Community Parson: Lost in the desert

Tuesday, August 9, 2011

Lost in the desert - in peril on the sea

Proper 14 A August 7, 2011
St. David’s
Genesis 37:1-4, 12-28
Psalm 105, 1-6, 16-22, 45b
Romans 10:5-15
Matthew 14:22-33

You may not hear this very often from me, but this spring I found myself in agreement with a ruling by Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. There was a case befo
re the Supreme Court about violent video games, and whether to prevent the sale of them to young children. His ruling, I believe, was there could be no restrictions.

I paid attention to this case because I know something about these games. I have children. They have video equipment, and yes, some of these games can get pretty gory. And yes, there are some sadistic people who seem to be “inspired” by some of the things they see depicted on various kinds of screens before them – video screens, tv screens, movie screens. And yes, of course, we want to shield our children from seeing horrific things depicted before their eyes.

But this is where I found myself in agreement with Justice Scalia, the Italian American father and grandfather of many. Most people – children even – know the difference between these cartoonish depictions and real violence. I was a little girl when I watched the road runner drop an anvil on the not-so-wily coyote; in the next frame, up jumped the coyote and the antics continued. In his ruling, Justice Scalia mentioned the Grimm’s Fairy Tales which we read to children – stories full of murderous mothers, abandoned children and death by all sorts of brutal means. And how about all these stories from Genesis we have been reading in church this summer? Just today, a story of vengeful brothers, deceptive sons and polygamous patriarchs. Like Justice Scalia, I am afraid that no amount of social engineering can prevent the dark side of human nature from creeping in to our consciousness.

The two big stories we read today are unsettling; the characters are full of fear. The jealous brothers throw Joseph in a pit, and then sell him into slavery. The disciples do not know what to make of Jesus, out on top of the water in a rough sea. The passage from the letter to the Romans urges us to tie all this up in a neat bow: "How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!" Ay yay yay. Neither Jacob nor his sons can claim such beauty, and the disciples think Jesus is a ghost. Everyone here is angry, fearful and confused. We have caught these two stories in the middle; we, too, are confused, and left hanging.

Our story of Joseph comes from the part of the book of Genesis where God does not seem to be present. Certainly God does not speak, or get involved in any direct way. It is only through dreams that God begins to creep back into human consciousness – Jacob, who as a young man wrestled with God; Joseph whose dream of his brothers bowing down to him made them so murderously angry and jealous. Where will those dreams lead the people of Israel? Will they find God’s redemption, even through famine and wilderness and slavery? How do these primal, Old Testament dreams speak to us, when we feel lost or confused or betrayed? We, whose own life stories are no more “finished” than the Joseph we read of today?

Lost in the desert – in peril on the sea: our gospel story has inspired Christians to think of the boat as an image of the church. In some decades of the church’s life, that boat floated securely on a serene sea. We would set sail for Jesus and everyone would come along, pledge cards in hand, eager to volunteer, all hands on deck. It was easy to jump right to the end of today’s passage. Ah, yes, everyone would nod; we are not of little faith. We all knew just what it meant “to go to church.” “To follow Jesus.” “To be a Christian.” And especially, “to be an Episcopalian.”

In “the old days,” like when I was in Sunday school, the lessons read in church would have never included this story of the abandoned Joseph. Such vivid “tales of terror” would be reserved for the children; “church,” as our parents knew it, was calm and serene. Now, it seems, everything is topsy-turvy. We give our children happy stories, while we sit here in church, quaking in our pews, and wondering if our little boat of a parish church – or a diocese – or a whole nation-wide Episcopal Church, or global Anglican Communion -- will run aground.

My old friend Beverly Messenger-Harris, who preached at my ordination, used to tell the story of the woman minister who was new to her church. This was a rural church, where everyone seemed to like to go duck-hunting. …

I don’t think I can walk on water. But I am happy to get into this boat with you, whether the seas ahead are stormy or calm. I am so glad that Jim picked that Leonard Bernstein song to sing this morning, one of my favorites. The days ahead will be like that song. Some of it we will know; some we will make up as we go along. We pray that it will be simple, but sometimes it might be hard. But it will all be beautiful, and it will all be well.

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Missional church and the arts

What if we thought about church in another way, as "a small community that [moves] into a particular area (often one with a lot of deprivation and poverty) ... seeking to follow Christ but their focus is simply helping transform their community -- in arts, environment, in social needs, with youth and so on."

These are churches, as the English church missioner named Jonny Baker, "are not focused on growing big -- but more like the yeast of the kingdom that Jesus talked about infecting the wider batch of dough. ..." Such churches, Baker says, face "the challenge of weaning members off their addiction to consumer approaches to church where they get their fix of worship and teaching and meeting with friends before they could properly engage in this more local, outward-focused community approach (maybe we need a 12 step detox programme for leaving consumer church!?)"

We may benefit from thinking this way, as we explore how to connect our treasure, which is the Celebration of the Arts, into parts of the community that could use more art.

Thanks to the Patheos blog for sending this thought my way ...

"A prayer book even an atheist would love"

It does seem a teensy bit arrogant for a 21st century author to claim that he "edited" The Book of Common Prayer, but Brian Cummings seems to have added considerable value to familiar red book we find in our pews. In this 2011 volume (Oxford University Press), we can find the full texts of the 1549, 1559 and 1662 Prayer Books, along with introductions, explanations, notes and glossary. The review in the September 2012 issue of The Atlantic, gives the book a glowing recommendation -- both in its edited and "explained" form and in the original, which as the book upon which all prayer in our language is based "shaped the inner life and branded the tongue of the English-speaking peoples. Its phrases and rhythms did not merely enter the language. They largely defined the language. " Read more of the review here, and if you read it, let us know how you liked it!!

What I read - 2012

FINISHED:

At Simon's INSISTENCE I read The Hunger Games. Some parts I had to skim through, because the depictions of these young people fighting each other to the death was at times too gruesome, but it was overall well worth the read. NOW I have to get on with # 2 in the series

Dennis Lehane's A Given Day. Everything comes together in a slightly staged but effective way in 1919 Boston: anarchists, molasses, racism, repression and the Boston police strike. J. Edgar Hoover makes some unflattering cameos. I must say it is kind of Ragtime as it would be dramatized by Matt Damon, Mark Wahlberg and Ben Affleck. It was in the days when you could tell what Boston block someone grew up on by the accent. The Irish don't come off all too well. Southie is a place to avoid in this prelude to The Depahted. It's good, though a little too graphically violent and written like a movie script. Let's just say Whitey Bulger came by his proclivities naturally.

Kaaterskill Falls by Allegra Goodman

quite charming and lovely; a peek into the modest domestic life and extraordinary yearnings of a summer community of Orthodox Jews in the Catskills

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest

Also saw the Swedish version of the first book.

The reminders of domestic terror in the most intimate sense are deeply unsettling. The author reminds of the percentage of Swedish women who are abused, beaten, left for dead, even. It is an all-too-steady drumbeat beneath human society.

Meanwhile, I found a new collection of stories, that is easier to read before bed. I heard the most astounding story on Selected Shorts: "The Mappist" by Barry Lopez. You MUST read it. Before you know it, you are in another world, that shines the most wonderful light on this place we inhabit and how we live in it.

I had a brief flirtation with a few of Joyce Carol Oates short stories. Bracing. I am always on the look-out for her perceptive comments about upstate New York.

Done with Cheever, and LOVED it. Again. If you read nothing else, read "The Death of Justina." Then again, I also like, "Goodbye, My Brother." Cheever; the chronicler of a world falling apart.

This summer ...
Middlemarch by George Eliot. This wonderful story of the intertwined lives of villagers contains the requisite English characters of pompous rectors, impoverished strivers and beautiful young women. It's like reading Trollope: you'll find someone you know in Middlemarch.
and
The Collected Stories of John Cheever. A perennial favorite. Poignant stories of families in mid-century middle America. Reading it again is a bit like Mad Men, where you are glued, almost in horror, at the train wreck you know is about to happen in these people's lives.

Responding to the Unspeakable

The shootings in Newtown, Connecticut, in the days right before Christmas, with the deaths of small children and the people trying to protect them, wrench our hearts like nothing else. However we respond to this tragedy -- with silence, with weeping, with anger, with resolve to work so that something like this will never happen again -- all of our reactions are understandable. We need ways to regain our footing and imagine how we will live in the world as it is now, in this world in which we experience yet more grief and sadness.

On Sunday, December 16, the Prayers of the People at St. David's Church were in the words of parishioners and preachers, some from the very day of the tragedy. Find the text of those prayers on our Forming Disciples blog.