In his posthumous book, Letters and Papers from Prison, Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes something that rings very true to me 65 years later. And after a few recent conversations with colleagues who have become bored, burned-out and cynical - something very easy for clergy in times such as these - this reflection from one imprisoned for both his thoughts and deeds takes on a new twist:
I believe that God can and will bring good out of evil, even out of the greatest evil. For that purpose God needs men and women who make the best use of everything. I believe that God will give us all the strength we need to help us resist in all times of distress. But God never gives it in advance, lest we should rely on ourselves and not on God alone. A faith such as this should allay all our fears for the future. I believe that even our mistakes and shortcomings are turned to good account, and that it is no harder for God to deal with them than with our supposedly good deeds...
Bonhoeffer sounds a lot like Dr. King talking about how the arch of the moral universe tilts ever so slightly towards the good. And what both martyrs make clear is that times such as these demand a unique and sustained resistance in which prayer and action are non-negotiable. Individuals have neither enough strength nor insight to carry-on as solitary opponents in our mean-spirited and seductive culture. Alcoholics discovered they needed encouragement and accountability to stay healthy. So why do so many clergy insist on trying to do ministry as islands unto themselves? Arrogance? Fear? Bad theology? No role models? What?
Probably all of the above plus the fact that most of us have not hit bottom... and until there is no place to go but up, we'll keep doing things the same old way and expecting different results. In the church - in our minds - in our lives, yes?
But that just makes clergy cranky, old farts who are more cynical and worn-out than inspirational. How did Jesus put it? "You can read the signs in the heavens but you can't see the signs of the times!" (Where is the artist formerly known as Prince when you NEEDhim...?)
PS - so our "praying the psalms" group met - such wise and faithful friends - who talked about how hard it is in our busy lives to make room for "listening to God" in prayer. And how weird some of the Psalms are, too. At the same time, some new words and phrases are becoming part of our inner vocabulary even as we struggle to find time for a new/old way of prayer.
+ Psalm 9: the Lord will be a refuge for the oppressed... God will not forget the cry of the afflicted... who never forsakes those who seek you.
+ Psalm 5: All who take refuge in you will be glad forever... you will shelter them... and defend them with your favor as with a shield.
+ Psalm 13: how long, O Lord, how long will you hide your face from me?
This is NOT the most popular study group I have offered - it takes commitment - but it is very, very sweet and the right thing at the right time.
Tonight I had the privilege to participate in the local Berkshire American Guild of Organists' annual "pastor/musician appreciation" dinner. For the past three years I have attended as the guest of my former Minister of Music. And every year - although often bone tired when I leave the house - I am blessed by the entire experience - so tonight I am a grateful man.
The presenter was Patrick Evans: Associate Professor of Sacred Music as well as Director of Music for the chapel at Yale Divinity School. He was brilliant, engaging and tenderly challenging. Like myself, Patrick is committed to reclaiming the beauty and importance of congregational singing - and in this group of musicians the sound was heavenly. But that is not the real point. Rather, the goal is to empower God's people to sing out their whole experience as communion with the Lord: our fears and our celebrations, our tears and our triumphs, songs where "the intimate and Infinite" become one.
So, he told stories and we sang: sometimes it was an evocative new hymn by Tom Troegger followed by an ancient "Gloria in excelsis" - we sang in Spanish and then American Sacred Harp - with a little gospel and jazz thrown in, too. He told how his grandmother, in her latter days, was unable to speak in full sentences but could still sing the songs of Gershwin she learned while courting - so that sang Gershwin to one another in her final days. It was soul music. It was prayer. And it was healing - a balm in Gilead.
Patrick also emphasized how the Body of Christ has a unique mission in this age of non-stop music in a culture of professionals to help ordinary people find and trust their true voices. It is an act that is counter-cultural, healing and essential in this age of "American Idol"atry.
Springsteen got this right when he did his rolling "revival" show back with the Seeger sessions - but we can do it EVERY week in worship - if we, too, can't keep our hearts from singing.
As I continue to reflect on the similarities and differences between the rise of Nazi demagogues in Germany during the 1930s and the equally dangerous politicians and broadcasters who spew hatred throughout contemporary America, I find that the poetry of Dietrich Bonhoeffer speaks to this era with remarkable clarity. (For a very helpful synthesis of Bonhoeffer's marriage of ethics and aesthetics see: www.crosscurrents.org/hollandf20.htm by Scott Holland.)
Bonhoeffer came to embody and express a life of faith as one that embraced solidarity with both the wounds and wonders of the world. In a word, the calling of Christ is compassion - sharing bread and suffering with others as equals - not sainthood. His poem, Christian and Heathen, puts it like this:
People go to God in their need, plead for help, ask for happiness and bread, for deliverance from sickness, guilt, and death. So do we all, all of us, Christian and heathen.
People go to God in his need, find him poor, abused, homeless, without bread, see him entangled in sin, weakness, and death. Christians stand by God in his suffering. God goes to all people in their need, satisfies them body and soul with his bread, dies for Christian and heathen the death of the cross, and forgives them both.
What I have come to call "incarnational theology" - living into the fullness of the human condition including all the brokenness as well as joy - is very close to Bonhoeffer's mature engagement with the world where "the Infinite and intimate become one." (Catherine Madsen in the essay sited above.) In this he exposes one similarity that the hate-mongers of both generations share: a rabid rejection of the humanity of their opponents. I do not think it is an exaggeration to claim that the demonization of Jews, homosexuals and Roma by the Nazi propaganda machine bears a frightening resemblance to the words of some Tea-baggers, Birthers and American militia.
The goal is to diminish the common humanity we all share. Their strategy is to fill our fears with racial venom and manipulate our economic anxieties with lies so that our hearts yearn to purge and punish the chosen scape goats. And as I consider this careful contemporary propaganda, I see strong parallels between the Nazi rallies of the 1930s and many of the current Tea-Bag and ultra-right conventions.
+ Both simplify complex problems into mean-spirited sound bytes + Both aggressively suggest that our current problems are the result of a sinister plot by those who hate the mother/father land + And both viciously portray those who disagree as either foreign dupes or human beings of a most inferior quality
And herein lies another tragic and potentially terrifying parallel: by denying our shared humanity in God to those they hate or fear, the contemporary Neo-Nazis who celebrate Guns, God and America are nourishing an idolatry the confuses hatred for love, anxiety for faith and violence for compassion. Christian militias? Lock and load for Jesus? Denigration and race-bating as the core of whatsoever you did unto one of the least of these?
Former US president, Bill Clinton, recently spoke about the consequences of the Oklahoma City bombing 15 years ago this week. Noting that the same type of fear-based anger was active in those times, he said, "I don't want America to have to experience more violence to regain its conscience..." After Oklahoma City we all became much more careful about how we talked and acted. We still had differences but we saw the consequences of our ugly words and dangerous hyperbole. One of Bonhoeffer's last poem, "Who Am I?" deserves another hearing:
Who am I? They often tell me I would step from my cell's confinement Calmly, cheerfully, firmly, Like a squire from his country-house.
Who am I? They often tell me I would talk to my warders freely and friendly and clearly, as though it were mine to command.
Who am I? They also tell me I would bear the days of misfortune Equably, smilingly, proudly, Like one accustomed to win.
Am I then really all that which men tell of? Or am I only what I know of myself, Restless and longing and sick like a bird in a cage, Struggling for breath, as though hands were compressing my throat,
Yearning for colours, for flowers, for the voices of birds, Thirsting for words of kindness, for neighborliness, Trembling with anger at despotisms and petty humiliation, Tossing in expectation of great events, Powerlessly trembling for friends at an infinite distance, Weary and empty at praying, at thinking, at making Faint, and ready to say farewell to it all?
Who am I? This or the other? Am I one person today, and tomorrow another? Am I both at once? A hypocrite before others, And before myself a contemptibly woebegone weakling? Or is something within me still like a beaten army, Fleeing in disorder from victory already achieved?
Who am I? They mock me, these lonely questions of mine. Whoever I am, thou knowest, O God, I am thine.
As a part of a new marketing campaign, the United Church of Christ has issued this beautiful and powerful video to share something of how we appreciate and embrace the Living God. I love it...
Every day I make a point to read a poem - often more - since an awakening about 15 years ago. This new poem, "The Conquerors," by L.S. Asekoff speaks some of the truth about what it means to engage in two international wars without owning acknowledging the consequences. It is soul food to me...
They showed us the white flower of surrender They showed us the red They fell down before us at the gates of their city Terrible to behold we hovered above them Lords of the Air We promised them the peace That passeth all understanding We promised them the freedom of the broken knee Only the conquered can know Rumors arose strange premonitions A talking fish a white crow & news of uprisings in the distant provinces Trouble closer to home Victims killing victims a priest cried Who is blameless? The Lords of the Air who dare not touch earth? Those who kill without risking death? Following the itinerary of stars We returned to our city There we found they had raised in our absence At the center of the great walled marketplace A statue of Phobus God of Fear As they fell down before us Perhaps we can be forgiven for asking Having lived so long among strangers What is there to fear?
Here is another by William Carlos Williams:
Sorrow is my own yard where the new grass flames as it has flamed often before but not with the cold fire that closes round me this year. Thirtyfive years I lived with my husband. The plumtree is white today with masses of flowers. Masses of flowers load the cherry branches and color some bushes yellow and some red but the grief in my heart is stronger than they for though they were my joy formerly, today I notice them and turn away forgetting. Today my son told me that in the meadows, at the edge of the heavy woods in the distance, he saw trees of white flowers. I feel that I would like to go there and fall into those flowers and sink into the marsh near them.
And this entitled "Disgust" by Elizabeth Scanlon - it makes me laugh - and feeds my soul, too:
There's a preponderance of dog shit in Paris but no one says so, attracted to its other, finer qualities. If people were stepping in that much crap in Detroit you'd never hear the end of it. Motown my ass, they'd say, without so much as a backward glance at the Miracles, the Temptations. They might remember Ike & Tina since he beat the shit out of her, but they'd be wrong. They were from Tennessee. What you get for the price of Paris is a certain forgiveness, a willingness to overlook the less scenic. I don't know why. I told a French guy once that I loved how clean and green the Seine looked; he laughed till he almost puked. Because I was wrong, of course, but also because cleanliness wasn't his idea of a compliment. So let's be Paris. I'll be blind to your porn habit and you'll elide the edges of my idiot rage. We'll be full of shit but marvelous anyway, and the young will flock to us as an eternal symbol of romance.
May there always be food for your soul... life is too short to be all work and suffering.
Last night at band practice we started working on a few "grunge" tunes to adapt for our more "cowboy junkies" type groove: "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" (Green Day) and "Smells Like Teen Spirit" (Nirvana) have great potential. There are a few minor lyric tweaks we'll need to make to do these songs in worship, but they both hold great potential for exploring the way that alienation is a prayer/song of lament.
Other possibilities include:
+ Keep the Car Running and Wake Up - Arcade Fire + Daddy's Gonna Pay for Your Crashed Car - U2 + Use Somebody - Kings of Leon + Nobody Knows My Name and It Hurts - Rickie Lee Jones + Hurt - NIN/Johnny Cash
Are there other good rock/country/pop tunes that express the anguish of alienation that are among your favorites? I would love to know so that we can experiment with them, ok? Just as Paul Tillich discovered that the abstract expressionist painters of Germany were giving shape and voice to the Living God better than the church after WWI - and just as others look to film and television to discern sacred insights amidst secular genres - I continue to search contemporary music.
There are, of course, other themes... but right now I am curious about how alienation, estrangement and shame are being expressed. Any thoughts?
NOTE: My notes for Sunday, April 18th, 2010 are a part of my Eastertide series on considering the meaning of sin in the 21st century. To say that I am not systemmatic would be too obvious: like both of my influences - Niebuhr and Nouwen - I know that only part of this mystery has been unraveled. At the same time, because there is mystery involved, I trust that the parts that are clear are good enough for the time being. If you happen to be in town on Sunday at 10:30 am, drop in and join us.
There seems to be a cyclical nature to the way Christians talk about sin in public: sometimes we are obsessive and harsh, other times we are oblivious and indulgent; often we are shallow and moralistic but every now and again we are insightful, profound and helpful. And this push-pull pattern – our peculiar embrace and then rejection of the reality and effects of human sin – repeats itself over and over again in our history.
Early in our Congregational tradition, preacher Thomas Shepard said:Every natural man and woman is born full of all sin, as full as a toad is of poison, as full as ever his skin can hold… thy mind therefore is a nest of all the foul opinions and heresies that were ever vented by any man. Thy heart is a foul sink of all atheism, sodomy, blasphemy, whoredom, adultery, witchcraft and beggary; so that, if thou hast any good thing in thee, it is as a drop of rosewater in a bowl of poison: where we are fallen it is all corrupted.(Gathered in the Spirit, Susan Drinker Moran)
Less than one hundred years later, however, when this nation’s first authentic intellectual, Jonathan Edwards, preached an equally vigorous message about sin and human depravity over the hill in Northampton… at first he was celebrated but eventually found himself so alienated from his congregation that they fired Edwards from his pulpit and banished him to the farthest western regions of the wilderness: Stockbridge.
There have been times when we have cherished the loose grace of Emerson and his transcendentalists and other times when we have hungered for firery revivalist preachers like Charles Finney, Dwight L. Moody or even Billy Graham. Before the First World War, American Christianity wrestled with social justice and notions of human perfectionism only to aggressively swing back towards fundamentalism and a fear of eternal hellfire and damnation by the war’s ugly end. In the 1940s and 50s Reinhold Niebuhr tried reclaim a healing and psychological interpretation of sin for the world, but by 2000 the contemporary theologian and teacher, Marcus Borg, was asking whether our whole notion of sin was more trouble that it was worth.
In his book, The Heart of Christianity, Borg frames the challenge like this:(Clearly) the language of sin and forgiveness dominates the Christian imagination. Its centrality in Christian thought and practice is evident everywhere… (and yet) is the word sin the best way to name what is wrong (with humankind)? Does its centrality illumine what the Christian life is about or cloud it?
It is almost schizophrenic, isn’t it? No wonder so many in our tradition no longer want to talk or even think about sin: not only has our history been confusing, but too often our sin-talk and been punitive, moralistic and mean-spirited. Think of the pillory and stocks that our spiritual ancestors used on the town green at Old Sturbridge Village and throughout New England. Do you know what I’m talking about?
• A pillory is a wooden frame that locked a sinner’s hands and head into place – and stocks locked their feet – so that you could be immobilized for public humiliation as part of your rehabilitation.
• Such spiritual offenses as lying, idleness, falling asleep during the sermon or missing either of the two required worship services on Sunday could lead to your being imprisoned in the pillory or stocks where it was expected that your neighbors and others in the town throw garbage – or worse – at you.
And let’s never forget that our ancestors also believed it edifying for a drunk to be forced to wear a large D on his or her clothes – or a T for theft – of an A for adultery. Lord, have mercy – and while I’m on a roll let me note that Protestants don’t have a monopoly on unhealthy notions of sin either. No, our Roman Catholic sisters and brothers have been equally scrupulous about condemning petty moral offenses and emphasizing human depravity instead of God’s grace.
• My man, Bruce Springsteen, tells the story of going to Catholic grade school and the abuse he took at the hands of the nuns. One day, when he was caught daydreaming instead of paying attention to the lesson, he was forced to sit all day in a garbage can with a dunce cap on his head. “You are nothing but garbage,” the nun told him, “and you will amount to nothing but garbage – so get used to it!”
• Sadly, I suspect that there are equally punitive strains amongst our Jewish cousins in faith as well as Islam and other spiritual paths when it comes to sin.
So, given all this brokenness – given all the shallow moralistic and judgmental notions that continue to plague our hearts and wound our minds – you might be wondering why I’ve chosen to do a five part series about sin in the 21st century. Why not leave well enough alone, yes? Hasn’t there been enough damage done?
So let me tell you why I think it is necessary for us to go down this road one more time: thinking and talking about sin gives us permission to explore the mysterious aspects of the human condition. We are beings of body and soul – spirit and flesh – heaven and earth, yes? And there are just some things we cannot grasp or fully understand. How does St. Paul put it? “Now we see as through a glass darkly, then we shall see face to face.”
“Sin,” writes theologian James Nelson, “is not the only metaphor for addressing the basic human condition, but it is the main one given to me by my heritage.” He continues:
That is why I cannot join our culture’s dismissal of religious language when it comes to human dysfunction… I cannot accept the so-called ‘triumph of the therapeutic’ – where medicine, psychology and sociology are seen as the only relevant explanations of human brokenness. (Something more is at work – something mysterious – and something that every religious tradition uses to try and explain) why good things have turned bad and why relationships have gone wrong.” (Nelson, Thirst, p. 60)
Are you still with me? What Nelson is saying – and what I think is profoundly true – is that science and medicine alone cannot explain human brokenness. There is something at work within and among us – something mysterious and beyond our control – that causes us to hurt those we love, that drives us into self-destructive behavior, that impels us towards violence and lust and all the rest.
Nelson speaks of this something as sin which he defines like this: What is sin? Theologies give diverse descriptions of the fundamental but mysterious problem: missing the mark, disobedience, pride, sensuality, selfishness, inordinate self-loss, injustice – the possibilities are numerous. And while I find some truth in each of these, I find sin best described as profound estrangement. It is relational brokenness, separation from everything meaningful. It is alienation from ourselves, from those around us and from our environment. It is separation from life itself. Because, fundamentally, sin is estrangement from God who is the source and ground of all that exists.
In the beginning, God saw that it was good – that’s how the Bible begins – but things go south real fast. Frederick Buechner summarizes what some have called the “central plot” of the Bible like this: “I think it is possible to say that in spite of all its extraordinary variety, the Bible is held together by having a single plot. It is one that can be simply stated: God creates the world, the world gets lost and God seeks to restore the world to the glory for which God created it.”
What sin-talk is really all about, therefore, is not a catalogue of vices or a moral list of behaviors that are wicked and unhealthy. Rather sin is a way for us to describe what it means to be lost – and how God’s love can bring us home – just like the old hymn tells us:
Amazing grace how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me I once was lost but now am found, ‘twas blind but now I see
That’s what this morning’s gospel lesson celebrates, yes? Peter is not restored to vibrancy and integrity by being punished or shamed. Jesus does not force him into a pillory or stocks to bring an end to his estrange-ment, does he? Preacher, Peter Koontz, puts it this way: “In this story, we are Peter, and Peter is us. And the second chance (he is given) comes not through some penitential act… but through the sheer grace and love of Jesus himself."
And just so that we hold onto to this insight, let’s review the story because it tells us something important about sin and grace.
• The story begins with Peter and some of the disciples back in their fishing boats: now why do you think this important?
• It is what they knew before their relationship with Jesus, yes? It is a way of reminding us that when we are estranged from God and caught in shame… we often fall back into old behaviors and habits. Do you know what I mean? Can you give me an example…
The story says that often we slip back into old habits and behaviors when we are estranged and ashamed: that is one of the mysterious ways sin works. I’m not sure I know how to explain this or even understand it – but I know it is true. That’s one insight but there are three others that deserve mention:
• First, the story goes on to tell us that Jesus comes back to Peter and the disciples, but they don’t recognize him. They are caught up in their old ways and don’t yet see the grace of God moving towards them.
• Which suggests something very different that really has nothing to do with the old, moralistic notions of sin: sin doesn’t push us away from God, sin brings God towards us. Do you see that in this story – how this estrangement works to help and heal – not punish?
Don’t get me wrong: there are clearly consequences to our sin – we feel empty and angry and afraid or guilty and ashamed – and God lets us feel the consequences of sin. But never to wound or punish us – always to pull us closer into relationship, yes?
• For isn’t that what happens next in the story? Jesus doesn’t chase all the fish in the Sea of Tiberius away, he fills their nets full and brings bounty to his disciples not scarcity. So much so that we’re told Simon Peter pulled in 153 fish into a net that just moments before had been empty.
• I’m not going to waste our time talking about that number – 153 – but it is a curious little detail. And there have been sermons preached about that 153 representing all the known types of fish in the Sea of Tiberius at that time and how this is symbolic of Christ’s to all different types of people.
• I prefer to go with the wisdom of St. Augustine on this who said it is a mystery number that points to God’s bounty and power beyond the obvious.
Clearly, when Christ comes back into the lives of his disciples not only is their shame and estrangement gone, but they are filled and nourished. The story tells us that the disciples had a feast on the beach – their sorrow has been lifted – and they are brought into joy and celebration. That’s the whole point of sin – to bring us back into relationship with God – and end our alienation.
So allow me one last insight concerning the questions that Jesus asks of his old friend Simon Peter. This is tough stuff because while Jesus never wounds us he does make it clear to Peter that Peter has wounded him: “Do you love me, Peter?” He asks this question three times – three times Peter denied the Lord – and three times Jesus asks him to reflect on his love. It is agonizing – there is tension and remorse – there is sorrow and uncertainty – there is sin and grace wrapped up in this mystery.
• Do you love me, Peter, more than all these? All these old habits and ways of living? All these other people and relationships? All the other loves in your life?
• If so, Jesus continues, your love for me will have to become compassion and connection with my sheep for there is no distinction between loving me and caring for the flock.
Think about this for this is how Christ treats sin: no hair shirts, no flagellation, no pillory and stocks or public humiliation. He helps us name our shame and alienation – he comes to us when we are most wounded with an embrace not a rebuke – and then he works to fill us full from the inside out. And when the feast is over, when we have known joy and hope again, he quietly tells us that now we are to give to others what we ourselves have experienced: grace and compassion in abundance.
• The final words between Jesus and Peter are some of my most cherished for they remind us that many times we will not feel like sharing Christ’s love. “When you were younger,” he says, “you went where you wanted to go and did what you wanted to do.”
• “But now that you are older – more aware of you sin and wounds – now another will lead you into those places where you do not want to go.”
A healthy and honest notion of sin in the 21st century invites us to mature – grow up – so that we can follow Christ with love. It speaks to us of the mystery of real life and the challenges we know but cannot explain. And it helps us hear Jesus when he calls into places we do not want to go. The way of Jesus always begins with your sins are forgiven – then he bids us come and follow. This is the good news for those who have ears to hear.
As I continue my non-systematic (but thoroughly relentless) refection on the relevance of Bonhoeffer and the Confessing Church of Germany for the contemporary American experience, a few ideas have bubbled to the surface:
+ First, Bonhoeffer's legacy is a deep and radical understanding of Christ's incarnation. Lisa Dahill clearly names this as a non-sentimental "Christmas" spirituality. She writes: it is an incarnate spirituality immersed in the complexity and particularity and messiness of the world – where the God who becomes flesh lives. In his writings he is not primarily interested in the triumph of Easter but in the deepening incarnation precisely into God’s own poverty, darkness, emptiness – and joy, mercy, sweetness, love – met for Christians in Jesus Christ. In a world today where Christians in our context too often tend to see ourselves in the place of the victor, the divine agent, the conqueror in the name of “God,” his is a refreshingly humble and open perception of divine reality, curious about the world as it is and eager to find precisely in the faces and alterity of every other the very face of God.
+ Second, Bonhoeffer's radical sense of incarnation is informed by both prayer and acts of solidarity-and he insists upon similar engagements to the discipline of prayer and compassion from those who would embrace his spirituality. Prayer - particularly praying the Psalms - forces individuals and communities beyond our own habits, prejudices and ideologies. And serving broken people in a faith community as servants is another non-negotiable. South African theologian John W. DeGrunchy speaks of Bonhoeffer's role in helping him join the anti-apartheid movement like this: In many respects Bonhoeffer’s main contribution in South Africa has been his challenge to those of us there who are socially privileged and academically trained, as he was, and therefore numbered among an elite minority—even if we have sought to be in solidarity with those who struggled for liberation and attempted to identify with the victims of apartheid... for he insists that we keep confessing Christ here and now... from the perspective of those down below. He asks those who would explore his spirituality to search for Christ in prayer - in Scripture - and in solidarity with the most wounded.
I am moved by the words spoken by Albrecht Schoenherr on the 40th anniversary of Bonhoeffer's death (we just marked the 65th such anniversary.)
There are things for which an uncompromising stand is worthwhile. And it seems to me that peace and social justice, or Christ himself, are such things" (quoted in Bethge, p. 155). With the Words "peace and justice" he hoped to make himself understandable to his brother, a social democrat. But then came these words -- "or Christ himself." It is notable that he could see all this together: the political, the ethical and the religious. For him, Christ stood behind the longing for peace and justice.
The Christ Bonhoeffer talks about is not the Christ of the idealists, who transmits the meaning of life or a harmonious world view. It is not the Christ of the individualists, who guarantees strength for life, happiness and eternal salvation. Bonhoeffer means the biblical Christ who is faithful to the earth, who lives among people and brings them together. He brings salvation and healing from suffering and death, liberation from guilt and sin, liberation from the forces which are destroying the earth, among which war and injustice are the most terrible.Uncompromisingly to advocate this Christ is the motive that drove Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
Life for him consisted not of different compartments, but of a single reality. This earth could not be considered apart from Christ’s footsteps, which are impressed in it. Christ’s manger stands on the earth, his cross is rammed into the earth, his grave is dug into the earth. Because God became human in Christ, there is only the one reality, which includes God, world and human persons. Bonhoeffer’s thought was not like ours, divided among different realities: employment and family, economy and politics.One does not find in Bonhoeffer any sneaked-in simplicity, in which a part of reality is ignored, or the kind of piety that only lives in and for the life beyond and lets things on this earth go as they will. Nor did he live in the kind of immediacy that knows no genuine obligations and only seeks personal wealth.
As the Community of Iona puts it: we are a community of faith that unites work and worship, prayer and politics, sacred and secular. And the key is the embrace - not one or the other - but both. Like the Psalmist says: Mercy and truth have met together, justice and peace have kissed each other. Truth shall spring up from the earth and compassion shall look down from heaven.(Psalm 85)
+ And third Bonhoeffer invites intellectuals and church leaders to listen more than we speak. Yes, we can listen together to the Psalms and the stories of the real lives of our people. Of course we can offer insights from our training. But the fact remains that Christ is always discovered together - almost always from below - not from above. And so we listen... and watch... and wait.
I suspect that much of the Tea Bag phenomenon - as well as the Palin/Bachmann fury - is more about people not being ignored and forgotten than anything else. These demagogues, however, are doing a much better job at feigning interest than any one else. So broken people facing mortgage foreclosure, job loss and a change in the social structure of their community are frightened and angry. Scott Brown in Massachusetts heard that - and responded. He is not a neo-facist like some liberals have suggested. He is a crafty, smart and often compassionate politician who listened to Bob Dylan: your really DON'T need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.
As our experiment in praying the psalms deepens, I trust that it will open conversations - and then actions - that will help our faith community more deeply engage with the real wounds and fears of our community. Both are a part of a spirituality of Bonhoeffer.
While it is often a "low" Sunday, I cherish the Sunday after Easter for a couple of reasons:
+ First, the lectionary reading is always about the doubts of Thomas, and doubting has taken a bad rap over the years. For some reason, doubt has never been one of my charisms - for most of my life (except about a year of a true dark night) I have been grounded in the gift of faith - which I have gathered is not the norm. Not that my "faith" is particularly strong or unique - most of the people in my church are far more faithful that me - it is just that I have almost always had an organic, abiding trust that God was in loving control so I need not worry about too much. So this Sunday gives us all a chance to celebrate and explore what doubt might mean in our journey in faith. It is also a time to affirm that doubt can also be another path towards faith - the questions being as important as any answers - or the emptiness being as true as any thing else.
+ Second, most of the time the folks who turn out for the first Sunday after Easter are those who REALLYlove church. I am a church geek - I have almost always experienced church as a true and loving community of hope and grace - and I think those who show up on this Sunday have come to a similar conclusion. Not that church is always right - it isn't. And not that church is the ONLY place to find/build community - that isn't true either. But for those seeking a connection with the love of Christ in Jesus.... church often feels like home. And on this Sunday - just like the Sunday after Christmas - those who gather are mostly "just folks." Simple sinners and wounded ones who find some solace and healing in Christ's grace.
+ And third, after the drama and high pageantry of Holy Week and Easter, going to church on the Sunday after feels grounded, simple and true. Don't get me wrong I love the boldness of the high holy days - but I don't live most of my time in those places - so I mostly cherish the low Sundays as part of the real journey of faith. I give thanks for the "mountain top" celebrations, but prefer to dwell down in the valley.
So, at the end of a "low" Sunday - after I have mostly rested during the week after Easter and am preparing a humble pot roast for my honey who is worn-out and taking a nap - I return thanks for the ordinary blessings of these times. Like Mary my prayer is:
Sing out my soul, sing of the holiness of the Lord, who has delighted in a woman, lifted up the poor, satisfied the hungry, given voice to the silent, grounded the oppressor blessed the full-bellied with emptiness and with the gift of tears those who have never wept; who has desired the darkness of the womb and inhabited our flesh. O sing of the long of our God: sing out from deep within my soul.
Ok, this is totally worth the price of admission: after singing beautiful music with my sweet wife AND doing a version of "Angel from Montgomery" with my dear daughter, THIS little clip tells me that I am ready for anythingbecause whatever else happens... it is all gravy and grace. Here is my little blues man, Ethan, playing a lick we worked on for a church talent show tonight: Pure grace...
I am so grateful that my buddy Steve - whose own son did a rocking version of "Flight of the Bumble Bee" on marimba - was there to tape this. Again, pure grace...
Yesterday was the 65th anniversary of the execution of Dietrich Bonhoeffer - martyred for his commitment to Christ during the triumph of Nazi hatred - on April 9, 1945. Many considered Bonhoeffer a traitor in his day:
+ He taught his congregations and students that Jesus was a practising first century Jew when his government was burning Jewish books and bodies.
+ He insisted that the ancient heresies of Marcion (who tried to discard the Old Testament and all traces of Jewish theology from the early Church) were no less deadly in his generation and made praying the Psalms - Christ's only prayer book - an essential part of his course on Christian formation.
+ He systematically challenged both his church and his government by forming an underground seminary to train new pastors; he also refused to submit to the Nazi's edict that Christians cease to study and publish everything associated with the Old Testament.
+ He eventually joined the July 20th plot to assassinate Hitler knowing that in a broken and sinful world not all sins are the same: his violence would save the lives of millions. He refused to rationalized his deeds, scape-goat others or hide behind his privilege. He understood the evil he embraced and accepted that in a broken world many of our deepest convictions are saturated with sin.
On the day of his execution, he was stripped naked and led to the gallows to be hung by the neck on a thin wire. He died just three weeks before the Russians liberated his death camp and a mere month before Germany surrendered. One of his prayers reads:
God of the day and of the night, in me there is darkness, but with you there is light. I am alone, but you will not leave me. I am weak, but you will come to my help. I am restless, but you are my peace. I am in haste, but you are the God of infinite patience. I am confused and lost, but you are eternal wisdom and you direct my path; now and for ever. Amen. The testimony and witness of Bonhoeffer continues to haunt me as I consider the parallels and differences between the moral capitulation of the German Christian Church to the hatred and destruction of the Nazis and the burgeoning Palin/Bachmann tidal wave of mean-spirited Christian piety mixed with appeals to those hardest hit by our current social and economic troubles.
This is the parallel that worries me the most:
+ Erich Fromm's study of the German merchant and working class of the 1920s and 30s, Escape from Freedom, suggests that fear (real and imagined) and shame (born of defeat after WWI) were vibrant breeding grounds for demagogues. Appealing to both God and nation, therefore, gave the Nazis a language that found a receptive and even malleable audience.
+ And that is where the current demagogues are focused, too: economic chaos and social anxiety. What's more, like the Nazis before them, this current breed of hate-mongers are slowly and carefully demonizing their enemies. They question the President's birth certificate rather than openly use racial epithets. They exploit America's post-September 11th fears of Islam and insinuate that those who disagree are likely to be agents of Al Queda. They paint their opponents as advocates of class warfare rather than souls committed to the common good.
+ And they very carefully use slander and sound-bytes to dominate the public conversation around social welfare, national security and economic stability. In a word, they are seductive and dangerous and building momentum.
So where are their pastors? Where are their sacred teachers? Where are those who know scripture, history and the care of the soul? Bonhoeffer insisted that those training with him to become pastors learn the Psalms - and pray the Psalms - because they fill us with an alternative to our own fears and sin. They give us a chance to start with God's words rather than just our own emptiness. He writes:
The child learns to speak because the parent speaks to the child. The child learns the language of the parent. So we learn to speak to God because God has spoken and speaks to us. In the language of the Father in heaven God’s children learn to speak with God. Repeating God’s own words, we begin to pray to God. We ought to speak to God, and God wishes to hear us, not in the false and confused language of our heart but in the clear and pure language that God has spoken to us in Jesus Christ.
On Monday, April 12th we will start a new Eastertide gathering at 7 pm. We will pray the psalms together. We will talk to one another about how to go deeper into God's heart. And we will make a commitment to hold one another accountable to both daily quiet prayer with the Psalms and using a common liturgy. There is more - much more - to consider but for now this is our start.
es something that rings very true to me 65 years later. And after a few recent conversations with colleagues who have become bored, burned-out and cynical - something very easy for clergy in times such as these - this reflection from one imprisoned for both his thoughts and deeds takes on a new twist:
