Difficult questions

Late last night, I was about to go to sleep when I heard my iPad ding.  That’s the signal from the New York Times that there is breaking news.  I went online, and discovered that the President was to make a statement on national security.  It was on Facebook that I first heard that Osama Bin Laden was dead.  I found myself breathing out, as if I’d been holding my breath, without even being aware of it, and feeling an immense sadness, as his death brought home all the deaths these last ten years that one way or another have been related to the 9/11 attacks - here in the US, in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, and elsewhere.

And I thought of those who lost family and friends on 9/11, and especially our junior warden, whose brother-in-law was killed that day.  As we waited for the President’s announcement, the Junior Warden and I began to chat online, as we struggled with how we should respond as followers of the Jesus who said we should love our enemies and forgive seventy times seven.

The reality is that it would be simplistic to say that we should have just forgiven Bin Laden and Al Qaeda.  Yes, we are called to forgive.  But true forgiveness is not something easily done.  It can take a lifetime, or longer, of intentional work, just as it can take a lifetime, or longer, to heal.   

But there is another question that as Christians, we have to address.  How do we deal with evil? Is it ever right to kill someone? What's the difference between revenge and doing something to prevent someone from committing more evil? Does the technological capacity to do mass murder make a difference?

Those are questions that have exercised Christian theologians ever since Jesus was crucified and resurrected. There is consensus that we should always resist evil - but there is less agreement on how we do that. Some concluded that it is right - or at least justifiable - to participate in a small evil to prevent a greater one.  Others concluded that it is never right to participate in evil, and that non-violence is the only option for us as Christians.  And there is a whole range of opinion in between.

We live in a fallen world.  There are no easy answers or perfect solutions.  There is no doubt that Bin Laden was the leader of an organization that was committed to bringing death and destruction, and was the perpetrator of evil.  We are called to resist that evil.

But I do not rejoice in his death.  I wish - and yes, I know it’s not particularly realistic - but I wish that he had repented.  I wish he had been brought to justice.  And I pray that his death will not fuel a further cycle of violence and fear.  It is time to stop.

As we wrestle with these difficult questions, perhaps the best thing we can do is pray.  And so we turn to our prayer book:

"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." “A prayer for our enemies,” Book of Common Prayer, p. 816

Called to the Dance

Here is the church

Here is the steeple

Open the doors

And see all the people.

The childhood finger game is one of my earliest images of the church.  It takes some manual dexterity to push your index fingers into the form of the steeple, and to interlock the remaining ones so that the people are hidden under the church roof, ready to be revealed when we open our thumb doors, rather than dancing on it.

"Church" is possibly the most common word that we Christians use, second only - perhaps - to "God." We use it of the buildings where we meet to worship God. We use it for the things we do on Sundays, "going to church."  We use it as a shorthand for our parishes and congregations. And we talk about the church at large, meaning Christians everywhere, or at least Episcopalians.

But in the New Testament, the main word that we translate as "church" is ecclesia.  It doesn't mean the buildings, or what we do.  It means literally "called out." We are the people who are called out, who are gathered together by God.  We are bound together by our faith in Christ, through baptism, and we are bound together with the people with whom we gather to worship and pray and serve.  We belong to one another, just as we belong to God.

And it's that belonging to God that shapes our relationship with one another as the church.  Just as God as Trinity is in an eternal dance of relationship of mutual interdependence, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, we as Christians are caught up into that dance with God, and in turn mirror that interdependence with one another as the church.

One of the places to which we Episcopalians turn to explain what it means to live as Christians is the baptismal covenant.   But one of the things I've noticed recently is that the baptismal covenant doesn't do too well in expressing that interdependence.  It's implied earlier in the Baptism service, where the congregation is asked if they will support the baptismal candidate in their life in Christ.  But in the covenant itself, references are scarce.  We say we believe in the church - whatever it is - in the Creed.  But then we focus on our individual actions, in how we live our lives and in how we respond to the world around us.  It's as if we've forgotten that in baptism we are not only joined to Christ, but are joined to those called by his name.  We have a new identity in the household of God. And I wonder if we need to add a sixth question, "Will you use your God given gifts for the glory of God and the upbuilding of the church?"

And perhaps next time I play the church finger game with my nephew, I'll lock my fingers together the "wrong" way.  Maybe dancing on the roof is exactly where the church, where we, need to be.

Making space for God

Traveling through the Holy Land on the clergy pilgrimage with our Bishop, the thing that struck me most, and has stayed with me these last few weeks, is the desert.  When I think of desert, I remember the backgrounds of Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote cartoons, with sand and rocks, but also cactuses, or the Simpson Desert in Australia, with its endless red dunes stubbled with canegrass and spinifex.  I didn’t expect to find desert with huge rocky cliffs, stone strewn slopes, and almost no visible vegetation.

Deserts are usually harsh places, and the Judean desert harsher than most.  But what I remember is not just the dry, rocky terrain, but the incredible spaciousness.  The endless sky seemed full of possibility; the stony ground demanded closer inspection; the cliffs invited me to go deeper.  I saw an orange wing-tipped black grackle, a nut-brown field mouse, and a diligent trail of ants.

But the spaciousness was not only physical.  As I stood in the desert, I felt as if my soul were opening wide in that space, opening up to God.  And I began to understand why it was that immediately after his baptism, Jesus went into the desert - possibly that same Judean desert - for forty days. During Lent, we remember those forty days that Jesus spent in the desert.  For him, it was a time of preparation for his ministry.  But I also suspect it was a time when, in the spaciousness of that place, the three-personed God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, was able to commune.

We often wish that we could have an intense and visceral experience of God. Saint Augustine talks about our hearts being restless until they find their rest in God. My heart  and soul are often restless because there is so much stuff in my life.  It’s no wonder that Jesus told one man that as well as following the commandments, he had to sell what he had and give the money to the poor.  Not because there was anything intrinsically wrong with possessions - after all, Jesus didn’t give the same command to all the wealthier people he met - but because, I suspect, Jesus knew that all that stuff was crowding out God. There was simply no room left in that man’s life.

Deserts offer that space for God. But the problem with deserts is that they are lonely places.  There are usually not very many people there.  And while some are called to a life of solitude and contemplation, the vast majority of us are called to live in this world as the light of Christ, so that others might be drawn to him.  That mission is really hard to accomplish if we are in the desert and everyone else is elsewhere.  We need to be where people are, to share with them the love of God.

But we also need to know God.  So perhaps we need to carry the desert with us, creating desert-like spaces within our lives, where there is room to commune with God.

This year, my Lenten discipline this year has been to make space for God.  I have cleaned house, sorting through the food in my cupboards and the clothes in my closet, and giving things away.  I have given up some of the TV programs I used to need to watch, and removed some games from my iPhone.  I have spent time in meditation and prayer.  And I have met God, often unexpectedly.

The desert still calls, but underneath I know that what - or who - is really calling, is my Savior.  If only I will save the space.

Of Diversions and Arrivals

You can't get there from here. No one actually ever said it, but one of the things bout traveling through the Holy Land is that you rarely travel in a straight line. Sometimes it's geography that gets in the way. Visiting the places that Jesus knew around the Sea of Galilee involves driving around the lake, unless you have access to a boat. The drive from Ein Gedi on the Dead Sea to Bethlehem looks like a straight shot, until you realize that the rock hewn mountains and stone strewn wadis of the Judean Desert are in the way. And even in Jerusalem itself, you find yourself traveling round in circles, circumnavigating the Old City time and time again, even though it would be almost quicker to travel through on foot.
One of the things that you realize when you read the Gospel according to St Mark, is that Jesus rarely travels in straight lines either. But it's not just because of the geography. From the time that he goes into the wilderness after his baptism, right to the time he is arrested, Jesus is driven by the Holy Spirit to do the work of God (Thanks to the Rev Dr Christopher King for this insight, in one of the many conversations among the pilgrims this last week). Deep down, most of us, I suspect, think that life should go in straight lines. But the reality is that life rarely works out like that. There are innumerable twists and turns and diversions. Often it is incredibly frustrating, as we look at where we want to go, but somehow can't get there from where we are. Yet looking back at our lives, we often find that what we thought were detours in fact took us places we needed to go, without which we would not be the people we have become. And sometimes we can even see the hand of God in them.
The pilgrimage to the Holy Land is over. I began this blog entry in the bus traveling through Jerusalem; I'm finishing it in an office on Long Island. I have a suspicion that the pilgrimage will, in time, prove to be one of those detours that will shape my life in unexpected ways. If nothing else, the process of pilgrimage teaches you to let go of your own illusion of control and receive the unexpected as a gift, trusting that God will lead you in straight paths and detours alike.

Experiencing unity and division

Church this morning was at  the Anglican (Episcopal) Cathedral of St George in East Jerusalem, on the Arab side of the city.  Just a couple of blocks away, the wall marks the boundary with the Palestinian West Bank.  Walking towards the Old city from the Cathedral, you travel along a busy street, lined with Arab shops and market stalls, and after passing into the Old City through the Damascus Gate, you find yourself on the boundary between the Muslim Quarter on the left and the Christian Quarter on the right, though there is no visible difference between the two.

Mostly at home, when we hear about Israel, we hear about Jewish Israelis on the one hand and Muslim Palestinians on the other.  But rarely do we hear about the people caught in between: the 170,000 or so Palestinian or Arab Christians, like Isaac, who owns a shop near the Cathedral.   Isaac is Israeli; he also happens to be Arab and Christian.  His parents' home was in West Jerusalem, now a Jewish area; after the 1948 war they were forced to move east. When the wall dividing the West Bank from Israel proper was built, Isaac's home ended up on the wrong side.  It's only two blocks from his shop, but is behind the wall.  He has had to make a choice - live in his home, and forgo his Israeli identity and his livelihood, or keep his shop and live with his wife and children in one room in the Old City.  He has chosen the latter, and so his home lies empty and may eventually be bulldozed.  

This morning the Eucharist was celebrated in two languages.  At times it alternated between English and Arabic.  The sermon was preached twice, once in each language.  We sang the hymns and said the responses in our own languages, English and Arabic simultaneously.  And at for end, we went into the parish hall for cake and Turkish coffee.   It was truly a taste of the time to come when, as Isaiah says, "On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well aged wines..." (Isaiah 25:6).   Pray for our brothers and sisters in the Middle East, and for the peace of Jerusalem. 

Humbly I adore thee...

One of the first things that strikes you as you enter the city of Jerusalem through the Lion Gate is the golden glow that emanates from the buidlings.  It's simply light falling on the sand-gold limestone that the buildngs are made of, but it almost seems as if the city itself has a halo, inviting you to reverence and worship.

As we walked the Via Dolorosa today, I was struck by the multiple forms of reverence shown throughout the ages and even today.  In the Crusader church of St Ann, our voices resounded long after we stopped singing, the echoes revoicing our praise.  A jumbled pile of large crosses by the ninth station bears testimony to the Friday tradition of carrying a cross while following in the footsteps of our Savior.  In a small church, an Ethiopian priest kept vigil, wrapped in a traditional shawl of black with maroon stripes. And in the church of the Holy Sepulcher, women in headscarfs chatted loudly to one another, black-clad Orthodox priests lined the route of a procession, people knelt and kissed the holy places, others lit candles and offered them in prayer, and still others stood in reverent silence.

Reverence lies in the act of worshipping or paying homage to Christ.  We do it when we sing and when we pray, when we genuflect or make the sign of the cross, even when we dress in our Sunday best.   And yet each of these can become perfunctory, habitual actions that have lost their essential connection with our Savior.  It's at times like these that being exposed to other, less familiar forms of reverence invites us to a new experience of worship and awe.

Shabbat Shalom in Jerusalem

Today, when we returned to the hotel in Jerusalem after a busy day visiting Masada and the Dead Sea, the lobby was full of little girls in black party dresses, white tights, and black Mary Janes, brothers in black trousers and white shirts, and their parents, preparing to celebrate the Sabbath.  Extended families gathered in the downstairs dining room, while upstairs, a rabbi with long curls and white robe and cap taught a group of young adults the Sabbath rituals. And at another table in the lobby, three preteen boys in khakis and sneakers seem to be arguing with an older sister about what card game to play, while a younger kid in a plaid shirt begs to be allowed to join in. If the babble of voices and laughter is any indication, this is a joyous time to be savored, in which family and faith are inextricably entwined.

As Christians, our the closest thing to the Sabbath is Sunday.  For most of us, the days of roast dinner - or pasta and meatballs - for Sunday lunch - are long gone.  And I don't think I'd want to go back to the days of blue laws and enforced churchgoing three times each Sunday. But I wonder if we have lost something in the process. Sundays are busy, filled with soccer or shopping or the incessant demands of chores.  Family and faith so easily become relegated to the time left over, or perhaps even displaced altogether.  And even when we make them a priority, they are often marked by sullen teenagers and harassed parents and overtired toddlers.  And I wonder, what can we take home for our own weekly celebration of the resurrection?