The Little Friar

What I find interesting about Christian faith -- particularly contemporary  Christian faith -- is the strange role we reserve for the Holy Spirit.  In fact, at least among mainline Christians (Episcopalians, Methodists, and Baptists, specifically -- since those are the ones I've been running with lately), there's barely any  place for the Spirit -- in our language or in our experience.  All that marks me off as a strange and odd little man.  Because, to be honest, my practice of  spirituality as a Christian is marked by a deep sense of the Spirit's imminence where creation is charged with the Spirit's presence.  The Spirit is alive and active, regularly encountered in everyday life.  When good things happen, when prayers are answered, I take this to be a sign of the Spirit's providential, continuing care of Jesus.  In other words, I'm fully a trinitarian.  And it saddens and puzzles me when others aren't.  I'm committed to a very d...

My mind is burdened with a thousand different prayers tonight.  Each with its own depth and wordlessness.  So I begin to formulate some thoughts on prayer.  1.  What is prayer?    It is the eyes of the world looking back at God (Pavel Florensky).  2.  Can theology penetrate into the mystery of prayer? Yes:  Theology burrows into prayer as the ant makes its tiny tunnels in the earth's immense dark turning orb. 3.  Once when I was sleeping, the sound of rain on the roof became, in my dream, the hammer of war drums beating in a jungle:  A real sound, vibrating in my ears, echoed in the chamber of my dreams.  In the same way, the vibration of eternity echoes in the chamber of our world when people pray. 4.  Prayer is restlessness and silence and sadness.  It is jubilation and a cup running over and the sound of all the gum trees clapping hands.  5.  "We do not know how to pray" (Rom 8.26).  True words! ...

I am called to the ministry of the Church through my baptism.  I am trained and ordained to the ministry of "elder" or "presbyter" or "priest", and my service has largely taken place in rural churches.   God has called me to be one who reminds others of the ministry to which they are called through their baptismal vows.  Which is to say, ministry is messy.  The Church is always engaging in Jesus' continuing ministry, or it's not Church.  Preaching always focuses on the Incarnate Word, or it's entertainment.  Christian life is Jesus' missional life, or it's dead.  Ministry is the result of well-trained Christians, and is conducted out of our baptismal identity.  Or it's mere care-giving.  That's why ordained ministry terrifies  me.  It would be so much easier if I weren't called to work for the Kingdom of God.  God won't let me off so easy.  I'm firmly convinced that the reason clergy often "burn out" is bec...

Last night, Kendra and I began exploring attending a different church in the area.  Another friend also asked that she and her kids join that journey as fellow companions.  So one of the first questions asked was about children and communion:  Specifically, could they take? Now, they've been baptized.  But not confirmed.  Parenting is shared between mother and father, but they're divorced.  So what's the decorum in admitting children into the church's (read, adult ) worship? Let me begin by saying, I'm very, very, very supportive of parents who bring their children to worship.  And I think the Church catholic is too.  We have lots of folks who invest, every Sunday, in the nurture, care and support of children.  So I praise the Sunday school teachers.  I salute the children's pastors.  I love all those who know how to tell a good story and sing good songs with our children.  I wish them all  well.  I'm even hugely supp...

Most of us think of Easter as just one day.  It's never had the commercial appeal of Christmas.  And we usually just get one day off work to celebrate, since it always falls on Sunday.  But Easter isn't just one day; it's a whole season .  Easter is 50 days.  The Easter season stretches all the way to Pentecost:  April 20th to June 8th this year.  Lent, which sometimes feels like it can stretch out forever, is only 40 days long.  It never includes Sundays.  Because Sundays are always mini-Easters.  Easter, on the other hand, is 50 continuous days long.  It's such a significant celebration, that it gets a whole season.   These days are an intivtation to party on. But they're also more than that.  They're a journey into the depth of the heart of Christian faith:   God-with-us . Some of us focus so intently on Jesus' death as the moment of salvation that we loose the richness of the rest of his life.  It isn't just ...

Simone Weil once said that "if the gospel omitted all mention of Christ's resurrection, faith would be easier for me".  What could this brilliant, saintly, mystical French philosopher have possibly meant by such a provocative statement? I think that Weil was challenging the common but shallow assumption that the resurrection makes life easier for those who believe.  It doesn't.   After all, the disciples were completely wrong-footed by the events of Easter, and their reactions to the news that "He is risen!" suggest disturbance and disorientation, not confirmation and relief.  They were like the walking wounded after an explosion, and their subsequent witness was as overwhelmed as it was overwhelming.  That's why those courtroom-inspired "proofs" of the resurrection -- like those of Evidence that Demands a Verdict -- are so misconceived and insipid.  They not only fail to resolve the insurmountable literary and historical problems of the gospel...

This is the Great Easter Vigil sermon I've always wanted to preach.  The gospel reading is Mark 16.1-9.  I want to focus on 16.7:  "Now -- go on your way" ( The Message ). So:  What are we waiting for?  Go. 

Today, I'm thinking about what it means to be pastoral . A friend phoned me a few days ago.  He had witnessed -- and himself been subject to -- a "pastor" who has become a proponent of "clericalism".   Clericalism , for those who've never heard the term, is the mentality of those ordained to the office of pastor who think they're important, powerful, worthy-of-notice.  It's the antithesis  then of pastoral . Pastoral  is a  term that communicates warmth, caring, positive regard, and perhaps especially the love that a pastor, a trusted Christian counselor or friend seeks to extend toward others, especially toward those who find themselves in quandaries, conflict, pain or danger.  Indeed, when we find ourselves under strain, this warmth, love and even defense are the very things we need from those ordained and able to respond with care.  Pastoral  is a good word.   Clericalism  isn't.  Jesus, and the prophets before him, longed f...

Our sin.  His nails.  Our pain.  His blood.  His death.  Our life. 

Silence.  This day -- Holy Saturday -- is the day of the Christian year for silence.  Not the kind of silence intended for "emptying oneself".  Instead, this is the kind of silence for getting the news of a great tragedy.  This is the kind of silence those who have grieved deeply know.  This is the kind of silence that we simultaneously dread  and welcome . This is the silence of Jesus' tomb.  Or, more accurately, from  Jesus' tomb.  This is the kind of silence that grabs me at 4 in the morning.  This is the kind of silence that deafens my hearing and awakes me in the middle of the night.  This is the kind of silence that crashes thunderously into my world, when the weightiness of Good Friday collapses every other word.  Silence.  This is what Holy Saturday has been about in the life of the Church for centuries.  Liturgically, the Church's calendar is all about committing to discipleship up close and personal.  S...

It's Good Friday.  And a lot of us will be reading and hearing Isaiah 53 today.   Isaiah 53, the suffering servant text, is filled with images that have captivated the Christian imagination for millennia, specifically verses 3-6: He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. Like one from whom people hide their faces he was despised, and we held him in low esteem. Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. Today is Good Friday and we all know that the church has used this text to interpret the crucifixion of Jesus.  Isaiah 53 has come to be an important text for atonement ...

French mathematician and Christian philosopher Blaise Pascal once said:  "Kindness is welcome only to the extent that it can be paid back".  And if you've ever wondered why folks recoil and refuse to believe the Good News, there it is.  When told of the complete welcome and kindness of God, we don't like it.  We're embarrassed by complete gifts.  We only really  feel comfortable when we receive something we think we're owed.  Or at least something we think we can, to some great degree, at least give back.   That's how the honor and shame culture of first century Palestine worked.  And it's how our culture works, regulated by contracts, personal relationships ruled by mutual consent, a transactional culture where "you get what you give".  We privilege autonomy and protect against dependency.  In such cultures, Peter's protest against the kindness of Jesus on that Thursday, a kindness that can never be paid back, a radical kindness th...

A poem for Holy Thursday:         Jesus kneels down,         Peter reels round as he's told to take a seat.         Jesus hushes,         Peter blushes at the Lord who washes feet.         Role reversal,         a unique play,         dress rehearsal         for the Friday:  Praise the God of bowl and cross! Praise the God of bowl and cross!         Back at table,         still unstable, friends of Jesus reconstrue.         Reprimanded,         now commanded, "Do what I have done for you!"       ...

It's Wednesday of Holy Week.  Tomorrow begins the Great Triduum -- Thursday, Friday, Saturday -- which brings Lent to its culmination.  In that time, there's a lot of talk about "the cross".  Jesus', particularly.  And ours, generally.   If there's one thing I've learnt as a Christian throughout the past forty years, it's this:  We tend to talk a lot about "the cross we've been 'called to bear'".  So what is that cross?  And what is its meaning? One of the ways -- perhaps the commonest way -- some folks talk about the cross we bear is that it has something to do with suffering.  In this view, "bearing the cross" means enduring some form of suffering, that we happen to be enduring -- a sickness, a sorrow or a person.   Thing is, I don't think the "cross" we've been called to bear has anything to do with those.  What do all those have in common?  They're all quite natural -- terrible, maybe, but natur...