Theological and other musings from Fr. Neo. You might call it ‘Mere Christianity with an edge.’ Vade retro Satana! Nunquam suade mihi vana! Sunt mala quae libas. Ipse venena bibas!
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Posted on June 20th, 2008 by fatherneo.
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A Methodist is a Baptist who can read.
A Presbyterian is a Methodist with money.
An Episcopalian is a Presbyterian with manners.
While there are many problems with my own church in the US (The Episcopal Church), the reason it has been unable to be indigenous like other Anglican bodies around the world, is primarily because it is the church of gin and lace. It was once the ‘Republican party at prayer’ and now it is the ‘Green party at prayer.’
With all of its claim to progressiveness you would think it was the religion of the masses. Not so. It is the religion of the elite. We never learned (with some notable exceptions) how to be accessible to people of all hues and economic backgrounds. In fact we have persecuted those who have tried to do just that (Wesley, as an example).
How do we get away from the wine and cheese culture?
Posted on June 12th, 2008 by fatherneo.
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So the true difficulty is making time and space amidst ‘household’ responsibility. If you look at the Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus (250 A.D), you discover that the ‘hours of prayer’ made famous by the monastic tradition, actually began in the church among ‘ordinary’ Christians. So, the early Christians rose at midnight and prayed, and prayed several times during the day (7 times total), both corporately (before work the community would gather daily) and privately, presumably with the children around and the chaos that accompanies little ones.
Folks get their knickers in a knot when kids are present at worship fidgeting and doing things kids do, but I wonder if that’s not the beauty of it. Should we not all learn to pray, worship and receive the sacraments as soon as possible? Should we not all learn to be silent, even when the world around us is buzzing. Should we not ‘take our cells’ into the world?
Posted on June 9th, 2008 by fatherneo.
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I heard that when Henri Nouwen used to teach workshops to seminarians on prayer, he would begin by gathering the class together (and of course they were in rapt attention), say a few words, then request that they sit in silence—for four hours!
Nouwen would observe that the seminarians would squirm and fidget during the first two hours before finally sitting still. What Nouwen concluded and what his students learned was that, in our cultural cacophony of distractions, it takes two whole hours to block out the noise, and that only then can we begin to listen to the Spirit of God.
Posted on June 7th, 2008 by fatherneo.
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I have gone back to Henri Nouwen’s book, The Way of the Heart, his reflection on how the sayings and stories of the Desert Fathers can inform ministry in our day (and any day). What struck me was his notion that silence is not usually what we think of. We think of silence as an opportunity to have ‘me’ time or to have our ‘privacy.’
Silence from the desert perspective is not to have a quiet moment for ‘getting away from it all.’ Desert silence is going in your cell to be mortified; to be purged; to be converted. It is to leave the world, face the Devil and one’s own disordered passions. It is to stand in God’s presence, with all that we are and all that we are not laid before him. To stand before him to whom all hearts are open, all desires known and to whom no secrets are hid.
Indeed, the Word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow; it is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And before Him no creature is hidden, but all are naked and laid bare to the eyes of the one to whom we must render an account.
Posted on June 5th, 2008 by fatherneo.
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Muslim women dress so as not to be taken advantage of.
Jewish (Hasidic and Orthodox) men ‘wear’ their faith so that all can see.
Buddhists look like, Buddhists.
Christians priests are obvious, but what makes the body as a whole distinct? I know, no ritual or dress ’saves’ us, but do the rituals of Western culture bring us down to Gehenna? I know, we love, so that all will know we are disciples, we live righteously (theoretically on both of those) but it seems there should be something physical, tangible and obvious about our faith as there is for the other faiths of the world. We are not Gnostics are we?
Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.
Posted on June 4th, 2008 by fatherneo.
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As I wrote below, to find success in our culture is not to find one’s place in the group, but to transcend it. I was reading a recent Touchstone article (’Unmarried, Still Children” by Joan Frawley Desmond) and the author quotes Jeffrey Arnett’s recent work Emerging Adulthood, where Arnett says that those in their late teens and twenties define adulthood as “accepting responsibility for the consequences of your actions,” and choosing “personal beliefs and values independently of parents or other influences.”
Even the old Lutheran Hiedelberg Catechism, while emphasizing strongly individual salvation and individual justification says,
Question 54. What believest thou concerning the “holy catholic church” of Christ?
Answer: That the Son of God from the beginning to the end of the world, gathers, defends, and preserves to himself by his Spirit and word, out of the whole human race, a church chosen to everlasting life, agreeing in true faith; and that I am and forever shall remain, a living member thereof.
Posted on June 3rd, 2008 by fatherneo.
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A recent article in Prism (Ron Sider’s publication) by Wendy Bilgen shows a fascinating snapshot of life in Turkey. Bilgen and her husband, a Turkish native, recently returned to Turkey to live. She writes:
One day our son’s new Turkish friend asked my husband, a Turkish native returning to his homeland to preach the gospel,”Why do you follow Isa?”
“Jesus invited me to follow him,” my husband answered “His words are true. I couldn’t say no. Why are you a Muslim?”
“My chevre invites me to follow Islam,” the young boy answered. “How can I say no?”
What is a chevre? Bilgen says,
In the West community is sometimes considered optional, in Turkey it is difficult to do much of anything without your chevre. It’s the group you depend onto help you get that first job, pay your bills when money is tight, find a mate, even learn how to live with your mate. It’s the group that defines who you are and what you will do in life. Without a chevre you’re on the outside, unprotected and vulnerable.
In our culture, transcending the group is considered successful while being a part of the group is considered failure. You learn how to fend for yourself so you will not be ‘dependent’ or ‘defined’ by anyone except for y.o.u. Success is transcending family, church and anything else that keeps you from your ultimate goal–complete freedom and (mostly financial) independence.
We Christians can learn from the chevre, not in terms of intimidation or for control, but to point to what the Body of Christ is supposed to be about. Ours is the first Christian culture in history that acts as if it were disembodied. Jesus is necessary, the church not so much. Jesus saves, the church is a distraction or a necessary evil.
But the Church is God’s idea, not ours. Our calling is to be a Body which is consecrated, set apart, to be a light and a blessing to the nations. Being a part of the people of God is a privilege; being grafted in by baptism an awesome responsibility. Our promises made at baptism and our sacramental union with Christ in the church ‘defines who we are and what we will do in life.’ The Church is the ultimate chevre.
Posted on June 2nd, 2008 by fatherneo.
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There is a new breed of Christ-follower in America today. These are people who are more interested in being the Church than in going to church. They are more eager to produce fruit for the kingdom of God than to become comfortable in the Christian subculture. They are focused on the…spiritual passions that facilitate their growth as genuine people of God and citizens of the kingdom. These people are Revolutionaries.
So says pollster George Barna in his recent book. His argument is, since regular churches are not turning out Christians, the ‘new breed’ of Christ-follower of the future (and in many places right now) will be ‘non-churched’ Christians. This new kind of Christian will never darken the door of the church, and within a generation, most Christians will belong to a house church or some kind of other version of Christian community–Barna even sees online community filling the role of traditional churches someday.
Barna has some important points to consider. The so-called traditional church is not getting it done in a lot of ways. House churches and para-church organizations don’t have the ball and chain of a denomination or the curmudgeons of the church holding them back.
But, isn’t the trend to get away from the Christian community a denial of the very strengths inherent in the community? At our small but growing parish, for example, we have ‘ all various conditions of men (and women),’ from different backgrounds, economic situations, ethnicities and generations.
For many suburban or urban professionals, this kind of mix is too much to handle. Barna uses an example of a couple of men who meet on the golf course before prayer and study. This is one of his shining examples of something that finally ‘works.’ While these faithful golfers may be accomplishing decent things in the name of Christ, they never have to struggle with living as the Body of Christ. There are no crazy family dynamics to worry about. You have a good time, put your clubs away, and you never have to mess with crying babies or complaints from old-timers or different colored faces. You have pure, unadulterated, convenient Christianity on your own terms.
Like it or not, God chose a group of people to be ambassadors of his name, not a bunch of individuals. First it was Israel, and now the Gentiles are grafted into the vine of the people of God to point the world to God’s work in Christ. We may bugger it up on a regular basis, but if we learn to act collectively, rather than as mini-messiah’s, the world might just take notice.
Posted on May 29th, 2008 by fatherneo.
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I took an opportunity to visit with Denver’s ‘Jazz Theologian.’ His blog is
http://www.jazztheologian.typepad.com
and he has a book coming out in February of 2009. What follows is our discussion.
Neo: What is your passion?
JT: Discovering and being the Body of Christ.
Neo: What is unique about the Body of Christ?
JT: We are the only people with the potential to honor but not allow distinctions of race, class and denomination to keep us from being ‘one’ as Jesus describes in John 17.
Neo: What does that look like?
JT: A jazz ensemble. Distinct instruments, playing the same song with room for improv. Call and response; playing in concert with and for each other.
Neo: I see Obama calling for Americans to move away from our polarization to embrace our unity, to look at what unites rather than divides us. Is this a realistic goal?
JT: ‘E pluribus Unim,’ from the one, many. This is the fundamental challenge of our country–how do we make the many one? It seems to be an elusive goal. I believe the church, however, can be the vehicle that brings it about. The Spirit can bring it about. Look at Pentecost…unity without uniformity. Obama is echoing what many desire–what Dr. King desired–but Obama hasn’t necessarily pointed to the answer.
Neo: What is your opinion of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright?
JT: One’s response to Rev. Wright reflects your awareness of the prophet he is named after-Jeremiah. If you have read Jeremiah from the Old Testament, then Rev. Wright is no big deal. Rev. Wright got himself in trouble when he called America to be damned when, as Christians, we should be calling for mercy. We must have room in our ensemble for people to improvise with solos we do not necessarily like. Don’t forget what Billy Graham said, ‘If God does not judge America, then he will have to personally apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah.’ That’s tough stuff.
Neo: The Immigration debate is often characterized by more heat than light. How does the Body of Christ respond?
JT: The question of national security, borders and immigration are public policy issues that I do not have any easy answers to. What I do know, is that whenever God allows mass movements of people, he seems to be up to something. Whether it is the Israelites migrating from Egypt and then in the wilderness for 40 years, or the massive number of people who had to migrate in Herod’s time for a census. It is clear that God is willing to move massive amounts of people, just to have one baby born in the right city!
Posted on May 14th, 2008 by fatherneo.
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We had our memorial for Daniel last Saturday. I have to say that, despite the great pain, it was the most profound worship experience I have ever had. It is ironic to say that about a memorial service for a young man who died way too soon.
We found that while we were digging in the cave of darkness and grief, that we were actually mining gold in God’s eternal country. Sometime during that service we went from earth to the eternal realm of glory.
I am not one to exaggerate. The Spirit of God really descended on 780 grievers on the eve of Pentecost 2008 at Christ Episcopal Church in Denver.
The cynic in me wonders where He was while we were praying desperately for Daniel to recover, but I have to say that I was moved to my core at His palpable presence among us last Saturday.
Christ is risen. I didn’t think I would feel that as powerfully amidst the reality of death. I did not think my song would be ‘Alleluia’ looking at mourners.
Somehow, eternity was not that far away and I am still feeling its effects.