Global Manifestation #4: One apostle at a time.

And I'm thinking about that guy throwing starfish back into the ocean.  Here's the short version: guy on the beach tossing starfish back into the water.  Friend asks, "why are you doing that?"  Guy says, "helping them stay alive." Friend says "there's too many for you to throw them all back."  Guy says as he tosses another into the water, "helped that one."

Pretty soon we'll enjoy the presence of Assisting Bishop Don Wimberly.  On the Second Sunday in Lent February 18, he will visit us to lead worship and to confirm, receive, reaffirm our candidates for such.

In our polity, Bishops “R” us  They are present when we bring in new and returning adult baptized persons because that entrance is not just to the parish of Advent-Madison but to the whole denomination and to the "One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church" and for the sake of the whole world.

We still account for "members" without a bishop's "laying on of hands."  That's because at the parish level "baptised members" matter.  We still account using attendance for prayer and communion as well because at both parish and church-wide levels "communicants" matter, too!  We invite everyone to pledge and you know why that matters.

Confirmation/Reception/Reaffirmation matter in a way reflective of a "bishop centered context."  When visiting, a bishop lays hands on and prays for each candidate and the prayer always mentions the role of the Holy Spirit and each member's new relationship to the Church.  Each candidate is addressed one at a time.  This gesturing is an extension of the act that makes each bishop another minister in "apostolic succession."  A chain of "hands on heads" all the way back to Peter.

Our polity is "episcopal" -- Bishops “R” Us -- because the rest of christendom AND the whole world matter, too.  When a bishop confirms or receives or reaffirms it is because of how God is manifesting God's self -- Christ Jesus -- into the world; one candidate at a time so that in return we each can pledge to join that larger apostolic movement of the Church into the world. I once heard a story about a bishop in Africa stopping for tea because there were so many candidates.  Another story recalls deacons holding up the arms of the bishop because he was so fatigued.  Whether hundreds or just one or two, each person is welcomed and empowered.

If you're still reading please take a minute to consider how you are accounted.  Maybe it's time for you to be presented to the Bishop.  It's not too late.  Certainly you can throw starfish back without being listed under ANY title in the official parish register.  Even Jesus said "I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd." (John 10:16) 

But we're not just lost sheep or starfish.  Our polity and accounting mean something about how we intend to turn to the world.   Once we are "in," once the bishop's hand are no longer blessing our heads it is our turn to see to it that ours is still a "One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church." 

Global Manifestation #3: Thoughts and Actions

Remember this bumper sticker? I recall that when I first saw one it made immediate sense.  (H/T E. F. Schumacher.) It did especially as an expression of ecological concern.  This was way before "global warming" or "climate change" became topics.  This was back when we were just learning to reduce our use of styrofoam and "plastic" was clearly on it's slide into a dirty word.

The sentiment is a good one because of how it encourages efforts that would otherwise be stalled by their enormity.  The news about pollution, endangered species, and other dark ecological forecasts is too big for anyone of us to stop.  So we've learned to credit even the smallest actions to reduce damage to the globe.

The most recent is the new campaign to refuse disposable straws in restaurants.  For those of us with moustaches this effort has to be balanced with a likely increase in napkin use.

This global/local concept matters here because of who Jesus was and is as the incarnation of God.  Back when people came to realize that God was up to something big . . . again AND up to something unique, one of the earliest understandings was that the whole world was "implicated."  January 6 has it's place in the Christian calendar to say exactly that.

Stargazers -- think global watchers -- came to Bethlehem to visit and recognize the one of a kind -- think local phenom -- God incarnate.  For Balthazar, Caspar, and Melchior the trip was to confirm that a paradigm had shifted.  Why else did that star appear so unusually?  That they were able to recognize HIM meant that their departure wouldn't be by any familiar path.  They were already bound to "another way" home without Herod's idiosyncratic threats.

But sometimes we are the idiosyncrats, afraid like Herod and consumed or at least distracted with local troubles which too easily prevent our global thinking and our participation in God's local actions. 

In Christ, God was thinking globally and acting locally because the world was already "polluted" enough.  God is still acting locally and can through each one of us.  There are still global implications to which we respond, "thanks be to God!"

Global Manifestation #2: Ordinary Means Patterned

Last week I wrote about how we are called to make room in our resting just as God made room for us in his "sabbathing."  Creation -- our lives -- will not be accomplished best by our driving towards greatness 24/7 like an Egyptian Pharoah.  More than any other time before now, the whole world cries for us to make sabbath not progress so the rest of creation can take its turn in unfolding, becoming.

In the ordering of creation God establishes a pattern that leads to Sabbath.  This is the implication of "ordinary time" after our Epiphany feast: our becoming or manifesting God's presence as we hear the stories of our Lord moving from cradle to mountain top transfiguration is built on that pattern.

Most of what we will read in these days-growing-out-of-darkness are stories of becoming disciples, becoming known, becoming confident, and ultimately becoming focused on the end that needs it's own season to move in its own approach and final confrontation without any trust in a God who rests.  Look ahead to the rapacious collusion of temple and Roman authorities and you'll not see much sabbath.

For Jesus the pattern of becoming includes progressive doses of exemplary obedience, trust, and courage.  How else does one move from infancy to sonship in solidarity with God's covenant to sonship as covenant renewed on a cross to sharing in God's authority from heaven?

In the Jordan God's voice affirms Christ's calling, "you are my Son."  Jesus follows that calling.  Following requires trust.  Not necessarily a trust that the one who leads knows the way but more like trust that the one who leads will never betray his love of us.  That's how obedience works.

After obedience gets us into the habit then trust becomes reciprocal.  God counts on us to act out of the freedom in more and more expansive ways.  And after trust courage helps in those moments when we have grown into being agents and not just children.  Like we say in our prayers, "to do work you have given us to do."

Were we without failing the whole world would be "on board."  Because we will fail we should try doubly to follow God's lead and get out of the way.  That's what Sabbath is for.  Sometimes it takes courage to let go, lay down, apologize and let creation takes it's turn.

The pattern of Christ's manifestation is meant for the whole world not just us Gentiles. It yearns to be ordinary. We may just need to let it.

Global Manifestation

Three years ago when I was writing about the need for and the effect of sabbath especially as we distinguish it from Sunday I said this:

Before you think I'm screaming conspiracy theories or fashioning tin foil hats know this:  I believe it was and is meant for the whole planet when God commands those words that help to form a nation: "Remember the sabbath day to keep it holy."  I believe that was and is for the whole planet that on the seventh day God rested -- read slept -- and as a creator was silent. 

There is a holiness intended by God in our Sundays, our sabbaths, our silence, and our sleep.  It is a holiness meant for the whole world.

My focus is on the phrase "meant for the whole world."  I'm pretty sure that what we do as a worshipping community, in a county seat town in "Georgia's Lake Country" has greater implications.  But somehow when we seem too easily to slip into busying ourselves with accounting and carrying around bits and pieces of offence and disappointment our world shrinks.

Whenever we get too insular, too self-pitying, too dependent on "the way things always have been" more than anything we are preventing that expansive, creative, spirit-freeing turn God expects us to take.

Whenever we constrict our hearts, the ego-impulse to defend and enlarge our impact has to overcompensate and drives us to pile on the bits and pieces to build what is really a substitute for faith and trust and grace.

Remember Pharoah's "high control needs" and his ordering the Israelites to work 7 days a week making bricks thus preventing their sabbath observance?  They wouldn't stand for it and with God's help made their way first to sabbath in a wilderness until they came home to the land God had promised.  

Sadly on the way even they succumbed to the beast of control and melted their "bits and pieces" of gold -- much of which was handed to them by the Egyptians -- into a idol, a false god of self glorification.

If we remember that our creator God slept -- gave up control -- and in so doing made way for the world he had made to become something more in freedom and trust and rest, then even we might better live together in this historic middle Georgia refuge and not just for ourselves.  

We each have our part but each of us has just a part.  It will not do for us just to pile up the bits and pieces, or endlessly to pull our boot straps, there's no sabbath there.  

A Resolution about Resolutions

This past Sunday I referred to an ancient heresy that challenged the faith fairly early in the "church."  It was the one that tried and failed to explain how the incarnation of God in the person of Jesus of Nazareth was at once both human and divine.

Apollinarianism taught that "Jesus could not have had a human mind; rather, Jesus had a human body and lower soul (the seat of the emotions) but a divine mind."  The response of the faithful was to say that "that which is not assumed is not saved."  Even before the heresy was spread John's gospel reminds us that nothing was missing and that what was present was "full of grace and truth."

Most of us are not practitioners of Apollinarianism. That's a good thing.  Also good is that most of us do not lie awake at night worrying about heresies or even worse about being deemed heretics ourselves.  But heresies do not end just because "the authorities" say so.  Most of them morph and evolve into modern iterations.  

Another "heresy" that predates even Jesus has morphed and morphed and morphed and persists even today.  I call it the boot-straps heresy.  Like all heresies it becomes such when it goes too far and allows us to refuse a necessary tension of balancing human volition with divine authority.  

The first time a boot-straps heresy shows up is in Genesis 11:1-9.  Verse 4 says, ". . . let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth."

The end result was that the tower fell and God made it so that the people were separated by their languages.  Most scholars understand the story as answering the question about from where all the different human groups and languages come.  Whether or not it works for you as an explanation -- don't we prefer something more scientific? -- you have to admit that it begins with a quintessential boot-straps moment.  

There are many other biblical stories that remind us to be careful and respect the tension that our "boot-straps only" efforts avoid.  Human volition says we must choose faith in order to be faithful while recognizing divine authority says we must always yield to God's authority and power.  Both/and not either/or and thus an uncomfortable tension.  Babel was a choice that failed to acknowledge God's power and authority.  

The tension is there whether we acknowledge it or not.  That tension is with us now as we join our neighbors and friends to celebrate the new year and . . . make resolutions.  

Making resolutions is not heresy.  But it is easy to slip in our resolution making and think that our "improvement" depends solely on our muscle, our plans, our resolve.   

There are many choices before us as the people of Advent, Madison.  There are always moments and will always be moments when our faith calls on us to decide, to choose, to want.  These same moments will just as much call on us to trust in God, to honor God's authority and to have confidence in God's power.

Let's resolve together to trust in God AND keep pulling.