On a National Narrative.

This is a follow up to the Video “First Thursday in July:  Fragments of a National Narrative” available on You Tube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJW33k-WnjM&t=9s

The opinion was offered in that video that absence or brokenness of a national narrative in American life better explains the difficulty in motivation that appear to plague all but in a particular way younger people, the Z generation.  Blaming that on character faults seems to be a mistake. My take is that absence of national narrative provides with a better understanding of what we are experiencing and how that could be changed.  In a subsequent conversation prompted by the video, has lead to the following thoughts which might be useful in extending this discussion.

A national narrative in the best of times is a work in progress.  So, if someone my age looks back and speaks of the national narrative of his or her youth, they must be wary of nostalgia and fantasy.  Still, I am looking at the fifties in the US, there was a project shaping a narrative which provided me and my contemporaries with a sense that what we were about was meaningful and that the effort it took was worthwhile.  It did so in spite of internal contradictions and misinformation, which were by no means small, and maybe not so different as now.  The question is what sustained it then and what is failing it now in our present American life?

            I would suggest that there was a sub-narrative to carry it forward.  Here is where I get religious, the sub-narrative was the Biblical narrative.  The Abraham out of Ur of Chaldea, Moses out of Egypt, David out of the sheepfold into the kingdom and finally the one that begins “on the night in which he was betrayed.”

            This is the central thesis of my book, On Giving My Word.  That may appear to be a wild and unsubstantiated claim, but where else, I would ask, the does the narrative process begin?  It is often claimed that it began with the Greeks and the Romans.  But the Greek classics, the Iliad and Odessey, are about a return home, a closing the circle by means of a restoration of wht was before.  That is myth, not narrative.  The Romans on the verge of a new age, tettered and reimagined themselves as the new Ilium, see Virgil’s “Aeneid.”  Both Greece and Roman contributed substance to the West, they did not provide it with direction.  That happened when the narrative stream of Christianity passed through them. 

            It is a new question now, to ask if it can continue to do so in our present American life.  The link is suggested by the fact that decline in the belief in God coincides with the floundering American narrative.  The decline in belief is related to a rise in doctrine, whether liberal or conservative or dismissive.  So, a liberal Christianity and a Conservative Christian seem certain that they are opposites, but viewed from the outside they look pretty much alike!  As do I dare say, the atheist!  Doctrine has risen and fallen in the course of history as a replacement for narrative. 

             So, if I was in the pastorate today, I would say to Gen Z, help me. Gen X thought that they did not need the narrative.  They thought that being American was being self-reliant and pragmatic. 

            As has happened before in American life, they find themselves in the end caught it a static reality with nowhere to go.  If you are not to be caught in this quagmire, you need to find a narrative that clarifies from where we have come and illuminates the possibilities of where we might go.  The pattern of this narrative lies in a living Christianity, as opposed to a doctrinal Christianity, which we can, together, launch in the heart of American life.   

Footnote: "living Christianity" is in fact traditional Christianity, a doing it in order to understand it. 

A Representation of the Trinity 

In the resent post on You Tube, reflecting on the Holy Spirit, I found myself wishing for a whiteboard, the kind you have in a classroom, on which I could represent the three actions of divinity, forming a kind of dynamic triangle.  In the days when I held forth in a classroom, I was forever filling one, whether it was for the edification of my students or as a lubricant for my thoughts was never clear.  What is clear is that such a project is problematic.  Nevertheless I attempted an experiment with MS Whiteboard which I would share with you, with, of course, comes the disclaimer: like but not like.  

On the left I have drawn an arrow to represent the Father whose motion of withdrawal, stepping back, is into a deeper silence and darkness. In its wake is space-time and a lead, an invitation.  On the right is an arrow to represent the Son whose motion of extension results in an ever more revealing word and light.  In it is the movement of a sower, who seeds reality with an internal meaning. Beneath these two outward arrows, I have drawn a back-and-forth arrow to represent the Holy Spirit that comes the Father and returns from the Son, whose ambivalent motion is union and communion.

 Lastly note the blue line in the center branching and folding which represents the creation, our reality, tumbling into space-time.  The Spirit moves across it on its eternal movement between Father and Son.   The passage of the Spirit results in union on all levels or reality.  At the level at which it crosses the human spirit it sounds a note, a bow drawn across and returning does on a cello.  

Visit First Thursday June on the You Tube channel for further discussion.  

It is import, however, not to focus on the lines and objects on the whiteboard, but to catch sight of the movement. This I take it is cause with whiteboards filled with mathematical formulas.  You have not understood it as long as you are seeing symbol and numbers.  It is only when you see the flow passing through them that they mean something mathematical.  Otherwise, you have a mere abstraction which would justly cause you to ask: “Why do I need to know this?” 

What I would like to suggest to you is that this movement implied in this graphic is part of our experience.  You can and should seek to experience it in your prayer.  It is what makes communion possible.

 

A Reveiw of Mia Couto's trilogy:

 

 Preached at St. Thomas Episcopal Church March 26, 2023 on the occasion of the installation of the icon of the Annunciation.

Conceived by the Holy Spirit

   + Let me begin with a brief explanation of my presence in your pulpit.  It is due to an icon, the Icon of the Annunciation, which has just been written by wife Jane for St. Thomas and to the generosity of your rector who has gracious invited me to occupy it.  On the one hand I count it wonderful privilege and must confess to being a washed with memories of my undergraduate years serving on this altar, worshiping almost daily in this choir, and of a number of visits over the years, the last of which was the fall semester of 2019 when we were resident in Edgerton House for a semester.  On the other hand, I am keenly aware of the challenge to match the quality of preaching to which you are accustom and to do justice to the demands of this pivotal Fifth Sunday of Lent and its daunting propers.  The pivot, to which I refer, is a turn from a season of introspection to the moment of the observation of the climatic mysteries of crucifixion and resurrection.  The daunting propers to which I refer begins with the difficult Gospel of a man, Lazarus, brought back form the dead, which supplies a preview of the Resurrection of Jesus which is to follow. The prospectus of this Gospel is provided by the Old Testament reading which consists of Ezekiel’s vision in the Valley of the Dry Bones.  In it a nation, Israel, is promised that it will be brought back from destruction, hardly less miraculous than bringing a man back from the dead.  The New Testament reading is a retrospect on the resuscitation of Lazarus, it being a lesser included miracle of Jesus raised from the dead.  It consists of Paul’s wisdom which he set at the heart of great Epistle to the Roman.  Without the eighth chapter, the epistle fragments and devolves into a legalistic argument, the very thing that Paul is trying to avoid.  The stakes could not be higher!  The fact that your preacher this morning has been sitting on the bench for the past 15 years, gives new meaning to this year's Lenten theme: March Madness.

             My hope is that the icon that has brought us to together can provides us with the means finding the Gospel for us in these reading and the spirit that will allow us to enter into the contemplation of the death and resurrection of Christ that is shortly upon us.   It might seem gratuitous, but Annunciation icon is not a peripheral icon, but a central icon, being a Festal Icon, which are displayed in the upper story of the Iconostasis, which divides the nave of an orthodox church from the sanctuary and is repeated on the Holy Doors that open the sanctuary to the nave.  In the Western Church it is expressed in the Angelus, rung three times a day, inviting one to prayer the Angle Gabriel’s greeting to Mary: “Hail Mary.”   

               To begin with, I would refer you to the upper lefthand corner of the icon.  There you will see a cloud of dark unknowing, which send a ray, marked with a dove, obliquely across the icon to the breast of Mary of Nazareth.  It represents the movement to the Holy Spirit. The movement of the Holy Spirit is precisely what is at stake in Ezekiel’s vision.  The spirit, rauch, in Hebrew, transported Ezekiel to the valley of dry bones.  There Ezekiel is directed to prophesize “Thus says the Lord GOD to these bones: I will cause breath, ruach, to enter you, and you shall live. I will lay sinews on you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath, ruach, in you, and you shall live.”   The play with Hebrew word ruach, which means wind, breath and spirit, recalls the creation story.  There the ruach hovers over the chaos.  There God forms Adam from red clay and breaths life into him.    Spirit is also what is at the heart of the wisdom of Paul.  Chapter 8 begins with thematic statement “The law of the Spirit of the life in Christ has set you free.”  In the portion of that chapter, we have read today, the agency of the Holy Spirit is declared to be the essential mover of the resurrection: “If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you.” 

               The line, that traces the movement of the Spirit. connects the prophet’s vision and Paul’s Wisdom and, on its way, it passes through the bringing of the man, Lazarus, back from the dead.  (I cannot pretend to say more of the what and the how.  But something happened that day in the Spirit which struck those present to their core.   Step back and look again and you will see that that this line originates in the creation and ends in the resurrection and on its way, it passes through the heart of every one of us.

               Now I would direct you attention to the figure on the right side of the icon, Mary of Nazareth.  She sits in the posture of prayer. 

               Her primary garment is not the blue of heaven as in Western art, but the red of the earth as it always is in the in Eastern art.  The Hebrew word for red is adam.  The word for red dust is Adamah.  From that dust the first human, hadam, was formed.   Mary’s under garment is green, the color of growth, and only in her hairline is a touch of blue signifying her share of divinity that indwells us.  Curiously in the East she is referred as the Theotokos, the God bearer, and not as in the West, the Ever Virgin.   She sits firmly in context of our humanity and her “lack of sin,” is the lack of separation from humanity and, more particularly, from Israel.    The long line of history that passes through Isreal equips her with the capacity for a “Yes.” 

               Her prayer is an internal dialogue.  It arises as a response to the call of indwelling Word of God. The same may be said of you and me.  It is there because, as we read in John, “The Word was coming into the world and the world knew him not, but as many as received him, he gave power to become children of God.”  Wherever the Word is, the Holy Spirit comes from the Father and says to the Word, “You are my beloved, my son, in whom I am well pleased.”   Simultaneously this same Spirit returns to the Father with the words of the Son: “I delight to do your will.”   In this archetypal structure of prayer, the movement of word and spirit anticipate of the experience of the Christ at his baptism and at his Transfiguration. 

               This is where I need your help.  I want to look into your own interior prayer and see if it is not essentially dialogical.  See if the origin of your interior dialogue is not your initiative, but rather your response to something which has invited your response: “Ask and you shall receive.”  And then recall, if not always to same degree, that what appears to be a purely mental activity has had some kind of physical effect on you.  You might have reported, “my heart was warmed.”  Given the distractions that plagues our prayer, it is likely that this physical effect has not been all that deep or prolonged.  Even so, I dare say we felt something pass through us.  The movement of the Holy Spirit plays us as if we were a string and she was a bow drawn across us.

               It is important for my argument to place Mary’s interior pray life, in the context of our own.  Once we have grasped its commonality with our own, we can go on to imagine its exceptional outcome.  Imagine that the warming is so deep, and the resonance is so sympathetic that the whole body is engaged.  I cannot pretend to say more about what or how, except to confess, “conceived by the Holy Spirit.”

               Now we can step back from the icon, as we do I ask you to take note of a detail.  In Mary’s lap is a hank of wool dyed red and shaped like a cross.  From it a thread ascends to her raise right hand and from it the thin red thread descends.  Apparently, her state of prayer has been preceded by the labor of spinning thread.  It is red, adam, the color of blood, dam, and it foreshadows the blood of her son.  The thread falls below to where it raps about a spindle, and then from the spindle it continues down into a chalice.  This chalice is the holy grail from which we ourselves partake.  The thread ties us to the holy mystery of the movement of the Trinity which creates and ends the world, and in between makes for our salvation.  Let us confess it: “Conceived by the Holy Spirit.”

 

God as Embodied

Christology and Participation in Maximus the Confessor

Dr. Hans Boersma

January 30, 2023

 

I must begin by expressing my deep gratitude to St. Vladimir’s for making this splendid occasion available, both the Divine Liturgy celebrating the Feast of the Ecumenical Teachers:  St. Basil, St. John Chrysostom and St. Gregory Nazianzus and this outstanding lecture by Dr. Boersma, in the context of the Ecumenical dialogue of Anglicans and Orthodox.  From the point of view of Anglicans this dialogue helps us find that level of sacramentality which belongs to us, but which is subject to suppression by our commitment to rationality.  That is why when reading theology years ago, reading Schememann meant so much to me.  Allow me to register a few thoughts about where Dr. Boersma has led us.

It is commonplace to say the Jesus embodies God, but the inference that God is Embodied raises a question.  Dr. Boersma has argued for the inference in his address at the Fortieth Annual Alexander Schmemann Memorial Lecture.  He begins with a tease: “Does God have a body?” and then he laid out the Scylla and Charybdis through which one must navigate: the deist severance of God and Creation on the one hand and the pantheist identification of God and the creation on the other.  The navigational aid that Boersma offers, is the work of Maximus the Confessor and more generally of the Council of Chalcedon and the tradition of eastern fathers associated with it. 

Boersma identified two key themes of Maximus, his concept of logoi in everything and his concept of divine act as participation with which he intended to make his argument.  With the former he accounts for the potential of creation and with latter the capacity of the divine to be present in things and transcendent at the same time. 

The way these tools should be used, to my thinking, is in reference to the hypostatic union.  Incarnation according to Chalcedon is not an alteration or replacement of the physiological but the union that happens on the level of hypostasis.  Anything less, risks the confusion of the two natures.  What is meant by hypostasis not easy to state.  Person, as it is translated, in our contemporary understanding is blurred with psychological connotations which makes it a translation of limited value.  My attempt at stating it is to speak of it as the origin point of personal being, and as such the single subject of all subsequent actions.  In the case of the Christ, that point is grasped by God, is God.  From that point divine energy works downward into the body which responds by reaching upward to cling to God.   

This intersection of the divine with the creation it unique.  It can happen once only at certain time and place. The existence of logoi in all things represents the possibly of response.  But each logio is a very small line of information, in need of elaboration of another logoi, and another, until it can accrue the capacity of the “Yes.”  It is one of the mysteries of history that this happens in a Galilean village in what we reckon as the first century, in the interior life a young virgin woman.   In this sense the conception is unique, and Spirit led like the creation and the resurrection.   

In term of action God is present in the body of Jesus, but in terms of being, he is not in the body but remains outside over against the body in God’s infinity.  If the former participation constitutes being embodied, we cannot object Boersma’s proposal.  But it seems safer not to speak of God as embodied since this soon leads us to the rock of pantheism, which undoes sacramentality.

 

The Synaxis of the Ecumenical Teachers

January 30 

In the West, January has been a season of Ecumenism.  In the last quarter of the last century, the Octave of Christian Unity, fitly bookended by the Feasts of the Confession of St. Peter and the Conversion of St. Paul was widely observed and commonly reported upon in the media.  The idea of the octave originated with the Graymoor Fathers in 1908 and was greatly enhanced by the Second Vatican Council, 1964.  The founder of the Graymoor’s was Paul Wattson who had opened his ministry as an Anglican priest, in our own Omaha Nebraska.  He was here as part of the Associate Mission which the new Bishop, George Worthington, brought to Nebraska to launch an urban mission aimed at the working-class immigrant populations of the city.  The young celibate priests were active across the city with social programs and founding churches.  The mission did not last long and most of it work disappeared, save for St. Andrew’s which continues to serve the city.  Wattson returned to the East and found a vocation as Roman Catholic, founding an order formally called the Franciscan Friars of the Atonement, never losing his zeal for unity, including for that of the divided churches. 

 It comes as a pleasant surprise that at the end of January a significant ecumenical event will happen in which, in a small way, I will be a part.  St. Vladimir’s Seminary, NYC, of the OCA is marking the feast called the Synaxis of The Ecumenical Teachers with a liturgy and program which will be addressed by Dr. Hans Boersma, an Anglican Priest, in honor of Dr. Alexander Schememann.  These events that can be participated in online by registering on their web site, https://www.svots.edu&form=IPRV10#.

The Ecumenical Teachers are St. Basil, the Great, St. Gregory of Nazianzus and John Chrysostom.  They are the key Fathers associated with the Council of Nicea which preserved the worldwide unity of the church, 321 CE, and with the struggle that ensued to defend its teaching.  The word “synaxis” refer to coming together as a congregation for the liturgical purpose common prayer and witnessing.  The image of the three hierarchs, differing in their gifts, so gathered is itself a celebration of unity and an elegant witness to the great triune unity of the Divine enshrined in the teaching of the Council.  It is a testimony to St. Vladimir’s zeal for unity that it makes this the patronal feast of their chapel.  I share with you the version of this icon which is in my own prayer corner that it might add to its aura to the light that shine forth from work of St. Vladimir’s.  In it St. James of Jerusalem is added, as his presidency at the Council in Jerusalem, laid the foundation of a conciliar church.

 

Schememann also belongs to that last quarter of the last century, which now seems so long ago, when we devoured his writings as a means and a hope for living into an Ecumenical Age, which, of course, did not happen.  The issue in the West is clear.   Even as the fruits of the theological dialogue was being published, ARC, LED and others, a shift was taking place in church life.  The fears for interior unity and discipline within the various church bodies, led to a replacement of theological identities with political identities.  Political lines were easier to draw and to defend.  There is no need to point fingers because we have all done it.  The bottom-line result is hard to assess, but one wonders if more has been lost that gained, and how, difficult it is to walk out of it. 

 As one who has followed Orthodox Church in America and of St. Vladimir’s Seminary over the years, I have the sense that they sit in the context of American life in a way that is different from those of the West, Roman, Protestant, Evangelical and Anglican.  It is gracious of them to share with us and from them I think we have much to learn.

 The Elder of Omaha, January 2023

 

Does Kathryn Tanner Preach?

 Not an Occasional God

Occasionalism, which was formerly known as supernaturalism or interventionism, in relation to the Devine, is excluded by Tanner’s primary principle for God-talk: God’s agency acts immediately, everywhere, always.  In contrast to a God that acts occasionally, this God is the great God, that in turn demands more of us.  We mirror God, so if our God is an occasional God, we will be occasional Christians, sometimes in need of God, sometimes praying to this God, sometimes going to Church to find this God.   If, on the other hand, our God is great God, who acts immediately, everywhere, at all times, then we will understand that our need for God is continual, our prayer is continual, and our going to Church is regular.   

Here's a text:  "Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus." I Thessalonians 5:16. Almost makes me miss not having a pulpit!