Showing items filed under “The Rev. Canon Dr. Victor Lee Austin”

Her Departure is Coming

How did she know? I was walking the Katy trail with my backpack—the 38-liter one that I will take to Spain next month. She was a power-walker, elderly (though perhaps not older than I), talking away with her companion. They passed me and then she, without stopping, turned her head backwards to ask: “Are you going to walk the Camino?” I don’t think there was anything obviously Camino-ish about me or my pack—for instance, there was no Camino shell attached to it. But she intuited. As she walked on, her torso twisted to face me, she said she had walked it in a certain year that she named but I have forgotten. I said I was leaving in April. She said it would change my life.

I think that’s true, but I don’t think I’ll ever have the flexibility to walk fast while twisting to talk to a guy behind me.

–

More commonly I get asked, “Are you in training?” Two years ago, same trail, same backpack, a runner who passed me stopped and turned back to ask that question. When I told him my hope of walking the Camino, he was impressed. He knew of the Camino, even as he knew about of a lot of other long walks. He told me he was training (though not at that moment) to walk a wilderness trail in the American West. He would be sleeping outdoors, cooking his own food, and thus carrying a lot more weight than I would or could. It was my turn to be impressed.

For the Camino is not that hard. Rather than the forty-pound pack that he would have to carry, I’m getting by with twenty pounds tops. The Camino—and here I mean the Camino Frances, the French Way, the most popular route to Santiago de Compostela in Spain--has so many pilgrims there is quite an informal support system all along. You just need a sleeping bag: there will be a bed somewhere, and there will be coffee and food and snacks and dinner, and there will be markets and people with food stands along the way. So you just need a change of clothing and some water and a guidebook and a few other things. Twenty pounds, in fact, is a bit luxurious on my part; this time I am planning to take a tablet and keyboard, two pounds’ weight that I did without last time. (This time I want to do more writing along the way.)

–

Departure is drawing nigh, and in that manner my Lent is a sort of feeble image of my Lord’s: he too was walking in training, or at least training his disciples, towards the event that Saint Luke literally calls “his departure”: the cross and all that follows. At the end of walking last time, I sensed I had traveled unknowingly in the shadow of Jesus’ own walking to the cross. So this year, when Lent ends, I launch into another walk to the cross—maybe. Who knows? The meaning this time may be quite different.

I think the closer we get to the liturgical life of the church, the closer its patterns become the patterns of our life. You too, dear reader, are “walking” towards Jesus’ “departure,” which is your own sharing in his life (which was his sharing in our life). It can happen without literal walking, of course. Whatever your life, it is a sharing of a walk with Jesus. Then along comes Easter, the explosion of new life into our old world. But Easter is not the end of walking. Having risen from the dead, Jesus keeps going—for famous instance, on the road to Emmaus with two disciples, walking and talking.

Such happens to us also. After the deprivation-walk of Lent, there is the great fullness of the walk of Easter. Let us keep on with our Lord, wherever we are and whatever the season. 

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Out & About. What is the purpose of Jesus’ incarnation? It is to restore the possibility of friendship of us with each other and offer friendship with himself. This is the thesis of chapter 5 of A Post-Covid Catechesis, which I will be talking about on Tuesday, March 19, at St. Stephen’s Church in Sherman, Texas, at 6 p.m., and also on Wednesday, March 20, at St. Matthew’s Cathedral in Dallas at 6:30 p.m. In each case the talk is preceded by soup—no sign-up required.

Looking far ahead: The next Good Books & Good Talk seminar will be on Sunday, June 2, at 5pm, on Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro.

On the Web. M. Anthony Mills writes: “federal regulation is not always the most appropriate way to deal with the consequences of technological change. Nor is regulation the only option.” He reminds us of President George W. Bush’s Council on Bioethics that, over several years, engaged in “public deliberation about emerging technologies that may contribute to human fourishing but also pose serious ethical questions about freedom, dignity, and even what it means to be human.” He argues that we need something like that today to provide us with “the moral resources needed to grapple with the challenges and opportunities” of Artificial Intelligence. https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/a-presidents-council-on-artificial-intelligence

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Did Nicodemus Hear John 3:16?

This Sunday the Revised Common Lectionary has us reading John 3:14-21. This rather major change from the BCP lectionary of 1979 is a mystery to me; I would have preferred extending the reading for Lent II in Year A (last year) from 3:1-17 to 3:1-21. That is to say, I think these verses belong with the Nicodemus story—indeed, that they are the end of it. And so it’s a shame we will hear them in isolation from that context.

They fit Nicodemus. He comes to Jesus in the night, and in verse 20 we have Jesus (or the gospel writer?) saying, “everyone who does evil hates the light, and does not come to the light.” If Nicodemus heard those words, he would feel their challenge: he had come to Jesus in the night, not because he was evil—but he was, perhaps, in danger of going that way. In the previous verse Jesus (or the gospel writer) says that “the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.” If he heard those words, Nicodemus would sense that Jesus was speaking directly to his heart. Is he going to be on the side of light, or will he stay in darkness?

The subsequent mentions of Nicodemus in John suggest that Jesus’ words convicted him and turned his heart towards the light. In chapter 7, Nicodemus stands up for Jesus amidst the leaders who were trying to condemn him. And at the end of chapter 19, after the crucifixion, Nicodemus takes Jesus’ body and anoints it with “myrrh and aloes” and wraps it in a linen cloth, as was appropriate—as was loving—as the deed of someone who has come into the light, whose deeds are righteous and good.

— 

John’s Gospel works on multiple levels at the same time. Nicodemus, told by Jesus that he must be born anew from above, asks how he will fit back into his mother’s womb. He is thinking on only one level; Jesus of course was using fleshly language to speak of the Spirit. 

John’s multiple layering is sometimes manifest in the grammar or the structure of the text itself. It is clear, in chapter 3, that Nicodemus is no longer there by the time we get to verse 22. But it is not clear when Nicodemus leaves. At the same time, it is not clear where Jesus stops speaking. Biblical Greek has no quotation marks. So we do not know where Jesus leaves off and the gospel writer picks up. In the NRSV, Jesus speaks all the way through verse 21. But in the RSV Jesus stops at verse 15, and from verse 16 on it is the evangelist John making a comments and generalized theological claims upon the events as a whole. “So God loved the world,” (and the “so” rightly goes first; the sentence means, God loved the world in this way, by giving his only Son)—did Jesus say this, or is John making a comment? The King James Version, like the Greek, has no quotation marks, and thus could be read either way.

I think it interesting to meditate on these various possibilities: Nicodemus stayed around, or Nicodemus left; Jesus kept speaking, or Jesus stopped and we are getting commentary. In both cases, it could have happened at different times. 

One of the layers of John’s Gospel is the layer of us, the contemporary church, hearing it read. If Nicodemus might or might not be there listening, how about us? How much do I hear? When do I tune in or tune out? At the end of it, through internal transformations we can only guess at, Nicodemus has become a courageous believer in Jesus, might this be happening to me? As I read John’s Gospel, as I hear it in church, as it sinks through my mind into my heart, am I turning into someone who loves the light, someone who will be courageous for Jesus’ sake?

— 

Out & About. This Sunday, March 10, I am to preach at St. Matthew’s in Dallas at 9 and 11:15 a.m. Then at 5 p.m. we will discuss the strangely popular recent novel, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce. We meet in the Great Hall for 90 minutes; everyone is welcome, and if you’ve read the book you are welcome also to talk.

Wednesday, March 13, I will address the Lenten program at St. Matthew’s on Five Basic Christian Teachings important for our time. This week’s topic is the most important of all: what is a human being? I take this to be revealed in Jesus, who was the one truly complete human being. This is discussed in chapter 4 of A Post-Covid Catechesis, if you want to read up in advance. You can come at 7 p.m. for the class, or at 6:30 for a light supper, or at 6 to join in the stations of the cross.

Sunday, March 17, I will be a guest at the rector’s forum of New York City’s parish of Calvary and St. George’s. Topic: “The emergence of the distinction of humans and (other) animals.” Info here: https://www.calvarystgeorges.org/events/rectors-forum-with-the-rev-canon-victor-lee-austin


 

 

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The Rev. Canon Victor Lee Austin. Ph.D., is the Theologian-in-Residence for the diocese and is the author of several books including, "Friendship: The Heart of Being Human" and "A Post-Covid Catechesis.: 

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