on the first day of Christmas (December 25, 2017, Christmas Day), my True Love gave to me the gift of the blessed babe born in the Bethlehem manger

Note: These prayers, one for each day of the twelve-day Christmas season, in which my True Love is God, follow the pattern of that well-known 18th century English carol with a number of the days illumined by the observances of the Church calendar.

O gracious God, I thank You for the gift of Your Son, Jesus; Your Love enfleshed in our mortal frame to be Emmanuel, “God with us” and to reveal to us who You are and who, from the dawn of creation, You have meant us to be by making us in Your image.

By the daily nurturance of Your Spirit, may the Christ Child be born again in the womb of my soul that I may grow, day by day, I pray, into the fullness of His likeness.

Amen.

waiting for Jesus – an Advent-season-prayer-a-day, Day 21, Saturday, December 23, 2017

Note: Advent, from the Latin, adventus, “coming”, is the Christian season of preparation for Jesus’ birth, the heart of the Christmas celebration, and, according to scripture and the Christian creeds, his second appearance on some future, unknown day and also according to scripture and Christian tradition, his daily coming through the Holy Spirit. Hence, the theme of waiting for Jesus is Advent’s clarion call.

O Lord Jesus, I wait this day for the wonder of Your Wholeness; You in Whom “the fullness of the deity dwells bodily.”(1)

Though made in the imago Dei, I, in my sinfulness and sins, my scattered thoughts and feelings, my self-centered intentions and actions, sully the glorious semblance of divinity in which I have been created.

O Lord Jesus, by Your Spirit, I pray You refashion my mind and my heart, my soul and my spirit, my being entire that Your Apostle’s word may be true for me, will be true in me; that I come to the measure of Your full stature.(2)

Amen.

 

Footnotes:
(1) Colossians 2.9
(2) Ephesians 4.13

waiting for Jesus – an Advent-season-prayer-a-day, Day 10, Tuesday, December

Note: Advent, from the Latin, adventus, “coming”, is the Christian season of preparation for Jesus’ birth, the heart of the Christmas celebration, and, according to scripture and the Christian creeds, his second appearance on some future, unknown day and also according to scripture and Christian tradition, his daily coming through the Holy Spirit. Hence, the theme of waiting for Jesus is Advent’s clarion call.

O Lord Jesus, I wait this day for the wonder of Your Wrath. Yea, O Lord Jesus, I laud Your Welcome, yet I dare not forget Your Wrath; You Who, angered by the desecrating exploitation of Your Father’s House, cleansed the Temple.(1) As Your Apostle identified the body of the Christian community, verily, the bodies of Christians as temples of the Holy Spirit,(2) by Your same Spirit, consume with cleansing fire all dross within me that dishonors my creation in the imago Dei that I may glorify Your Father, my God in my living. Amen.

 

Footnotes:
(1) Matthew 21.12-17; Mark 11.15-19; Luke 19.45-48; John 2.13-16
(2) 1 Corinthians 6.12-20

of loyalty & love

a sermon, based on Matthew 22.15-22, preached with the people of Epiphany Episcopal Church, Laurens, SC, on the 20^th Sunday after Pentecost, October 22, 2017

Charles Dudley Warner,[1] essayist, novelist, and friend of Mark Twain, among his many bon mots was noted to have said “Politics makes strange bedfellows.” The expediency of self-interest has the magnetic power to draw together folk who otherwise stand apart, indeed, who otherwise can’t stand each another.

The Pharisees, devoted to the Law of God, detest the oppressive Roman Empire. The Herodians, a political party of King Herod, the puppet ruler of Judea set on the throne and kept in power by Rome, are loyal to Caesar. These two strange bedfellows, at best, begrudgingly tolerate each another. Yet they agree on one thing. They despise Jesus, whose proclamation of “repentance, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand”[2] poses a threat to their religious and political status quo. They set a trap, first with deceitful flattery, “Oh, Jesus, you’re so sincere, truthful, and impartial”, then the zinger, “Is it lawful to pay Caesar’s tax?” Gotcha, Jesus! For if you say “lawful”, the people, who hate the Roman Empire and the burdensome tax, will hate you, and if you say “unlawful”, you will be guilty of sedition against the Empire.

But Jesus, more than wiggling out of a well-laid trap, takes the matter, as he always does, to a higher level of meaning. But first he says, “Show me the coin used for the tax.” Jesus’ pockets are empty. He doesn’t have a coin. The Pharisees and Herodians do. Thus, Jesus, by the very fact of their possession of the coin for the tax, exposes their entanglement in the exploitative economics of the empire. I can hear Jesus say, “Gotcha!”

Regarding the higher level of meaning, I do not believe that it is either the separation of politics and religion or the importance of obedience to the government. The issue, simply, profoundly is this: To what, to whom do we owe our greatest loyalty, our greatest love.

Jesus looked at the coin, which bore Caesar’s image and title. Thus, it belonged to him and to pay the tax is to return to Caesar what belongs to Caesar. However, long before Caesar, indeed, at the dawn of creation, this was, is, always is God’s intention: “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness.”[3] Thus, we, bearing the image, the likeness of God, in all that we are and all that we have, belong to God. Thus, in all of our living, we return to God what belongs to God.

In our daily living we deal with manifold competing, at times, conflicting loyalties, and Jesus calls us alway to discern, to be clear – and to act accordingly – that our greatest loyalty, greatest love is to the One in whose image we are made.

 

Illustrations:

The Pharisees and the Herodians Conspire Against Jesus (Les pharisiens et les hérodiens conspirent contre Jésus) (1886-1894), James Tissot (1836-1902)

Caesar’s Coin (Moeda de César) (1790), Domingos Sequeira (1768-1837). Note: I love Sequeira’s depiction of the encounter between Jesus and the Pharisees and the Herodians. As I view and interpret the painting, Jesus, literally center stage, elevated above the one handing him the coin for the tax, and with his right hand pointing upward, gives visual testimony that he, in his teaching, is about to take the matter to a higher level.

Footnotes:

[1] Charles Dudley Warner (1829-1900) (photograph c. 1897). The saying ostensibly was adapted from a line in William Shakespeare’s The Tempest: “Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows.”

[2] Matthew 4.17

[3] Genesis 1.26

the push and pull of mystery

I awoke this morning in a melancholy mood thinking about the cares that beset any human under the sun, the daily reminders of our limitations, the not (never?) having enough time, energy, or money (or any two or all three), in the face of our desires and needs, to complete, compete, or compensate.

Then I pushed beyond my personal, largely small cares, thinking about greater current woes of the world. Among them:

• The horrific destruction of hearth and health and hope wrought by the winds and waves of Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria, and the tectonic tumult of earthquakes; turning verdant lands barren, bringing darkness, save for still-shining stars, to what seem endless nights, cancelling the coming day for the final closing of the eyes of the dying, and
• The dread specter of rising, billowing nuclear clouds, and
• The social, cultural unrest of an America stirred by the symbols of flags, anthems, and statues, and actions, whether to stand and salute or lock arms and kneel.

Then pulling back from these painful thoughts, as I oft do, I meditated on mystery – not a riddle to be resolved by human reason, but rather the reality of all things beyond human power to control, perhaps even human ability to understand and, thus, to amend.

My meditations provoked, as they always do, questions. Among them:

• Why do, must people suffer?
• Why, after centuries of observing and studying the futility of war to resolve disputes, do we, as peoples and nations, continue to lust for combat and long for conquest; the latter, given the superior and spreading nuclear capacity to destroy both enemy and self, being a fool’s goal?
• Why, despite our best ambitions toward equality, do we continue to separate ourselves along lines, some invisible, yet all seemingly inerasable, of race and class, culture and clan, party and perspective; resulting in our apparent inability and unwillingness to acknowledge the existence of another point of view?
• Why, long recognizing the incontestable truth that we occupy one planet (notwithstanding the dreams of lunar and Martian colonization) and that we form a global community of inseparable, interlocking interests, do we remain blinded by our prejudices, refusing to see the common humanity that we all irrefutably share?

Underneath these realities, as I behold them, lies unfathomable mystery. Understanding so little, I cannot answer my questions. One thing I do know. I cannot end suffering, war, inequality, prejudice, and a legion of human ills. However, as a person of faith, I can and do pledge to repent, daily, praying the Holy Spirit to make me more conscious of my:

• time, energy, and money and how to use what I do have to serve, to share with my sisters and brothers of greater need;
• anger, oft rooted in my sense of an affront to my personal honor and how to channel its virulent energy toward efforts to make peace with others and myself;
• individuality of self and my commonality with all, so that in acknowledging the former I never disavow the latter;
• biases and how to peer more deeply into the eyes of “the other” and mine own to behold our common God-given image.

I am not sure how this does, can, or will work. For I perceive it as mystery. By faith, I shall trust God, the greatest Mystery, to bring it to pass.

Of life in the still-Christian South (a retired cleric’s occasional reflections)…

About Epiphany Episcopal Church, Laurens, South Carolina

On February 1, 2015, I entered my retirement.

Before that date, countless were the times, o’er my over 35 years of full-time active ministry, when I sat at the feet of my revered elder clergy, who, having led large congregations, spoke of the joys in retirement of serving smaller communities where pastoral relationships took on the character of a proximate, transparent intimacy. I oft wondered whether that would be my lot, indeed, whether I’d want it to be my lot! Or would I, in retirement, be ready, even needful of stepping away from exercising any form of clerical ministry?

On December 20, 2015, I entered my “rehirement” as the priest-in-charge, part-time, of Epiphany Episcopal Church, Laurens, South Carolina.[1]

A year and a half into this still new ministry, I reflect…

What my elders told me has proven true for me. I love being a part of my Epiphany-community. Every Sunday, I have the exquisite pleasure of looking out at 30 or so souls and saying to myself, “You, each and all, belong to me and I belong to you.” Frequently enough, I say aloud to them, individually and collectively, “I love you.” Equally often, I open my sermons saying, “Once again it is my privilege to preach with[2] you in the Name of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.” (And they seem, so far, to put up with this Episcopal Church-born-and-bred, but black Baptist-rooted, coming by it honestly on my mama’s side, noisy-preacher!)

Moreover, I sense and receive from my folk a gentle, unconcealed deference for the ordained ministry (I haven’t been called “Father” this often since…since!) that, given much of my remembrances of my prior experiences and my reflections on the testimonies of my colleagues in other places, is a still-treasured characteristic of the South.

Still more, and most especially, I believe that God, who, in a Christian Trinitarian understanding, eternally dwells in the communion of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, in creating humankind in the imago Dei, the image of God,  hath hard-wired us, in our bodily, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual being-ness, for relationship. In this, I rejoice to be in relationship with the folk of Epiphany Episcopal Church, Laurens, South Carolina.

 

Footnotes:

[1] The Doric-columned edifice, built in 1846, listed in the National Register as part of Laurens Historic District, and the oldest actively-used church structure in Laurens County, South Carolina, is the home of a generously, generations-old loving community of people. The warmth of their affectionate care, person to person, permeates and emanates from the very brick and mortar and wood of the place.

[2] Long have I believed that I, as a preacher, do not preach at people, which, in my sense of things, means that I, endowed with especial Spirit-inspired wisdom, have the answers about God and life that I share with those who would not have the benefit and blessing of knowing save that I tell them. Nor do I preach to people, which, in my sense of things, is a kinder-and-gentler (read: more self-effacing, less arrogant) form of preaching at people. Rather, I, seeking alway to be in community, indeed, to be in communion with people, preach with them; the sermon, again, in my sense of things, being a form of ongoing communal conversation among God, people, and priest.

a-Lenten-prayer-a-day, day 28, Saturday, April 1, 2017

Note: As a personal, spiritual discipline, I write a prayer for each of the forty days of Lent; each petition focusing on a theme, truly, relating to a care or concern weighing on my mind and heart, at times, vexing my soul and spirit…

On beholding the Image of God’s new creation: O Lord, all that is, yea, too, humankind is fashioned in Your Image, even more, redeemed by Your Son, still more, through Your Spirit, made a new creation.[1]

Yet, for the longest time, at least for me and at least much of the time, I found it hard to see Your Countenance in the faces of others, verily, too, in the face I beheld in my mirror…

For, despite Your creating, saving, sanctifying work, I, oft trusting more (most? only?) in my observation and opinion, continued to regard others and myself from a human point of view of judgment as alway failing, falling short of Your will.[2]

Today, I, in my being entire – my mind and heart, soul and spirit – am convicted of my sin of denying Your goodness and grace.

In my repentance, I give You thanks for being granted new eyes to see others and myself as You see us.

In this, I also need praise You for Your merciful, infinite patience with me. Amen.

Footnotes:

[1] See 2 Corinthians 5.17-18a: (The Apostle Paul writes) So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ.

[2] See 2 Corinthians 5.14-16a (my emphasis): For the love of Christ urges us on, because we are convinced that one has died for all; therefore all have died. And he died for all, so that those who live might live no longer for themselves, but for him who died and was raised for them. From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view. Note: The Greek, kata sarka, here, translated “human point of view”, literally means “according to flesh”, which, in light of the Apostle Paul’s theology, as I interpret it, connotes more than human perception, but rather the inherent opposition of sinful flesh to God’s work in and through the Spirit. Thus, to view others, indeed, myself, as I write in my prayer “from a human point of view of judgment” is to perceive all things and everyone “as alway failing, falling short of (God’s) will.” So, again, I thank God for being given new eyes to see life and creation, others and myself no longer (not only) from “a human point of view” of judgment, but rather, as God sees, with mercy and grace!

a-Lenten-prayer-a-day, day 25, Wednesday, March 29, 2017

Note: As a personal, spiritual discipline, I write a prayer for each of the forty days of Lent; each petition focusing on a theme, truly, relating to a care or concern weighing on my mind and heart, at times, vexing my soul and spirit…

On audacious joy: O Gracious God, in Your Love, You created me in Your Image…

O Jesus, You came to show, to be in Your flesh the imago Dei of unconditional Love and Justice…

O Spirit of God, You abide within me that I, through Your sanctification, might “come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God.”[1]

Whene’er I contemplate the words, “the knowledge of the Son of God”, I shudder in the audacious joy that I, by the Trifold Grace of You, O Blessed Trinity, am to know more about You, O Jesus, and to know more about what You, O Jesus, know about You, O God!

All to which, in joyous humility, I only can say: amen, amen, amen.

Footnote:

[1] Ephesians 4.13a

a-Lenten-prayer-a-day, day 23, Monday, March 27, 2017

Note: As a personal, spiritual discipline, I write a prayer for each of the forty days of Lent; each petition focusing on a theme, truly, relating to a care or concern weighing on my mind and heart, at times, vexing my soul and spirit…

On imago Dei: O Precious Lord, You created humankind in Your image.[1] Yea, an eternity of human contemplating canst ne’er reveal all that this means. Yet three things I believe I know. You are wholly Holy, utterly “Other” than I. Thus, I canst ne’er comprehend the fullness of the Sovereign Majesty and the Sacred Mystery of the workings of Your Mind.[2] Thus, I, to have even a thought of You, must have mine imago Dei – mine own image, mine own creation of You. O Precious Lord, by the Illumination of Your Holy Spirit, unceasingly unveil unto me the difference that I may seek You aright. Amen.

 

Illustration: The Creation of Eve (1508-1512), Michelangelo (1475-1564)

Footnotes:

[1] See Genesis 1.26a, 27: God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness”…So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God He created them; male and female He created them.

[2] See Isaiah 55.8-9: “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways,” says the Lord. “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts.”

imago dei – a reflection on Earth Day, April 22, 2015

“Then (after all things had been created) God said, ‘Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, the cattle, and all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth’” Genesis 1.26

Humankind was granted dominion. O’er time, we have confused that call and charge with our will to power, exercising domination over creation. The effects of our handiwork, despite the claims of those who deny our creaturely despoliation of the environment, are evident.

The English words “dominion” and “domination” both bear the overtones of rulership, ownership. However, for me, the determiner, definer of the Genesis’ warrant of dominion is expressed, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and…” Human dominion is a fruit of being made in God’s image, which…

By necessity, begs the question: What is the meaning of “image of God” (or imago dei) or rather, more properly, I think, how is it to be interpreted? (As I am wont to say, I do not believe that any two of us ever mean precisely the same thing even when using the same words, hence the constant prerequisite of any, all communication of defining our terms.) And, no surprise imago dei can be understood in a variety of ways; traditionally, substantively (that humans are, in some sense, of the substance, nature of God), relationally (that humans, having benefit of the gifts of reason and freewill, are unique among all creatures in being able to conceive and perceive, to know and, thus, be in conscious relationship with God), and functionally (that humans, by virtue of substantive relationality with God, have the duty to act as God’s representative in the created order). And, also no surprise, in each case (as with other definitions and descriptions), many are the digressions and distinctions, filling libraries and fleshed out in unending cybertext.

Concerning our parental abuse of Mother Earth, of the three traditional views of imago dei, the third, functional interpretation poses the greatest problem. So easy it has been and is for us to overstep the responsibility of God’s representatives, ambassadors to creation and, misusing our reason and freewill, usurping the role of “creators,” and, therefore, becoming destroyers.

As one who believes or rather who perceives (and, therefore, believes) the hand of God in creation as the profoundest and eternal (not once upon a faraway, long ago moment at the dawn of time, but ongoing and endless) labor of love, my conception of my imago dei, my being made in God’s image is rooted in, what I term above, substantive relationality. I, of the same substance of God, which, Who is love, strive to live in loving relation with God, with the creation, and with all creatures therein and thereof.