man who was in Huddleston's pariah also speaks of two other things about His former priest. The first is his remembrance of Huddleston coming a great distance to make weekly hospital visits when the boy was sick with tuberculosis for a year. The other is his memory from only the age of 7 or 8 when he was walking down the street with his mother, a domestic worker, and the two saw Huddleston and Huddleston took off his hat to in respect to the mother.

The man later described that moment with as the most defining moment of his life.  

"I didn't know then that it would have affected me so much, but it was something that was really -- it blew your mind that a white man would doff his hat," he said.  

"And subsequently I discovered, of course, that this was quite consistent with [Huddleston's] theology that every person is of significance, of infinite value, because they are created in the image of God.  

"And the passion with which he opposed apartheid and any other injustice is something that I sought then to emulate."

That man who would indeed go on to emulate Huddleston's passion, the little boy in the story, is Desmond Tutu.

I am standing here beneath the Tom Gate where Huddleston first entered the walls of Christ Church. I hear the same carillon of bells he would have heard the day he received his call.  I walk the same cobblestone road outside the gate into the world. It is the communion of saints -- a reminder to me that I am not alone on this path, but rather surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses. Others have gone before; and others will come after.  And right here and now, this distance is very thin.

British Evasion #11, August 13, 2015

British Evasion #11

On Sunday I took a break from my studies on St Augustine here in Oxford and made a day trip to London.  I left out on a bus early in the morning because I wanted to go back to St Martin in the Fields and see Sam Wells who was dean of Duke Chapel while Irie and I were in Durham and is now priest at St Martin.

After getting off the bus at Victoria station, I made the walk past Buckingham Palace, down the Mall at St James Park and right into the hustle and bustle of Trafalgar Square. It was amazing to me at 9am on a Sunday how busy the city already was with cars, and trucks, buses and masses and masses of people all negotiating the traffic lights and making their way around the square. And on the hill overlooking the square, high above all the din of traffic crowds stood St Martin with its carillon of bells chiming the hour and summoning the people to worship and to sanctuary. 

I made my way around the square, making sure to look right and then left for oncoming traffic and not left and then right as I would in America. Around me were scores of Chinese tourists, some wearing masks.  A group of protesters were shouting slogans with placards saying "Black Lives Matter".  A bagpiper dressed in a Scottish kilt was playing over the top of the protesters. I moved up the hill towards the church and could then see the homeless just beginning to stir from the shop alcoves they called home the night before. There was the feint smell of urine in the morning air. A beggar asked for spare coin.

I came to the the giant granite steps of St Martin where a dozen or so people were seated looking out over the square. Some were obviously homeless. Others were tourists. Perhaps some were waiting on the steps before entering the church to worship. All of there in the porch were street people. 

I ascended the steps and was caught of guard, stunned even, by the centerpiece image I saw carved out of a rock standing in the middle of the church's covered porch. I was surprised at my reaction, as I had seen the image before on my first visit to St Martin's two weeks ago. But it is just so breathtakingly stunning and graphic even. A life-size newborn baby, with umbilical cord still intact, rising up out of the monument as if cradled in he rock. And beneath the child, words from the Prologue of John's Gospel stretching all the way around the sculpture: "In the beginning was the Word and the Word became flesh and dwelled among us."

I stood over the monument and looked out over the square and what I can see of the city beyond with all its busses and taxis and masses of people. "This," I thought to myself, "this is why he came --to be one with these people, the people of these streets.  He took on flesh for the sake of their salvation, their redemption, our redemption."

I turned and walked inside and a friendly, African-looking woman handed me an order of service with a smile.  "Welcome," she said graciously in her African accent.  I sat down, trying to be as close to the end of a pew as possible without either sitting in the center aisle or on the wings where I might be staring at a column the whole service. I gave up on the hope of being on the end, and settled for scooting down right into the middle of the pew.  I looked up and then noticed for the first time the diversity of the congregation inside this sanctuary.

There were more dark-skinned, African looking people -- mostly women wearing beautiful dashikis of every color. There were more homeless scattered across the pews, some who looked to be there as a part of the worshiping community and others who appeared perhaps to just be looking for a quiet place to rest. There were young and old, with an especially large number of pilgrim-like tourists carrying backpacks and looking to be somewhere in their late 20s.  There was what appeared to be the older, regular community of typical Anglican worshipers who greeted and chatted with one another with familiarity. Then, most curious, in the front row, just left of the chancel was a woman dressed completely from head to toe in a bumblebee outfit. I tried not to stare, but wondered if it would be inappropriate to take a quick picture.  I thought better of that, but then made a little joke to myself about what she might say if maybe I asked her later why she is dressed this way. "None of your beeswax," she says back.  I smiled.  All the people from the streets are now here as the organ prelude begins.

I looked down at my order of worship and Was disappointed to see that Dr Wells would not be preaching this day. "What is it about these Anglicans," I wondered to myself.  "Their priests only seem to preach about half the time."  I then began ruminating on the actual meaning of that, concluding that there's something important being said in that: That the sermon or the preacher isn't what it's all about.  That something else is going on.  Something perhaps deeper.  Something beyond words.

Yet, it's words which then leveled me in the next moment -- words, not from a preacher or priest, but from one of the people who had come into the church from the streets sometime in the past few days. I was reading through the parish newsletter inserted in the order of service and there was an article from Dr. Wells.  In it he writes about readying himself for morning prayer and thumbing through the prayer requests left by visitors on the board which are to be offered to God in the service. One is a prayer from someone homeless.  Another is a prayer from someone who has lost their husband. But then Wells says his eyes fell on this prayer:

"For the baby I aborted: I love you despite never meeting you.  I hope you're with me until I have the chance to explain why the timing wasn't right in person. Until then, I must let go. xxx"

The words overwhelmed me. Their pain, their sorrow, their lament, their truth. I sat with the words as the prelude ended and the service began with the first words of the opening hymn: 

 

"Author of life divine . . ."

And then words of confession:

" . . . For the sake of your Son Jesus Christ, who died for us, forgive us all that is past . . ."

Then absolution:

"The almighty and merciful Lord grant you pardon for all your sins."

The woman's words remained with me throughout the rest of the liturgy and singing.  The sermon, which was from a newer priest, Rev Alistair McKay, was about the alienation he felt growing up and his struggles to believe in God in the face his own painful experiences of exclusion as a child.  This sent him on a prodigal-like sojourn in the far country, which he described as an attempt to fill what he called a deep "hunger" he had for God.  Then somewhere about halfway through the sermon Rev McKay quoted the words of Jesus from the day's Gospel lesson: "I am the bread of life.  Whoever comes to me will not be hungry."  

The amen was said and the collection bag went round, but the words stayed with me -- those both of the woman in her prayer, and, most deeply, one single word from Jesus: "Whoever".

The preparation of the table began and as I prepared myself to receive communion I suddenly remembered something Augustine said in the "Confessions" that we talked about in class the week before. He asked the readers of his book that they might remember his mother Monica before the altar to take the sacrament.  As the Eucharistic Prayer began I remembered Monica.  Then I remembered the woman with the prayer. Then I begin to remember the names and faces of other women who have confided in me that they've had an abortion. I remembered them in that moment-- their pain, their sorrow, and their struggle to find peace.  I held the images of their faces in my mind and remembered them also before God.  And then I did what the woman in the prayer asked the church to do, I remembered  the baby she aborted. I had no image to see in my mind for this baby and it troubled me; but then the image of the baby in the sculpture outside the church came to my mind.  I could see him in my mind.  He was there, like some kind of an icon -- an image of all babies, everywhere, rising up from lifeless rock into flesh with umbilical cord still attached -- forever attached.  

I sat there in the pews and remembered all these before God -- Monica, the mothers, their babies, and all others I could think of who might want or need to be remembered.  Then I fell to my knees with the rest of the congregation and together we prayed the Lord's Prayer:

" Father, who art in heaven . . . Give us this day our daily bread . . . Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us . . . For thine is the Kingdom . . . forever."

After the prayer Dr Wells stood before us and broke the Host saying, "The body of Christ broken for the life of the world."  Then all responded, "Lord, unite us in this sign."  Then we began to sing the Agnes Dei:

"Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world: have mercy on us.  Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world: have mercy on us.  Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world: give us peace."

With that we rose from our knees and walked forward -- the African and homeless and the regular members and the tourists, and the one dressed like a bee, and everyone else, we came.

"Whoever" came.  All the people off the streets came.  And we brought "Whoever" with us. And we all came processing down the aisle to receive unto ourselves the Bread of Life.

British Evasion #10, August 8, 2015

British Evasion #10

Earlier this week I made an early morning trip up to see CS Lewis' gravesite in Headington in East Oxford about 3 miles from where I am staying. 

There are a myriad number of Lewis-related tours and pilgrimage destinations to see here in the city center (or "centre" as they spell it here in Oxford).  No Lewis fan can come to Oxford without a stopover at the Eagle and Child, where Lewis and Tolkien swapped manuscripts and banter over pints of good cheer. And while perhaps not as alluring as the pub, the schools Lewis was associated with here in Oxford give you some sense of the academic world he inhabited from a boy.

But I was on the hunt for something off the beaten path, something you can't find along the usual tourist trek.  I wanted to see something Lewis-related that is a little less hallowed than the Eagle and Child and something more ordinary than an Oxford University college.  I was searching for something less glorious than all this. I wanted to see something less -- and something more; I wanted to see Lewis' church -- the parish he worshiped in and the cemetery behind it where he is buried.

Apologist and Churchman

It is impossible to fully articulate what a contribution Lewis made to Christianity in the last half of the last century and has continued to make in the first part of this one. Both a Cambridge and Oxford professor and great Christian thinker, Lewis has given generations of Christians a logic and way of talking about faith that has helped them to make belief in God a reasonable choice.  In the shadow of two world wars, Lewis did his theology in what Bonhoeffer called "a world come of age".  An intellectually robust faith was necessary following the deaths of so many millions of people and the near destruction of a whole civilization. Lewis' writings gave us tools of metaphor, analogy, and story which allowed us to go on thinking and believing in God, trusting in His goodness, and hoping in His ultimate victory over the dark powers of evil.  

Perhaps this Lewis theme of faith in the Good is most beautifully captured in his book "The Last Battle" when Tirian says to Jill, "But courage, child: we are all between the paws of the true Aslan."  To trust that the world is in God's hands even amidst all the horrors of war and human cruelty was a much-needed word in the 20th century. It is still a needed word today.

Lewis' writings were extraordinary helpful to me personally as a young man as I endured my own soul-wrenching struggle to believe.  For Lewis's help in this most difficult part of my journey I will forever be thankful. He came to me just when I needed him most, just as I was ready to give up entirely. As I have spent the last week submersed in the Anglican tradition that Lewis was himself a part of I can see that they have an ever-present language to describe what Lewis did for me. They call it the communion of saints.  

Now, however, 15 years after my own participation in the archetypal battle to believe, and 10 years into the vocation of serving as a pastor, I have different, now even greater appreciation for Lewis. I appreciate him now not only as a great apologist for the church universal, but even more so as a congregant in the church particular.  In other words, I appreciate him now perhaps most deeply as a churchman.

It's Very Ordinariness 

Holy Trinity Church just isn't that easy get to -- or even know where it is. I left about 6:30am following the map on my phone and headed East across the Magdalen Bridge, into East Oxford, and then up the very steep hill toward  Headington. Once up the hill I went another mile or so into the Headington Quarry neighborhood where the Lewis house "The Kilns" is and where his parish was supposed to be.  That's when I discovered the map wasn't quite right.  Assisted by a very generous sign and two smaller but no less necessary signs, I finally made it to the little walking path that bent through the woods and then wound its way out into the back of the church yard. And that's when I took my first, and most-striking mental note: Lewis' church is quite uninspiring -- just like he told me it would be.

Made of grey stone, probably taken from the nearby quarry, small in size, and hidden away in its little neighborhood, Holy Trinity is not anything like all the grand churches I have visited on my British Evasion thus far. This is definitely not a cathedral, but a church for the commoners, a very ordinary-looking building, and probably just about the last church anyone would hope to find a transcendent spiritual experience -- which, again, is just like Lewis told me it would be.

It's a theme Lewis wrote often about. That the sacred is often hidden in the ordinary looking, like a prince princess is hidden among the poor in so many of the fairy tales he loved so much.  But therein lies the test of the heart; its the very ordinariness, the unspectacularity, the commonness of things which mask their inner beauty.  And for Lewis this was true -- perhaps especially true -- when it came to matters of faith.  The inner nature is always hidden, and only the pure of heart can see.  And it there, within the heart, that a battle -- cosmic in nature -- takes place for every individual soul.  Will they stay at it and come to see with their heart or will they be content to only see with the conceit of the eyes?

The Battleground

Lewis first started attending Holy Trinity as he was beginning to change his mind about being an atheist and philosophically accept the idea that there is a God. He was not yet a Christian, but what he called a "Theist" and began going to church out of what he described as a kind of obligatory citizenship or sense patriotic responsibility to "fly one's flag" in declaration of a belief in God.

But the church, it's demanding Anglican traditionalism and liturgy, and especially it's people were altogether uninspiring for the young Lewis.  Here's an important and self-conscious reflection on his view of the church at the time from his memoir of those days of conversion "Surprised by Joy":

"The idea of churchmanship was to me wholly unattractive . . . It was, to begin with, a kind of collective; a wearisome "get together" affair.  I couldn't yet see how a concern of that sort should have anything to do with one's spiritual life.  To me, religion ought to have been a matter of good men praying alone and meeting by twos and threes to talk of spiritual matters. And then the fussy, time-wasting botheration of it all!  The bells, the crowds, the umbrellas, the notices, the bustle, the perpetual arranging and organizing."

For Lewis, a Romantic accustomed to an academic world where performance was evaluated on individual and not collective merit, this whole church thing was at once both much too communal and not near enough lovely.

And that was the battleground, Lewis later made clear. Many of the spiritual insights he later gave us in the plots of a scheming demon in "The Screwtape Letters" come from his reflections on his own struggling experience in the early days of attending church at Holy Trinity.  Here's the demon Screwtape describing to his junior nephew demon Wormwood how he might go about foiling the burgeoning faith of his "patient" who appears a lot like Lewis in those critical days of first attending church and considering becoming a Christian:

"[The patient] sees the local grocer with rather an oily expression on his face bustling up to offer him one shiny little book containing a liturgy which neither of them understands, and one shabby little book containing corrupt texts of a number of religious lyrics, mostly bad, and in very small print.  When he gets to his pew and looks round him he sees just that selection of his neighbours whom he has hitherto avoided.  You want to lean pretty heavily on those neighbours.  Make his mind flit to and fro between an expression like 'the body of Christ' and the actual faces in the next pew."

Shadows and Substance

"Between the conception

And the creation

Between the emotion

And the response 

Falls the shadow"

These are the words T.S. Eliot penned of "The Hallow Men" who are neither in heaven nor earth. It is in the shadow of these things -- between heaven and earth, war and peace, the glory of things promised and the reality of things received, the sublime body of Christ eternal and the actual, struggling face of Christ temporal that a Christian must learn to live if he or she is to learn to be a Christian. And the place where and the people to whom a Christian goes to learn these things is, according to Lewis, called the Church.  

Lewis stayed with the church.  He kept going even though he didn't always like it very much. But in continuing to go he came to see it as something that it did not quite appear to be at first -- something sacred, and beautiful, and holy. Something heavenly cloaked in something very earthly.  

For Lewis it was there, in the local parish, among the creaking pews and beneath the banal sermons that one comes submit oneself to what God wants to do with them. And what is that?  To do what all Christians come to church to do -- to sit among creaking pews and pray the prayers of ancient people, and sing the hymns of bygone generations, and above all else to take the Sacrament which opens us to behold the mystery of faith and see with our spirits what we cannot see with our eyes.  

In other words, it there in church that we come ourselves be changed in our essence like the bread and wine are changed -- to be, ourselves, transubstantiated.

As Lewis reflected:

"But as I went on I saw the great merit of it.  I came up against different people of quite different education, and then gradually my conceit just began peeling off.  I realized that the hymns (which were just sixth-rate music) were, nevertheless, being sung with devotion and benefit by an old saint in elastic-side boots in the opposite pew, and then you realize that you aren't fit to clean those boots.  It gets you out of your solitary conceit."

Call to Worship 

I round the corner into the Holy Trinity graveyard which is quaint and still, the graves still shadowed by the high trees at this early morning hour.  I walk the yard from north to south but discover Lewis' grave to be just as difficult to find as was his church. It strikes me immediately that there might be some kind of meaning to that. Finally, after walking to and fro for about 10 minutes I get eye of the plot.  There he lies amongst the tombs just as he set amongst the pews.  He is not alone or in just a pair of twos or three.  He is buried there in the same earth and dirt as all the common saints of Holy Trinity, and all the communion of saints everywhere.  

And then it occurs to me what is going on out in that graveyard -- what they're doing. They're doing together in death what they did together in life -- they're waiting. The congregation is waiting for the bell to ring and the call to worship to begin and for what is now only known in part to finally be seen and known in full.

In other words, the congregation is waiting for its hour of glory to begin.