Diary of a Theologian

I was preparing to write this during the Super Bowl; I had gone to Village Burger Bar worrying I might not be able to get a seat. But there were lots of seats, and as I sat there and lingered with my laptop, the place never got full. The game was on the monitors and the sound was in the air, but the crowds were elsewhere.

The first time a World Cup occurred while I was in New York City, the pubs were full—even in the mornings, if a game were happening then. On the sidewalks were chalk signs noting the teams and the times for the day. Inside were noise and beer and compactness. If I had a visitor during the Cup, we would go out to watch a game; I had no TV, and the pubs were more fun anyway. But it wasn’t only TV-less folk, everyone went out to see the Cup. It was a public-communal experience.

The Super Bowl is different. Everyone watches it, and apart from places where people live in postage-stamp-size apartments (and apart from a few TV-less folks), they watch it gathered in homes.

And this makes for that strange feeling on the streets, a lack of traffic, an odd quietness. Here we have a near-universal event, something everyone is doing, but the happening is domestic, behind private doors. It’s not family-focused like Christmas, nor is it a huge gathering like a star concert. The Super Bowl is millions of simultaneous home parties. I think I’ll call it “private-communal.”

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There’s a private-communal aspect to Christianity also. Christians have public places where they come together, always have; but Christians also gather in small domestic groups. These small groups of Christians come together to pray, read the Bible, learn the faith, and encourage each other. They’ve been doing this since biblical times, and they do it still—which is why you might not often think about it. But when you are out in your neighborhood, you never know: somewhere near you there may be a group of Christians gathered. 

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The private-communal aspect of Christianity promotes happiness. We need small groups for our flourishing. Super Bowl parties are good, but even better are private-communal events that happen week after week.

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Out & About. The Good Books & Good Talk seminar is this Sunday, February 19, on A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess. We meet in the education building of Incarnation in Dallas from 5 to 6:30 p.m. Anyone who reads the book is welcome to the conversation.

The next seminar, on March 19, will be on James Matthew Wilson’s The Strangeness of the Good, his most recent collection of poems that includes his Covid diary. Wilson is a widely published poet with a Christian imagination.

It seems to come over me near the beginning of Lent each year: a sense of the awesome extent of God’s embrace of our human condition: its suffering, its joy, everything. There will be lots of people at the altar rail, hands extended to receive the Body of Christ. Some kneel easily and look up with eager smile. Others hold children, guiding them to cross their arms if they don’t receive the sacrament. Some can’t kneel easily, and sort of jerk down, or wince, or just bow as they stand. Some hold a cane; some hold the upper arm to support another who uses a cane. 

The hands vary. Smooth hands with painted nails are lifted; hands with a ring and hands with many rings; leathered hands, calloused; gnarled hands; sometimes a hand with missing digits. Wounded by work or accident, soiled by work or youthful play, and the occasional visible tattoo: these hands are lifted up, like flowers straining to catch life-giving sunlight. 

A side note: This old priest notes the traditional Episcopalians, who have the right hand on top (and will lift the host on that hand directly to their mouth), and those trained to receive communion as Roman Catholics, who put their left hand on top, then take the host in their right hand to put it in their mouth.

Then the mind starts wondering: Was that a sign of Alzheimer’s? He seemed not to know exactly what was going on; the young woman beside him made a motion for him to lift the host to his mouth.

And what was that child thinking? She smiled happily. This other child was looking from side to side. When the blessing words were pronounced—that Christ the light of the world bless thee always—how long in earthly years was that “always” going to be for this child? Might this child persist in faith for eighty years, even more?

Some linger, some get up quickly, as more and more fill their places. “The Body of Christ.” They bring their family problems (and joys), their work, their hardships, their searchings, their hopes. Everything you can imagine a human being living through or wanting or dreading, it all comes. 

I felt this first back in New York City. I was at a church that, on Ash Wednesday, gave out ashes all day long. We were a prominent church in a well-traveled area, and hundreds upon hundreds of people walked in through the day. They would approach the priest in an otherwise silent church; he would mark them with ashes and say, “Remember, O man, that dust thou art and unto dust shalt thou return.” They were everyone, anyone. Many of them said “Thank you,” which struck me as a wry truth. I had just told them they would die, and they were grateful for the news.

How awesome is the reach of God’s embrace! Every human being, in whatever condition, is welcome to receive his touch. It is indeed true: Jesus “stretched out his arms upon the cross, and offered himself . . . a perfect sacrifice for the whole world.”

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Out & About. I am to preach at All Souls’ Church in Oklahoma City on Saturday, February 11, at 5:30 p.m., and on Sunday, February 12, at 8 and 10 a.m.

The next Good Books & Good Talk seminar will be Sunday, February 19, on A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess. I urge that you don’t see the film—read the book. The conversation will run from 5 to 6:30 p.m.

On the Web. On the Human Life Review website there is a new post of mine, “The Foolishness of the Cross”: https://humanlifereview.com/the-foolishness-of-the-cross/ 

Just a Note. February 8, 1986, was a Saturday after a day and a night of much snow in Wappingers Falls, New York. Nonetheless, Bishop Stuart Wetmore got there and at Zion Church ordained yours truly a priest. February 8 was the last Saturday before Lent that year; my rector was glad to have priestly assistance during the penitential season. Although I have been a priest longer than I haven’t, I still fall short by a couple of decades, and sometimes more, the tenure of many admirable senior clerics still alive. So don’t let me go on too long about this old guy stuff.