Bow Back Windsor Chair

For my 30th birthday, B sent me on a trip to make a chair with the man I call my wood-working mentor, although wood-working is really just a metaphor for life. In five days, I basically finished making this chair. Many happy hours--and a few frustrated ones too--were logged in that dank and cold basement, with the strains of Mozart and Bach as a suitable soundtrack. B definitely qualifies for wife of the year--nearly seven days alone with two small children!

Here are some thoughts about why I love wood-working. For one, wood-working requires undivided attention. There is no room for anxiety of any kind. To employ an over-used but true cliche, you are living in the moment, not slavishly looking at a clock every 10 minutes. B can tell about how I go out to my shop to do some wood turning only completely to lose track of time, wandering in at 10:30 or 11:00 with shavings hanging from my beard. I also love wood-working strangely because it involves compromise: one has an ideal of the project in mind, but there are always imperfections, known most acutely by the maker. Accepting these imperfections is part of the process of completing a chair. Without my mentor present, many steps in the project would not have been completed through worrying about imperfections. This is wonderful medicine for my exacting--mostly unrealistic--standards. To be able to say 'it is good enough' is thrilling, and one of those life lessons I am still trying to learn.

Epiphany Sermon

Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judaea in the days of Herod the king, behold, there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem, Saying, Where is he that is born King of the Jews? for we have seen his star in the east, and are come to worship him. When Herod the king had heard these things, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him. And when he had gathered all the chief priests and scribes of the people together, he demanded of them where Christ should be born. And they said unto him, In Bethlehem of Judaea: for thus it is written by the prophet, And thou Bethlehem, in the land of Juda, art not the least among the princes of Juda: for out of thee shall come a Governor, that shall rule my people Israel. Then Herod, when he had privily called the wise men, inquired of them diligently what time the star appeared. And he sent them to Bethlehem, and said, Go and search diligently for the young child; and when ye have found him, bring me word again, that I may come and worship him also. When they had heard the king, they departed; and, lo, the star, which they saw in the east, went before them, till it came and stood over where the young child was. When they saw the star, they rejoiced with exceeding great joy. And when they were come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary his mother, and fell down, and worshipped him: and when they had opened their treasures, they presented unto him gifts; gold, and frankincense, and myrrh. And being warned of God in a dream that they should not return to Herod, they departed into their own country another way.

- St. Matthew 2:1-12

It has frequently been asserted that one of Anglican’s distinctive features is an emphasis on the incarnation, the Word becoming flesh in the man Jesus. This emphasis is set in opposition to other churches and denominations that emphasize the cross. Because Anglicanism emphasizes the incarnation, it is stated, it is more comfortable with the material world and the joys of the body. The problem with this assertion is that it puts the incarnation somehow in tension with the cross and resurrection of our Lord. If we direct our eyes to that manger scene what do we see? The Creator of the world has been born of a woman; the Lord of all history and time has entered into time; the Word by whom all things were made is speechless, the Word is wordless; the One who opens his hand and fills all things living with plenteousness, has to be fed by his mother. “He did not account equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself of no reputation, and took upon himself the form of a servant.” The incarnation affirms the paradox of divine humility. If we were to write the script on God becoming one of his creatures, we would likely write him into royalty, riches, and fame, as we think befits God; instead, the Lord appears in a stable with a manger for a crib; born into the poverty of the working class; born under the infamy of a mother who conceived while unwed. What is the purpose of this divine humility? If a man is drowning and you are standing on the shore, there is little chance your exhortations for the man to exert himself or your tossing him a buoy, will result in the man saving himself—sooner or later you have to get in the water to pull him to shore. The only salve for human pride which has cast us down is divine humility—Jesus getting into the water, if you will. When we think of the incarnation in this way, it is impossible not to see the cross as the flowering of this divine humility. On the cross, this God-man, though innocent, takes upon himself the punishment and guilt of all humanity. The cross is the supreme manifestation of the divine humility that was evident to the eyes of faith there in Bethlehem in that manger. One might say that the cross was latent and foreshadowed in the incarnation.

In the same way, today, as we celebrate the Epiphany, we could say that the inclusion of the Gentiles—non-Jews—in God’s people is latent and foreshadowed in the coming of the wise men who were Gentiles to worship the new born king. Epiphany is a Greek word that means simply manifestation. The feast of the Epiphany comes at the conclusion of the twelve days of Christmas. And on this day in particular, we celebrate the manifestation of Jesus to the wise men as the new born king, and in this season generally we celebrate the manifestation of Jesus as both divine and human, recollecting his baptism, miracles of healing & forgiveness and his transfiguration.

On Christmas Day it was the Jewish shepherds who received the message of the angels about the new born messiah. On Epiphany it is the Gentile magi who follow a star to this same new born king. This order of first Jews and then Gentiles is reminiscent of what Paul writes in Romans: “I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ; for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Gentile.” The feast of the Epiphany is the good news for you and me as Gentiles that this salvation is “also to the Gentile.”

Matthew is the only Gospel to recount the coming of the wise men or magi. The word magi in fact does not occur in the King James Bible; magi is the Latin word used in the Vulgate—the Bible of the middle ages—to translate the ‘wise men’ of the King James Bible. The word magi highlights their pagan background better than wise men because they were essentially magicians and astrologers. Pious exegetes have sometimes argued that the magi knew the biblical book of Daniel—the historic Daniel lived in Babylon—and that the wise men divined the advent of the Messiah from the prophecies of that book. Interesting but there is no support for the idea in Matthew’s narrative. Rather, the star or light in the sky is a miraculous sign whose meaning God reveals to the wise men. No doubt their traditional wisdom played a part in how God revealed the sign to them.

The wise men stop in Jerusalem to ascertain the exact location of the foretold birth of the Messiah. The reaction of the people—or rather their entire lack of reaction—is a startling portrait of stale orthodoxy. The chief priests and scribes know chapter and verse the prophecies concerning the Messiah, but they are not moved to ascertain the truth of the wise men’s claim. Perhaps they took one glance at the wise men—their unusual dress, their foreign manners, their vocation as astrologers—and wrote them off as pagans, those outside of God’s covenant. It’s pretty hard to identify with this disposition. We never write others off who fall too far afield of our religious and social sensibilities. May I remind you that the true Christian disposition is to recognize that Jesus is the representative and sacrifice for all humanity; in the world of men there are only two types: those who know that Jesus is their elder brother and savior and those who do not yet know this. All therefore are our sisters and brothers, and we do have the prerogative to treat others as outsiders to the family.

If this is the reaction of stale orthodoxy, the reaction of Herod also contains an important lesson. Herod is the paragon of insecurity. Here is a man who is governor under the Roman Empire, the most powerful, stable, and peaceful of any ancient empire, and here he is frightened by the news of the birth of a king. A king fears a baby, a lion a mouse. As we know from experience and observation, those in authority seek to assert their authority when they fear something, real or imagined. The only lasting security for one is authority is to see oneself as one also under authority. The ruler who acknowledges God’s rule, knowing himself to be accountable to God, will act very differently than the one who sees himself as essentially a god, answerable to no one and nothing.

Following the star, the wise men proceed to Bethlehem where they find Joseph and Mary and Jesus. And, what do they do? They “fell down and worshipped him. And when they had opened their treasures, they presented unto him gifts; gold, frankincense, and myrrh.” Notice the different aspects of their worship. First, it was corporal; they worshipped Jesus with an outward expression of their body by bowing down. Second, I think we can safely assume it was heartfelt—one does not travel great distances, intentionally seeking someone or something, without experiencing some emotion at the sight of the one sought. Third, their worship was material and sacrificial. The wise men were not those who merely praised with their lips and not with their lives. They gave expensive gifts of gold, frankincense—a rare resin used for incense—and myrrh, also a resin used for incense and also for embalming. Consonant with what I said earlier, some have suggested that the gift of myrrh foreshadows Jesus’ death and burial; the cross is latent in the epiphany. Fourth and finally, in their worship of Jesus, the magi recognized who Jesus truly is: the king of Israel, the messiah for all people. Although to the eyes of the body, Jesus was only a little child, through the eyes of faith the magi knew Jesus for who he truly is. Theirs is a model for our worship; ours must be corporal—with sacraments and movements of the body, like kneeling and making the sign of the cross; our worship must be heartfelt—going through the motions simply is not enough; our worship must be material and sacrificial—we give to the church and to the poor not just what we can afford to give; our worship must recognize Jesus for who he truly is: the Christ, the son of the living God.

The magi are an excellent object lesson for us. Before the appearing of the star, the magi were thoroughly indoctrinated in their practice of astrology and accompanying superstitions. But God called them, where they were at, and led them to his Son Jesus. It is easy for us to think that when we get our lives in order, then we will commit our lives to God, once we reach a certain point. We think, we have got to make a certain amount of progress on our own before we can be good enough for God and the church. The truth is God calls us wherever we are at; he commands us to cast our treasures at his feet, the only place where those treasures will ever be secure and lasting. He calls us astrologers in Babylon, he calls us fisherman on shore of sea of Galilee, he calls us tax collectors at the receipt of custom. He calls us in the midst of our vocation, our troubled family situation, our addiction, to come to him and worship. O come, let us adore him, o come, let us adore him, o come, let us adore him, Christ the Lord.

The Spirit of Christ

[9] But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his. [10] And if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the Spirit is life because of righteousness. [11] But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you. [12] Therefore, brethren, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live after the flesh. [13] For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live. [14] For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. [15] For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father. [16] The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God: [17] And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together. - Romans 8:9-17

A popular caricature of Christianity is that it is a religion that despises the body and the pleasures of this world for a promised, idyllic world-to-come. It has often being accused of being too other worldly and heavenly minded. A superficial reading of the epistle lesson could suggest that the Bible in fact supports this view of the body and the material world being bad and the spiritual realm and soul being good. Paul writes about the flesh saying that if we live according to the flesh we shall die, but that through the Spirit we shall live. In fact, one might even think that the way to live into what Paul is saying is to become more spiritual: perhaps go to a few seminars or retreats on how to be more spiritual and less corporal. But, my friends, this is not at all what Paul is suggesting--in fact, he is saying just the opposite: we need to become less "spiritual" and less "religious" according to the common use of these words. It is spirituality and religion that make us think that we are making some progress towards God, that we are attaining spiritual summits never before traversed. The reality is in some ways much more stark but much more wonderful and glorious

Let's examine the lesson more closely. Firstly, the word 'flesh' as used by Paul can be highly misleading. He does not mean bodily. Rather, when he speaks of the flesh he means man, both body and soul, in his fallen condition. Hence, he writes in his Epistle to the Galatians that the works of the flesh are "adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies, envy, murders, drunkenness, [and] revelries" (Galatians 5.19-21 NKJV). Notice, how some of the things listed relate to the body but the ultimate source of all of them is in the will and the mind. Note also how, if we are honest, we are guilty of one or more of these works of the flesh. It should make us shudder then to see what Paul writes next "of which I tell you beforehand, just as I also told you in time past, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God" (Galatians 5.21). Like the response of the incredulous disciples to a particularly hard saying of Jesus, our question to Paul will likely be "who then can be saved?"

The answer is found, in part, in our epistle lesson. The opening verse reads "ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit", that is, you have left behind the fallen state of man and are being renewed by the Holy Spirit. Now, how is this true? The key is to notice how the Spirit is identified in the second part of that opening verse. He--not it--is called the Spirit of Christ. Not the spirit of spirituality or the human spirit, the Spirit of Christ: the Spirit who leads and points to the living Christ. Spirituality that does not point to Christ is not of the Holy Spirit. Leadings of the Spirit that do not lead to Christ, are not of the Holy Spirit. Rather, the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Christ, makes us to be like Christ. Our union with him and resulting transformation is how Paul can write that we are not in the flesh but in the Spirit.

What does it mean for the Spirit of Christ to make us like Christ? It means first of all that in the flesh—as sinful, fallen humans—we are dead. Christ came in the flesh and by his life of service and obedience, he revealed us to be the sinners that we are, and then, he died for these same sinners. It means that as sinners there is no place for us to stand, either to boast about our good works or even our bad works. I'm sure you've heard 'testimonies' where a person who has had a radical conversion experience gets up only to brag about all the bad things he formerly did. Before that person even had an inkling to sin, Christ died for him. It means that the endless attempts at justifying ourselves, proving ourselves to be right both in relation to others and in relation to God has come to a definitive end. Self-justification is like the punishment of Sisyphus who in Greek mythology is condemned to roll a boulder uphill, only to have it, of course, continually roll downhill. The reality of sin is like that rock, but yet, we go on trying to cloak and justify our sins, figuratively pushing that rock uphill. The one sacrifice for sins that Christ made frees Sisyphus from his endless burden.

What we witness in Jesus Christ is God's unequivocal 'no' to human sin and pride. So, the bad news is that the old Man--the flesh--must and has in fact died. But the Good news is that the New Man--the man renewed by the Spirit--has been firmly established in Christ. In Christ, God has spoken a definitive Yes to man, freely justifying us sinners by his grace, and making a new humanity through the resurrection of Jesus. The Holy Spirit makes us like Christ in his death, yes, but also in his resurrection; verse 10, "if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you." This New Man has not done anything to justify himself. He has not cooperated with God or advanced in God's service; but rather Christ has firmly established his foundation, and he is the prototype of this new Man. On account of these things Paul can write these bold words earlier in Romans: "we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ" (5:1). We cannot make our peace with God; it has already been done on our behalf in Christ.

So, the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Christ, makes us like Christ in his death--we die in him--and like Christ in his resurrection--we rise with him to new life and are freed from the guilt and burden of sin, but the Spirit also makes us like Christ in his sonship; verse 14: "For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God." Sons, not to exclude women or suggest that women be transformed into men, but that we, both men and women, are given the status of the Eternal Son of God, our Lord Jesus Christ.

The true Gospel of the Lord Jesus is so powerful and has implications for every area of human life. If we believe that we freely justified by Christ, then nothing--no person, no thing, no event--is grounds for fear or anxiety. This is the point of the later part of this chapter, but Paul hints at this theme in verse 15: "For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear, but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father." Abba is the familiar form of address for father in Aramaic. Some scholars have suggested it is equivalent to the term of endearment 'daddy'. The point is clear: we who were alienated from God by our sins, are now children of God, adopted brothers and sisters of our Lord Jesus, a new humanity God is gathering together in Christ. Imagine if rebels against the state, insurrectionists of the most violent type were declared to be forgiven and adopted by the King as heirs along with the King's son. This is precisely our position according to Paul in the final verses of our passage.

What will a Father not do for his children? This is a question to ponder. If it is true that we are God's children, what enemy could damn or curse us with any gravity? We are fed in body and mind from the table of God's abundance even in the presence of our enemies. If it is true, what adversity or trial could we face where we could legitimately fear the permanent loss of any good thing? Our Father shepherds and guides us through all of life's difficulties. If this is true, that we are God's children, who could declare us to be unlovable with any authority? We are wholly loved by Him who is called Love; and his is a love that does not alter or fade, but is steadfast even in the valley of the shadow of death. “For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father. The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God: And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ.”

Advent Sermon

Now it is high time to awake out of sleep: for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed. The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light.
-Romans 13.11-12

I'd like to start off my remarks today with a question: do you think you need to be saved? Do you honestly and sincerely believe that you need help for your life to endure? The long season of Pentecost has drawn to a close, and the start of Advent puts the necessity of salvation before us. "The night is far spent, the day is at hand," as the Epistle poetically describes this reality. Now what is salvation? And what is it from which we need to be saved? The Prayer Book identifies our enemies as 'the world, the flesh, and the devil', as we just heard in the Litany. The world is that part of human society that is in rebellion to God's gracious rule, ranging from the mammoth pornography industry to the abuse of ethnic minorities to the persecution of Christians in Africa and the Middle East. The World would have us capitulate to its standards, its ideas and its way of looking at itself and human beings. The historic doctrine of the devil is that he is a fallen angel. He and his angels are also in opposition to God's rule, and although we may as materialists be prone to question the existence of the devil, the chaos and evil in the world should give one pause: Think of the number of innocents murdered in the 20th century, a century of technological progress and human achievement. When we think about this and other evils, it is not difficult to believe that there are forces of spiritual evil in the world that seek to destroy God's good creation. Finally, the flesh. The prayer book doesn't simply mean the body. It means that part of the human person that wrestles with itself: You know the good you ought to do, but you give in to the opposite instead;That part of us that tempts us to subject our ideals and morals to our selfish desires is what the Bible and the prayer book in turn calls the flesh. It shouldn't surprise us that we our own enemy sometimes. Suicide is the trap door out of which one may exit life, but lots of other decisions one can make may not cause immediate death but do cause eventual death. These latter types of decisions blossom in addictions, divorces, and all kinds of figurative crashes, the inevitable fruit of which is an acute sense of alienation from God and others. The Bible put this stark reality in this way: "The wages of sin is death." Sometimes immediate death, sometimes eventual death.
The world, the flesh, the devil. These are that from which we need saving. Our prayer book emphasizes life as a battle in which we are under attack from these enemies. That is why there are two invariable collects or prayers for peace in both Morning and Evening Prayer. In these collects, one is not simply praying for the security of the state, since peace often merely denotes the absence of war. Rather, the peace we ask God to give us, the peace we want for our lives is security from the world, the forces of spiritual evil and from ourselves.
Now one of the problems of progressive theology is that it does not adequately account for the human need for salvation. The existence of the devil is usually denied and explained as merely a facet of human psychology. A theologically progressive church informed first most by the standards and mores of the World decreasing looks like the Christian church and more like a social action committee or even worse, a dying fraternal organization. Progressive theology tends to minimize the reality and costliness of sin--the flesh--and speaks of sin as denying the image of God in ourselves and others. Reinhold Niebuhr, a 20th century Protestant theologian, was formed in the mold of this type of theology, but through his pastoral work in Detroit he come to the conclusion that progressive theology held a naive view of sin and was overly optimistic about the effectiveness of social action. Concerning progressive theology, Niebuhr wrote, "A God without wrath, brought men without sin, into a kingdom without judgment, through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross." If we are honest with ourselves, the human situation without God is far more stark. We are in a battle which we cannot win without God's help and we need deliverance from the world, the flesh and the devil.
The other day I was listening to Mahalia Jackson singing "Didn't it rain," a song about how it rained for forty days and forty nights while Noah and his family were inside the ark. Brothers and sisters, today, it is raining too. As we approach the darkest day of the year, we are reminded in this season of Advent of our need for a salvation and a Savior. Will you be like those in the day of Noah did not see the coming storm, but were "eating and drinking, marrying and given in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark?" In other words will you live your life as if it were not a battle against the world, the flesh and the devil and in so doing surrender to the enemy. Or will you be like Noah who heard God's word to him and obeyed, entering the hull of ship while water swept over the face of the earth? The truth is that everyday it is raining and we need God's help. We need his help not to take that drink this holiday season, we need his help to spare us from that final incident that will severe for good a troubled familial relationship, and maybe we need God's help to be delivered from the distressing memories of past holiday seasons. To borrow another metaphor from Gospel music: the Gospel train is coming, Jesus is the engineer, the conductor is shouting 'All abroad'. Will you get on board?

The Best Present for a 4-year-old: Baptismal Font

In the parish we have a relatively new family of five from a Presbyterian background. Their eldest, Jack, just turned four a few weeks ago. Now Jack is not your typical four-year-old. Simply put Jack loves church. When his family first came to the parish, Jack would cry when the candles on the Holy Table were extinguished at the conclusion of the service. He didn't want the service to end! He and his father often will come to the Wednesday 7:00 AM service of Holy Communion; he is always quiet and devout in a charming and very moving way.

Since the family first joined, he has really taken to 'playing' church at home: conducting processions with his home-made processional cross, 'singing' hymns, making the sign of the cross over various members of the family, even doing what I'm told is a remarkable imitation of Fr. Petley, a fellow-priest on staff. In an older child, this could all of course be done sardonically and with a bit of cynicism, but not for Jack. The ritual of Anglican worship, even all liturgical worship really, in its non-verbal aspects communicates the faith even to the youngest minds. This is part of its power, that it can both appeal to children who sense its reverence and power, and that to the those who have heard the Prayer Book services over a lifetime, its riches are never exhausted.

Jack's birthday party was held at the Oklahoma Train Museum complete with a concluding train ride. As I mulled over what to give him for a present, I thought The Little Prince would be entirely fitting for this special young man who is kind of a little prince in his own right. When I spoke to his father to confirm that he did not already own the book, I learned that Jack had told a mutual friend that what he really wanted for his birthday was a baptismal font. I decided while still on the phone that I needed to make Jack a miniature font. So, I went home that night--the party was the following morning--and turned this baptismal font.


It's a bit modern in style--probably more 1979 Prayer Book that I'd like to admit--but it was the best I could do as far as design with the time constraints. I used the left-over mulberry wood from this project. I finished it off with an IHS on the outside of the bowl. This is an ancient contraction for Jesus' name used often on church fixtures and vestments.

I'm told that various members of the family have now been baptized. On multiple occasions in some cases. And a bonus: he is now using it as a chalice. I don't take all this as conclusive evidence of a priestly vocation, but it certainly does make one ponder what our Lord's intention for his life might be.

Update: we just received an thank-you letter in the mail from Jack telling us that, "the baptismal font is my favorite. I use it almost every day. Claire and Lily like to be baptized." Here is the accompanying photograph:

Sermon - 5th Sunday after Pentecost

"And it came to pass, when the time was come that he should be received up, he stedfastly set his face to go to Jerusalem, And sent messengers before his face: and they went, and entered into a village of the Samaritans, to make ready for him. And they did not receive him, because his face was as though he would go to Jerusalem. And when his disciples James and John saw this, they said, Lord, wilt thou that we command fire to come down from heaven, and consume them, even as Elias did? But he turned, and rebuked them, and said, Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of. For the Son of man is not come to destroy men's lives, but to save them. And they went to another village. And it came to pass, that, as they went in the way, a certain man said unto him, Lord, I will follow thee whithersoever thou goest. And Jesus said unto him, Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head. And he said unto another, Follow me. But he said, Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my father. Jesus said unto him, Let the dead bury their dead: but go thou and preach the kingdom of God. And another also said, Lord, I will follow thee; but let me first go bid them farewell, which are at home at my house. And Jesus said unto him, No man, having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God." - St. Luke 19.51-62

It is perhaps unfortunate that in the ordering of the books of the New Testament that the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles, which is also authored by Luke, are separated by the Gospel of John. It is as a result easy to overlook the fact that the two are a unity. The Gospel of Luke tells of the life and work of our Lord Jesus beginning in Galilee in what is today far northern Israel and ending on Calvary outside of Jerusalem. In the Gospel lesson this morning, we get a snippet of this movement from the provincial Galilee to the urban religious center Jerusalem in the enigmatic phrase: "he steadfastly set his face to go to Jerusalem." The Acts of the Apostles opens with the ascension of our Lord and his command to his disciples to wait in Jerusalem until the Spirit comes: He tells them, "you shall receive power, when the Holy Spirit comes upon you and you shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in Judea, and in Samaria and unto the uttermost part of the earth" (Acts 1:8). In the succeeding narratives in the book of Acts his apostles are witness to him beginning in Jerusalem, and then the surrounding region of Judea and then to Samaria, kind of like concentric circles in increasingly large geographic areas. Finally, we learn in the later chapters of Acts of Saul of Tarsus who is miraculously converted and renamed Paul. He becomes an Apostle to the Gentiles throughout the Roman Empire. There is, thus, a movement inward to Jerusalem in the Gospel of Luke and a movement outward in the Acts of the Apostles. What is the point of this important facet to these two books? Well, it says that the central event of both of them is contained in the death and resurrection of our Lord. Everything in the Gospel account is leading up this sacrificial death and the miraculous resurrection. Everything in Acts is pointing back to this one event. A passing study of the Apostles sermons in Acts will evidence this point.
The cross truly is the center point of history on which the whole history of the human race, even the creation, hinges. It is through this event that we should, as a lens, see the world and all of our relationships. Through the cross, we see God's purpose for the world, both in judgement for its sin and rebellion against his gracious rule but also God's design to redeem the best of the human spirit and to save us. Through the cross, we see that we should love others even when they are not lovable or when we believe they deserve judgment. The cross constantly before us reminds us that our Lord Jesus shed his precious blood for us knowing that we still would be unfaithful and rebellious against him. We in turn treat others with the same unmerited kindness and love. It is the cross that is the center of all human history. The hopes and fears of all the years are found in our Lord Jesus and in his most important action, his sacrificial death.
Now we are in a position to understand more clearly what the Evangelist is saying in this enigmatic phrase, "he steadfastly set his face to go to Jerusalem." We've seen what that phrase means in the context of Luke and Acts, and what it means for us, namely, that we should strive to see all our life and the world around us through the lens of the cross. This is the center of all. Religious people don't like to hear that because the cross is outside of us. Religious people like spirituality and the search for the divine spark within which is ultimately searching for a god like one's self. The cross tells us that none of our religious efforts, none of our attempts at spirituality have any real meaning or significance in light of the one sacrifice of the Master. The heavy price of our sins has already been paid in full, and we are in no position to try and buy ourselves out: we can only make assent to this awesome work.
In his sermon last week, Deacon Easter spoke of the modern tendency to draw sentimental portraits of our Lord Jesus. We want him to bless the children and heal the sick, but we don't want him to talk about carrying a cross and we certainly don't want him to turn over the money changers tables and fashion a whip to drive them out of the temple. Now we need to be careful on this point that, as he made clear, we don't exclude either part of the full portrait of our Lord, and we also need to take care that we do not in the end give Jesus two masks, one as the stern master and the other as the loving shepherd. He is one Christ who brings both a word of judgment and a word of grace for human sin. With all this talk about the cross, what I'm not saying is that Jesus is just the easy shepherd or the docile parent who merely overlooks our sins. The cross doesn't take sin lightly, but rather shows how costly its grace is through our Lord's costly death.
Further in the Gospel lesson today we see this same tension that Deacon Easter pointed out. Our Lord first rebukes the disciples for wanting to cast down judgement on a Samaritan village, saying that he has not come to destroy men's lives but to save them. The "gentle" Jesus. Following this, we have a slew of what are typically called the "difficult sayings of Jesus." Preachers love to teach classes and explain away these sayings. "The Son of Man has no where to lay his head"; "Let the dead bury the dead", and "No man, having put his hand to the plow and looking back, is fit for the Kingdom of God." It might make us doubt his earlier assertion that he has come to save lives not destroy them, when we learn that our Lord expects that, to be his disciple will mean we never feel at home on earth, we will follow him first most even putting him before our family, and we will be his disciples without wavering or relenting. Is he truly come to save lives when he seems to infringe so drastically on the ordinary lives of his followers?
A neglected skill in understanding the Bible is relating parts to parts. We might understand verses on their own, but there is a depth and a profoundity to be found in seeing how verses relate to verses, chapters to chapters and even books to books. Proficiency at this skill evinces the artistry behind the various texts of Scripture. And our reading from Luke is no different. It is no mistake on the part of the author that these two contrasting passages follow one another. In fact, these two contrasting passages help develop the significance of one another. Jesus says "let the dead bury their dead" and "no man having put his hand to the plow and looking back is fit for the kingdom of God." Our Lord suggests that the customary order of this world may not be in line with God's design. In our Sunday morning adult education class, we've talked about the calendar of saints in the Book of Common Prayer, and the virgins of the early church commemorated on various dates. The virgins forsook the conventional design on their lives as young women--having an ordinary, ordered family with a husband and children, sometimes at great cost of alienation from family and society--and committed themselves wholly to following our Lord. Clearly this type of celibacy is a special calling, but it shows the other-worldly dimensions of Christianity, the same ones that our Lord is highlighting in the latter part of our passage.
In the first part of the passage, when the disciples ask if they should command fire to down from heaven upon a village, I don't think our Lord's response is simply saying he wants to preserve biological life for its own sake. Rather, the end of life, closes the door to repentance, and perhaps, he wishes to preserve this opportunity for repentance for those Samaritans. Might I suggest that the lives he has come to save are those that will be directed to his counter cultural world-view, those who when they receive the call to serve him will not look back.
Our lives are more than food, clothing and shelter and they are even more than the complex biological processes in our bodies. Rather, our life, as St. Paul says, is hid with Christ in God. And if we are to save that true life, we must lose our life here. We must be willing to sacrifice conventions, our own standing in society and sometimes even our respectability among our family in following our Lord Jesus and bearing witness to him. This is a great price to pay, but in doing so, we will find this true life, the one our Lord came to save with his precious blood.

Artistic Failure

B and I were recently asked to be godparents to a little boy in the parish named Christian. Christian Augustino. His parents are second generation Italian. We have become fairly close friends with this family since we settled here in Oklahoma.

In my opinion, it is really quite impossible to figure what to give an infant for his baptism. Either one gives something far beyond his ability to use and appreciate--a Bible, Book of Common Prayer, some other classic of Christian literature--gifts more suited to confirmation, or one resorts to decorative gifts that typically range from ghastly to pedestrian at best.

The one gift I know I received at my baptism was actually quite a good one. It was from my godfather, the late dean of the Episcopal Cathedral in Albuquerque, John Haverland. It is a framed prayer written in calligraphy and in the shape of a cross. The prayer is the birthday prayer from the 1979 Book of Common Prayer (interestingly altered from the 1928 BCP by the removal of the petition, 'keeping him unspotted from the world"). This hung in my room for years as a child, and then for a number of years was in a box. A few years ago I found it and have hung it at our various residences since then. I like the dated 80s gold-flecked frame (which required regluing recently because the joints started to separate) and the mysterious water stain on the left edge. I think there is something profound about how I say this prayer many Sunday mornings as part of a parish tradition to give a blessing for those who have a birthday or anniversary within the week.

After reflecting on the long term quality of this gift, I decided to put my amateur calligraphy skills to the test, attempting to copy the one I'd received. So here are the results. The professional one is shown first followed by my best effort.

It was fun trying to imitate the calligraphy, using an ink pen and the well that B gave for Christmas a few years ago. But the results were far more lacklustre that I was prepared to accept. In our time a difficult problem presents itself to non-professional artists and all efforts at creativity: the advances of recording technology, printing, and assembly-line manufacturing have made perfection and precise uniformity seemingly attainable. Amateurs shy away from playing music because recorded music lacks imperfections, even though this perfection is entirely an illusion of multi-track recording and over dubbing. I don't say this by way of excuse for my own failures artistically, but to point out that the type of craft and art I'm interested in--that is, useful art made by an amateur--is arrested in a number of ways by this illusory perfection that characterizes most music and popular art.