.jpg)
Easter 7 C; May
12, 2013
Acts 1:4-11; Psalm 47; Revelation 22:12-14,16-17,20-21; John
17:20-26
This Lion and this Dragon are replicas from the parish
church in a small town in Essex, England. When Conrad Noel went to Thaxted, in
the early 20th century, he went there to develop what he called the Catholic
Crusade: a movement to make the church into the embodiment of the kingdom of
God on earth – to be the herald, the vanguard, to make this earth as beautiful
as heaven – with music, with art, with color, with dancing, with processions
which gathered up all bystanders in joyful party.
And that party, for Noel, always began in church, with the
sacraments, with
… the common meal, the bread and wine joyously shared among
[the] people… The Lord thus chose the human things of everyday life, [Noel
wrote,] the useful bread and genial wine, to be the perpetual vehicles of his
presence among us till his Kingdom should come on earth as in heaven.[i]
So apt, then for this second Sunday of the Celebration of the
Arts. Noel would endorse such a Celebration as we have here: the church turned
inside out to show the works of people’s hands and hearts and voices. The
beauty we see and hear reflects the beauty of God – God, Noel wrote, who was
… the maker of the sense of wonder, justice, love and
worship; of the sense of color which delights in the flowers, pictures,
sunrises and gay fabrics … of the sense of smell which rejoices in roses and
frankincense; of the sense of hearing which responds to poetry and music.
All of this beauty, Noel would say, starts in the church, in
this place of community and communion, of bread and wine and fellowship. The
church is the community of the ascended Lord, this Lion who rules the earth,
this Jesus who shares our human nature, now taken with him into heaven.
Yet if all this beauty stopped here, if we hoarded it only
for ourselves, it would be corrupt and perverted. It is like that tempting and
beautiful leviathan, that serpent, that dragon. Noel points out that for God,
beauty is always connected to justice. Not only are there sufficient material
goods to go around – indeed, the benefits of God’s commonwealth are for all of
God’s people – but with that living wage goes a living beauty, and embodies a
living hope: that the imperfections of the world, where want, greed, death and
destruction threaten God’s creation, will be transformed, and the dream of God
fulfilled.
We commemorate the Ascension of Our Lord every year, but
every year it means something new. Some established order we thought was there
forever is changed, gone, displaced – what we that was impermeable is now, we
see, transformed into something new. At the Friday night performance, someone
asked the new artistic director of the Paul Robeson Performing Arts Company
what had happened to that community group since it lost its performance space, and
what had called him to work to revive it. “The Paul Robeson Performing Arts
Company was formed in 1982,” he said, “And it’s no longer 1982.” This company
which was founded to give a voice and a stage to African American playwrights
and performers found itself in a world where the best and the brightest of
those playwrights and performers could achieve great heights on any stage. But
there are still stories needing to be told – not the same stories that were
told in 1982, and not necessarily stories that will “sell” in the way that
commercial theater has to “sell” in order to stay in business. These are
stories that are worth far more than that, Ryan Johnson-Travis told us on
Friday night. These are the stories of our community today, a multi-cultural
community, a community where people embody gender and sexuality in different
ways, a whole community, not only of the “south side” or “the 16th ward” but of
the suburbs and the University and the immigrant north side. These are stories
of hope, of a new reality, of the dragon of despair and alluring nostalgia
trampled under foot.
We’ve done a lot of new things with the Celebration of the
Arts this year, and there are more new things to come. Just as the Robeson
company discovered it was no longer 1982, we can readily see that it is no
longer 1970. Forty-three years is a glorious run, but “what we’ve always done”
can get in the way of seeing what is going on around us now, can get in the way
of hearing new voices, new stories, new music – can prevent us from welcoming
the new people who embody the dream of God today.
Every Ascensiontide, we are given a choice. As the disciples
watch Jesus ascend into heaven, no doubt mouths agape and eyes incredulous, two
men in white robes ask them, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up
toward heaven?” That’s our choice: do we stand there forever, feet rooted,
necks craned, lost in the glorious and beautiful past of the days Jesus was
with us? Or do we become Apostles, walking out into this new world, this wild
and different and multi-cultural and multi-lingual and complicated and
beautiful world, with our useful bread and genial wine, and share with everyone
what God has dreamed this world could be?
[i]
Conrad Noel, from archival papers, quoted by Kenneth Leech in “Some Light from
the Noel Archives.” Conrad Noel and the
Catholic Crusade: A Critical Evaluation, ed. by Kenneth Leech (London: The
Jubilee Group, 1993)
Easter 6C May
5, 2013
.JPG)
Acts 16:9-15; Psalm 67
Revelation 21:10,22-22:5
John 14:23-29
John 14:23-29
Even here, in this suburban garden of prayer, we sit by a
river. It is a small river, yes – the fountain in the Memorial Garden – but it
is the river to us. The river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing
from the throne of God, surrounded by trees and blossoms and fruit.
In our reading today from the Acts of the Apostles, we see
Paul and his friends in a strange city, and as they look for a place to pray,
they come to the side of the river, to the springs of the water of life. It
could be any river, in any city or town – and there they find a place of
prayer.
A synagogue, for faithful Jews, is a gathering of ten men –
ten Jewish men. A Minyan. But look: the place that Paul and his friends find is
a place where women gather for prayer – all kinds of women. “All kinds of
women” were certainly not the people with whom Paul and his friends would have
gathered for prayer in their former lives.
But this is, of course, not their former lives at all. These
are the early days of their transformed lives, when the reality of what Jesus
risen from the dead is just beginning to be understood. The roof has been blown
off the synagogue. All bets are off. The invitations have gone out far and
wide, and people, all kinds of people, women, even, are believing that even
they are welcome to sit and pray and worship God by the river of the water of
life.
 |
| Sharon Bottle Souva's wall quilt in the Celebration of the arts |
We read about Lydia because she is an exemplary Christian:
she is the person of faith we should aspire to emulate. She is open to God. She
listens to the preaching and teaching of the Good News, and it makes sense to
her. She knows it will make her life better. As soon as she opens her heart,
she also opens her home. From faith flows hospitality. From the awareness of
the abundance of God’s gifts and God’s grace comes this primal response: “Come
to my house. Stay at my home. Eat at my table. Let me give to you some of the
good things that God has given me.”
Lydia also must have very good taste. She is a dealer in
fabrics, rich, beautiful, expensive fabrics. The fabrics of which Kings make
their garments. Lydia is a woman of the world, an independent entrepreneur, no
doubt an artist in her own right, a woman who recognizes good goods when she
sees them. Lydia would be delighted to come to the Celebration of the Arts. Lydia’s
favorite 20th century novel would be The Color Purple, and her favorite
character would be Shug Avery, the woman who says, “I think it pisses God off
when you walk by the color purple in a field and don't notice it.” The color
purple that is the color of God’s glory. The color purple that is there for
everyone to see. The color purple which comes from the plants which grow by the
side of the river of the water of life. The color purple, bright as crystal,
that flows from the throne of God.
Almost better than any other poet in the English language,
George Herbert expresses the human desire to worship and delight in the beauty
of God. God’s beauty is all around us, in the people we love and who love us,
in art, in music, in language. We see God’s beauty when dismal neighborhoods
are transformed into livable communities. We see God’s beauty when the hungry
are fed and the desperate are cared for and when the prisoners are set free. We
see God’s beauty when the sick person is made whole and when the abundance of
God’s riches are spread among all who need them.
George Herbert was, more or less, a high church Anglican in
the century when there was some tension between those who thought the Church of
English should maintain some of its historic connections with medieval
Catholicism, and those who thought the church should be pure, stripped bare of
artifice and pretension and privilege. Herbert died in 1630, and in 1640 the
Puritans won the English Civil War. The high churchmen, aristocratic or not,
were thrown out, and the plain Word of God reigned.
But I think it is a mistake to think Puritan Calvinists were
dry as dust. The great reformer John Calvin rooted his theology, much as George
Herbert did, in the glory of God, and in the joyful duty of each believer to bask
in that glory and beauty. But yes, the Puritan reformers were concerned with
lots of things – political things, powerful things – and George Herbert, as we
see in these poems we are singing and listening to today, gave up power and
politics to sit in a garden like this, to listen to river of the water of life,
and to write down all he heard and saw and smelled and tasted. The beauty of
God filled his heart. The music of God filled his ears.
God has given all of us all of these things. The roof has
blown open and all bets are off. It is time to take all that we have, and give
it all away.
No comments:
Post a Comment