My defenses rise up when somebody, especially an evangelical Christian, wants to tell me 'the truth' about God or religion or the Bible. We live in what the Pope calls a 'relativistic age' - an age in which people think the truth cannot be known because everything is relative. However, I now find myself poised to tell you that's very true about God!! So, put your religious defenses in order!
On my desk sits a nice birthday gift, a certificate to one of my favorite restaurants. I didn't happen to find it on the desk and claim ownership of it as a 'finder-keeper' thing; somebody gave it to me. The gift came from a giver, and it was intended for a receiver, me. There were three things: the giver who gave it, the receiver who got it, and the gift itself.
Two thousand years of reflection about God, together with numerous hints in the scriptures, have convinced Christians that the deepest truth about God is there are three persons in God: a Giver, a Gift, and a Receiver of the gift. Over the time we have named these persons as Father-Giver, Spirit-Gift, and Son-Receiver. Lover, Love and Beloved. God is Trinity.
Have you ever read William P. Young's engaging little novel, 'The Shack?' The book touched a nerve in me when I read it for the first time. Its heart-wrenching theme, grief, is highly emotional and personal, but of course, also highly universal. It's basically a series of conversations with God as a Trinity of persons.
Here's the story line. When his younger daughter is violently killed on a mountain shack, Mac's anger burns him to a cinder. His life becomes overwhelmed with grief, despair and sadness. Then one day he receives a mysterious note, an invitation from God to return to the mountain shack where his daughter was killed. Mac reluctantly goes there, and in the shack he encounters an intriguing vision of the Trinity.
The Father is depicted as a large, delightful African woman. The Son appears as a Jewish carpenter, and the Holy Spirit looks like a gracious Asian woman. They take Mac on a journey of extraordinary self-discovery. In his anger and despair he recognizes the God of love, in and through the grace of forgiveness and reconciliation. Mac is profoundly transformed by this encounter which leads to repentance towards himself, towards God, and even towards the person who killed his daughter.
Our particular version of God can change us - for better or for worse. If we submit to the idea that God is angry, judging and punitive, then it is likely that we will be that kind of person. If we submit to the version which says 'God is Love,' then our lives will be happier, as will the lives of those with whom we deal. Life's basic questions - How are we to live? To what should we devote ourselves? To what causes give ourselves? - boil down to the question, Who is God for me?
'The Shack' offers an unusually helpful version of God by depicting the Father as a delightful African woman, and the Spirit as a gracious lady. The Trinity of persons laugh together - they whistle and sing and dance together; they listen and care for each other. The concept of God that's offered here brings Mac back to living and loving again. I believe the author tells the truth about God, far-fetched as the book may appear. He offers a vision of God that gives hope, even when we are blinded and ripped apart by grief.
I cannot know for certain that God exists, but I know that the word 'God' is operating in the world, running around doing all kinds of work, good and bad, and I feel we need to think critically about the kinds of gods we make and worship. There are god-mongers out there busy peddling empty religious slogans that can numb and block us from living and loving, forgiving and reconciling. We need to work toward a version of God that might make the world a more just and life-giving place for everyone.
PASTOR EMERITUS
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, CHURCH!
To capture the Holy Spirit is like trying to capture the fog. The Church makes a very big deal out of this Sunday, Pentecost Sunday. Our tradition sees the feast as the birthday of the Church, the day when fire fell on the apostles and a huge wind sent them on their way to the ends of the earth.
The Spirit of God, the divine breath, breathes through the pages of the bible as something creative, something that brings order out of chaos: creating the universe, delivering harvests, giving the Law, guiding and enlightening the chosen people, effecting unusual births, lighting a fire under fearful disciples and forming in them bold, creative, and vital words that would bring life.
A couple of things in this Sunday's readings got my attention. One is the vitality of God expressed by symbols of fire and wind. The lifegivingness of God is reflected in our human thirst for meaning, purpose and satisfaction. Every human heart longs for fullness of life, and people are prepared to do what it takes to have it. Many, unfortunately, look for it in all the wrong places, being deaf and dumb to Jesus who said , 'I came that you might have life and have it more abundantly' - John 10:10.
Another thing that strikes me is to ask, if Pentecost is the birthday of the Church what makes us Catholic? I think the question comes down to asking 'Who is my neighbor?' If you read the gospels carefully, you will see that Christian spirituality is relational through and through. It's a community-of-persons spirituality.
Jesus said that people will come from 'the east and west, from north and south to recline at table in the kingdom of God' (Luke 13:29), and everyone will be welcome. He taught that God will hold all people accountable for their lives and by the same criterion of how they treated their neighbors in need (Matthew 25:31-46). Last Sunday's Gospel ended with Jesus sending his disciples to the ends of the earth to invite everybody to the table (Matthew 28:16-20).
Vatican II was a watershed for this 'catholicity' of the Church, this universality or world church nature. It's vision was to push Catholicism out of Western 'confinement' to become truly 'world church.' The Council urged the Church to welcome multiple cultural expressions of Christian faith - to look like a universal community rather than a 'Roman' church in different parts of the world. Vatican II's vision was a modern statement of the unity of 'language' and diversity of peoples that we hear about in Sunday's first reading. We know from the Acts of the Apostles that the first Christians were committed to uniting around the 'Gospel' of Jesus - as one. Although honoring diversity, they were determined to hold to the 'one Lord, one faith, one baptism' of Ephesians 4:5.
The Catholic Church often sins against 'catholicity.' Both insiders and outsiders can experience it as a hierarchical club, marked by inhospitable signs of sexism, racism, class-ism, and homophobia. Its dominant culture - patterns of thought, symbols and rituals, art, structures and laws - all are distinctly Western, or even European parochial. Today, 66% of Catholics live outside Europe, in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Is work piling up in the Church for the Holy Spirit, or what?
We need to pray that the Holy Spirit will fall once more like fire from heaven. Jesus came to cast fire on the earth (Luke 12:49) and Luke portrays him as a man on fire. We need to commit again to Jesus and to his lordship over us. This Sunday's second reading from Paul sees a tight connection between 'saying' (i.e. living out) that Jesus is Lord and the action of the Holy Spirit.
Our Church needs the birthday gift of a new fire and a strong fresh wind. But, as the song says, 'let it begin with me!'
PASTOR EMERITUS
The Spirit of God, the divine breath, breathes through the pages of the bible as something creative, something that brings order out of chaos: creating the universe, delivering harvests, giving the Law, guiding and enlightening the chosen people, effecting unusual births, lighting a fire under fearful disciples and forming in them bold, creative, and vital words that would bring life.
A couple of things in this Sunday's readings got my attention. One is the vitality of God expressed by symbols of fire and wind. The lifegivingness of God is reflected in our human thirst for meaning, purpose and satisfaction. Every human heart longs for fullness of life, and people are prepared to do what it takes to have it. Many, unfortunately, look for it in all the wrong places, being deaf and dumb to Jesus who said , 'I came that you might have life and have it more abundantly' - John 10:10.
Another thing that strikes me is to ask, if Pentecost is the birthday of the Church what makes us Catholic? I think the question comes down to asking 'Who is my neighbor?' If you read the gospels carefully, you will see that Christian spirituality is relational through and through. It's a community-of-persons spirituality.
Jesus said that people will come from 'the east and west, from north and south to recline at table in the kingdom of God' (Luke 13:29), and everyone will be welcome. He taught that God will hold all people accountable for their lives and by the same criterion of how they treated their neighbors in need (Matthew 25:31-46). Last Sunday's Gospel ended with Jesus sending his disciples to the ends of the earth to invite everybody to the table (Matthew 28:16-20).
Vatican II was a watershed for this 'catholicity' of the Church, this universality or world church nature. It's vision was to push Catholicism out of Western 'confinement' to become truly 'world church.' The Council urged the Church to welcome multiple cultural expressions of Christian faith - to look like a universal community rather than a 'Roman' church in different parts of the world. Vatican II's vision was a modern statement of the unity of 'language' and diversity of peoples that we hear about in Sunday's first reading. We know from the Acts of the Apostles that the first Christians were committed to uniting around the 'Gospel' of Jesus - as one. Although honoring diversity, they were determined to hold to the 'one Lord, one faith, one baptism' of Ephesians 4:5.
The Catholic Church often sins against 'catholicity.' Both insiders and outsiders can experience it as a hierarchical club, marked by inhospitable signs of sexism, racism, class-ism, and homophobia. Its dominant culture - patterns of thought, symbols and rituals, art, structures and laws - all are distinctly Western, or even European parochial. Today, 66% of Catholics live outside Europe, in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Is work piling up in the Church for the Holy Spirit, or what?
We need to pray that the Holy Spirit will fall once more like fire from heaven. Jesus came to cast fire on the earth (Luke 12:49) and Luke portrays him as a man on fire. We need to commit again to Jesus and to his lordship over us. This Sunday's second reading from Paul sees a tight connection between 'saying' (i.e. living out) that Jesus is Lord and the action of the Holy Spirit.
Our Church needs the birthday gift of a new fire and a strong fresh wind. But, as the song says, 'let it begin with me!'
PASTOR EMERITUS
Thursday, June 2, 2011
CLEAR ON THE CONCEPT?
Bishop Robert Finn of Kansas City made it into the national media recently. He admitted having failed to notify for a year either the police or his diocesan Review Board about a priest who was reported to him for having tons of child pornography on his laptop. He apologized for his oversight and then said something I found extraordinarily unbelievable: "Don't trust me. Trust our Lord Jesus Christ, trust his Church."
I was gasted with flabber not so much by his failure to act but by his concept of church. The whole area of the clergy sexual phenomenon is too complicated for me to say anything about it that has not already been said over and over.... To start talking about it would be like trying to rearrange the icebergs up in the Arctic Circle without knowing what's hidden of them under the water. I think there's a huge unknown factor about each case.
Back to the bishop's statement about the church. What was he saying when he came out with 'Trust the church?' My understanding of the church is that all of us, from the Pope all the way down to the people in the pew, are the church. If you ask a kid what the church is he or she would probably say it's a building. If you asked people of my generation you would probably be told that the church is the hierarchy, the ordained. In my day, seminarians were said to be 'going for the church,' training to be members of 'the church.'
There was a fight in the early days of Vatican II about this, after which the Council Fathers declared that the church was the whole people of God, not just the hierarchy. The hierarchy constitutes church leadership. But, like an army, church membership is not confined to the officer core. The army is made up of officers and 'men.' I use the term 'men' here as embracing women. You and I are the church. We are called to care for one another, to share the good news about Jesus Christ, to find a nook where we can follow Christ and be faithful to the gospel.
As I read the Acts of the Apostles these days of Easter-time, I am reminded that the Spirit is meant to help us recognize and use for the good of all the gifts we received in baptism. We are, as St. Therese of the Child Jesus once said, the trustworthy hands and feet of Christ in this world. As such, we help one another acknowledge our sinfulness and need for redemption, and trust our leaders to bolster our faith and hope. When our leaders fail us, we need an accounting.
But what if an army Colonel fails his 'men' and then tells them to trust the army...? What if a bishop fails his people and tells them to trust the church....? It has been almost half a century since Vatican II clarified the meaning of church. Wouldn't you have thought that our bishops would be clear on the concept by now?
PASTOR EMERITUS
I was gasted with flabber not so much by his failure to act but by his concept of church. The whole area of the clergy sexual phenomenon is too complicated for me to say anything about it that has not already been said over and over.... To start talking about it would be like trying to rearrange the icebergs up in the Arctic Circle without knowing what's hidden of them under the water. I think there's a huge unknown factor about each case.
Back to the bishop's statement about the church. What was he saying when he came out with 'Trust the church?' My understanding of the church is that all of us, from the Pope all the way down to the people in the pew, are the church. If you ask a kid what the church is he or she would probably say it's a building. If you asked people of my generation you would probably be told that the church is the hierarchy, the ordained. In my day, seminarians were said to be 'going for the church,' training to be members of 'the church.'
There was a fight in the early days of Vatican II about this, after which the Council Fathers declared that the church was the whole people of God, not just the hierarchy. The hierarchy constitutes church leadership. But, like an army, church membership is not confined to the officer core. The army is made up of officers and 'men.' I use the term 'men' here as embracing women. You and I are the church. We are called to care for one another, to share the good news about Jesus Christ, to find a nook where we can follow Christ and be faithful to the gospel.
As I read the Acts of the Apostles these days of Easter-time, I am reminded that the Spirit is meant to help us recognize and use for the good of all the gifts we received in baptism. We are, as St. Therese of the Child Jesus once said, the trustworthy hands and feet of Christ in this world. As such, we help one another acknowledge our sinfulness and need for redemption, and trust our leaders to bolster our faith and hope. When our leaders fail us, we need an accounting.
But what if an army Colonel fails his 'men' and then tells them to trust the army...? What if a bishop fails his people and tells them to trust the church....? It has been almost half a century since Vatican II clarified the meaning of church. Wouldn't you have thought that our bishops would be clear on the concept by now?
PASTOR EMERITUS
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