January 20 post

It's not everyday that I am accused of being irresponsible (though I suppose I shouldn't be surprised if it happened more often!), so when a colleague called me less-than-responsible recently, I took notice.  My irresponsibility had to do with not having a plan for flu prevention in the parish.  (You know where this is going don't you?)  So, in an effort to not just be irresponsible, but more importantly to make sure we are on the same page and doing what will be helpful to hopefully prevent any sickness in the parish, here are some thoughts.

As one community of faith noted, we are in the midst of what is considered one of the worst years for flu transmission and a virulent strain at that.  I do not want to sound alarmist and demand that we close church or quarantine people.  However, I think that common sense and the St. Francis approach of people doing what makes sense to and for them is a natural way to proceed.  As in so many avenues of life, there is no cookie-cutter way that demands conformity.  There are many ways to co-exist.

So, some things to consider:

1.  If you are coughing, sneezing, or feeling any symptoms of illness, resting and staying away from public gatherings is probably not a bad choice.

2.  Washing and hand sanitizing is doubly important at this time of year.

Regarding the liturgy and our time together on Sundays, here are some further thoughts:

1. With the possibility of contamination, the common communion cup, may be a risk to some.  As we have stated before, there are many ways to commune, and they are all valid.  Consider:
a.  You can take the bread and drink from the cup.
b.  You can take the bread and intinct (dip) the bread in the cup.
c.  You can take the bread and acknowledge the cup with the words of promise but you do not consume any wine.
d.  You can take the bread and kiss the cup and hear the words of promise but not drink any wine.
e.  You can take the bread and forgo the wine altogether.

Again, what you are comfortable with and what makes sense to you is the important thing, and we honor all ways of receiving communion.  Christ is the host of the meal, and as many ways as people can imagine communing, so too can Christ come.

2. Regarding the sharing of the Peace, you may want to alter the way you share and honor what other people are comfortable doing.  Here are some ways to share the peace:
a.  With a handshake and the words of promise
b.  With a hug ATWOP
c.  By bowing toward another person ATWOP
d.  You can visually acknowledge another and offer the Indian "Namaste" (the God in me honors the God in you).

Similarly to communion, there is no one way of sharing the peace that is demanded.  Indeed, Christ's peace comes to us, perhaps, in the very moment that we think about sharing it with another?!

3. We do have Purell bottles in the entry way of both churches and in the sacristy of the churches.  Please avail yourself of this cleanser as needed.

I hope and pray that we all stay healthy during this season when we can be so prone to illness and at a time when a particular bug is such a threat.  At present, I do not know of anyone in our community who has the flu.  If, God forbid, you were to get sick, please let me know.  There is a cadre of individuals who are more than happy to help with meals, etc. if there is a particular need.  It is at times like these that sensitivity to others and their needs is obviously a part of our religious practice.  Honoring the many ways to be active and present in worship is, itself, honored.  Thank you. 

The adage, "Better to be safe than sorry," comes to mind at this time.  May you all be safe, and may none of us be sorry this season.

Blessings,

Mark

January 13 reflection

One of the simple pleasures of January that I enjoy begins on Monday the 14th.  It is the Australian Open.  Beyond my love of tennis--and I LOVE tennis and the amazing athletes who create artistry in motion with simply a ball and racquet and the confines of baselines and alley lines--the "thing" that gets me is watching players sweating under the sweltering heat of Australia's summer, while I stoke the fire with another log in Connecticut's northern hemisphere.

The juxtaposition of the southern and northern hemisphere's opposing seasons is an easy reminder of how vast the globe is.  It's one more opportunity to recognize the great mystery of what one of the Eucharistic prayers expresses as this fragile earth, our island home.
And this global climate flip-flop is, well, just COOL!  It reminds us, again, of how very small and inconsequential we are.  Which, I hope, is not interpreted in a pejorative way.  I actually think that an awareness of smallness and inconsequentiality is, actually, helpful, important, or, as Proverbs 9.10 would proffer, "the beginning of wisdom ."

However, global awareness, coolness, or simply the recognition of humanity's place in this--to quote John Prine--big old goofy world is really not what, ultimately, attracts me to the juxtaposition of hemispheres.  What I love is the ongoing challenge to our assumptions that must be made when we become aware of the larger world, and the possibility of thinking--and hopefully acting--in ways that are not simply in lockstep with our surroundings or what we have known but nimble enough to see another way, a different way, a way, nonetheless, that is just as good or true or apt as what we have done or will continue to do.

Mainly, I think about Christmas.  In the northern hemisphere, it makes complete sense to hold Christmas at the point in the calendar--and the reality of the world around us--when we are locked in the darkest time of the year.  In this context, it is easy to catch the resonances of the light returning, light flooding the darkness and driving it away, and light filling and warming our hearts.  Our hemispherical ontology is a direct analog to what we hope and trust occurs in God coming in Christ:  the light is the light of the world. . . the light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it.

However, if you live in the southern hemisphere, you observe Christmas at the point in time when your surroundings are just the opposite.  The weather is balmy.  You have just observed the longest day of light in the year.  And now you begin the long and steady slog through summer to the darkest day on JUNE 21!

Some recognize this situation as hemispherical colonization:  the north imposing its will on the south.  Others, meanwhile, respond with the classic, "Get a life."  There are more important things to consider.  Still others will ask in what ways the context of summer in the southern hemisphere might be able to express the fullness of Christmas' imagery and symbolism.  (There is no doubt that the eternal SUN is shining as brightly and hotly as it will all year at this time, and one can make an easy connection of how brightly and hotly the eternal SON shines in our lives.)

Yet, I often wonder what would happen if we, as the global church, allowed communities in their various contexts to worship and observe the festivals at the times when they resonated the most?  Why do we need to be on the same schedule?  Why do we pretend that we observe in the same way?  Why do we think that there is ONE way of believing or acting or praying or worshiping that is right? 

Again, the vastness of the globe expressed in the hemispherical seasonal dichotomy is a helpful reminder that there is soooo much diversity in the world, soooo much variety, soooo much infinitude of thinking, being, expressing, desire, enjoyment, and soooo much more.  Why do we need to confine everything?  Demand conformity?  Rather than sacrilege and heresy, could even the observance of major festivals in our tradition at different times in the calendar be a way of marking off the multifaceted world which God has created and the manifold ways that God comes to us not least of which is because of the particular uniqueness that we possess?

Just a thought.  I'll mull it over a bit more as the Australian Open plays out. . .

Blessings,

Mark

In the beginning. . .

Given the many good writers and interesting perspectives that make St. Francis a vibrant and interesting community, members' reflections are highlighted in this space from time to time.  Today Philip Calabrese prods our thoughts:

John 1:1-18 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

 There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.

 He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.

 And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. (John testified to him and cried out, ‘This was he of whom I said, “He who comes after me ranks ahead of me because he was before me.”’) From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.
On Sunday, December 30, we read 

the first eighteen verses of the Gospel of John, one of the most inspiring passages in the Christian Scriptures.  John was the last of the four gospel volumes that came to be admitted to the canon.  Letters/Epistles that are considered to be genuinely authored by Paul, while not gospels per se, are also an important witness to the earliest Christian confessions.    An easy to remember

heuristic is that-give or take a few years--the historical chronology is as follows:

60 CE for Paul 

70 CE for Mark
80 CE for Matthew
90 CE for Luke
100 CE for John

It is interesting to note that the later the text, the earlier is the claim for what we might call the moment when Jesus' divinity is recognized and/or proclaimed by each witness.  Paul says Jesus was, "designated Don of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead" (Rom.1:3-4).  Mark writing later, has that moment at Jesus' baptism, as he rises from the waters and the heavenly voice says, "Thouart my beloved Son; with thee, I am well pleased" (Mk 1:11).  Matthew and Luke, writing later still, place this moment within their birth narratives.  And finally John, writing in his first chapter, places the moment of divinity "in the beginning." That famous line from Genesis presaged God's inauguration of his creation, humanity. John's genesis is the very beginning of the cosmos. Jesus was there with God from the "logos." the fourth evangelist tells us.  Jesus' sonship did not happen by human agency, nor at any point in human time.  Jesus was co-existant from all eternity, incarnate NOT from the virgin Mary, for John, but forever incarnate of and with the father. 

What this all is a succession of ever higher Christology, which is a fancy term for the evangelists' several claims of the meaning of Jesus' identity, and the place of that identity in God's promise of salvation to Israel, "spoken through the prophets" as we confess so many Sundays. There is a certain amount of one upsmanship" going on.  In a secular analogy, it is a little like a bridge game where each successive evangelist plays a higher "trump."  Just as the Christological confessions for divinity increase, so do the attempts to trace Jesus' ancestral humanity back in time.  Mark leads with a low card, and calls Jesus "Son of David."  Matthew plays a higher trump, and traces Jesus' lineage back to Abraham, Israel's first patriarch.  Not to be outdone, Luke plays his highest card, and develops Jesus' ancestry to the very "Ur" of humanity, Adam himself.  But it is left to the Fourth Evangelist to take the trick.  He slaps down the Ace, with the declaration, quite simply, that Jesus always was. 

These first eighteen verses of John are usually called the prologue, a summary of the gospel author's understanding of Jesus' place in relation to God the Father.  It precedes his narrative of Jesus' public ministry.  Looking behind the text, it is impossible not to note that in addition to elevating his Christology, the Fourth Evangelist takes extra pains to reduce John the Baptist to a subordinate role.  Mark, Matthew and Luke all report that Jesus was baptized with water, and have the Baptist say that someone greater (Jesus) is coming, who will baptize with the holy spirit.  Only John' gospel does not directly tell of Jesus' baptism; instead, it is only referred to obliquely.  The question we might ask is, simply, why?  Why go to all this literary trouble to make him inferior? 

Remembering that Christianity began as a solely Jewish movement in the time we now call Easter, in the years following the crucifixion, as Jesus' disciples wrestled with the meaning of his life and death,  the facts of his life and ministry--so recently known and impossible to deny--were at odds with the expected "warrior king" of Jewish prophecy.  While the Jesus movement at first co-existed within Judaism, and with some Jewish Christians preaching the good news within synagogues, Judaism came to reject Christian claims for Jesus in the years following the fall of the Jerusalem temple in 70 CE.  The Jewish understanding was that Jesus was, at best, only a prophet.  The gospel writers all wanted to dispel such an understanding, and looked through the Hebrew Scriptures to find verses that supported their Christological claims.  Perhaps more than any other text, this prologue of John's gospel became part of the foundation of what would become the theology that Christians confess to this day as we, too, wrestle with who Jesus is for each of us.

Thank you, Philip.

Blessings,

Mark