I'm referring to the song I learned in Sunday School back in the 1960s in Anderson, SC. God's love is big, I can swim in it! I never once considered that that depth and width was meant for anything other than my pleasure, my immersion. That is to say that the piety I was taught was built on personal salvation, on becoming singularly sufficient either by conversion or submission, me and Jesus.
It took teen-aged frustration and well-worn parents to find any purchase, any traction in a world that understood justice as salvation, that understood God's love as for saving the world and not just building an army of Baptists.
When I last sang this refrain it was not about me as the one bathing in God's fountain but me as one of many striving for peace and prosperity among all people. It was in the 1980s in an inter-denominational and racially mixed meeting gathered to pray and imagine how best to support the work of a homeless shelter.
This was yet another chapter in my life of learning and unlearning, of framing and changing frames, of doubt and repentance. But consider that even without competitive Southern Baptist upbringings or bleeding heart liberalism we can each remember envisioning a world smaller than the one we now understand as seen and loved by God.
Each one of us can grow, each one of us has grown, each one of us has a way of understanding that is larger than the one we had before. Some of that comes by repentance, some of that is natural human development and personal individuation, some of it is only by way of a deep spiritual maturity.
This song has meant so many things to me and now it means the possibility for spiritual depth that comes from God but only continues when there is an accompanying redistribution of that love.
It's deep AND wide, not the either/or of my earlier understanding. It's not just my salvation and it doesn't forget that I need saving, too. It's not just feeding the hungry and it doesn't ignore my own deficiencies and weakness.
The fountain of God's saving love is for me because it is for everyone. The fountain of God's love is deep because of who God is. It can be deep in each one of us because God's love goes that deep. The fountain of God's saving love is wide because of who we are. It can be wide because every human, even the ones with more to learn, has some of that love to share.
Tuesday, March 26, 2019
Wednesday, March 20, 2019
Lenten Choices: Law and Grace
One of the themes behind our modern practice of Lent is "being tested." Loosely imitating the story of Jesus being driven into the wilderness by the Holy Spirit we use the 40 days to fast from excess and pray more steadily, more deeply.
In effect we test ourselves, our resolve, our appetites, our capacities and more. We begin with great and in most cases reasonable hope that on the other end something will be proven more trustworthy more reliable, more fit for demands of our lives during and after Easter.
Though it is God who saves us and we are totally dependent on God's mercy to do that still we strive to get better as creatures, as incarnations of love and faithfulness. I like to use the phrase "to make God's job a little easier."
Most of our Lenten disciplines are heavy on the law side of the religious equation. Measuring pounds lost is "of the law." Keeping track of calendar moments like my daily environmental reminders or extra classes like Mudhouse Sabbath, or devotional/worship sessions like Stations of the Cross require a law-like measurement and attendance.
Fear not. This version of the "law" has little punitive authority or power, mostly because it is of each individual's designing. But the principles that direct our practice are like rules and standards.
Sometimes the testing of our own design is too much or it fails to move us forward. Even by our own self assessment and before Lent moves into Holy Week we have abandoned our fast or study.
Thanks be to God the measure applied from the one who watches over us is grace. God's grace is always next whether we attend every session, say every prayer, or avoid every temptation. God's grace is always next.
Perhaps we could acknowledge those instances when our own disciplines expose a truth to us well before the 40 days are past. All that takes is for us to consider that these tests of our design just may be able however unintended to show us more of who we are, more of how we are God's, more of how the death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth is God's greatest grace to us.
No matter the test, God's grace is always next.
In effect we test ourselves, our resolve, our appetites, our capacities and more. We begin with great and in most cases reasonable hope that on the other end something will be proven more trustworthy more reliable, more fit for demands of our lives during and after Easter.
Though it is God who saves us and we are totally dependent on God's mercy to do that still we strive to get better as creatures, as incarnations of love and faithfulness. I like to use the phrase "to make God's job a little easier."
Most of our Lenten disciplines are heavy on the law side of the religious equation. Measuring pounds lost is "of the law." Keeping track of calendar moments like my daily environmental reminders or extra classes like Mudhouse Sabbath, or devotional/worship sessions like Stations of the Cross require a law-like measurement and attendance.
Fear not. This version of the "law" has little punitive authority or power, mostly because it is of each individual's designing. But the principles that direct our practice are like rules and standards.
Sometimes the testing of our own design is too much or it fails to move us forward. Even by our own self assessment and before Lent moves into Holy Week we have abandoned our fast or study.
Thanks be to God the measure applied from the one who watches over us is grace. God's grace is always next whether we attend every session, say every prayer, or avoid every temptation. God's grace is always next.
Perhaps we could acknowledge those instances when our own disciplines expose a truth to us well before the 40 days are past. All that takes is for us to consider that these tests of our design just may be able however unintended to show us more of who we are, more of how we are God's, more of how the death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth is God's greatest grace to us.
No matter the test, God's grace is always next.
Tuesday, March 12, 2019
Lenten Choices: Balance and Capacity
It seems like every year I'm adding something to my spiritual practice during Lent. As a parish priest I've always been interested in using this season to provide options for the spiritual practices of my parishioners. In most cases the hope is not only that "those things may please him which we do,"(Ash Wednesday, BCP 269) but that a forty day rehearsal of them will "stick."
We continued our practice of Night Prayers for more than two years after introducing them in Lent of 2015. Morning Prayer, Rite 1 on Wednesdays continued after it's introduction during Lent a couple of years ago. Theolatté started during Lent.
There are other ways to categorize the practices of Lent because some of them aren't meant to "stick" such that they become permanent or dominant features. We fast during Lent; some do on Fridays until sunset, others on Sunday mornings until they have received communion. But we do not intend for fasting to replace eating as the norm.
Fasting only works the way it does because eating is the norm. Fasting works because of how it contrasts with the established standard of -- even well moderated -- consumption.
To continue a practice of fasting after Lent is finished requires continuing the contrast as well. The intent is balance and not wholesale change from one practice to another, from eating to not eating.
Regardless our Lenten practices can be meant to and in most cases should continue; saying our Morning Prayers every Wednesday now year after year or introducing and nurturing balance in our consumption is as worthy after Lent as during.
Our practices call on us to be aware of our capacities and our energies. This concern for our capacity along with the value of balance moderates that stereotypical approach to Lent that imagines great changes -- never say "never?" -- in one's behavior or life-style.
Instead we are encouraged by the hope for balance and by a recognition of our capacities -- call it "knowing our limits" -- to use Lent for rehearsals, for practice and for growth. That way we can finish our 40 days changed and able to continue changing.
We continued our practice of Night Prayers for more than two years after introducing them in Lent of 2015. Morning Prayer, Rite 1 on Wednesdays continued after it's introduction during Lent a couple of years ago. Theolatté started during Lent.
There are other ways to categorize the practices of Lent because some of them aren't meant to "stick" such that they become permanent or dominant features. We fast during Lent; some do on Fridays until sunset, others on Sunday mornings until they have received communion. But we do not intend for fasting to replace eating as the norm.
Fasting only works the way it does because eating is the norm. Fasting works because of how it contrasts with the established standard of -- even well moderated -- consumption.
To continue a practice of fasting after Lent is finished requires continuing the contrast as well. The intent is balance and not wholesale change from one practice to another, from eating to not eating.
Regardless our Lenten practices can be meant to and in most cases should continue; saying our Morning Prayers every Wednesday now year after year or introducing and nurturing balance in our consumption is as worthy after Lent as during.
Our practices call on us to be aware of our capacities and our energies. This concern for our capacity along with the value of balance moderates that stereotypical approach to Lent that imagines great changes -- never say "never?" -- in one's behavior or life-style.
Instead we are encouraged by the hope for balance and by a recognition of our capacities -- call it "knowing our limits" -- to use Lent for rehearsals, for practice and for growth. That way we can finish our 40 days changed and able to continue changing.
Tuesday, March 5, 2019
Lenten Choices: Accumulating and Sharing
One of my ministerial BFFs let me in on a concern he experienced in another denomination. Since 90+% of what Episcopal clergy do looks like what clergy in just about every other denomination do it made sense to hear his concern as addressing something of our lives, too.
He talked about how too many churches in his group operated to provide all that was needed both place and program of the spiritual practice each member attempted. The article he shared called it simply, "program piety."
The implied message was "we've got what you need. Come and get it." Pushing through the implication were other veiled messages about soul competence, value of membership and perhaps most of all individual subservience to an institution.
In our Episcopal world the old monster of "program piety" looked like clericalism. "Father knows best" supported by a Book of Common Prayer. It's not all bad but we still have a foot in that world.
Our annual parochial report measures first and foremost Average Sunday Attendance (ASA) to indicate the congregation's vitality. Along with the comings and goings of communicants we are evaluated on a kind of Sunday morning "program piety."
The priest and other leadership plan programs that are seasonally appropriate, that affirm a gentle and broad orthodoxy, that foster mostly personal and therefore individual spiritual practices and that do not interfere or contradict engagement that is measured by the annual parochial report.
I'm not complaining. It makes sense especially because we are so bound by tradition, custom, history, etc. But it also too often makes us work against our own best interests.
The question isn't so much "how to do the new thing so more people will come to church?" but more so "how do we help initiate, nurture and share our spiritual lives at all age levels such that growth is obvious?"
ASA can't measure that. Our Bishop and diocese agree and provide a "page five" so that we can at least give some narrative recognition to growth not measured by ASA.
Let's use Lent to share and grow and to do so in all the ways we have, both measurable and abstract, numbers and spirits, ASA and "page five" and more.
The change will not be found in how we exercise or increase "program piety." We're going to do that anyway. The best indicator of growth will be in noting how we share with each other as many of those aspects of our individual and corporate piety and we can.
The movement Jesus initiated with his life, death and resurrection was not a system of delivering a "program piety" packaged and quantified for the records. It was first, foremost and finally, sharing.
He talked about how too many churches in his group operated to provide all that was needed both place and program of the spiritual practice each member attempted. The article he shared called it simply, "program piety."
The implied message was "we've got what you need. Come and get it." Pushing through the implication were other veiled messages about soul competence, value of membership and perhaps most of all individual subservience to an institution.
In our Episcopal world the old monster of "program piety" looked like clericalism. "Father knows best" supported by a Book of Common Prayer. It's not all bad but we still have a foot in that world.
Our annual parochial report measures first and foremost Average Sunday Attendance (ASA) to indicate the congregation's vitality. Along with the comings and goings of communicants we are evaluated on a kind of Sunday morning "program piety."
The priest and other leadership plan programs that are seasonally appropriate, that affirm a gentle and broad orthodoxy, that foster mostly personal and therefore individual spiritual practices and that do not interfere or contradict engagement that is measured by the annual parochial report.
I'm not complaining. It makes sense especially because we are so bound by tradition, custom, history, etc. But it also too often makes us work against our own best interests.
The question isn't so much "how to do the new thing so more people will come to church?" but more so "how do we help initiate, nurture and share our spiritual lives at all age levels such that growth is obvious?"
ASA can't measure that. Our Bishop and diocese agree and provide a "page five" so that we can at least give some narrative recognition to growth not measured by ASA.
Let's use Lent to share and grow and to do so in all the ways we have, both measurable and abstract, numbers and spirits, ASA and "page five" and more.
The change will not be found in how we exercise or increase "program piety." We're going to do that anyway. The best indicator of growth will be in noting how we share with each other as many of those aspects of our individual and corporate piety and we can.
The movement Jesus initiated with his life, death and resurrection was not a system of delivering a "program piety" packaged and quantified for the records. It was first, foremost and finally, sharing.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)