The 4th section of the Lambeth Quadrilateral states that "The Historic Episcopate, locally adapted in the methods of its administration to the varying needs of the nations and peoples" is a core value in the ordering of the life of the church. After all these years of poking about as to what exactly that means, we at least know this: "The churches of the Anglican Communion are autonomous and free to make decisions about policy." We have this on good authority, namely that of the Secretary General of the Anglican Communion, Archbishop Josiah Idowu-Fearon, quoted by the BBC.
The bible purity crowd seems to think otherwise, but of course they can do so precisely because "the churches of the Anglican Communion are autonomous and free to make decisions about policy," including the decision that what they are deciding about is policy and not core doctrine. It is precisely this problem that lies at the center of the current madness in Anglican Communion life.
"Provinces" is the name given to the "Anglican Churches" which are national or regional synods (assemblies) having a common canon law, prayer book, body of bishops and other church leaders, etc. Calling them Provinces makes them appear to be extensions of a central ecclesastical state, in this case a world wide Anglican Church. But they are not. Calling them Provinces is a really bad idea. They are "autonomous and free" synodical bodies, united with one another by common history and extended "familial" connection. But that's it.
Which means that unity comes not by being part of the same organization - Provinces of a larger entity - but by being part of the same hope. If there is an Anglican Communion that lasts it is a gathering of Churches of hope - the hope that in Christ all will be well at the last. Prior to the last there will be great bouts of tribulation as this or that Church exercises the decision to make policy in carrying out the Gospel as they have received it, but in ways not agreed to by other churches.
When the Church of England and the Scotish Episcopal Church determined that bishops could be ordained for work outside their own church structures, they could exact some initial requirements about church life, but in the long run they had to let go of control. The bishops gathered in the Episcopal Church (USA), in Canada, in Scotland, and later in many new churches in many nations, all who "owed" their orders to the Church of England's synod of bishops, seldom had in their own canons any subservience to the Church of England or any other extra-synodical body. They are indeed, "autonomous and free."
So now we have some Churches that have joined together to form a more perfect union... one based on a form of biblical and historical certainty that belies the very foundation of the notion of Anglicanism, namely that polity, structure and common life are products of national or regional understandings as well as ancient professions of faith and order.
The GAFCON crowd, churches that came together and affirmed the Jerusalem Declaration, have in recent days determined that the Church of England, as well as the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada, are apostate. In the most recent letter from the GAFCON leadership they had this to say about the Church of England.
"FCA UK & Ireland, formed at our initiative, continues to welcome
and provide support for faithful Anglicans in the British Isles. We are
particularly concerned about the Church of England and the drift of many
from the Biblical faith. We do not regard the recent use of a Church of
England building for a Muslim service as a minor aberration. These
actions betray the gospel and discourage Christians who live among
Muslims, especially those experiencing persecution.
We support Bishop John Ellison in resisting the unjust and
uncharitable charges brought against him by the Bishop of Salisbury, and
in view of the Great Commission, we note the sad irony that this former
missionary bishop to South America now finds it necessary to defend
himself for supporting missionary activity in his own country.
We
continue to encourage and support the efforts of those working to restore the
Church of England’s commitment to Biblical truth. Equally, we
authenticate and support the work of those Anglicans who are boldly
spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ and whose circumstances require
operating outside the old, institutional structures.
We remain confident in the great good of gospel ministry, and we see
what happens when actions impacting the Communion are taken without the
priorities of the faith once delivered.
Wherever they are and whatever their circumstances, GAFCON continues
to unite faithful Anglicans under a common confession of Christ’s
Lordship and a desire to make disciples."
GAFCON provides the institutional cover for congregations and parishes who are wanting to leave the Anglican church of record (The Church of England, the Episcopal Church, etc) and establish a second Anglican entity (a regional church) claiming to be "true" Anglican body.
So the Church of England will now get to taste the bitter fruit of schism that has already occurred in the US.
And in an unfolding side-bar story, the Scottish Episcopal Church (SEC), in the midst of following its own internal council as a synod, is considering allowing clergy to bless same sex unions. The Archbishop of Canterbury has suggested that if they do so, they will be subject to the same sanctions that have taken place regarding inclusion of The Episcopal Church (TEC) church members in ecumenical conversations. At the same time GAFCON, seeing a new place to make incursions, all for the sake of biblical purity, is offering to take offended local parishes into their care.
The end of the matter is just this: To the extent that there are indeed canons, organizational structures, episcopal synods, and the like, they are formed and determined,by general Anglican Communion agreement, by the synodical structures of the several churches.
That parishes and dioceses might want to re-align is a reality. They are doing it. But in doing so they are not becoming new Anglican bodies, they are forming new churches, new synods. GAFCON is not the new Anglicanism. GAFCON is constituting a new super-provisional world wide body that will not put up with this "locally adapted" business.
So be it.
But the Church of England, and its Archbishop, are now party to the same game being played out in the US, in Canada, Scotland and other churches of the Anglican Communion. It is being taken for a ride.
And to the extent that England has become a multinational nation, its church, still English, will have finally to deal with the reality that there is no national church in England, but rather the Church of England in a nation that includes many church communities, some of which will try to pull from the CofE such members and dioceses as it can from the CofE itself.
That is why the Archbishop of Canterbury has to make up his mind. Does the CofE condone GAFCON's "new mission" as an Anglican device, or does it say, as TEC has said, that GAFCON is using the cover of a "pure" Anglicanism for purposes of usurpation and expansion? At the core is the issue of synodical governance, on a national or regional level.
The ABC was wrong to invite the GAFCON puppet, the Anglican Church of North America, into the gathering of Primates. He was wrong to push the Primate's sanctions as a possible outcome for Scotland. He needs to put a stop to this GAFCON purity initiative in England or see his own province reduced to being just another church in England, along with whatever GAFCON will call its church in England (perhaps the Anglican Church in England.)
The ABC cannot stop GAFCON from forming new churches in England, but he can make it clear that GAFCON's new church development is not Anglican, not the "pure and restored" Anglican community in England.
When the Anglican Communion bodies did not make it clear that incursions into Churches part of the Communion by other churches in the communion would not be condoned or in any way sanctioned, they made a dreadful mistake. The notion of "the historic Episcopate locally adapted" is based on national and regional synods, and the ancient understanding is this: you don't muck about in your neighbor's garden.
It is all coming home to roost. The mucking about is getting messier, and the Archbishop of Canterbury is not helping.
Showing posts with label anglican. Show all posts
Showing posts with label anglican. Show all posts
6/10/2016
1/07/2016
Why the Primate's meeting is important.
There is a storm brewing regarding the Primates Meeting coming up Monday the 11th. At least that is what some Anglican commentators seem to hope will be the case.
The Archbishop of Canterbury is hoping that a wide variety of topics will be covered in the meeting. There is considerable anxiety that only one will be of importance - the topic of Anglican unity and identity. Supposedly that topic will be decided in the first days of the meeting leading to compromise and / or walkout. For all intents and purposes that will be only item on the agenda that will make the papers. It is assumed that that there will not be much good news in all this.
Most of the press seem to think this meeting will result in one of three possibilities:
(i) That the Global South, GAFCON, Primates (about 10-12 or so in number) will, on the first day of the meeting, demand that The Episcopal Church, The Anglican Church of Canada, possibly the Church of England and assorted other Primates cease and desist from supporting the full inclusion of gay people in the church, allowing gay marriage and ordaining gay people, and that these churches repent of their actions in the past and otherwise become "biblical Christians." If the culprits do so, all will be well, sort of.
The Communion that will then exist will be different from the Anglican Communion of the Lambeth Conference, Communion wide office and programs, Anglican Consultative Council and Primates Meetings. The difference will be that the Archbishop of Canterbury will no longer be the focal point of unity. It may look like a short term win for the ABC, but it will not be.
(ii) That the Global South, GAFCON, Primates will make the demand and the culprits will say "no," including the Archbishop of Canterbury's own Church of England. In which case the esteemed Primates of GAFCON will leave, meet elsewhere and there will be two distinct world-wide bodies claiming to be the primary expression of Anglican identity: one, identity based on communion with Canterbury, and the other identity based on a declaration (the Jerusalem Declaration).
(iii) That the Global South, GAFCON, Primates will make the demand and the Archbishop of Canterbury will not go with the usual suspects, but rather affirm the Global South position, in which case the Jerusalem Declaration will be effectively the litmus test used by the Archbishop of Canterbury for inclusion in the new improved Anglican Communion.
For most of us Episcopalians, or for that matter for most of any of us Anglicans in whatever national or regional church we belong to, this is all pretty foreign, mostly a snooze, and not really very important either to our own church life or the ministries we have, domestic or foreign.
There has been considerable "yawn" here in Episcopal Church land concerning the meeting and what might transpire. I suspect being tired of all this foolishness is pretty well the case in many parts of the Anglican world. But that yawn is also a bit overdone. It betrays, I believe, a deeper sense of avoidance, avoidance of uncomfortable problems in our relations with others in the Communion.
So, why is anything that happens at the Primates Meeting around this important?
Well, dear friends, it is important because in spite of all the hard feelings and anathemas being hurled at various churches, in spite of colonial history, there are residual feelings of real companionship in the Gospel and real hopes for engagement in common mission. We have been a community of considerable depth and mutual respect.In all the wringing of hands and lamenting of this or that deep hurt this fact is likely to get lost.
The redefinition of the Anglican Communion is being drawn along lines of the "clean" and "unclean." And the clean, in this case the GAFCON Primates, have made a big show of their purity by loudly proclaiming that they will have nothing to do with money coming from the unclean churches. Some Churches have hedged their bets: The Church of the Sudan still accepts relationships, financial and otherwise, with dioceses in the US that have held to purity standards of GAFCON. There are companion diocese links that have continued even across the purity borders. But on the whole the GAFCON crowd believe that some money is more tainted than other and they are set on the purity way.
There is, of course, considerable evidence that monies and other aid from churches has been accompanied by various pressures from the giving churches on a variety of issues. Most notably, grants and other monies have often been given with Western ideas of purity regarding financial reporting, which in turn has led to patronizing and humiliating "accounting" processes. Granting organizations have come to the receiving church with sometimes insulting demands. Where some Western churches have seen graft and corruption in their receivers, some receivers have seen only the strings attached. And of course there has been graft and corruption at times. But there have always been strings... and those have been seen as puppet strings.
It is also true that receivers sometimes have a different sense than the givers of what a grant is. Does receiving the grant make the receiver an agent of the giver? Or is the giving free and the actions of the receiver a stand alone moral issue? Is the giving and receiving between equals or not.
And there is the long term sense that "The white man came to our land an brought us the Bible, when it was over we had the Bible and they had the land." While the Bible was accepted there has been long resentment of the colonial exploitation of land and people. Colonialism brought Christianity and the Bible. Now whole nations have a strange and convoluted relationship to the churches who were missionary to their nations. The Word came among them carried by the very people who were exploiting them.
Many of the churches formed out of the missionary enterprise that accompanied empire building are now led by the children of former hirelings of the empires. There is both resentment and admiration of the style of empire, and a love / hate relationship to the parent churches.
There is a new analysis of this colonial paradigm from writes in the GAFCON crowd. (I believe it is mistaken.) It goes like this: The West is pushing its gay and feminist agenda by way of the actions of Western churches that have been co-opted by anti-biblical compromise with Western culture. Those same churches are pushing that agenda in every place in the Global South where they have influence by grant making, missionary involvement or education of clergy. It is a new or "neo" colonialism, the purpose of which is to make the Global South conform or at least buy into the West's cultural sensibilities. But because the Global South have indeed received the Bible and live by it faithfully they will have none of the cultural imperialism of the West which is both un-biblical and immoral.
To all of this the better voices in the West continue to insist that they are motivated in their own churches by the voice of justice, which they believe has biblical foundations. And they believe that justice is not limited by boundaries.
The battle then involves the underlying long term suspicion of some Churches in the Communion that they are being caught again in an imperialism of the West, this time not bringing the Bible but some new message which runs against both ancient community standards AND those adapted from the Biblical witness they received from the Western churches. Having suffered colonialism once they will have none of it.
No wonder there is a sense that betrayal accompanies every incursion of the Western churches into the lives of peoples they have reached. At every turn the Gospel was accompanied by some form of imperial reach. In imperial times it was the reach for land. In modern times it is the reach for economic dominance. The imperial reach could carry the Gospel.The modern economic reach, as they understand it, has no Gospel to bring, only the superficial good news of consumer power and hedonism.
The distrust by some of our brothers and sisters of other Anglican Churches has been fanned by puritans within the Anglican Churches of the west, particularly by some in the United States. It has been easy to fan. A good bit of coaching and teaching has come from puritan conservative Anglicans.
Nothing of this distrust and coached suspicion is addressed by the posturing at the Primates Meeting. No matter which way things go there - peacefully or otherwise - nothing addresses the longer term distrust of colonialism and imperialism, or for that matter the distrust of the notion of biblical purity.
What is desperately needed is a combination of (i) theological work, driven by work in the newer churches, about what to do with the reality that the Gospel was brought in colonial and imperialistic containers and (ii) good solid on the ground building of deep friendships that cannot be contained by any cultural expectations.
What is needed is post-colonial paradigms for the Gospel and its containers, and renewed deep companionship.
The best thing to do at the Primates Meeting is to meet and not walk away, to not play various power cards but to find small ways to trust. The best thing to do is to do what the Primates meetings were designed to do - to give heads of the churches a chance to have deep discussion and increase mutual affection. Anything else is business and war as usual.
We Anglicans can do better than that.
The Archbishop of Canterbury is hoping that a wide variety of topics will be covered in the meeting. There is considerable anxiety that only one will be of importance - the topic of Anglican unity and identity. Supposedly that topic will be decided in the first days of the meeting leading to compromise and / or walkout. For all intents and purposes that will be only item on the agenda that will make the papers. It is assumed that that there will not be much good news in all this.
Most of the press seem to think this meeting will result in one of three possibilities:
(i) That the Global South, GAFCON, Primates (about 10-12 or so in number) will, on the first day of the meeting, demand that The Episcopal Church, The Anglican Church of Canada, possibly the Church of England and assorted other Primates cease and desist from supporting the full inclusion of gay people in the church, allowing gay marriage and ordaining gay people, and that these churches repent of their actions in the past and otherwise become "biblical Christians." If the culprits do so, all will be well, sort of.
The Communion that will then exist will be different from the Anglican Communion of the Lambeth Conference, Communion wide office and programs, Anglican Consultative Council and Primates Meetings. The difference will be that the Archbishop of Canterbury will no longer be the focal point of unity. It may look like a short term win for the ABC, but it will not be.
(ii) That the Global South, GAFCON, Primates will make the demand and the culprits will say "no," including the Archbishop of Canterbury's own Church of England. In which case the esteemed Primates of GAFCON will leave, meet elsewhere and there will be two distinct world-wide bodies claiming to be the primary expression of Anglican identity: one, identity based on communion with Canterbury, and the other identity based on a declaration (the Jerusalem Declaration).
(iii) That the Global South, GAFCON, Primates will make the demand and the Archbishop of Canterbury will not go with the usual suspects, but rather affirm the Global South position, in which case the Jerusalem Declaration will be effectively the litmus test used by the Archbishop of Canterbury for inclusion in the new improved Anglican Communion.
For most of us Episcopalians, or for that matter for most of any of us Anglicans in whatever national or regional church we belong to, this is all pretty foreign, mostly a snooze, and not really very important either to our own church life or the ministries we have, domestic or foreign.
There has been considerable "yawn" here in Episcopal Church land concerning the meeting and what might transpire. I suspect being tired of all this foolishness is pretty well the case in many parts of the Anglican world. But that yawn is also a bit overdone. It betrays, I believe, a deeper sense of avoidance, avoidance of uncomfortable problems in our relations with others in the Communion.
So, why is anything that happens at the Primates Meeting around this important?
Well, dear friends, it is important because in spite of all the hard feelings and anathemas being hurled at various churches, in spite of colonial history, there are residual feelings of real companionship in the Gospel and real hopes for engagement in common mission. We have been a community of considerable depth and mutual respect.In all the wringing of hands and lamenting of this or that deep hurt this fact is likely to get lost.
The redefinition of the Anglican Communion is being drawn along lines of the "clean" and "unclean." And the clean, in this case the GAFCON Primates, have made a big show of their purity by loudly proclaiming that they will have nothing to do with money coming from the unclean churches. Some Churches have hedged their bets: The Church of the Sudan still accepts relationships, financial and otherwise, with dioceses in the US that have held to purity standards of GAFCON. There are companion diocese links that have continued even across the purity borders. But on the whole the GAFCON crowd believe that some money is more tainted than other and they are set on the purity way.
There is, of course, considerable evidence that monies and other aid from churches has been accompanied by various pressures from the giving churches on a variety of issues. Most notably, grants and other monies have often been given with Western ideas of purity regarding financial reporting, which in turn has led to patronizing and humiliating "accounting" processes. Granting organizations have come to the receiving church with sometimes insulting demands. Where some Western churches have seen graft and corruption in their receivers, some receivers have seen only the strings attached. And of course there has been graft and corruption at times. But there have always been strings... and those have been seen as puppet strings.
It is also true that receivers sometimes have a different sense than the givers of what a grant is. Does receiving the grant make the receiver an agent of the giver? Or is the giving free and the actions of the receiver a stand alone moral issue? Is the giving and receiving between equals or not.
And there is the long term sense that "The white man came to our land an brought us the Bible, when it was over we had the Bible and they had the land." While the Bible was accepted there has been long resentment of the colonial exploitation of land and people. Colonialism brought Christianity and the Bible. Now whole nations have a strange and convoluted relationship to the churches who were missionary to their nations. The Word came among them carried by the very people who were exploiting them.
Many of the churches formed out of the missionary enterprise that accompanied empire building are now led by the children of former hirelings of the empires. There is both resentment and admiration of the style of empire, and a love / hate relationship to the parent churches.
There is a new analysis of this colonial paradigm from writes in the GAFCON crowd. (I believe it is mistaken.) It goes like this: The West is pushing its gay and feminist agenda by way of the actions of Western churches that have been co-opted by anti-biblical compromise with Western culture. Those same churches are pushing that agenda in every place in the Global South where they have influence by grant making, missionary involvement or education of clergy. It is a new or "neo" colonialism, the purpose of which is to make the Global South conform or at least buy into the West's cultural sensibilities. But because the Global South have indeed received the Bible and live by it faithfully they will have none of the cultural imperialism of the West which is both un-biblical and immoral.
To all of this the better voices in the West continue to insist that they are motivated in their own churches by the voice of justice, which they believe has biblical foundations. And they believe that justice is not limited by boundaries.
The battle then involves the underlying long term suspicion of some Churches in the Communion that they are being caught again in an imperialism of the West, this time not bringing the Bible but some new message which runs against both ancient community standards AND those adapted from the Biblical witness they received from the Western churches. Having suffered colonialism once they will have none of it.
No wonder there is a sense that betrayal accompanies every incursion of the Western churches into the lives of peoples they have reached. At every turn the Gospel was accompanied by some form of imperial reach. In imperial times it was the reach for land. In modern times it is the reach for economic dominance. The imperial reach could carry the Gospel.The modern economic reach, as they understand it, has no Gospel to bring, only the superficial good news of consumer power and hedonism.
The distrust by some of our brothers and sisters of other Anglican Churches has been fanned by puritans within the Anglican Churches of the west, particularly by some in the United States. It has been easy to fan. A good bit of coaching and teaching has come from puritan conservative Anglicans.
Nothing of this distrust and coached suspicion is addressed by the posturing at the Primates Meeting. No matter which way things go there - peacefully or otherwise - nothing addresses the longer term distrust of colonialism and imperialism, or for that matter the distrust of the notion of biblical purity.
What is desperately needed is a combination of (i) theological work, driven by work in the newer churches, about what to do with the reality that the Gospel was brought in colonial and imperialistic containers and (ii) good solid on the ground building of deep friendships that cannot be contained by any cultural expectations.
What is needed is post-colonial paradigms for the Gospel and its containers, and renewed deep companionship.
The best thing to do at the Primates Meeting is to meet and not walk away, to not play various power cards but to find small ways to trust. The best thing to do is to do what the Primates meetings were designed to do - to give heads of the churches a chance to have deep discussion and increase mutual affection. Anything else is business and war as usual.
We Anglicans can do better than that.
12/16/2015
Incarnation, writ small, take #1
Incarnation is about making the Word flesh. Dangerous idea, this. Not for the faint of heart or the imagination limited to the trash heaps of machine thinking. Incarnation is about the presence of the Divine between the time God walked in the Garden and the time when the Son of Man call together all that is created for a final confab. It's God with us in the time between.
The big INCARNATION event, of course, is celebrated on December 25th in a great shout out for Jesus. But once the door is opened to the possibility that the Divine presence can be made flesh and dwell among us, the door opens to that same presence being in each and all of us, or in particular persons in specific instances.
In Jesus all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, all the time, and through death to resurrection. But perhaps in this or that person, for this or that moment, God too is pleased to dwell, if even for a moment. The Word made flesh, is also known in the "flesh" that is the whole created order, so sometimes incarnation is seen in the whole of creation, all together.
Incarnation is thus an invitation to a party where at least one person, Jesus, is that Presence, all the time, and where others can be that presence, if only for a moment, and the creation itself can also bethe flesh of God's incarnate presence.
It's hard to experience incarnation in what is often understood to be a badly fallen creation, and in particular hard to seen in the lives of human creatures whose world can be harsh and brutal, fearful and dangerous. Still, if we cannot see God present, infleshed, anywhere around us, how are we to believe that in Jesus God is present fully? If we have no experience of incarnation, what sense can we make of The Incarnation?
So, working up to Christmas, I'm thinking of small incarnational moments, when people or events reminded me that the Divine is given body in the world I live in. The next few days I want to record some of the times when I have been assured that God present in body is a reality. You will have your stories as well. Perhaps you too will share.
Incarnation (writ small), take #1
912 Greens: This morning I've been listening to Ramblin' Jack Elliott sing "912 Greens," a rambling story / talking song about a trip to New Orleans. I first heard him in person sing this at Canterbury House in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Since then I suppose I've seen him in person sing it six or seven times and have heard it on disk hundreds of times. Some of my best memories of hearing it in person have been with friend Jim Friedrich.
Throughout the song Jack would sit or stand on the stage, but towards the end (and everybody knew what was coming) he talked and strummed his way out into the audience and sang - sang- the one line that was pure song, "Did you ever stand and shiver, just because you were looking at a river?"
Jack was, for a brief moment (repeatable) the presence of the Divine in the flesh. His story song was filled with what has been called "investigative poetry," poetry that fills us with concrete details, little snapshots of the developing story line. The story / song loves real people in a gentle way. It is filled with real moments, small acts of courage, small events of community. And then, when he has brought us all into the moment, the full whammy of the "just now," he rips our hearts out, by wondering if we knew how to stand and shiver just because we were looking at a river. Jack takes us in a brief instance, into the mind of the Creator looking at the Created with an overwhelming sense of anticipation and joy.
Maybe all of this is foolish, after all Jack is just a singer and it is just a song, and he is a rascal and I am a fool. But still, I find myself listening and my mind stills down and I enter the world of 912 Greens and I am more and more prepared to anticipate and entertain the idea that the words are building a world in which amazement and shivering will be present, and I will experience The Word in words, and The Song in songs, and will know the Divine made flesh in the singer and the song, and in me too.
It is a little thing, this incarnational moment. It is not The Incarnation. But it is a light in the darkness, it is a moment of Truth is a world of words gone bad. It is a beacon of hope, hope that God who walked in the Garden also walks down into the audience, and into my heart, and gives me hope by pointing to the river, and I shiver.
And it holds promise too that maybe in this or that moment you and I too can be the incarnation of the Holy One, a small spark of the Divine One in the real world.
The big INCARNATION event, of course, is celebrated on December 25th in a great shout out for Jesus. But once the door is opened to the possibility that the Divine presence can be made flesh and dwell among us, the door opens to that same presence being in each and all of us, or in particular persons in specific instances.
In Jesus all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, all the time, and through death to resurrection. But perhaps in this or that person, for this or that moment, God too is pleased to dwell, if even for a moment. The Word made flesh, is also known in the "flesh" that is the whole created order, so sometimes incarnation is seen in the whole of creation, all together.
Incarnation is thus an invitation to a party where at least one person, Jesus, is that Presence, all the time, and where others can be that presence, if only for a moment, and the creation itself can also bethe flesh of God's incarnate presence.
It's hard to experience incarnation in what is often understood to be a badly fallen creation, and in particular hard to seen in the lives of human creatures whose world can be harsh and brutal, fearful and dangerous. Still, if we cannot see God present, infleshed, anywhere around us, how are we to believe that in Jesus God is present fully? If we have no experience of incarnation, what sense can we make of The Incarnation?
So, working up to Christmas, I'm thinking of small incarnational moments, when people or events reminded me that the Divine is given body in the world I live in. The next few days I want to record some of the times when I have been assured that God present in body is a reality. You will have your stories as well. Perhaps you too will share.
Incarnation (writ small), take #1
912 Greens: This morning I've been listening to Ramblin' Jack Elliott sing "912 Greens," a rambling story / talking song about a trip to New Orleans. I first heard him in person sing this at Canterbury House in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Since then I suppose I've seen him in person sing it six or seven times and have heard it on disk hundreds of times. Some of my best memories of hearing it in person have been with friend Jim Friedrich.
Throughout the song Jack would sit or stand on the stage, but towards the end (and everybody knew what was coming) he talked and strummed his way out into the audience and sang - sang- the one line that was pure song, "Did you ever stand and shiver, just because you were looking at a river?"
Jack was, for a brief moment (repeatable) the presence of the Divine in the flesh. His story song was filled with what has been called "investigative poetry," poetry that fills us with concrete details, little snapshots of the developing story line. The story / song loves real people in a gentle way. It is filled with real moments, small acts of courage, small events of community. And then, when he has brought us all into the moment, the full whammy of the "just now," he rips our hearts out, by wondering if we knew how to stand and shiver just because we were looking at a river. Jack takes us in a brief instance, into the mind of the Creator looking at the Created with an overwhelming sense of anticipation and joy.
Maybe all of this is foolish, after all Jack is just a singer and it is just a song, and he is a rascal and I am a fool. But still, I find myself listening and my mind stills down and I enter the world of 912 Greens and I am more and more prepared to anticipate and entertain the idea that the words are building a world in which amazement and shivering will be present, and I will experience The Word in words, and The Song in songs, and will know the Divine made flesh in the singer and the song, and in me too.
And it holds promise too that maybe in this or that moment you and I too can be the incarnation of the Holy One, a small spark of the Divine One in the real world.
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