The Friday Letters

30 July 2010

My Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

Our scripture assignment for this coming Sunday includes a reading from Hosea, the first eleven verses of chapter eleven. After last week’s Hosea portion, in which the word “whoredom” was used no less than three times in the opening sentence, I would forgive you for being less than utterly enthusiastic about having more from this prophet. However, I must beg you to reconsider. If you are not in the habit of reading the Sunday lectionary ahead of time, this is the week to try it. Hosea 11:1-11, besides being deliciously binary, is a passage of scripture of surpassing beauty.

It will be August this Sunday, and I can feel the summer stretching out for a last lazy roll in the grass. I have a few weeks off coming the middle of August and lasting through Labor Day weekend. I imagine many of you have plans to enjoy the warm days as well. The end of each season seems to call me into the next, but I’m trying not to worry about October just yet. I hope your days are full of summer moments and presence as well.

Peace,

Ben.

The Friday Letters

23 July 2010

My Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

The Gospel reading for this Sunday contains a liturgically significant event: Jesus’ disciples ask him for something, and for once he gives it to them without breaking off into some impenetrable parable or obscure object lesson. “Teach us to pray,” they ask, and he delivers the prayer that we have come to call The Lord’s Prayer.

It can hardly be overstated how central to the Christian experience this prayer is. My own first experience of Christian community included the Lord’s Prayer as a central element. Without knowing precisely what I’d gotten myself into, I wound up at summer camp where the theme for the week was this prayer. Each day of the seven day camp we took a different line or phrase from the prayer as out topic for the day. We’d spend the whole day—morning devotions, Christian education time, chapel planning, and campfire—working on the phrase of the day. “Hallowed be Thy name.” What does that mean? Once you’ve penetrated the archaic language, still, what does that mean? The Lord’s Prayer dominated our days for a solid week, and though I’d been to church less than a dozen times before that week (not counting obligatory Christmas Eve trips) I had that prayer memorized from thence forth and forever more.

It gets into us early, and it stays with us late. Just last week I sat with Pat Hertzog and prayed the prayers of Last Rites. Pat was only hours from death, and was, as the medical professionals say, “unresponsive”. Maybe she knew I was there, maybe she didn’t; she couldn’t speak or react in any way that clearly showed she was aware of me or the prayers being said for her. Then I came to the Lord’s Prayer, and said it alone. Her breathing changed, her mouth moved, her grip on my hand shifted. All of these things might have been coincidental, except that I’ve seen them so many times before. Time and again, people who can otherwise not participate in worship at all will be called out of themselves to say the Lord’s Prayer, even if the words are unintelligible to anyone who didn’t already know what they were saying. But we do already know what they are saying. They are praying in the words Jesus taught us to pray.

Our Father…

Peace,

Ben.

The Friday Letters

16 July 2010

My Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

This Friday I’m completing the little mini-vacation I attempted two weeks ago—the one where I headed off to the Tri-Cities and ended up sicker than sick and in need of rescue. I’m looking forward to it, if only because two weeks ago I barely managed to talk to my friend Brian whom I was visiting. Hopefully this time I’ll avoid the pestilence I encountered last time.

I’m all better now, but in the spirit of sharing I’ve passed my illness along to my mom, who’s visiting from Arizona. Actually, she wasn’t visiting, she was staying in Seattle doing research for her job. However, it’s hard to research while your throat is sore and you can’t stop coughing, so Jieun and I brought her back to Puyallup for recovery. It’s like how the wealthy English used to head for the Mediterranean coast to effect a cure, except that Puyallup (while it has its charms) isn’t that nice…

At any rate, I’m looking forward to everyone being well again, because the weather just doesn’t get much better than this. Summer is well and truly upon us, and what a blessing it is! I hope you’ll give thanks where you’re able, for the world around us and for those with whom we share it on these beautiful days.

The burial office in the Book of Common Prayer can begin with the words, “In the midst of life we are in death…” and I’m feeling these words particularly lately. We’ve had two funerals at Christ Church in not much more than two weeks. There is another funeral this Sunday for Casey Longwood, whom many of you knew and loved. Another funeral, this one for our own beloved Pat Hertzog, cannot be far away. In the midst of the life of this summer we are indeed in death. Yet the burial office does not stop there; instead it ends with one of my favorite lines in all the BCP: “All of us go down to the dust; yet even at the grave we make our song: Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia. Give rest, O Christ, to your servants with your saints, where sorrow and pain are no more, neither sighing, but life everlasting.”

May all of life embrace you this week, and may you be ever reminded of the joys and sorrows of the world our God has given us.

Peace,

Ben.

The Friday Letters

9 July 2010

My Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

Last week at this time I was miserable with fever, and while the fever has gone (none too soon) I’m still miserable, though not quite as much. My doctor said this morning that I probably got a bacterial infection from my viral infection (which just seems unfair) and that some antibiotics ought to clear it up quickly. Thus, hopefully I will be hale and hearty by Sunday and can be with you all at church in the park.

I really regret not being able to be with you all last Sunday. Delivering someone else’s sermon is a tricky thing at best, but all reports I’ve gotten say Ann handled it well. Thanks to her, and thanks to you all for bearing with me. The dog and I spent our 4^th miserable together, she hiding from the fireworks and me hiding from consciousness.

In addition to the Parish Picnic, this Sunday is also the beginning of the second book discussion series I planned for this summer. There is still a spot or two left for the in-person portion of the program, but let me know quickly. Otherwise, you can follow along at www.cecopbookstudy.blogspot.com. Our text is “To Heal a Fractured World: The Ethics of Responsibility” by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks. It is the best thing I’ve read about religious ethics in a very long time, and I whole heartedly recommend it. We’re hitting Part I this week, the first 129 pages.

Summer has clearly arrived at last; I hope you’re enjoying the weather. Stay cool, or sunny, as you prefer, and I’ll hope to see you on Sunday.

Peace,

Ben.

by The Rev. Benjamin J. Newland

We mark today the 234^th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, and in doing so celebrate all that is good and lovely and true about our country. I would like to take this opportunity to preach a Fourth of July sermon. I do so in full knowledge that such a sermon is in deadly peril of becoming nationalistic, overly sentimental, and even jingoistic. In an effort to avoid such perils, I will try to follow closely the scriptures appointed. Not the scriptures read from the Bible this morning, but some of my favorite American Scriptures:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness—That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it…

In the month of September, in the year 1776, General George Washington’s armies were in retreat and the war that would come to be called the American Revolution was not going according to plan. Little more than two months earlier, fifty-six men, representing the thirteen American Colonies, had signed a document penned by Thomas Jefferson that began with the words above and ended with these:

We therefore, the representatives of the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the World for the Rectitude of our Intentions, do, in the Name, and by the Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly Publish and Declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be, Free and Independent States…

The power and poetry of these words are utterly overwhelming to me. It is a painful truth that we  seldom live up to the righteous demand for justice called for in our Declaration of Independence, but I cannot imagine how anyone, upon reading these words, could not be moved. How was is that King George III, upon receiving this document, did not immediately depose himself before the onslaught of liberty’s fury? And yet, the words were not enough. Blood would have to be spilt, and British and American soldiers would have to be killed, before the American Colonies would be free.

In that month of September in 1776 it could not have looked to General Washington like the Revolution he was fighting would ever be successful. He was out-manned, out-gunned, out-trained, out-historied, and indeed out-classed in every category important to a military general. And in that dark September, Thomas Paine, an English writer turned American soldier, wrote these words:

These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.

And so when the original American Dream seemed ready to die before it could be born, Paine defined the true American Patriot as the person who would persevere not only during the easy times of summer and sunshine, but during the dark of winter and the partly-cloudy conditions of real struggle. Free and Independent States were not to be just a beautiful idea on paper, but an ideal worth the toil and blood of their citizens.

Eighty-seven years later Abraham Lincoln would take Thomas Paine’s words to heart and force the United States to face the ideals written in the Declaration of Independence. Thomas Jefferson wrote, “that all Men are created equal.” The gender specific language sounds harsh in our ears today, and who knows if the founding fathers meant to include women or slaves in their declaration. Whether they meant it or not, that is how Lincoln read it, and he set out to make the country look more like the declaration that had started it. In January of 1863 he issued the Emancipation Proclamation, part of which sounds like this:

…on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any state…shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free; and the Executive Government of the United States, including the military and naval authority thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons, and will do no act or acts to repress such persons, or any of them, in any efforts they may make for their actual freedom.

It didn’t go that smoothly of course. Lincoln’s words might have freed the slaves legally, but it took a civil war to actually free them. It would take another hundred years for those slaves’ children to be allowed to vote or to go to school with white children. It was a test, for Lincoln, a test of a nation conceived in liberty. Could any such nation really exist? Reality always lags behind ideals, but was it fated to lag so far behind that the nation would fail?

The question must have been in Lincoln’s heart, but there was no doubt in his words. Eleven months later he stood on a battlefield in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania where earlier that year 51,000 men had died arguing about the freedom of people whose skin happened to be darker than theirs. His words are nothing less than iconic:

Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live…

Lincoln goes on to say that he cannot consecrate the ground they’re all standing on any further than the dead have already done. He says it is instead the task of those gathered to dedicate themselves,

…that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom; and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

I’ve read that Lincoln was an atheist in his youth—that he had no use for God. By the time the Civil War had gotten a hold of him this clearly wasn’t the case anymore. Whether a devoted Christian or a Public Theist, after being elected to his second term, Lincoln tackled one of the persistent problems of religious philosophy during his second inaugural address. While seeking to describe the two sides of the Civil War still raging, he said, “Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other.”

Lincoln can’t let his even-handed statement of the situation stand, and follows up with a sentence that cuts directly to the heart of theology in far fewer words than any theologian I’ve ever read. “It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces; but let us judge not, that we be not judged.” The place of human being in judgment aside, that statement is a judgment: a particularly American judgment that God and justice are real, and that we can and must live by their precepts if we want to live out this patriot dream of America.

The thing that stands out to me about all of Lincoln’s words is his utter dedication to the United States of America, not as a place, or as an economy, or even as a group of people. For Abraham Lincoln America is an achingly beautiful idea that we as Americans have a duty to live up to. “Eighty-seven years ago a bunch of regular guys had a really good idea,” he says. “Now, we’ve flubbed it up pretty badly so far, so let’s get to changing things.”

If you want proof of his faith, I offer the signature line of that Emancipation Proclamation:

Done at the city of Washington, this first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the independence of the United States of America the eighty-seventh.

Did you grasp that? Lincoln dates this fundamental legal document of freedom by giving the date in years since Christ was born, and then again in years since the United States were founded. As if to say that the founding of the United States of America on the principles of liberty, and justice, and equality, and freedom, was just as significant an event in world history as the virgin birth of Christ, and the date of the document that set slaves free ought to reflect that.

When I started work on this sermon, it’s title was ‘Cognitive Dissonance’. Cognitive Dissonance is the psychological term for what happens when your brain disagrees with itself. Like when you know what is right but are forced to choose the wrong. Or when you believe in the ideal but are witness to the reality. I named this Independence Day sermon Cognitive Dissonance because that is exactly what I experience whenever I really think about the country I live in.

I believe that the Declaration of Independence was meant to claim life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for ALL people. I understand the reality that it did so initially only for white men who owned land. I believe that Abraham Lincoln intended to set the slaves free. I understand the reality that more than one hundred years later there are ways in which their children are still not free. I believe in the original Dream of America: that all who are willing to embrace our ideals and contribute to our nation will be welcome here. I understand the reality that we need a line of border guards between us and Mexico, and that Homeland Security looks at citizens from Arabic countries much more closely than citizens from Northern European ones.

The Patriot dream of America is a complicated thing, full of contradiction between ideal and reality. It is, however, a dream very much worth dreaming. The power and rightness of the values that set this country on its course deserve our constant nurture, and to be ever present thorns in the sides of our leaders.

And finally, in testament to that far-reaching dream, one final piece of American Scripture. Everybody knows the hymn,  America the Beautiful, but generally you only hear the first verse sung out in public. Here are the first two lines of the third verse:

O beautiful for patriot dream that sees beyond the years

thine alabaster cities gleam, undimmed by human tears.

Given my age, the formative act of war in my life will always be the destruction of the Twin Towers of New York City. I’ll never forget when Dan Rather came on the first Dave Letterman show to air after the eleventh of September, 2001. He quoted that verse and said that he didn’t think he could ever sing it again, because our alabaster city had nearly drowned in human tears. I think he may have missed the point. Our cities, our nation, and our people are not without tears, only undimmed by them. In fact, our cities, our nation, and our people have been anointed with tears, again and again, sometimes at the hands of our enemies, and sometimes at our own hands. It’s just that, somehow, this patriot dream, fueled by a people driven to live free and at peace, can see beyond the years of pain and strife, and stand undimmed by the tragedies done in its name from time to time.

Again, given my age, I was born too cynical to end a sermon by saying, “God bless America,” as American Presidents and political candidates are always doing at the end of their speeches. Instead, let me leave you with that last verse again:

O beautiful for patriot dream that sees beyond the years

thine alabaster cities gleam, undimmed by human tears.

America! America! God shed his grace on thee,

and crown thy good with brotherhood from sea to shining sea.