Category: Archive

Mrs. Neo and I saw a most delightful movie recently Ushpizin, which is a modern Israeli Hasidic tale. It takes place during the Feast of Succoth, or the Feast of Booths, when the children of Israel recall the wandering in ‘booths’ or ‘tents’ (Ushpizin is the Aramaic phrase for ‘guests’–thanks Fr. D). The Hasids in Israel make literal mini-houses to celebrate and pray that the Lord sends guests. I won’t spoil it, but it contains so much fodder for theological reflection in regards to prayer (I’d say 50% of the movie is one kind of prayer or another–charming, dramatic, earthy, Jewish prayer!), and is a powerful picture of Jesus words from Luke 6:

Give to everyone who begs from you, and from one who takes away your goods do not demand them back. And as you wish that others would do to you, do so to them.

If you love those who love you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who do good to you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. And if you lend to those from whom you expect to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to get back the same amount. But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil. Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.

My favorite line from the movie: ‘You are nothing. I am nothing. In the end there is only God.’

I found this in Touchstone magazine:
A Baptist Preacher’s Abortion

Donna Schaper says she’s a grown-up, a pastor, and a murderer. She claims all three labels, and is not apologizing for any of them.

Rev. Schaper, pastor of Judson Memorial Church in New York City, wrote a recent article for the liberal Jewish monthly Tikkun about the abortion she had nineteen years ago. She says she’s “neither bragging nor apologizing.”

Schaper says that her abortion was the right choice, since she and her husband had young twins at the time. “Because women are mature sexual beings who make choices,” she writes. “Birth control and abortion are positive moral forces in history. They allow sex to be both procreational and recreational, for both men and women.” As a matter of fact, as Schaper sees it, abortion doesn’t have anything to do with babies. “The drama of the abortion battle is not about unborn babies at all,” she writes. “Instead it is about women and sex.”

But she doesn’t really believe that. Schaper spends most of this article writing about an unborn baby. She even names the aborted child, “Alma,” which means soul. She also admits that what she did was the taking of a human life. She even calls it murder:

“I did what was right for me, for my family, for my work, for my husband, and for my three children. I happen to agree that abortion is a form of murder. I think the quarrel about when life begins is disrespectful to the fetus. I know I murdered the life within me. I could have loved that life but chose not to. I did what men do all the time when they take us to war: they choose violence because, while they believe it is bad, it is still better than the alternatives.”

I am amazed and discouraged on a variety of levels. ‘I did what was right for me…’ sounds an awful lot like the words from Judges: ‘In those days Israel had no king, everyone did what was right in their own eyes.’

‘I know I murdered the life within me. I could have loved that life but chose not to.’  Unbelievable.

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While I am ambivalent about Rev. Falwell’s political tactics, a ‘Rest in Peace’ to our brother in Christ.

Falwell may not have always taken his stands in the way I would have, but he did take his stands.

The ‘Culture War’ that we find ourselves in–what are ways we can actively engage our world and keep our witness of God’s mercy and Christ’s love intact?

What the Church (and the world) need is another Gregory of Naziansus. He was one of the great Cappadocian Fathers of the Fourth Century and instrumental in the formation of the Creed.

What strikes me about Gregory’s life is not only his sublime orthodoxy, but his reluctance to take the seat of power. He was hesitant to become a bishop and took posts in ‘one horse towns.’ Only his friendship with Basil the Great brought Gregory influence.

Gregory was strong, convinced in the power of Christ’s salvation to heal humanity through His holy life and divinity, and best of all—humble. While he was not afraid to ‘mix it up’ with heretics, at the end of the day it was the Holy Trinity that got the glory.

More than ever we need a solid apologetic for the faith. We need a clear strategy for evangelism and apologetics. We are surrounded by, both inside the Church and outside, a culture that has abandoned Christianity.

Even many who profess Christ and the basic doctrines of the faith, those ‘agnostics with collars,’ exist within the church and sometimes control entire denominations. In some cases, there are bishops with full episcopal juristiction who do not believe in the same ‘Christ’ as faithful believers have for 2000 years.

What, then, do the faithful do? What then do orthodox laity and clergy do? There is the obvious answer. Leave. Form a new ‘province’ or ‘communion’ or ‘house church’ or ‘denomination,’ or whatever you want to call it. Is there another strategy?

What would Christ do in the face of apostasy? I’m not sure. We only have one example of Jesus facing obvious apostasy. This was when Judas turned him in for 30 pieces of silver. What did Jesus do with Judas? The same thing he did with Peter the denier and all the disciples who abandoned him. He washed their feet. He was Judas’ servant as much as he was the ‘beloved disciple’s.’ Can we do no less? But what might this look like?

One of my all time heroes is now with the Lord. Dr. Robert Webber is one reason why I am an Episcopal priest. His book Evangelicals on the Canterbury Trail has blessed many and his ‘ancient future’ writings have inspired me.

My wife and my first ‘date’ was spent discussing Evangelicals on the Canterbury Trail together at Starbuck’s. We both grew up in ‘low church’ traditions and were drawn to Anglicanism independent of each other. Robert Webber then, though I only talked with him once briefly on the phone, is our matchmaker of sorts!

For him we pray:

Into paradise may the angels lead thee; and at thy coming

may the martyrs receive thee, and bring thee into the holy

city Jerusalem.

I won’t try to add to the discussion of the VT tragedy, but I really like what Terry Mattingly has said:

This column was syndicated by Scripps Howard News Service on 04/18/2007

You’re waiting for the other shoe to drop.

You know the shoe I’m talking about — the religion shoe. When the Virginia Tech University story broke, you began clicking from website to website, channel to channel, seeking information and, then, something more.

You’ve seen photos of mourners in pews, offering comfort and seeking solace. You know that believers will pray and that journalists will keep aiming cameras at them, because, that’s what Bible Belt people do. People in southwest Virginia put scriptures on big road signs and build huge crosses next to Interstate highways. They pray. It’s a good photo, but it’s just prayer. Right?

No, you’re waiting for a real religion angle to surface, a crazy one linked to violence and power. After all, religion surfaces in so many bloody stories these days.

Plus, you know there are politicos here inside the Beltway who are sitting, TV remotes in their hands, waiting to grade the candidates. Will Barack Obama get the tone right, with the right mixture of scripture and concern? Will Hillary Clinton look chilly? Will anyone in the GOP herd look both presidential and pastoral?

You know the pope will say something and that — no matter what he says about the mysteries of life and death, good and evil — it will appear in news reports as a naive cry for peace and for an end to violence.

Then again, journalists know that the Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University is up I-81 from Blacksburg. So maybe he’ll come to Virginia Tech and talk about jealousy, broken hearts and the sexual revolution. Or maybe Pat Robertson will say — something, anything. Then, on the other side, perhaps the atheist version of Robertson could call a press conference and say this tragedy is more evidence that life is random and without purpose. That would work.

You’re waiting to find out what video game the shooter played all hours of the day and night. Did he go to see the movie “300” one too many times? Was he driven by Satan or too many “Left Behind” novels? People on both sides of the sacred vs. secular divide need to know. You’re waiting to see if he killed more women than men. You want to know if the big massacre started in the classroom of an evangelical professor who once witnessed to the shooter and made him mad. You heard reporters say the shooter was Asian and you immediately thought: Asia? What part of Asia? What religion was he?

You’re waiting for something that points toward the source of this evil. Am I right? And if you remember the Columbine High School massacre, you may be thinking of that column that journalist Peggy Noonan — a traditional Catholic — wrote about the “culture of death” hours after that hellish day.

She wrote: “Your child is an intelligent little fish. He swims in deep water. Waves of sound and sight, of thought and fact, come invisibly through that water, like radar; they go through him again and again, from this direction and that. The sound from the television is a wave, and the sound from the radio. … The waves contain words like this, which I’ll limit to only one source, the news:

“… took the stand to say the killer was smiling the day the show aired … said the procedure is, in fact, legal infanticide … is thought to be connected to earlier sexual activity among teens … court battle over who owns the frozen sperm … contains songs that call for dominating and even imprisoning women … died of lethal injection … had threatened to kill her children. … had asked Kevorkian for help in killing himself … protested the game, which they said has gone beyond violence to sadism … showed no remorse … which is about a wager over whether he could sleep with another student … which is about her attempts to balance three lovers and a watchful fiance…

“This is the ocean in which our children swim. This is the sound of our culture. It comes from all parts of our culture and reaches all parts of our culture, and all the people in it, which is everybody.”

You’re waiting for the other shoe to drop. You want to know the eternal “why” in “who, what, when, where, why and how.”

I know that I do.

Terry Mattingly (www.tmatt.net) directs the Washington Journalism Center at the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities. He writes this weekly column for the Scripps Howard News Service.

I am in one the ‘liberal’ denominations that you hear about all the time. You know the one. In my view, when Anglicanism is done right, it is hard to beat the beauty and wonder of its liturgy and piety. My Holy Week was a prime example. Our church is of the orthodox and traditional bent and does not go along with the (breaking) winds of revisionist religion.

One common trait I’ve noticed, however, is that when conservatives become embroiled in the ‘culture wars’ of the church and the state, then something quite awful can happen. If you happen to hold the right views on a matter, then ‘all is fair in love and war.’ That is, we turn a blind eye to our own sin and our own sinners.

Therefore, our priests and heroes, if they are caught in grave sin, we think and say they are being ‘set up’ my the liberal elite. Our guys can steal and cheat and if they are called on the carpet then it is the ‘revisionist’s fault’ for exposing the wrongdoing.

Isn’t there another way? Are not the ‘culture wars’ just a convenient way to cover up our own sin? Isn’t it easier to see the speck in the other’s eye than the log in our own?

We need to call wrongdoing wrongdoing, even when the sinner is one of our own. And we also need to humbly get on our face before God and plead at the Table, “Surely it is not I Lord!”