Month: July 2014

What got it started

Nearly forty years ago I stumbled across a story that started me on a long and circuitous exploration of what priesthood is really about. I wasn’t ordained at the time but was just entering the process. I’d hoped Fr. Capon’s book An Offering of Uncles would give me a clue just what this priest stuff was about. After all the subtitle was The Priesthood of Adam and the Shape of the World. But well into the first chapter Capon shared a reflection that started a ball rolling and that ball refuses to stop. I’ll share this excerpt in the hopes that it may stimulate some priestly reflections in others. It’s a reflection on marsh reeds that grew around a small creek in Port Jefferson, Long Island:

“Marsh reeds, when full grown, vary from five to ten feet in height, and the tassels on the ends of the good ones are thicker than squirrels’ tails. The next time you walk past a bank of reeds, try something. Pick out the tallest one you can reach, and cut if off with your penknife as close to the ground as possible. Ostensibly, perhaps even to yourself, it will seem that you are cutting it down to carry home to your children. No one will take serious exception. But in the carrying of it, you will make a discovery. Keep a record of your reactions: It is impossible simply to carry a marsh reed. For how will you hold it? Level? Fine. But it is ten feet long, and plumed in the bargain. Are you seriously ready to march up the main street of town as a knight with lance lowered? Perhaps it would be less embarrassing to hold it vertically. Good. It rests gracefully in the crook of your arm. But now it is ten feet tall and makes you the bearer of a fantastic mace. What can you do to keep it from making a fool of you? To grasp it with one hand and use it in your walking only turns you from a king into an apostle; to try to make light of it by holding it upside down is to become a deacon carrying the inverted crozier at an archbishop’s requiem. Do you see what you have discovered? There is no way of bearing the thing home without becoming an august and sacred figure — without being yourself carried back to Adam, the first King and Priest. So much so that most men will never finish the experiment: the reed, if cut at all, will never reach home. Humankind cannot stand very much reality: the strongest doses of it are invariably dismissed as silliness. But silly is from selig, and selig is blessed. If you ever want to walk your native ground in the sceptered fulness of the majesty of Adam, I commend the marsh reed to you. Whatever embarrassment it may cause you will be an embrras des richesses.“

Glacial Transformation

Glaciers transformed the face of this continent. Valleys and canyons, lakes and plains were shaped, in some cases over 1000s of years, sometime only over centuries, and when floods were loosed by glacial movement, sometimes over mere decades. The generally slow movement of glaciers over extended periods gives the adjective “glacial” a sense of an extremely slow process, but one that reaches deep beneath the surface. This is a helpful image of the sort of transformation that needs to happen in churches. And that was one dangerous sentence.

After all, when “change” and “church” are used in the same sentence you can be sure that someone is going to be unhappy, and most likely many “someones.” And yet, when changes disturb the equilibrium of churches, those changes tend to be superficial: styles of worship, decoration, furniture arrangement and so on. The sort of change churches need is far deeper, and when they happen, the superficial ones lose their significance.

Transformation occurs at levels we rarely think about. The first and most important is when the “glue” that holds us together changes. This glue, in nearly all congregations, is not consistent among all members. For some it is a denomination identity, for some it is a variety of connections with other members, with leadership, or with aspects of the congregational life. Go to any traditional congregation and ask 50 members what connected them to the group, you might get 50 different answers. When the glue changes from the individual reasons to the single purpose of following Jesus then there is a change that rocks the very depth of congregational life.

Deep transformation does not, however, stop there. The connection with Jesus must always begin with an individual choice. The next step in deep transformation is when “me and Jesus” becomes “we and Jesus.” At this level our commitment to following Jesus is inextricably connected to our commitment to one another. No member’s joy is private joy. No member’s pain is private pain. We see signs of that in the life of any healthy congregation. When transformation comes, even those with whom we are not close become matters of our concern. Here “membership” regains its older meaning of the parts of a body. We know well the term of dismemberment when it comes to physical bodies. Here we rediscover the meaning of “re-member” each time we gather together in worship. When Jesus says, at the Last Supper, “do this in remembrance of me,” He’s not just speaking of a recollection of the past, but the present gathering of us, His Body – re-membering. As we come from scattered places – disconnected by different work, different stresses, different schedule, different obligations – in the Eucharist a community of this deep transformation is reconnected with Jesus and with one another. We are re-membered to one another because we are re-membered to Jesus in the Sacrament.

And there is more. The movement from me to we in relationship to Jesus also means a movement from inward to outward focus. This movement does not appear by magic. It is simply the result of following Jesus. His ultimate command is to go out into the world (Matt. 28: 19). As we go we are to make disciples of all sorts and conditions of people, people like us and people very, very unlike us and everyone in between. As an essential element of making disciples we are to incorporate them into community. And as part of this community of disciples we are to show them how to make God’s kingdom visible in all we do and all we say.

There is even more than this, but already this description is sounding like the deluded fantasy of a priest wearing his collar too tight. But that’s where Glacial Transformation comes in. This is very slow work. It requires the intentional adoption of spiritual disciplines that draw us to Jesus, build us into community and points us towards serving other. In fact, it requires something very like our Trinity Way of Life. It requires a priest who is willing to stay as long as necessary to keep the message repeating week by week, season by season, year by year. It requires a people who are willing to try this out and persevere over delays, setbacks and all the ups and downs of keeping a congregational system running while never losing sight of the goal.

As a priest in his early 60s it is natural that my thoughts and plans might turn to retirement from time to time. It is natural that timing should be considered: 65? 72? Next week? It is natural that finances should be considered, though that seems to be in order in our household. What is not natural is supernatural. Trinity, Greeley was never in my plans – only because I had no plans. All planning was given over to Jesus 16 years ago. The vision of a deeply transformed community has been both God’s gift and God’s curse that will not go away. So I plan to plug on until Jesus says stop.

The Priesthood of un-meaning

OK, it’s been 5 months since I’ve been online. This is not unusual. I’m still working through what it means to be a priest, whether presbyteros or hiereus but in the interest of full disclosure, most of these ideas come from a book written many years ago by a wonderful, witty and somewhat strange priest, Robert Farrar Capon. In his book An Offering of Uncles Capon examines the priesthood of Adam and the priesthood of Christ. In both of these he uses the meaning hiereus. His primary assertion is that Adam, as a figure representing all humankind, was created to be a priest and thus all human acts, intentionally or not, are priestly acts. But that leaves us with a conundrum and that’s where I pick up after the long delay:

The role of the hiereus priest is the transformation of the ordinary through oblation. Phew! That was loaded with jargon. However, jargon is a shortcut for a longer declaration, so let me try that instead. When we offer and embrace others in the love of God, change happens. Not big headline change, but a quiet and small change that has depth which shows itself slowly and in ways that build meaning and joy in life.

If that was all there was to it then life would look a lot different than it does. The painful reality is not all priestly offerings build meaning and joy. We are priests. We are created to be priests. All our offerings are priestly offerings. But that means that betrayal, abuse, deceit and other equally sinful acts are priestly offerings that rob meaning, rob joy from those caught up in the offering. Such offerings are part of a Mass, but it is Black Mass of unmeaning. Our world is full of such masses of unmeaning: the greed and immorality of the financial frauds behind the Great Recession; the kidnap and murder of three Israeli teens and the revenge killing of a Palestinian teen; schools shootings, innumerable incidents of stalking, spousal and child abuse, drug violence and even the tediously vile political advertisements and social media postings all evidence the human propensity for offering Black Masses of unmeaning. In the overwhelming tide of such awful priestly acts it seems like the priestly acts of building and blessing are like fighting all of Hell with a water pistol.

The problem we face is that the priesthood of Adam cannot be both the problem and the solution. A new priesthood is needed, not based in human history, but entering from outside. That’s just what has happened. A new priesthood, which is a fulfillment of old promises, is already on the ground. The nature of that priesthood and how we can participate in it will be the subject of the next posting — hopefully before the end of the year!