Earth Day and frequent-flyer miles

Instead of a sermon this past Sunday, and in honor of Earth Day, our Rector read a “pastoral teaching” on the environment from the Episcopal House of Bishops. He is committed to environmental issues, for which I commend him. But he omitted the best part, which is the location from whence this was issued:

The Episcopal Church House of Bishops, meeting in Province IX, in Quito, Ecuador, issued the following Pastoral Teaching …

The mounting urgency of our environmental crisis challenges us at this time to confess "our self-indulgent appetites and ways," "our waste and pollution of God's creation," and "our lack of concern for those who come after us" … [my emphasis]
LINK

So the U.S. Bishops all flew to Ecuador in order to pontificate about our carbon footprint. Impressive!

The Episcopal Church seems to go out of its way to maximize travel. In 2008, I was invited to a Credo Conference as a participant in the church pension plan. The location was Louisiana, about a thousand miles from where I live and work. This was purposeful, as their materials indicated, in order to get me well away from my regular commitments. A hypothetical Credo participant from Louisiana would be shipped off to Virginia, or Minnesota. But despite misgivings, I accepted the invitation.

[An aside: one of my memories of the week is from my personal financial review with one of the conference faculty. He looked at our family portfolio (such as it is) and advised “You need to get rid of most of that cash. Put it in equities, or real estate. Buy a house. Don't just let all that money sit around in CDs.” This was at the beginning of September, about a fortnight before the Lehman collapse. I was glad that I did not rush home and take his advice. I hope also that he did not lose his shirt that fall.]

It bothers me that the Episcopal Church presents its political views as “pastoral teaching.” Like our Rector, I am committed to the environment. I suspect that we are well along the path toward its systemic collapse, and seek to do what is in my power to delay that event. But this document goes well beyond that: it “urges every Episcopalian” to actions such as “advocat[ing] for a climate treaty, and work[ing] toward climate justice.” Aside from sensing that the phrase “climate justice” is essentially meaningless, it is far from clear to me that these steps are the only Christian response. A more Christian response might include (for example) fewer frequent-flyer miles for our House of Bishops. And more pointedly, it might include quite a bit of inconvenience for me, and for all of us. I have met few Episcopalians who are ready for that.

Words

from The Philosophy of Tolkien [Peter J.Kreeft, Ignatius Press (2005)]:

“Words were important to Tolkien, not just instrumentally, through their power and effect on life, but metaphysically... Tolkien discovered that 'legends' depend on the language to which they belong... 'Greek mythology depends far more on the marvelous aesthetic of its language and so of its nomenclature of persons and places and less on its content than people realize' [Tolkien's Letters, no. 180, p. 231]...

“The words of much of The Lord of the Rings and all of The Silmarillion are vertical, and heavy, as Max Picard says of Hebrew: 'The architecture of the language was vertical. Each word sank down vertically, column-wise, into the sentence. In languages today we have lost the static quality of the ancient tongues. The sentence has become dynamic; every word and every sentence speeds on to the next... each word comes more from the preceding word than from silence...' [Max Picard, The World of Silence, pp. 44-45]

“Each word in the Silmarillion seems like a thunderbolt from Heaven, a miracle. There are many capital letters, in contrast with the fashion of our leveling, reductionistic age to trim, to decapitalize, to decapitate. And there are many nouns, both common and proper. It is the Anglo-Saxon style. The words are solid, like mountains; heavy and slow, like a glacier. The sense of height and weight of words suggests the sense of ontological height and weight, a verticality, a supernaturalism. The reader is lifted up out of himself..." (pp. 154-156)

This “static quality of the ancient tongues” corresponds with my still-minimal experience with Hebrew. The individual words are of utmost importance, “solid, like mountains.” Yet it is precisely in this solidity that the relations between the words become important. “The LORD is my Shepherd” -- in Hebrew, this is just two words: “LORD – my Shepherd.” And this simple juxtaposition is enough to carry one through the “valley of the shadow of death.”

In the beginning...

An imaginary Sermon: Matins for the Sunday of the Resurrection

Psalms 148, 149, 150
Exodus 12:1-14
St. John 1:1-18

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.

In the Divine Liturgy, we are accustomed to hearing this on the First Sunday after Christmas Day. In that context, it is the Incarnation as considered from a distance of many years. The angels singing Gloria in excelsis Deo, the shepherds coming “with haste, and [finding] Mary, and Joseph, and the babe lying in a manger” (St. Luke 2:16) – all this has come and gone, and St. John, now an old man, seeks to find words to write about the Word, the Logos. He knew the stories of the Incarnation from the most direct of sources: St. Mary the Virgin, who had treasured all these things in her heart and whom her Son had entrusted to him as a Mother. But now St. John knew that he must say more; he must find a way to tell us what it meant, and still means. By the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, he tells us that “the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.”

That Incarnation, that being “made flesh and [dwelling] among us,” led by a straight path to the Cross. And this is why we hear the Prologue to the Gospel according to St. John on the morning of Easter Day. It is upon the Cross that we “beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.” St. John here declares the theme that permeates his Gospel: this Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of Man, shows us who God is, and the message is most fully writ as he hangs upon the Cross:

... in the grace that rescued man
his brightest form of glory shines;
here, on the cross, 'tis fairest drawn
in precious blood and crimson lines.
(“Nature with open volume stands,” Hymn 434)

Thus it is that the corn of wheat falls to the ground, in order that it bear much fruit (12:24).

... as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life. (3:14)

The corn of wheat falls to the ground and dies. But a new thing springs forth, for this “love is strong as death” (Song of Solomon 8:6). “In him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.” Not in any sense of the word: the powers of darkness had no comprehension of what, or Who, was before them. Nor could all the powers of Death encompass or overcome this Light:

... it was not possible that he should be holden of it. For David speaketh concerning him, I foresaw the Lord always before my face, for he is on my right hand, that I should not be moved: Therefore did my heart rejoice, and my tongue was glad; moreover also my flesh shall rest in hope: Because thou wilt not leave my soul in hell, neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption (Acts 2:24-27).

Christ is the first-fruits of this new thing, the Blessing promised to Abraham, a Seed in whom all the nations of the earth are blessed (Genesis 22:18). We spoke of this in the Pascha nostrum (BCP p. 46) a few moments ago, quoting from St. Paul:

Christ is risen from the dead,
and become the first fruits of them that slept.
For since by man came death,
by man came also the resurrection of the dead.
For as in Adam all die,
even so in Christ shall all be made alive.
Alleluia.

“He brought me to the banqueting house, and his banner over me is love,” says Solomon (Song of Solomon 2:4). As soon as this Office of Matins is completed, the Holy Eucharist, the marriage supper of the Lamb, is at hand: “Come and dine,” he tells us (St. John 21:12). For “this month shall be unto you the beginning of months: it shall be the first month of the year unto you.” (Exodus 12:2) “This day shall be unto you for a memorial; and ye shall keep it a feast unto the LORD throughout your generations; ye shall keep it as an ordinance for ever.” (v. 14)

Praise him with the timbrel and dance:
praise him with stringed instruments and organs.
Praise him upon the loud cymbals:
praise him upon the high sounding cymbals.

Let every thing that hath breath praise the LORD.
Praise ye the LORD.
(Psalm 150:4-6)

Crux fidelis, spes unica

[an imaginary Sermon, for the Good Friday Liturgy]

In the Name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost: Amen.

We call it "Good" Friday, and we venerate the Cross, that instrument of shameful death:

Faithful cross! above all other,
one and only noble tree!
None in foilage, none in blossom,
none in fruit thy peer may be:
sweetest wood and sweetest iron!
sweetest weight is hung on thee.
(Pange lingua - Hymn 166)

It is a contradiction. There was nothing beautiful about the cross. Even less was there anything beautiful about the brutal death inflicted upon its occupant.

Yet, we revere the cross. Many of us wear crosses around our neck, or hang a crucifix on our wall, or place one on our desk where we can see it as we work.

In the cross of Christ I glory,
tow'ring o'er the wrecks of time;
all the light of sacred story
gathers round its head sublime.
(Hymn 442)

We look not at the cross, but through it, as with an icon. In the cross, we see the Arm of the LORD made bare, God revealed in the fullness of His power and glory: "Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks foolishness; but unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God." (I Corinthians 1:23-24)

Here his whole Name appears complete;
nor wit can guess, nor reason prove
which of the letters best is writ,
the power, the wisdom, or the love.
("Nature with open volume stands" - Hymn 434)

The Liturgy for Good Friday [optionally] concludes as follows:

If desired, a wooden cross may now be brought into the church and placed in the sight of the people. Appropriate devotions may follow... (rubric at BCP p. 281)

What are "Appropriate devotions" for such as this? Words are inadequate. Silent contemplation is better. In the end, though, we find that we must sing. At our parish, we always sing the old Spiritual:

Were you there when they crucified my Lord?
Were you there when they crucified my Lord?
Oh, sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble.
Were you there when they crucified my Lord?
(Hymn 172)

And we always conclude, as the Prayerbook directs, with the great hymn of Fortunatus, the Pange Lingua, sung by Christians on this day for fourteen centuries:

Sing, my tongue, the glorious battle:
of the mighty conflict sing;
tell the triumph of the victim,
to his cross thy tribute bring.
Jesus Christ, the world's Redeemer,
from that cross now reigns as King.
(Hymn 166)

Singing is good. It opens the soul to deeper meditation on the Passion, which is our only foundation, hope, and joy. But even music falls short, unless it is coupled with obedience and conversion of life, which is our "reasonable service"(Romans 12:1):

Were the whole realm of nature mine,
that were an off'ring far too small;
love so amazing, so divine,
demands my soul, my life, my all.
("When I survey the wondrous cross" - Hymn 474)

On Good Friday, we join with Christians around the world and throughout time to ponder these things. We join also with angels, archangels, and "every creature which is in heaven, and on earth, and under the earth, and such as are in the sea,and all that are in them" in the praise of him who died on that Tree. It will be our chief occupation and delight through all the ages of eternity:

Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power,and riches, and wisdom,and strength, and honour, and glory, and blessing. (Revelation 5:12-14)

Now the God of peace, that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, make you perfect in every good work to do his will, working in you that which is wellpleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory for ever and ever. (Hebrews 13:20-21)

Thursday night, Friday morning

Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant... (Philippians 2:5-7)

Therefore we before him bending
this great Sacrament revere:
types and shadows have their ending,
for the newer rite is here;
faith, our outward sense befriending,
makes our inward vision clear.
(Thos. Aquinas: Hymn 329/330)

On this day, all the “types and shadows have their ending.” The atonement foretold in the Passover (“When I see the blood, I will pass over you”) and Yom Kippur looked toward this day. As the Epistle to the Hebrews explains, the blood of bulls and goats cannot atone for our wickedness (10:4); they were shadows of a greater redemption that was to come, and now is. The veil of the temple is rent (St. Matthew 27:51), and we can now “enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way, which he hath consecrated for us, through the veil, that is to say, his flesh” (Hebrews 10:19-20).

Last night at the Maundy Thursday service, the sermon emphasized the footwashing and the New Commandment. It was left for the Celebrant to emphasize the Institution of the Eucharist, the other great focus of Maundy Thursday, as recounted in the Collect for the Day and the first two Lessons (Exodus 12:1-14 and I Corinthians 11:23-26), and the white altar paraments and vestments. She did so by singing the elaborate Mozarabic chant appointed for the Preface of Eucharistic Prayer D in the American BCP (based on a Greek Orthodox model; the chant is found in the Altar Book, but I had never heard it done until this night) and by her careful celebration of the Eucharist. One of the virtues of her work at the altar is that she always acts as if this thing in which she is participating, the Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist, is the most important thing in the world – which it is. This was especially evident last night, and the sung Preface was overwhelming in its splendor.

She had a bit of trouble in breaking the bread. For reasons I will not here recount, a “real” loaf of bread is used for this service, an un-sliced loaf purchased across the street at the store. Suffice it to say that she was using this loaf out of obedience, not from free choice. She did the best she could with it. And that brings me to another side of the Holy Sacrament: it is glorious beyond all imagining, but it is also lowliest of all, humblest of all, “obedient unto death.”

The Rector concluded the overnight Watch with a brief distribution of the remaining bread and wine at 7 am, drawn from the Form for Communion under Special Circumstances (BCP p. 396). He finished up and went his way. It was left for our retired priest, Fr. H., to clean up. He is in his eighties and does not get around very well. But he got on his knees behind the Altar and picked up the crumbs, which were many, by moistening his fingertip so it would pick them up from the floor, then eating them. Once I realized what he was doing, I helped by going along behind the altar rail and doing the same. “Therefore before him bending, this great Sacrament revere...”

We all shirk the consequences of our actions; the inconvenient little details of our lives that we wish would just “go away” can often be passed off to others, to the “servants” (e.g., members of the Altar Guild, or the Sexton). But the buck has to stop somewhere. There has to be someone sufficiently low, to whom all the dirty work, the consequences of our actions, has to fall. It might be slaves in China who make the electronic gadgets and clothing that we buy in the stores. It might be someone in our family who always cleans up after us. It might be the people in America driven into poverty so that the “one percent” can remain comfortable. It might be the Latinos who butcher our meat and harvest our crops. J.F. told me recently about an economics class she is taking: the class discussion turned to such matters as the Greek “austerity” and the increasing inequality in this country. The professor summed it up: “Someone has to suffer.”

Someone did. He who is Highest became Lowest, drinking the cup of our wickedness to the last of its most bitter dregs.

Lamentations: the mystery of Providence

Then answered the Jews and said unto him, What sign shewest thou unto us, seeing that thou doest these things? Jesus answered and said unto them, Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up. (St. John 2:18-19)

In the Daily Office, we have been reading the first chapters of the Second Book of Moses, and for Holy Week we turn to the Lamentations of Jeremiah. In their different ways, both are examples of the Hand of God at work in the course of history. Indeed, much of the Old Testament can be read as an exploration of Divine Providence in the details of history.

I have heard clergy, including some whom I respect, scoff at the idea of God “micro-managing” the universe. They scoff at the simple folk who often attribute the small doings and events of their lives to God's direct intervention (as I do, though I have learned to keep such thoughts to myself in the place where I work). They apply this especially to circumstances where (for example) someone has suffered an accident or tragedy, or a natural disaster has struck. The clergy of whom I am thinking would say that the idea of God “willing” suffering or injustice or tragedy on someone is preposterous.

I am not so sure.

Jeremiah struggles with this in the Lamentations. He describes what has happened to the Daughter of Zion, and cries out to God: “Why????”, even though he knows very well why. He has delivered the word of the LORD to the people from his youth and they have steadfastly refused to listen, in the end throwing him into a pit to die. He concludes with these verses (5:19-22), leaving the question open:

Thou,O LORD, remainest for ever; thy throne from generation to generation.
Wherefore dost thou forget us for ever, and forsake us so long time?
Turn thou us unto thee, O LORD, and we shall be turned;
renew our days as of old.
But thou hast utterly rejected us; thou art very wroth against us.

I am inclined to side with Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, of blessed memory. Staunch Calvinist that he was, he attributed his successes on the battlefields of Virginia to the “gracious hand of Divine Providence.” But he also freely acknowledged the hand of Providence when it was seemingly against him – most of all in his friendly-fire injury at Chancellorsville, which resulted in his death. At the distance of almost one hundred fifty years, one can to a small extent guess at the workings of Providence: had Jackson been on the field at Gettysburg later that summer, his army corps would almost certainly have driven the Federals from Cemetery Hill behind the town on the first day of the battle before they could dig in, sealing a victory. At that moment, there sat on Lord Palmerston's desk at Ten Downing Street a bill that would formally recognize the Confederate States of America. Palmerston was sympathetic to the Southern cause and had expressed the opinion that an independent Confederacy “would afford a valuable and extensive market for British manufactures.” He was awaiting news from Gettysburg. Should the Confederates win a victory, he would proceed, and Great Britain would enter the war on the Southern side.

But Jackson was not at Gettysburg. Was his injury and death a random chance of war, or was it in some manner Divine Providence, or “God's will?”

The most obvious and central example of Divine Providence stands before us in the next week, and is indeed at the center of the universe: the Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ. The liberal theologians teach that (a) the Passion accounts as recorded in the Four Gospels are pious fictions with no relationship to what actually happened, and (b) “Rabbi” Jesus died on the cross, crushed by the Romans, and that was that. They delight in pointing to the short ending of Mark's Gospel, wherein (as they emphasize) there are no encounters with a risen Lord. None. Just a handful of women, running in terror from an imagined vision of angels. Naturally, they view this as the most authentic account of the so-called “resurrection.”

This fits nicely with the notion that our Lord's betrayal and death were, in essence, unfortunate accidents. It does not, however, fit at all with his teachings:

And he began to teach them, that the Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected of the elders, and of the chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. And he spake that saying openly. (St. Mark 8:31-32)

Divine Providence immediately raises the related question of Free Will. This, too, has its clearest answer in the events of the Passion: “Not my will, but thine be done.” The workings of Providence are most fully evident when our wills are fully aligned with God's. Very often, our wills are not so aligned; we insist on having it our own way. But the hand of Providence cannot be thwarted. If we refuse to do our part in furthering the Lord's will, he will get it done in another way.

Jeremiah weeps and we weep with him, because—if we are thoughtful and perceptive—we can see all of Jewish history in the dirges of Eichah [Lamentations]. This is the challenge of Tishah B'Av: [the day on which both the First and Second Temples were destroyed, also the day when the Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492] Can we realize that it is not merely a day of tears, but of challenge and hope? [from the Artscroll Chumash, footnote on p. 1274]

Returning to the example of the War Between the States, it seems clear that it was no more God's will that a whole race of people be enslaved than it was that (for example) Jerusalem be levelled to the ground, with its children within it (St. Luke 19:41-44), or Jerusalem's children of a later generation be slaughtered in the camps of the Holocaust. Both are cases where a great many people persisted over long spans of time in insisting on their own way, leading to vast suffering. And yet... in the end, God's will cannot be thwarted. Chattel slavery in the U.S. came to an end as one of the results of that war; the demonic regime of Nazi Germany likewise came to an end, and Hitler's goal of a “final solution” failed. Another hand was at work in this, beyond the workings of Churchill and Stalin and Roosevelt and their armies.

Unless we are to abandon the conception of Providence altogether.... all events are equally providential. If God directs the course of events at all then he directs the movement of every atom at every moment; “not one sparrow falls to the ground” without that direction... This may sound excessive, but in reality we are attributing to the Omniscient only an infinitely superior degree of the same kind of skill which a mere human novelist exercises daily in constructing his plot... (C. S. Lewis: “Miracles,” pp. 174-5, quoted in “The Philosophy of Tolkien: The Worldview Behind 'The Lord of the Rings'”, by Peter J. Kreeft, pp. 60-61)

Providence extends well beyond the “important” events of the wide sweep of history, as described by Lewis in the extract above, and as one sees fictionally in Tolkien's novel, the most beautiful depiction of the workings of Providence that I know. If we accept the concept of Providence at all, it must extend to all events, down to the tiniest. Does this overturn the laws of Nature? Of course not; it is by the very laws of Nature that Divine Providence normally works. Without Providence, there would be no laws of Nature.

One of the great Names of God is El Shaddai, generally translated as “Almighty God.” “All-sufficient God” would be another rendering. Or “the God who can and will do whatever it takes.” When He first revealed Himself by this Name “when Abram was ninety years old and nine,” he said:

I am the Almighty God [El Shaddai]; walk before me, and be thou perfect. (Genesis 17:1)

It is in this way, by walking before God (that is, in awareness of God's presence with us and in constant companionship with him in prayer, song, life, and work – and the bearing of one's cross) and thus being “perfect,” that we align ourselves with the Divine Providence. Jesus expressed it very simply: he said “Come, follow me.” And when we do so, we find with St. Paul that “all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28). We find as well that what had seemed chance was not that at all, but was part of the Story from the beginning: “For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.” (8:29)

This is the God of Divine Providence, the Author whose Story is most decidedly going to come to the eucatastrophe, the “happy ending,” that he foresaw before the foundation of the world.