Category Archives: Theology

Pope Francis on Economics

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POPE FRANCIS' GENERAL AUDIENCE

“Just as the commandment ‘Thou shalt not kill’ sets a clear limit in order to safeguard the value of human life, today we also have to say ‘thou shalt not’ to an economy of exclusion and inequality. Such an economy kills.” – Pope Francis, TIME Person of the Year, Nov. 29, 2013

The economic disciples of Ayn Rand’s “virtue of selfishness” – many of whom attend Mass or other Christian worship services on Sunday only to act on Monday as though they never had – have met their match in Time‘s Man of the Year. Economics is a spiritual matter – first, last, and always. Thank you, Pope Francis for speaking the truth with clarity.

God the Stranger

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I “know” less and less of what I thought I knew. The world has driven me into the unknowing silence out of which James A. Whyte spoke at the funeral in Lockerbie, Scotland in 1989.

During his term as Moderator of the Church of Scotland, The Right Rev. Dr. Professor James A. Whyte , still grieving the death of his wife, was called upon to lead the memorial service after Pan Am Flight 103 was blown out of the sky over Lockerbie. Among the most quoted parts of the sermon is this excerpt:

“That such carnage of the young and of the innocent should have been willed by men in cold and calculated evil, is horror upon horror. What is our response to that?

The desire, the determination, that those who did this should be detected and, if possible, brought to justice, is natural and is right. The uncovering of the truth will not be easy, and evidence that would stand up in a court of law may be hard to obtain.

Justice is one thing. But already one hears in the media the word ‘retaliation’. As far as I know, no responsible politician has used that word, and I hope none ever will, except to disown it. For that way lies the endless cycle of violence upon violence, horror upon horror. And we may be tempted, indeed urged by some, to flex our muscles in response, to show that we are men. To show that we are what? To show that we are prepared to let more young and more innocent die, to let more rescue workers labour in more wreckage to find the grisly proof, not of our virility, but of our inhumanity. That is what retaliation means.”

For James Whyte God is often silent. We are called to enter the space of God’s silence, the silence of the cross, the confusion and horror of the suffering of God at the hands of a world filled with man-made gods: security, freedom, nationalism, religion, muscle, revenge and self-righteousness, cultural supremacy. In the Jesus of the cross, Whyte’s eyes saw not only a naked man but God’s nakedness – a naked God stripped of all power, his arms roped to a cross-beam paradoxically spread wide to embrace the whole world of human suffering and folly.

James Whyte took time out of his busy life in 1991 to act as a conversation partner and mentor for an American pastor whose congregation had granted its pastor a sabbatical leave in St. Andrews. They met twice weekly for two months in his flat over tea and scones, the young American absorbed in the vexations of Christian claims to Christ’s uniqueness and universality, on the one hand, and religious pluralism, on the other, the good Right Rev. Dr. Professor listening attentively, maintaining a poignant silence that respected his mentee’s process. When the pastor left Scotland, he asked his mentor for a copy of prayers James Whyte had offered during worship at the Hope Park Church in St. Andrews. Each of the prayers was as thing of beauty. Each began with a quotation from the Book of Psalms.

James Whyte’s spirituality echoes that of an old Hasidic Rabbi (Barukh of Medzebozh [1757-1811]) reflecting on Psalm 119.

“I live as an alien in the land;
do not hide your commandments from me”
– Psalm 119:19

Rabbi Barukh of Medzebozh said of this psalm:

“The one who life drives into exile and who comes to an alien land has nothing in common with the people there and has no one to talk to. But if a second stranger appears, even though that person may come from quite a different place, the two can confide in each other. And had they not both been strangers, they would never have known such a close relationship. That is what the psalmist means: ‘You, even as I, are a sojourner on earth and have no abiding place for your glory. So do not withdraw from me, but reveal your commandments, that I may become your friend.”
– Martin Buber, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Tales-Hasidim-Early-Masters-Later/dp/0805209956(

” title=”Link to information on Tales of the Hassidim”>Tales of Hassidim – the Early Masters.

Thanks you, James Whyte, good and faithful servant and friend of God the Stranger. RIP.

Everyone’s Desire

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Pyrenees-Saint Bernard and Cavalier King Charles Spaniel

Pyrenees-Saint
Bernard and Cavalier King Charles Spaniel

Is there a common DNA between the frisky six-month-old 10 pound Cavalier King Charles Spaniel puppy and the lumbering two-year-old 150 pound Pyrenees-Saint Bernard who have just met?

Most large dogs ignore Barclay’s constant pawing for attention, but not this dog. Aside from their size, Sophie and Barclay could be mother and son. The fur is the identical. Its texture is the same: soft and fluffy. Slightly wavy. Beautiful to the touch. The coloring is identical: patches of auburn painted on new fallen fluffy snow white.

Watching Barclay and Sophie following each other around the crowded room on Thanksgiving after the huge meal at the retirement center lightens the air in the room and makes me thankful for these amazing creatures who we presume know nothing about conscious acts of thanksgiving, but who demonstrate the simplicity of joy and relationship that too often escapes families of the species that doggedly presumes its superiority to the canines.

We are thankful for the momentary intrusion into the relationships we take for granted. Joyful for the shared DNA and the union of two dogs who couldn’t be more different or more alike, an attraction of opposites whose fur and color mysteriously share the same DNA. Caught up in the ecstatic union of self-forgetful play that is everyone’s desire.

Footnote on the photograph:

The photograph was published by The Ipswich Star with the caption “King Charles Cavalier Spaniel Fred meets St Bernard Chopin at the Landguard Dog’s Day on Sunday, 19 May” with the following description by the photographer.

“I have to say I love this photo. I stopped to take a photo of St Bernard Chopin whose owners where feeding him his own ice cream at the Landguard Dog Day when he flopped down and Fred, a King Charles Cavalier Spaniel, a fraction of Chopin’s size came right up to his face sniffing away.

“Their colouring was so close it was perfect.”

Sermon: The Soul-Size Kingdom

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“The Soul-Size Kingdom” was preached after an emotionally draining week watching one of Shepherd of the Hill’s members take a turn for the worse in the memory care unit here in downtown Chaska, MN. Toward the end of the week I stumbled upon a sermon by Robert Hamerton Kelly, New Testament scholar and gentle soul, the former Dean of Chapel at Stanford University. His sermon spoke so meaningfully to me that I delivered Roberts’ entire sermon six years to the day after he had preached it on Christ the King Sunday. Robert died in July of 2013. “Well done, good and faithful servant.” RIP

Poem on working with Autistic Gabriel

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Poem by Sebastian Moore OSB, Downside Abbey, England

Poem by Sebastian Moore OSB, Downside Abbey, England

Dom Sebastian Moore OSB, a Benedictine Monk at Downside Abbey, England, was featured yesterday on Views from the Edge. The poem in the form it appears here was featured in an Archbishop’s e-newsletter. In his later years Sebastian Moore has come to express himself increasingly in poetry. This one is from his book The Contagion of Jesus: Doing Theology as if It Mattered, Orbis Books, 2007.

The strange man: Honest to God

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Yesterday we published a sermon by Robert Hamerton-Kelly, whose thought had ben influenced by Rene Girard. Today we draw attention to another provocative thinker influenced by Girard. His name is Sebastian Moore.

Years ago I met a strange-looking man at the Episcopal Campus Ministry Center at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. I was a campus minister at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater and had gone there to a meeting of campus ministers. There was this strange monk who said nothing. He just observed. He was weird, but his eyes were penetrating.

Sebastian Moore OSB

Sebastian Moore OSB

I never gave it much thought until much later when I recognized him from a picture related to the book that had changed my perspective on the cross: The Crucified Jesus Is No Stranger. I’ve been reading Sebastian Moore OSB, for fifteen years now. Moore is influenced, to some degree, by Rene Girard, the ground-breaking French anthropological philosopher at Stanford whose theories of mimetic desire and the scapegoat system have impacted the fields of anthropology, social psychology, sociology, philosophy, and theology.

In a recent search for Moore’s latest works, of culture, I ran across a radio interview with Sebastian Moore. Here’s a link that includes another link to Moore’s radio interview.

It appears that Moore’s The Body of Christ is the latest published book of this strange monk, published when he was of the ripe old age of 94. Here’s the link.

The Pearl of Great Price for a Video Game

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Preparing to preach last Sunday, I stumbled across this sermon by New Testament scholar Robert Hamerton-Kelly, former Dean of Chapel at Stanford. I came to know him during his stay as Associate Professor of New Testament at McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago, where I had returned to work on a New Testament passage that consumed my interest. No matter that he didn’t know me; he made himself available to two days.

Robert preached the sermon on Christ the King Sunday in 2007 to a meeting of the Saint John Society. Having read the sermon, I looked further only to discover his obituary from last July. His sermon and the obituary spoke powerfully to me, not only in and of themselves, but because his interest in the memetic theory of Rene Girard, one of Robert’s colleagues at Stanford, is one I have come to share. Robert, it turns out, was a leader in the Girardian theological interpretation.

Rene Girard, Robert Hammerton-Kelly, et. al. at conference on Girardian theory.

Rene Girard, Robert Hammerton-Kelly, et. al. at conference on Girardian theory.

Having felt as though I had discovered a pearl of great price, I shared the entire sermon with the congregation last Sunday, Christ the King Sunday, 2013. RIP, Robert, your influence survives your passing.

Christ the King and the Ethics of the Kingdom
by Robert Hamerton-Kelly

Scripture: Col 1: 11-20; Luke 23: 33-43

“There was also an inscription over him. ‘This is the King of the Jews’.” — Luke 23:38

Today, on the festival of Christ the King and the last day of the Christian year AD 2006-2007, I want to approach the Kingship of Christ through the ethics of the Kingdom. I want to ask, ” Given that our King expects us to live in a certain way in his Kingdom, what may we deduce from this life about His nature, what do the ethics of the Kingdom tell us about the nature of its King? The short answer: He is a Generous King; the ethics of generosity reveal a generous king and a kingdom of expansive kindness.

I love to preach in the summers when the lessons set are the parables in the central portion of Luke’s gospel: the prodigal son (the generous father), the good shepherd (the caring king – shepherd was one of the prime symbols of the king in the ancient near east, e.g. the Pharaohs were always portrayed with a shepherd’s crook in hand), the unjust steward (the generous boss), the lost sheep (the shepherd of impetuous love). These parables and others (e.g. the man who pays all the workers the same despite some having worked longer than others, showing that our reward depends not on our deserts but on God’s generosity, and who says to the complainers ” Can I not do what I please with my own money? Or is your eye evil because I am good?” And Jesus adds, “Thus the last shall be first and the first last” Matthew 20:15-16) all attest that our God is a God of expansive generosity, rather than retributive justice.

It is a truism in liberal theology that the historical Jesus was so to speak “on the side of” the poor and against the rich. So far do these theologians, like Marcus Borg for instance, go in identifying him with the poor that they empty him of divinity. Jesus is not, as we believe, “…the image of the invisible God, the first-born of all creation,” but rather a social prophet, concerned to clean up corruption among politicians, exploitation by businesses, and cruelty in kings. He is a partisan of democracy and an enemy of aristocracy. As far as he is concerned, “Behind every great fortune is a great crime.” These theologians must be the last Marxists in the world out side the jungles of Nepal.

His theological identity aside for the moment, such a claim clashes with the title Jesus was given, namely, King, and the name he gave to the nature of his community, Kingdom. For me, Borg’s Jesus is a complete mystery; a social worker who became in the eyes of his followers the image of the invisible God and the first-born of all creation. For Borg such claims are not statements of fact but metaphors of feeling, to which I say that such distinctions are impermissible because metaphors are statements of fact too. When someone says Jesus is the image of God he does not mean only that he personally believes this but that it is not “objectively” true. This kind of logic is way out of date, especially in view of progress in the neurosciences and in what used to be called epistemology but is now known as “cognitive science.” Metaphors are ways of stating “facts,” (another term that has lost its firmness of meaning).

I picked up Borg recently and found myself appalled at the sloppy reasoning and careless historiography by which he erases the King of life and death, the conqueror of sin and despair, and replaces him with a poet of social justice, like the folk singers of the sixties of last century. (I once reviewed Borg and said that his Jesus was like the Hippy remnants of Boulder Creek where we then had a house, and Santa Cruz). Now that is very bad news indeed; Jesus the community organizer and the Kingdom a great commune of love, flowers, and free sex.

Jesus is a king, which is not such a bad thing to be when you compare it to presidents. Currently we have a president who would be king and whose best pals are the rancid royals of Saudi. On this evidence there is no a priori reason to be anti-monarchy and pro-presidency; on the whole kings have not been more corrupt and rapacious than presidents. In the case in point look what democracy achieved: twice it produced catastrophe.

To be sure it was Jesus’ executioners who give us the title we cite today; it is the title on the Cross. However, it was not simply a slander, it must have had basis in fact; people did call him “King of the Jews,” and for good reason; there was something royal about him, something that reminded them of the great king David.

There was also something in his ethical teaching that was royal or at least aristocratic, namely, generosity. In this alone Jesus was not a social prophet of the OT kind. Those wooly rubes were far from generous; on the contrary they were hypercritical and flamingly partisan. If you listen to those OT prophets you hear mostly ferocious condemnation, self-righteous accusation, and venomous jingoism. You hear them excoriating the kings for being friendly with foreigners and at the bottom of the well you hear them demand that true Jews divorce and drive out all non-Jewish wives, and one of their exemplars, Phineas the priest once took a spear and killed an Israelite man and a Moabite woman in the act of love, for the sake of his god (Numbers 25:6-9). (Just like the Taliban religious police). Their vision of social justice would bring about a community like Stalin’s USSR or Warren Jeffs’ fundamentalist Mormons, or Saudi Arabia, or Taliban land.

Against the low class ressentiment and venomous indignation of these OT prophets, Jesus sets the ethic of generosity. He behaved like an aristocrat of the best kind; he was merciful, he was humane and he was generous. This is the overwhelming evidence of the parables of the Gospels.

Recently I have been reading Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University, 2007), a very good book, sane and reliable, which I recommend to those who are willing and able to read a demanding text. I learned from Taylor the history of the word “generosity” from its arrival in Western European discourse in 16th century French. Here is the description: Taylor is asking where we might have found the resources for a universal beneficence absent the divine commands. He writes, “Now one obvious place they might have found these resources was in pride. Not the negatively judged pride of Christian preaching but the positive force which was central to the warrior- aristocratic ethic, whereby one is moved by the sense of ones own dignity to live up to the demands of ones estate. This motive in 17th century French was called ‘generosite.’ Corneille’s characters incessantly evoked it. Here is Cleopatra’s speech from Pompe:

‘Les Princes ont cela de leur haute naissance…
Leur generosite soumet tout a leur gloire.’

(This to their high extraction Princes owe…
Their magnanimity subjects all to their glory.)

Generosite is translated “magnanimity,” a marvelous word! The opposite of pusillanimity and the narrow, nationalist meanness of the prophets. And the phrase, “…whereby one is moved by the sense of one’s own dignity to live up to the demands of ones estate,” translates the biblical phrase, “for Thy name’s sake.” We pray God to act generously not for our sake nor for our merit but for his own name, that is, the sense of his own dignity which makes him live up to the demands of his estate.

Think again of Christ the King in this light: his high birth is without peer, (“He is the image of God, the first-born of all creation…in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell…” Colossians1: 15&19). Out of this peerless dignity Jesus would of course show magnanimity and not pronounce condemnation. My friend Ed P Sanders of Duke University, whom I regard as the best historian of Jesus of our generation, points out that Jesus did not call first for repentance and then for entrance to the Kingdom, but rather for sinners to enter the Kingdom as they were, unrepentant or whatever, and subject themselves to its magnanimous influences. This, Sanders says was one of the reasons they crucified him, that is, for undermining the prophetic demands that people measure up to the prophets’ standards before they approach God. Jesus reversed this, and that is how he became the King who ruled from the Cross, the highest born among us in the place of slaves and traitors; he offered unconditional acceptance in a world of competition and conditions.

But through it all he never once ceased to be the King, your sovereign and mine. From that Cross he forgave us because we did not know what we were doing (Luke 23:34); and out of his magnanimity he still forgives us when we pander to current culture and its incapacity for truth, and thus crucify him again on a cross of pusillanimity and obsequiousness. Be assured, when we have Judas-like given over to them our magnanimous king, the prize givers of our culture, whom our renegades regard with such awe, will not reward us; they will despise us more, because we will have exchanged the pearl of great price for a video game, and even in their ignorance they can smell the rot of self-destruction.
Amen.

Touching the Light

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Climate Change and the Nations

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Haggai by Giovanni Pisano, Sienna, Italy.

Haggai by Giovanni Pisano, Sienna, Italy.

“The Philippines envoy to the UN climate change conference has issued an emotional announcement that he will go on hunger strike unless talks lead to a “meaningful outcome”. Click HERE to read the whole story in The Independent.

Naderev “Yeb” Sano is not the only one who’s fasting. So is a dear friend in Pennsylvania. Carolyn and I were in kindergarten together. Our families were best friends. We grew up in each others’ living rooms. We went to the same church. Went to Sunday School and Confirmation together. Graduated from high school together. Our parents retired to the same retirement community in Cornwall, Pennsylvania where one after the other they each came to the end of their lives concerned about the shape of the future. Carolyn and I come by it naturally, I suppose, and the Kidder DNA and the Stewart DNA, although different, is like the DNA of the entire human species: essentially the same.

What happens to the human species if the scientists have it right? How do we care for each other across the planet – ONE species in the Philippines, Poland, the Netherlands, Argentina, and the USA – facing the daunting changes that are coming? If we believe that we are our brothers’ and sisters’ keepers, what changes will we make individually and together to exercise that responsibility?

Carolyn and “Yeb” Sano have decided to fast until the meeting in Warsaw leads to a meaningful outcome. Fasting is not for everyone, although I can’t help wonder what impact it would have if there were a fast across the world that spoke louder than words to the national representatives gathered this week by the United Nations in Warsaw, Poland.

In place of fasting this morning I looked again at the strange little book of Haggai in Hebrew Scripture, and what did I see? A civil leader named Zerubbabel and a religious leader named Joshua trying to lead their people during a time of colonial occupation. We, too, live under colonial occupation – the occupation of international greed and neglect of the planet, its people, and the environment itself. Perhaps Carolyn and “Yeb” are like the prophet Haggai, whose term of ministry BTW was less than four months. “The word of the LORD (the word is in caps because it refers to the reality that is beyond all human naming and controlling, “YHWH”, which is no name at all) came a second time to Haggai on the twenty-fourth day of the month, ‘Speak to Zerubbabel, governor of Judah, saying, I am about to shake the heavens and the earth, and to overthrow the throne of kingdoms; I am about to destroy the strength of the kingdoms of the nations… On that day, says the LORD of hosts, I will take you, O Zerubbabel, my servant,… and make you like a signet ring; for I have chosen you, says the LORD of hosts.” (Haggai 2:20-23).

The climate shaking that has driven “Yeb” and Carolyn to fasting is no respecter of nations. It knows no national boundaries. Nationalist thinking has outlived its time. There is only one people. Only one human species in a wonderful diversity of geography, culture, color, religion, and language. The “kingdoms of the nations” are gathered today in Warsaw, and one of their representatives from the Philippines is shaking the presumption of all of the thrones. The national delegates bear the equivalent of the king’s signet ring to sign and seal agreements and documents on behalf of the modern equivalent of their kings. Sometimes in life a person IS like a signet ring for a new order, a man for our time like Naderev “Yeb” Sano.

Communio Sanctorum

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As a boy I thought of All Saints Day and the Communio Sanctorum, the Communion of Saints, the way I felt about Halloween. It was spooky.

Today it’s no longer spooky. I’m thinking about all the people who have touched my life along the way. Few of them are saints in the sense our culture has come to understand the word, but they were all saints in my book. The extraordinary thing about saints is that they know they are not extraordinary. They refuse to believe they are exceptional.

The people I’m remembering drew little attention to themselves, for the most part. Some of them, like Uncle Dick Lewis, who was an uncle not by blood but by affection only, were people of few words. Uncle Dick stood under the maple tree every Sunday morning waiting for our weekly routine: nothing more than a handshake, the strength of which tested and honored my growing toward manhood. The handshake is the only speech I remember. During the week Uncle Dick’s hands painted houses. On Sunday morning he clasped his hands together after painting a boy into a man under the maple tree.

The place where I grew up was a working class community with a working class church. Its members were house painters, plumbers, carpenters, and bus drivers with a few middle management people sprinkled in, and one generous rich man named George. George and Phoebe always sat in the front row.

Marple Presbyterian Church, Broomall, PA

Marple Presbyterian Church, Broomall, PA

George decided one day to donate a stained glass window. Although much of the money for the new building had come from George, a stained glass window was inappropriate for Colonial architecture. The church board, with some fear and trepidation, refused the proposed gift. George left the church in a huff. He moved his and Phoebe’s membership to the wealthy church in Bryn Mawr, leaving the carpenters, plumbers, and bus drivers with a clear message: “Good luck. You won’t have George to kick around any more! You’re on your own.”

Karl Marx observed that the rich will do anything for the poor but get off their backs, and that the ruling ideas of any society are the ideas of its ruling class. After George left, they didn’t love Karl, the man everyone at Marple loved to hate, any less than before, but they re-discovered the Beatitudes of Jesus: “Blessed are you poor. Blessed are the meek. Blessed are you who mourn.” Blessed are the peacemakers.”

George was always kind to me in a distant kind of way. He got a chuckle watching the mischievous tow-head preacher’s kid break the rules he didn’t dare break. My only pictures from childhood were taken by Phoebe’s camera. I still see George in his three-piece suit with a big cigar, looking like a statue of William Randolph Hearst, the newspaper magnate – not quite that rich, but likely every bit as lonely before and after the church refused his stained glass window.

Approaching All Saints’ Day this year, I see them all compacted, you might say, into a single communion, the communion of the dead who have left behind every illusion that they were exceptional to the common lot of humankind. I see them gathered again at Marple Church, but gathered differently: George in Uncle Dick’s painter’s coveralls and Uncle Dick dressed in George’s three piece suit smoking George’s Cuban cigar, and Phoebe still taking her snapshots of a community now repaired by the common threads of love and death, dragged kicking and screaming into the Communion of Saints that knows no exceptions.