Previous Thoughts of the Month

The Crisis with the Names of God
There are at least 125 scriptural names given to God and Christ, according to Cruden's Concordance. A simple inspection of such a listing reveals the obvious: these names are merely metaphors that can only point from afar to the nameless One. As metaphors, they arise out of the personal experiences and the cultural background of the individual writers.
    Thus, ancient Palestinian shepherds drew naturally upon their own world to express their intimations of the divine. God is the Good Shepherd; we are the people of his pasture and the sheep of his hand. This language persists, even in cultures like ours that regard sheep as rather stupid creatures: we enjoin people not to behave like sheep — except when we are in church.
From The June 2004 St John's Eagle

The Cruelest Illusion
The cruelest illusion is the belief that we are right beyond any shadow of doubting, that our most cherished convictions are guaranteed by divine authority. Others may be perplexed by uncertainties, may flounder in the morasses of ambiguity. But, by the grace of God, we know.
From The May 2004 St John's Eagle

Of Time and Eternity
We pretty much accept the scientific conclusion that we live in a universe where time and space are the principal dimensions. While we are immersed in these realities, they are exceedingly difficult to define. This is especially true of time, in its irreversible rush from the Big Bang to what? Actually, we know only an endlessly changing present. We can only think of the past by imagining ourselves as experiencing it now. And, likewise for the future: it can exist only as we incorporate it into our here and now. As the British historian Lord Namier, wittily stated, we imagine our past and remember our future.
From The April 2004 St John's Eagle

Those First Three Centuries
We, Anglicans, are likely to think of the "Church" as Jesus' own foundation. We believe that the Eucharist, more or less as we know it, traces its origin and essential form back to the Last Supper.
Bishops, priests, and deacons we assume to have provided the ecclesiastical governmental structure from the very beginning. The Apostles' Creed took us back, of course, to the original eye witnesses.
Yet, the scholarship of the past forty of fifty years suggests revision of this simple picture. No longer is it possible to think of "the Church" as a unified world-wide organization. Before, say 300 AD, "the Church meant the individual congregation — the church in Ephesus, the church in Corinth, the church in Rome — each largely independent, with its own presiding officer, usually called the bishop. Some communication, of course, existed between various churches: their founders, like Paul, maintained a lively interest in the local groups, mainly expressed through letters (the Epistles). But independent congregations, meeting largely in private homes, constituted the essential form of the Christian movement.
From The March 2004 St John's Eagle

The Nunc Dimittis
We do not hear this canticle very often, since the Office of Evening Prayer has all but disappeared from the Episcopal liturgy except in the largest of metropolitan parishes. Yet, from the earliest years of Christianity, it has held its place one of the several hymns Luke chose to incorporate in the section of his gospel covering events before the beginning of Jesus' public career.
From The January 2004 St John's Eagle

Deconstructing Christmas
As the holiday season approaches, a disturbing thought occurs: what if we were to restrain our celebration to a probable reconstruction of "what really happened " when Jesus was born?
    Jesus is presented as the son of Joseph, except in the introductory sections of Luke and Matthew. Nowhere else in those two gospels, nowhere else in the entire New Testament, is Jesus' conception described as anything other than quite normal and natural.
From The December 2003 St John's Eagle

The Unity of the Churches
The Prayer Book teaches us to pray for the unity of the church:
"Father, we pray for your Holy Catholic Church; That we all may be one."

But, from the beginning, the nature of the unity we pray for has been problematic. The first century congregation in Jerusalem was divided into Hebraists and Hellenists, between those who were convinced that the Law of the Jews was binding on all and those who opted for a greater freedom from the past. By the ending of that first century, the burning issue was Gnosticism is the material world intrinsically evil? Must we be snatched from it for union with pure spirit? The history of the church is one of division, heresy, and schism, down to our current fear that the Anglican community is about to collapse over the issue of homosexuality. An image that often occurs to me is that of the New England town, its commons dominated by three churches, often with a handful of others gathered around its extremities. All human groups are inherently unstable; their temporary unity is continually fractured by new churches, each with its own formulation of the Christian faith.
From November 2003 St John's Eagle

The Unpleasantness at Moriah
The story of Abraham and Isaac on Mt. Moriah is one of the most searing in the entire Bible. It is given that the reader knows from the first that this is a test and that Isaac is not to be killed. However Christian interpretation and Jewish interpretation of this story has differed. In traditional Christian thinking, Abraham was honored as one of exemplary faith who so trusted God that he was willing to put his whole future, a future so preciously gained through long struggle, in God's hand. The story was called the sacrifice of Isaac, and while Isaac did not die, the incident was made into a parallel to Jesus' journey to the cross.

However there are some disturbing implications around the edges of this interpretation and perhaps we can we explore this passage from other eyes and perspectives. In Jewish tradition this passage is known as the Binding of Isaac and is read during the High Holy Days of Atonement. Israel identifies itself closely to Isaac, for it has seemed that Israel finds itself always being brought right to the brink of extinction. When the shofar, representing the horn of the ram that was substituted for Isaac is blown, it becomes a reminder of God's promise to have mercy and to bestow blessing on the descendants of Abraham and Sarah, making them as numerous as the stars of the heavens.
From The October 2003 St John's Eagle

Just Slap a Label on It!
Back in my years of teaching English Renaissance literature, I became aware of how remarkably few words ending in "ist" or "ism" that I encountered. The only one I recall in Shakespeare is statist ( = statesman, politician). Yet just a few centuries later, such words are almost beyond counting. Scores are added every day, and some become permanent additions to our language.

Most of these words are put downs: sexist, elitist, syncretism, etc. They form part of an even larger class those words that reduce the other" to something less than full humanity. For one of my closest friends, Protestants are always "Prots," Episcopalians "Piskies," Presbyterians "Presbies"; the bishop is always "the bish," a rector “the (w)reck." Historically, words like Shaker and Quaker began as terms of derision. Nationalities and races invite such treatment. Some of them reveal a truly malignant hostility. Words are not passive instruments of communication: they can project our own deepest fears and insecurities. Putting down the other guys is a pathetic attempt to shore up a shaky sense of self.
From The May 2003 St John's Eagle

Reading the Gospels II
During my undergraduate years (1939 1943), Father Robert Casey served as Professor of Religion and also as assistant priest at St. Stephen's Church, Rhode Island's premier Anglo Catholic parish, nestled into a corner of the Brown University campus. A brilliant, tormented man, Father Casey was an enigma to us students. We simply could not understand how his high church piety cohered with a radically critical, even destructive, approach to the Bible.

One Good Friday, he lectured in the Student Union. Carefully, he summarized the accounts of the trial of Jesus provided by the Gospel writers. After the arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane, Mark and Matthew categorically state "Then all the disciples forsook him and fled" (Mark 14:50 Matthew 26:56). To be sure, Peter "followed him at a distance", but remained outside in the courtyard of the high priest; after his threefold denial, he left the scene and wept bitterly. Meanwhile, the trial proceeded inside the palace of the high priest, and all four evangelists give versions of this judicial interrogation. Father Casey paused dramatically. "The disciples had fled; Peter remained outside for a while, then disappeared into the night. Then who could have provided the information as to what the high priest asked and what Jesus had answered?"
From The March 2003 St John's Eagle

My Hidden Agenda
Some day a full study will be made of the contributions that Washington bureaucrats make to our language. These politicians and their speechwriters are always eager to find some new and striking phrase to define a particular moment or issue; most of these soon disappear, while a few become more or less permanent. From “at this point in time,” (administrative jargon for “now” or “at this time”), down to Mr. Bush's “axis of evil” the list might include “parameters” (in a sense unknown to mathematicians), "ikon,""parse," (my teachers at the Providence Classical High School would have guffawed over this), “inappropriate” (meaning downright wrong), and “hidden agenda.” The last mentioned suggest that sometimes we conceal what we really intend in a fog of words that seemingly addresses some quite different point.
From The February 2003 St John's Eagle

"Drink this, all of you"
The church from its beginning has been casting about for reasons to exclude the “unworthy” from communion. If we do not think right, behave properly (according to someone’s standards), we are not to participate. For one brief interval, Saint John’s printed in its Sunday leaflet “All who accept Jesus’s invitation are welcome at His table.” Only individuals, in their inalienable freedom, may choose to decline that invitation. (Editor's note — We now print “God welcomes us all to the table,”) Building fences around the altar is not what Jesus intended. Nor is turning differences of opinion into grounds for rejection.
From The December 2002 St. John's Eagle

"Will We All Get To Heaven?"
Many years ago, a friend, Madeleine L'Engle spent a weekend with us at St. John's. I recall most vividly a story she told in one of her presentations. --- A man died and checked in at the Gate of Heaven. Saint Peter examined his credentials, found them in order, and waved him through. After a bit, the man returned in great agitation. 'But where is Christ? Where is Mary? Where are all the saints and angels?” “Oh,” replied Peter, “they're all down in hell ministering to the damned.” Then after a pause, “Would you like to know the way?”
From The November 2002 St. John's Eagle

Two Frankensteins
The 1818 and 1831 editions of "Frankenstein" present two quite different versions of the story. It is as though the plot is a mirror in which we can all too easily perceive our own reflected faces. The author's, Mary Shelley, improved social position gave her a new reading in 1831. The larger Reform Movement in the 1830s provided another. Did the Monster suggest, as the Tories insisted, the threat of the working classes to the traditional social values? And in our own time, the personal preoccupations of the critics Marxist, psychoanalytical, feminist — have powerfully affected our responses to this problematic novel.
From The October 2002 St. John's Eagle

"One God - or Two?"
More than forty years ago, I saw Ingmar Bergman's extraordinary film The Virgin Spring (1959). I have been thinking about it ever since. Indeed, if I were teaching a course in medieval literature, I would use The Virgin 5pring as an introduction to the life of that era in northern Europe with its harsh juxtapositions of pagan darkness and the new religion of Christianity. (A distant runner up would be Wagner's Lohengrin.)
From The June 2002 St. John's Eagle

King's Chapel and its Prayer Book
Members of Saint John's visiting Boston may have discovered King's Chapel on Tremont Street at the foot of Beacon Hill. Those who have ventured inside for a service may have been vaguely disconcerted. The text in their hands was entitled The Book of Common Prayer; its format and much of the language would have seemed familiar enough. But something seemed odd about it all. And indeed it might King's Chapel uses a revision of the traditional Prayer Book—a revision that reflects its status as a Unitarian congregation. “High Church Unitarian,” we might be tempted to say.
From The May 2002 St. John's Eagle

Many Names, No Fixed Address
The advances of science in the last five hundred years have generated a number of crises for the spirit of western peoples. That our planet revolves around the sun and not even in a proper circular orbit, that our universe is vastly older and immeasurably larger than anyone had ever dreamed, that we ourselves have emerged by a slow process of evolution from the primordial slime — these discoveries have sent shock waves through the ranks of the faithful.
From The April 2002 St. John's Eagle

Enter Herod, Raging
In his sermon for the feast of the Epiphany, the rector noted that while Herod is mentioned in the gospel, Matthew Chapter 2; he is almost never visually presented to us in the nativity scenes that adorn our churches. Yet the student of medieval drama will find this omission curious, since Herod was easily the dominant figure in the mystery-cycles that were mounted each year in the major cities of Britain.
From The March 2002 St John's Eagle

The Book of Koheleth (Ecclesiastes)
The Book of Koheleth like the "Song of Songs", encountered considerable opposition before being accepted as a canonical book of the Hebrew scriptures. Even then, some scribal additions were deemed appropriate to tone down the bleak pessimism of the original text. In the long pull, it was probably the mistaken attribution to Solomon by its author and the fictional assumption of the role of Solomon that carried the day.
From The February 2002 St John's Eagle

Song of Songs
A few days ago, I listened once again to Palestrina's glorious motet based on sections of the Song of Songs. Afterwards, I found myself reflecting on the checkered history of this Biblical text. For the last hundred years or so, it has been a favorite of avant-garde writers and intellectuals (along with Ecclesiastes and Job) — perhaps because it focuses on distinctively human experience without so much as a mention of God.
From The December 2001 St John's Eagle

Intercessory Prayer
The readers of Dante's Purgatorio are likely to be surprised to find that various souls undergoing spiritual rehabilitation there beg the poet to urge their living relatives to redouble their prayers for them. And, despite their own involvement in an arduous discipline, they still find time to pray for the living. Intercessory prayer is thus very real for Dante.
From The October 2001 St John's Eagle

How Very Ordinary
The Christmas carols are so familiar to us that we all too easily glide over the literal meaning of their words. I have often been struck by the powerfully conceived images of Phillips Brooks's "O Little Town of Bethlehem"

    O Little town of Bethlehem / How still we see thee lie!
    Above thy deep and dreamless sleep / The silent stars go by;
    Yet in they dark streets shineth / The everlasting Light;
    The hopes and fears of all the years / Are met in thee tonight.
From The October 2001 St John's Eagle

The Lord of the Dance
Students of our Prayerbook's history are often surprised to learn that the General Convention of 1785 was strongly opposed to creeds as such. Its Proposed Book scrapped both the Nicene Creed and the Athanasian Creed and deleted "He descended into hall" from the Apostles' Creed.
From The September 2001 St. John's Eagle

Reading the Gospels
Writing history is never just setting down "what really happened." Much of the relevant data may have been lost forever. The historian must select from what little has survived--and then determine what details are important and which less so.
From The December 2000 St John's Eagle