Bishops' Blog

Confirmation Visitation at St. Augustine's (November 2)

     There is only ‘one Lord, one faith, one baptism,’ as Paul said, but there are lots of pictures of that same Jesus, what with our four Gospels, each from a different angle, as well as other New Testament books, giving us a 360 degree view. Another way to make the same point is to think of the light in which each season puts Christ. The Jesus of Advent, prophetic, challenging, taking us by surprise.  The Jesus of Christmastide, bone of our bone, vulnerable and lowly, dwelling in our midst. The Jesus of cross and tomb is the suffering servant of Isaiah, stricken for us, and of Ezekiel, called out of the valley of dead bones. Finally consider the Jesus of Pentecost, his spirit shaking  the Church and the world like a powerful wind.  We must hasten to add that these are one, his face known to us, and yet mysterious and deep.

    Who then is the Jesus of All Saints’ Day?  This morning  we see him in the light of the often-overlooked book of the prophet Daniel. You might add the Book of Revelation, where all the saints by tribe surround the throne of the wounded lamb, though there they sing the same triumph song of Daniel:’ ‘glory and honor and praise be to our God and (they add) to the Lamb forever and ever.’ Understanding more about the prophet Daniel sheds light on the Jesus of All Saints. And when this is clear, we can then see how it informs our own lives of faith, here and now.

    When my son was eight years old, the seventh chapter of Daniel was his favorite passage, and you can see why. Monsters with terrible teeth crawl out of the slime to terrorize humanity. It is a harsh but, in its own way, recognizable picture of how the world is, power and oppression, in cycle after cycle. Who has not at times felt that such is the world? But look closer, and you see the prophet has here a kind of good news for us- the rampage does not go on forever. By God’s protecting hand it will only last for a time, two times, and half a time, which means half as long as the fully Biblical seven years, cut short by God for that is all that humanity can withstand. Think of the verse where Paul reassures us that God does not try us beyond our capacity.  And even in evil there is a kind of order, one tormentor after the other, unfolding as He has predetermined. The message is that, even in the face of evil, we can see that all things are in the hand of God.

   A hard vision with cold comfort, but beyond the confines of our reading, let me tell you how the story comes to its conclusion.  There is a second narrative, the inner history of the world, the open secret, God’s plot line. Over the chaos is the ancient of Days, on his throne,  with the chariots of fire about him and a river of fire flowing from him. And then to Him came ‘one like  the Son of Man‘ all the nations of the earth are his train, in his wake, taken up with him to the Father, where the Son is given all authority and all glory. Here, in the Old Testament, a vision of the triune God, of the Christ, of the ascension, though we cannot see the face of the Son until the revelation in the New.  We, the nations, being carried to our Father, in the wake of the Son of Man: that is the real story of humankind, and indeed of the whole creation which sings a canticle in praise.

Let’s pause for a moment- what then does Daniel tells us about the Jesus of all the saints? The latter are honest about the deep brokenness of the world. But they are by grace lifted up to see the wider vista, and seeing it is a consolation. And that vista has Jesus at its center, we part of His throng, we the spoils of His triumph. What we call ‘mission’ is not so much our projects and stratagems, but rather what we see from the corner of our eye. We can also see that worship is not something we do of our own accord, but rather has a setting as wide, finally,  as creation.

You have surely heard about the two sides of our brains, with their two ways of knowing. They are sometimes described as creative and analytic, but they go back to a ability, which we needed to survive, on the one hand to scan the horizon (for danger) and on the other to see in detail (discriminating, for example, seed from pebble). Daniel 7 is scanning the horizon, not for danger, but rather for help!  But when you think of Daniel, you think of the three young men in the fiery furnace, or the lion’s den (or maybe, if you had a very good Sunday School, of mad king Nebuchadnezzar on all fours eating grass!). My point is that- the book is also eminently practical, down to earth. But it guides how to do what? To live faithfully in an alien land, how to read the cultural signs among your pagan neighbors.  This is no less true for us, who, in our own way, week to week, are trying to figure out, as Christians, how we too can sing the Lord’s song in a strange land, in the exile. 

   To the confirmands- you, like all the saints, need both, the wide and the narrow frame. As to the latter, make friends. Witness wherever God puts you. Be ready to see the glimmer of the longing for the divine in Nebuchadnezzar. But remember your story is distinct, i.e. don’t eat everything the culture serves you.  Even in the fiery-est places expect to find another, like the Son of Man. And, in both our wide and narrow lens moments, remember that the end of the story, the last Chapter, of your and our lives, as well as the Book of Daniel, belongs to God, who will raise the just and the unjust, and will have for them, us, all, the last word. And can be confident that that word, coming as it does on the day of the resurrection, whose first fruits is the Son of Man, Jesus, will be to us ‘Yes’ and will call out from us “Amen.’   

Participatory Thinking

I have recently read a book entitled Participation in God by our own Diana Luck’s step-son Thomas. I appreciated it and commend it to you. The theme of participation has been important in theology: for example John Zizioulas developed an ontology around it, and the Finish Lutherans used it to find a détente between catholic and evangelical. It is easy to see how a careless use of the concept could end up compromising the doctrine of grace, and this in turn would have an ill-effect on preaching. Here Luck’s work is helpful in the way that it bridges biblical, theological, and practical.

The eminent anthropologist Clifford Geertz famously used the term ‘thick description,’ and here is what he meant by it.  While philosophical terms move in generalities, understanding a phenomenon in its particularity requires adding layer upon layer of historical, physical, social, and philosophical description. We might compare understanding to the old overhead projectors with multiple transparencies. Thus one builds up a picture of something located in place, time, and culture.  What if we were to think about the word ‘participation’ in this way? (For this is what Luck’s book implicitly offers).

 In this book, the overlays offering a thick description of ‘participation’ are richly varied. First the Jewish philosopher Joseph S. guides us, with a complex reading of the figure of Adam in Genesis. He differentiates ‘first’ Adam as the being gifted with insight and will, ‘a little lower than the angels,’ from ‘second’ Adam, a creature of the earth who gives and receives mercy. This tension within the ‘image of God’ is within Adam prior to the fall, though ‘sublapsarian’ Adam has yet another tension. For this reason, already from creation the form of participation for Adam the creature is obedience

The second vector on participation, guided by the New Testament witness, is table fellowship. This reaches back to the Passover tradition, through Jesus’ own table fellowship, to include the Last Supper and His atoning death it interpreted, and on to the Eucharist in the early Church. Here too participation has a complex, particular, and multi-valent meaning.  Here too meaning moves ‘thickly’ from the specific to general, from Christology to ecclesiology. The third overlay, with perhaps a more uneasy fit with what has preceded, is participation as found in contemporary writings about social and systemic change. “Participation’ is not one thing but many, including distance, struggle, private emotion and public action, stasis and disruption.  “Participation’ has seasons and its own variety of plot-lines. Here too we need to ‘take captive’ these secular categories and insights for Christ, and in this task what has preceded in the book can be our help in developing a practical and pastoral theology for parish life.