#TractSwarm: The Language of Fasting

On the first Sunday in Lent, I recited the Exhortation from the Book of Common Prayer to emphasize for the parish the penitential character of the season we had just entered. I had never been in a congregation that used the Exhortation, and so this was a new experience for me, as I imagine it was for many of our parishioners. The severe, chastening language of Rite I, including the Exhortation, was a brusque change from our usual affirming and hope-filled outlook. To say in the confession that "we acknowledge and bewail our manifold sins and wickedness" might at times seem over the top and disingenuous for people who believe in the inherent goodness of humanity and see the glass as at least half full.

Yet, it has been useful to step out of our customary ways of praying and theologizing to confront the reality of human brokenness and sin. In a sense, we have been fasting from the normal language that nourishes our prayer and worship, and we miss it. It is a deprivation we feel in our very bones. If the function of fasting is to purify ourselves by dismantling the idols that keep us from a healthy relationship with God, then relinquishing our dependence on our linguistic comfort zone is a step in the right direction. If our customary language obscures the truth about human sin, which we'd rather not face, then it is meet, right, and our bounden duty to take a break from it and use language that forces us to see a different side of ourselves, even if it is our underbelly.

In the midst of all of the harsh "I am a worm and no man" language, however, there is a gentleness that can easily be obscured if one is not attuned to the Lenten theme of God's mercy.  The Exhortation, for instance, emphasizes that humanity is not beyond help or hope. God loves us extravagantly, and for this we are thankful:

Having in mind, therefore, his great love for us, and in obedience to his command, his Church renders to Almighty God our heavenly Father never-ending thanks for the creation of the world, for his continual providence over us, for his love for all mankind, and for the redemption of the world by our Savior Christ, who took upon himself our flesh, and humbled himself even to death on the cross, that he might make us the children of God by the power of the Holy Spirit, and exalt us to everlasting life.

Instead of just abandoning us to our endless wickedness, God's people are given useful strategies for overcoming their shortcomings. The Exhortation tells us to adopt a renewed reverence for the Eucharist, to forgive each other, to scrutinize our consciences, and if we are overwhelmed by guilt and sinfulness, to "open your grief to a discreet and understanding priest, and confess your sins, that you may receive the benefit of absolution, and spiritual counsel and advice; to the removal of scruple and doubt, the assurance of pardon, and the strengthening of your faith." In this way, the disciplines of Lent, such as fasting, confession, and Station of the Cross, prepare us lovingly to receive the joy of the Paschal feast. Fasting may take on many forms: abstaining from food or drink, resisting the temptation to judge or speak harshly of others, or adopting a more disciplined, healthier lifestyle that will honor the body as God's temple. However we fast, the sacrifice should dismantle the idols--even our language--that enslave us and distract us from our relationship with God.

Abundant blessings,
Fr. Ethan+

All Souls' Day: A Storehouse of Consolation

A Sermon for All Souls' Day.  A link to the audio recording can be found here.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

A young man sat across from me last Tuesday on the Red Line train during the evening rush hour. We’ll call him Phil.  Phil was in his mid- to late-20s, with a shaggy ginger beard and huge headphones over his ears. He looked up at me every now and then, and after several stops, finally leaned forward and ventured tentatively:

“You’re a priest, right?”

“I am,” I stated pithily, smiling.

“So, do I call you, Father or Pastor, or what?”

“Those are fine. Or you can just call me Ethan.”

“OK. Can I ask you a question?”

“Sure. Go ahead.”

“I’m not a Catholic or anything, Father, but …”

“Neither am I, actually. I am a priest in the Episcopal Church,” I hastened to clarify.  (I decided not to muddy the waters by explaining Anglo-Catholicism. I knew what he meant.)  Phil’s face brightened with a look of recognition.

“The Episcopal Church. OK, so you don’t have confession, then?”

“Actually, we do,” I said encouragingly.  “But we often call it reconciliation.”

“Hmm. Really?  Well, do you think that the sins and bad stuff we do can affect our physical health? ‘Cause I’ve been feeling kind of sick, lately,” Phil confided. “I’m wondering if there’s a spiritual cause for it?”

“Absolutely,” I agreed.  “I firmly believe that the things that weigh on our consciences can affect our whole selves, emotionally, spiritually, and physically.” Phil seemed genuinely engaged, so I continued. “They damage our souls, and they can turn toxic and work on us over the long haul, if we don’t process them through therapy or sacramental confession.  In fact, I do both, and I highly recommend them.  They can make a huge difference.” Phil’s face, which had been intensely serious, relaxed into a smile.

“OK, thanks,” he said reflectively, as we shook hands and I got off the train.

To those who say that sin is an outmoded, medieval concept, my brief conversation with Phil would suggest, on the contrary, the world is still in desperate need of God’s mercy.  And that’s because sin is real, however much our society might deny its existence.  Sin is a difficult sell these days, because we would prefer to focus on God’s estimation of the created order, including us, as very good, as the book of Genesis records.  But the recognition of human sinfulness does not invalidate God’s original blessing.  Rather, it acknowledges our complexity: that the human experience is fraught with moral failings that we cannot resolve by ourselves.  We may be inherently good, but we are not sufficient unto ourselves.  We need God.

It may be hard for us to discern this hopeful message in the Requiem’s severe language. Contemporary sensibilities are not attuned to the Requiem’s central theme of the wrath and vengeance of divine judgment.  But to really appreciate the extravagant gift of God’s mercy and deliverance from sin, we need to engage equally extravagant language around human brokenness.  If the human condition were expressed in lukewarm terms, then God’s remedy would seem far less dramatic, far less redemptive.  What is deeply beautiful about the Requiem liturgy is the notion that however far we may fall, however much we might deserve divine retribution, God, out of his endless love for us, offers us abundant mercy.  And this is where the liturgy ends up, with the balm of divine absolution.

This evening’s readings are aligned to this hopeful outlook.  They are meant to provide reassurance in the face of fear and despair, doubt and failure.  The Dies irae expresses the intensity of human terror in the face of death and final judgment, and, yet in the Recordare there is a note of humility and tenderness that acknowledges God’s promise of redemption through Jesus’s once-for-all sacrifice on the Cross.  “Remember, kind Jesus, / my salvation caused your suffering; / do not forsake me on that day. / Faint and weary you have sought me, / redeemed me, suffering on the cross; / may such great effort not be in vain.”

A wise priest said to me one day, while instructing me how to hear confessions, “Remember that we come to confession, not for condemnation, but for forgiveness.”  In the face of deserved judgment, God offers forgiveness to those who seek it out in a spirit of sincere repentance.  It is a pity that so few people nowadays avail themselves of the sacrament of confession, because I think it would provide a baseline for understanding how the Requiem amplifies on a cosmic scale the assurance of God’s mercy the priest offers the penitent in life.  In death, too, we are assured of mercy.  We may be broken, but God intervenes to make us whole.  And we are insufficient unto ourselves, not only because we must rely on God, but also because we must rely on each other.  That is what it means to be the Body of Christ and to participate in the great cloud of witness we call the Communion of Saints, which we celebrated yesterday.

The Communion of Saints, however, is often practiced as a one-way street, rather than the mutual relationship of intercession and encouragement that it is.  Yesterday, as we recited or sung the Litany of the Saints, we asked the holy ones who have gone before us for their intercession as we face the strife of our lives here on earth.  Yet, the saints are not just charged with the ministry of conveying our repentance to God, and pleading on our behalf.  They are also sinners with their own brokenness and pain, seeking wholeness and ultimate union with God, for whom we pray.  One theological tradition of the Church has argued that whatever brokenness we have acquired through sin during our lives on earth, we must face it after death in a reality that precedes Heaven.  I have imagined this myself not so much as working off our sins, but God granting us the space to repair the damage to our souls through healing, and learning, and new spiritual insight, so that we may achieve a more intimate union with Him.  In the end, who knows?  What is fairly certain is that we each meet our Maker with a certain amount of woundedness.  So, the living in turn pray for the departed on All Souls’ Day, asking God to show them mercy and heal their brokenness.  The Communion of Saints is about solidarity in the midst of shared sinfulness and vulnerability and hope.

John Mason Neale

The great luminary of the Oxford Movement, John Mason Neale, offered the following guidance in his sermon on All Souls’ Day 1856 to the sisters of the Society of Saint Margaret, of whom he was the founder and first chaplain.  He said,

“But for the great multitude of those who have been redeemed to God … they without us shall not be made perfect.  And it is they, the true Servants of God, but not his Saints, whom we keep in memory to-day.  And what then?  Between them and us is there no fellowship?  Is there such a great gulf fixed, that no prayers, no power or grace of the Church can overleap it?  God forbid!  This it is to hold the Catholic faith; this it is to derive the untold comforts of her storehouse of consolation.  Think now each of you, of the dear ones whom you have lost, and believe this earnestly: that, if they have slept in the Lord, your prayers still avail for them, as much as (or more than) if they were still present in the flesh.  Let it be so, that we cannot tell what their needs are; that we know not what especial increase of grace they lack; in what particular way they desire to be helped.”

The saints, whom Neale calls simply servants, to remind us of our kinship with them, are bonded to us in common care and prayer across the ages. We share in the untold comforts of the Church’s storehouse of consolation in prayer, the sacraments, and our relationships with each other, the living and the departed.

In fact, the prayers of the living and the dead for each other across the ages drives the Church’s core identity as one, holy, catholic and apostolic.  From the apostles, martyrs and confessors of the primitive Church down to Phil, and you and me in this day, we are united in God’s promise of mercy and new life.  “Very truly, I tell you,” Jesus proclaims in the Gospel of John, “anyone who hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life, and does not come under judgment, but has passed from death to life.”  The Eucharist that we are about to celebrate is our regular affirmation of this promise of eternal life, when human brokenness is redeemed, ours and the servants who have gone before us.  Bread broken that, in the fullness of God’s time, we might be whole.

Rest eternal grant unto them, O Lord.  And let light perpetual shine upon them.
May they rest in peace.  Amen.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

A Tale of Knives and Nunchucks

An audio recording of this sermon is available by clicking here.

The letter to the Ephesians commands its hearers to, “put on the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.” In this day and age, this sort of language seems out of place, whether for its militaristic overtones or the medieval worldview that it invokes. The image of Christian soldiers has often made me very uneasy, reminding me of shameful chapters in our history, like the Crusades and the Inquisition, when people have been oppressed and killed in the name of Jesus, the Prince of Peace. Talk of the devil and evil forces, moreover, seems superstitious and outmoded, calling forth visions of damned beings with horns and tails, inhabiting a realm of eternal suffering and unquenchable fire. And yet, I am here to tell you that these images are still compelling and relevant, even to postmodern people who think they have evolved beyond conventional understandings of angels and demons, of heaven and hell.

A brawl breaks out at Starbucks.

On Tuesday, I sat at a table at the Starbucks on Bryn Mawr in Edgewater, waiting for a parishioner to join me to plan adult forums for the rest of the year. As I sat in front of my laptop leisurely sipping my latte, a commotion erupted, and three men ran past me, swearing and knocking over chairs. At one point, one of these chairs became airborne as one man tried to shield himself from the blows of the other two, who were clearly enraged and bent on inflicting verbal abuse and physical violence. The shop’s patrons were alarmed, and so I packed up my stuff, and dashed outside to find a police officer. By the time I came back a few minutes later, a policeman was leading one of the men out of Starbucks in handcuffs. Over the course of the next several minutes, four more squad cars pulled up to offer backup, and the other two men were taken into custody, as well. The anxiety in the room quickly dissipated, and people returned to their drinks, conversations, and mobile devices. But my story doesn’t end there.

After my meeting, I jumped on the Red Line for my usual commute to Grace. When the trained pulled into the Jackson station, we interrupted another altercation already underway. As the platform came into view, I witnessed a woman attempting to defend herself with nunchucks against a man wielding a knife. The doors opened, and an officer in plain clothes whipped out his badge and shouted, “CPD!”  He exited the train and attempted to separate the two combatants and calm them down. Aided by another police officer in plain clothes, he apprehended the man with the knife, who had attempted to seek refuge on the train, all the while spouting obscenities. I thought about how frightened the German couple standing in front of me must’ve been, their school-age daughter in a wheelchair, facing the door where all of this turmoil was occurring. The two officers managed to subdue the aggressor, remove him from the train, and put him in cuffs. The woman, still holding her nunchucks, thanked the police officers, and announced, “he had the devil in him. He had the devil in him, and he showed his true colors.” I’m not making it up; she really said that.

Jesus' temptation in the wilderness.

It was harrowing to watch both of these scenes unfold before me, and to feel powerless to intervene. I was grateful that the police were responsive and professional during these incidents of unexpected violence that endangered so many innocent bystanders. It was fortunate that an officer just happened to be standing in front of the door -- in my train car -- at that precise moment. I don’t know if it was divine grace or dumb luck, and I frankly didn’t care.  But when I become complacent, feeling that the world is safe, moments like this remind me that human beings can still be agents of great suffering and violence, that evil really exists. I am not saying, of course, that the perpetrators of this violence are evil or are somehow not loved by God, but rather, that human beings—and that includes all of us—are susceptible to the lure of all kinds of sins, to selfish motives and evil urges.  We may not all act on these temptations, but they prod and goad us, encouraging us to give in to our baser impulses. This is what the reading from the Ephesians is all about. The devil is all around you, he’s crafty and powerful, so be on your guard and protect yourself, the reading tells us.  You’re kidding yourself if you think you’re immune. After all, Jesus spent 40 days in the wilderness being tempted by Satan, who offered our Lord wealth and power, if only he would bow down and worship him. 

I know that in the twenty-first century, sin is a topic that is out of fashion, and out of sync with contemporary sensibilities. Nobody wants to hear about it. As Jesus’s disciples say to him in this morning’s Gospel, while our Lord is teaching in the synagogue at Capernaum, “this teaching is difficult; who can accept it?”  Sin seems like a topic for fire-and-brimstone sermons from the seventeenth century. Besides, the Church has done so much to make us feel bad about ourselves, because of our sexual orientation, gender, or gender identity, or for using birth control or getting divorced, and a host of other things, that we’ve consigned sin to the theological dustheap. But I’m bringing back Old Time Religion this morning just for a moment, because I think we’ve overlooked something. There is a reason that we make our confession every Sunday before receiving Jesus’s body and blood at the altar: sin is real. It is not only the sin we commit as individuals against each other for which we ask for forgiveness, but it is also for our participation in institutionalized sins, such as racism, misogyny, ecological devastation, and rampant consumerism. We have a lot of sin to repent for.

Jesus's Baptism in the Jordan.

Ephesians offers us jarring language that chafes against our inclination to think of ourselves as just fine the way we are. I have always subscribed to the concept of original blessing, rather than original sin. When God said on the sixth day that everything that she had created was very good, I take God at her word. We ARE very good, but that doesn’t mean we can do without God, that we are self-sufficiently moral without God’s help. Even as good as we are, “the spiritual forces of evil” are formidable, and so we need to be vigilant and disciplined, because sin could crop up anywhere, at Starbucks or on the Red Line. To “take the shield of faith, to “fasten the belt of truth,” and to “put on the breastplate of righteousness” expresses the human aspiration to overcome the temptation to give in to sin. “As shoes for your feet,” Ephesians counsels, “put on whatever will make you ready to proclaim the gospel of peace.” In the face of sin and evil, we wrap ourselves in God, who shelters and protects us like armor.

This topic comes up most poignantly whenever I prepare new Christians, or their parents and godparents, for baptism. “Don’t be put off by the old-timey language,” I tell them. “Your child will face all kinds of evil in her life: human cruelty, apathy to the suffering of others, violence, greed, selfishness, and many other things that will divide her from God and her neighbor. In baptism, we are asking for God’s protection and guidance in such moments.” Indeed, the Baptismal Covenant in the Book of Common Prayer asks the person or sponsor, “will you persevere in resisting evil, and whenever you fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord.” The response is, “I will, with God’s help.” The Prayer Book suggests that the avoidance of sin is impossible, and so we just plug away as best we can and rely on God’s help to set us back on to the path of peace. As the disciples asked Jesus, I now ask you, “this teaching is difficult; who can accept it?”