Well, I've done it

I just put my name in for a parish.

I went back and forth about this for ages -- this place looks like such a great fit, but we can't really move right now, but look they do Compline!, but surely they want someone who's been a priest longer than five minutes, but but but . . .

For some reason I couldn't let go of the idea of putting my name in. What finally put me over the edge was finding a review of a service in that parish in an academic journal. Seriously. I'm standing there in the Sewanee library, killing time while I wait for a friend, and I'm leafing through the current periodicals, and there it is. And it wasn't the mere fact that the review was there; it was that it made the place sound like basically my idea of the Ideal Parish.

OK, I get it. I'd better get on this now, before hands start appearing out of thin air and writing instructions on the wall.

No doubt this won't actually go anywhere, but that's not really the point.

What exactly the point is is an open question.

If you can't say anything nice, become an administrator

I just got an e-mail from an Associate Dean, questioning some minor technical violation of a rule no one even knew existed, and he actually used sneer quotes. Sneer quotes! So the (planned, expected, agreed-upon) absence of one committee member from an MA thesis exam turns it into an "exam"?

Is that really necessary?

In which a priest I have never met guilts me into starching my shirt

Normally I starch and iron my clergy shirts. But today's shirt came out of the dryer looking just fine, so it doesn't need ironing.

No ironing, though, means no starch. Here I am on the Mountain, it's summer, I'm not on duty -- heck, most of the priests in the congregation at All Saints this morning won't even be in clericals at all -- so why I am about to get out the spray starch and iron that shirt?

I'll tell you why. It's because the Rev'd Scott Gunn explained in this post that all proper clergy wear stiff "Pontiff" collars, not floppy "Cleri-Cool" collars. No one told me this, and I am utterly dismayed that all of my collars are the improper ones. And here I thought I was doing so well by always wearing the full collar and not those tab things (which even I in my ignorance can recognize as an abomination before the Lord). Perhaps I had a vague idea that "stiff-necked" is never used in a complimentary sense in Holy Scripture.

In any event, if I can't have a sufficiently stiff collar, I can at least have a nice, crisp shirt.

"Who irons a shirt, as for thy laws,
Makes that and th'action fine."

The theft of the pears: a wordle

You can tell this is my translation because no one else uses "Behold" any more.

(Click to embiggen.)

A propos of nothing

This has nothing to do with Anglicanism, liturgy, philosophy, or any of my usual subjects. I just like it. A band whose most important luggage was mishandled responded to the airline's indifference in an unusual way:

No doubt some of my readers will disagree, but . . .

It struck me earlier that the only thing drawing me to the noon Eucharist was an interest in seeing what hymn we would sing.

That seemed like a pretty good indication that I didn't need to be at church today.

On over-valuing niceness

I was all prepared to leave church on Sunday and post a scathing explanation of why I would never return to that parish: the unauthorized (and in some cases unintelligible) liturgical tinkering, the vapid sermon, the oh-so-aggressive (read: loud) organ-playing, the vestments that were almost parodic in their ugliness . . .

But on my way out one of the priests was so nice, and we had such a pleasant little chat, that I was mollified.

Niceness will do it for me every time.

(Be sure to keep your eyes peeled for my forthcoming insightful post on how mean people suck.)

The theft of the pears

The Latin is Nam et si quid illorum pomorum intravit in os meum, condimentum ibi facinus erat.

Various English translations:

• Boulding: "Even if some morsel of the pears did enter my mouth, it was only the criminal act that lent it savor."
• Warner: "For if any of those pears came into my mouth, what sweetened it was the sin."
• Ryan: "For if I put any of that fruit into my mouth, my sin was its seasoning."
• Sheed: "for if I took so much as a bite of any of those pears, it was the sin that sweetened it."
• Pine-Coffin: "If any part of one of those pears passed my lips, it was the sin that gave it flavour."
• Chadwick: "If any of those pears entered my mouth, my criminality was the piquant sauce."

Five perfectly good translations (sorry, but "piquant sauce" is right out), all differing in nuance and cadence, in precision of vocabulary (facinus is definitely "crime" or "criminal act," not "sin," for Augustine), and in various other ways. So many decisions, just for one sentence.

All of this explains why I haven't done any serious Augustine translation since I was young and brash and too stupid to have a proper sense of the difficulties.

Oh . . .

Tentatively, one more translation:

• Postulant: "For even if something from those pears did enter my mouth, it was the crime that gave it savor."

And I'll futz with that sentence, and every other sentence, several times before I feel sure I've got it right.

It gets a bit worse every summer

My revision of Philosophy in the Middle Ages is due August 15. I'm putting together an unusually difficult graduate seminar for the fall; it will require (among other things) a lot of translating Scotus (who is unusually hard, in part because he was clearly not paying close attention in Latin class at Franciscan High). I owe editorial comments on two new articles for the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy by the end of the week, grades on someone's comprehensive exam in ten days, and a review for someone's promotion-to-full-professor case by September 1. I just agreed to review a 400-something-page manuscript of a volume on Anselm for a press; the MS is sitting at home waiting for me when I get back. And beyond that loom bigger projects, like gearing up to apply for grants for the next book, which I haven't even managed to formulate adequately yet.

Every summer I seem to be a bit busier, and correspondingly a bit less able to engage with my Sewanee coursework, than the summer before. This time around I'm only taking one course, and I'm still feeling swamped. I have no clue when I'm going to find time to finish my written work for that class.

Sorry, this is a most unedifying post. I just felt like venting.

It could be worse. I could be at General Convention.

Seminary hiring

Church Divinity School of the Pacific

President and Dean

The Church Divinity School of the Pacific is searching for a President and Dean to be chief executive, educational, and administrative officer, leading this vital seminary of the Episcopal Church into the future. CDSP educates leaders to serve congregations and society. It is a center for theological and intellectual inquiry, a developer of new models for theological education, and a partner in missionary exchange among Christians around the globe, as well as a leading resource for liturgical renewal and excellence in ministry.

The President and Dean will be charged with continuing to lead the evolution of theological education at CDSP and with strengthening the financial and organizational infrastructure that supports our mission. This person will help the school build on its strengths – academic excellence, collegial and creative faculty and staff, commitment to educational innovation, deep and broad connections with the wider church, ecumenical and interfaith partnerships in the Graduate Theological Union – while continuing to extend its vision and adapt its mission to the needs of a changing world. Our leader will combine experience in theological education with the enthusiasm to discern its emerging forms, creating and seizing new opportunities to proclaim the Good News of Jesus Christ and to equip the baptized for ministry.

The new President and Dean must be able to inspire hope and resourcefulness amidst many opportunities for growth – both planned and unforeseen. We seek an inspiring visionary and a financially astute fund-raiser, a person of faith, intellect and passion, grounded and formed in the richness of the Anglican tradition. Candidates may be ordained or lay, and will preferably hold an advanced theological degree. Applicants reflecting the diversity found in the Episcopal Church are particularly encouraged to apply.

More information is available at: www.cdsp.edu/deansearch

Sermon for the Feast of Saint Peter and Saint Paul

Feast of Saint Peter and Saint Paul
29 June 2009
Chapel of the Apostles, Sewanee

✠ I speak to you in the name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

No one wants to be a martyr.

Well, that’s not actually true. There are crazy people who want to be martyrs. But no sane person wants to be a martyr. The Lord Jesus was the sanest human being ever to live, for he was – and is – the perfect human being, leading a human life with an integrity and truth and fullness that reveals what all humanity should be, and what our humanity some day will be. But even the Lord Jesus did not want to die: “Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me.” Though there was for him no necessity of dying, but only his own will – for he had the power to lay down his life, and the power to take it up again – nonetheless, he shrank from death, that hateful enemy.

He did for love – for love of us, and for love of his Father – what otherwise no sane human being would venture to do.

Knowing, therefore, the death by which Peter would glorify God, Jesus asked Peter, not about Peter’s courage – which would have been an awkward question in light of recent events, and a pointless one in light of future events – but about his love: “Simon, son of John, do you love me?”

Peter, too, did not want to be a martyr: “when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go.” Peter did for love – for love of Jesus, and for love of those for whom Jesus died – what otherwise no sane human being would venture to do. And so the Lord asks him three times, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” – and elicits three confessions, the pledges of Peter’s love, to set against those three denials, the fruit of Peter’s cowardice.

And with each confession, Jesus gives him a charge: “Feed my sheep.”

Just as Jesus before his departure gave a final charge to Peter, Paul before his departure gave a final charge to Timothy: “preach the word.” Preaching the word is feeding the sheep. Unfortunately, the sheep are finicky about their food, rejecting wholesome fare and gorging themselves on junk. Instead of heeding the word, they stockpile teachers who are more to their liking, enriching the authors of crappy and heretical books.

Nonetheless, Paul says, be alert for opportunities, whether the time is favorable or unfavorable; be urgent in season and out of season. The rhetoricians of the first century, like the marketing professionals of the twenty-first, teach that there are fitting times and unfitting times to convey one’s message. Paul will have none of this. The message is too pressing, the word is too important, to wait for the “right time.” Behold, now is the acceptable time. So go ahead and “preach the word, be urgent in season and out of season, convince, rebuke, and exhort, be unfailing in patience and in teaching.”

Do you love me? Then feed my sheep.

Do we love him?

For me, as probably for many of you, the first time I put on a chasuble as a priest of the Church, it was red: red for Holy Spirit, but also red for blood, the blood of the martyrs. I am, needless to say, a consummately sane human being. I do not want to be a martyr, and I take no small comfort in the fact that it is exceedingly unlikely that God shall call upon me to be one. But I am still charged – we are still charged – with feeding the sheep for love of their Shepherd. And the sheep can be wayward and finicky and easily entranced by heretical crap – we know this because we are sheep ourselves. So even if we not asked to resist to the point of shedding our blood, there will still be much to be endured as we try, in the Spirit, to be unfailing in patience and in teaching.

And standing here as I do, clothed in the red of the martyrs, remembering the sacrifices of Peter and Paul – who did for love what otherwise no sane human being would venture to do – I wonder.

Do we love him?

Then we must feed his sheep.

Observations after a few days on the Mountain

Some ex-Baptists are more "ex-" than others.

Liturgics professors can't always get what they want, and frequently get things they hate, even in their own seminaries.

Maybe it's true that a soft answer turneth away wrath, but apparently it's also true that a soft question engendereth scorn.

There's no more frustrated preacher than one who has a great fifteen-minute idea for a five-minute sermon.

And the weird medieval food business continues

From Augustine's sermon on Monday's Gospel:

Piscis assus, Christus est passus.

Unsubtly translated, that's "The fish is roasted, Jesus has suffered."

I don't think I can use that for my sermon, somehow.

And if you're wondering whether I'm overpreparing for this sermon, the answer is an unequivocal yes.

Warm your chicken

Preparing to preach and celebrate on Monday, the Feast of St Peter and St Paul, in the Chapel of the Apostles, I was refreshing my memory of Anselm's prayers, and particularly of the Prayer to St Paul, in which Anselm goes on at rather great length addressing not only Jesus but Paul as mother. At one point he is addressing Jesus using the imagery of Matthew 23:37. The translation I have in front of me puts it like this:

"Warm your chicken."

Somehow that speaks to me of microwaves and leftovers.

Maybe that's just me.

Notes to my summer session students

Ms J: The time to ask for extra credit is during the course, not after I've already submitted the grades. I would have said no anyway -- I already gave you the opportunity to earn full credit, which you didn't quite manage to do, and full credit is all the credit there is -- but I wouldn't have questioned your capacity for rational self-governance.

Ms N: If you had put half the energy into actually attending class that you put into questioning your grade on the final, you wouldn't have needed to question your grade on the final.

Ms F: Thanks for slumming with us this summer. You upheld the academic reputation of my (and eventually your) alma mater, though you did rather ruin the curve for everyone else.

Mr S: It was very sweet of you to give your phone number to Ms T in case she wanted to talk more with you about your faith. But I have to warn you that if she calls, it's most likely because she sees you not so much as Guy Who Will Tell Me About Jesus, but rather more as Cute Blond Who's Headed For Med School.

A note of gratitude

Derek has up another of his typically sound and sensible posts about the Episcopal version of the Reform of the Reform. (I won't ask him to elaborate on what he means by the "proper place" for both plainchant and Anglican chant, for fear that my Anglican chant setting of Prayer C for four concelebrating priests will be quashed.) Do read it.

I simply want to take this opportunity to express my gratitude for having been spared any egregious manifestations of the "Spirit of '79" (in the bad or misguided or excessive sense) in my wanderings through various parishes and dioceses over the quarter-century that I've been an Episcopalian. I've been a member of five different parishes in as many different dioceses, and a regular attender of a couple more when I was away from home for extended periods, and though of course I've seen things done that would have been better left undone, I've seldom been to a liturgy that wasn't recognizably in continuity with the Western, and indeed specifically Anglican, liturgical tradition. I've heard bad sermons as well as many good ones, but I've never heard a preacher in one of my parishes say anything formally heretical.

Lots of people can't say anything like that, I know; I've had it good. And admittedly, in one case I can think of things went well only because a recalcitrant liturgy committee kept an experimentally-inclined rector on a very short leash. Still, I've had it good, and I'm grateful.

More seminary hiring

This hasn't appeared yet in the AAR Job Postings, but it's on General's website.

PROFESSOR OF CHRISTIAN ETHICS AND MORAL THEOLOGY The General Theological Seminary of the Episcopal Church seeks applicants of demonstrated competence for the position of Professor of Christian Ethics and Moral Theology. The position is open to all ranks and may be offered as tenure-track or with tenure. Applicants must demonstrate teaching ability and significant scholarly achievement in ethics and moral theology with particular regard to the Anglican tradition. Competence in a second academic field is welcome. Responsibilities include teaching at the M.Div., M.A., S.T.M., and Th.D. levels; committee work, and participation in the seminary's liturgical and formational life. Holding a degree of Th.D., Ph.D. or an equivalent is required. Women and minorities are encouraged to apply. The appointee will take up duties on July 1, 2010.

Sermon for Proper 6, Year B

UPDATE (18 June): Here's the audio. It's from the early service. I didn't think my delivery was terribly effective, so I spent a lot of time in between services figuring out how to do it better, and the second service went much better. Naturally, I don't have a recording of that service.

*******

✠ I speak to you in the Name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

The Parable of the Mustard Seed is pretty familiar. You’ve all heard sermons on it. You’ve probably had preachers bring in mustard seeds to show you how small they are. Matthew, Mark, and Luke all record the parable. The lectionary gives us two shots at it – Mark’s version, today, and Matthew’s version, last July. (Luke’s version, for some reason, doesn’t make it.)

But the other parable we just heard – the first one – is not so familiar. I’ve certainly never heard a sermon on it. (Well, except for the one I preached this past Wednesday night.) Until I started preparing to preach on it I didn’t even know what it was called. It’s the Parable of the Seed Growing Secretly. And the lectionary gives us only one shot at it – because only Mark records it.

Jesus said, “The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground.”

The Greek word translated ‘scatter’ is actually ‘throw’. In the Parable of the Mustard Seed, the seed is sown. The sower is trying to get a harvest. (Incidentally, the rabbis forbade the planting of mustard seed. The mustard plant is like kudzu – it grows quickly, takes over everything, and is next-to-impossible to kill. The kingdom of God, apparently, is vigorous, intrusive, and a bit annoying. But that’s another sermon.) Anyway, the guy in the Parable of the Mustard Seed is trying to get a harvest; the guy in the Parable of the Seed Growing Secretly is not. Or maybe not. It’s hard to tell. He’s very casual, very offhand, just sort of flinging the seed without really thinking about it.

The seed gets scattered whether we mean to or not, whether our minds are on it are not. The planting of the seed doesn’t depend on our good intentions or heroic efforts. We make a phone call, or dutifully write a thank-you note, or listen to that person pour out the same tale of woe we’ve heard a zillion times before, and we’re not even thinking about the kingdom. But the seed gets thrown anyway.

The kingdom of God, Jesus says, is as if someone would absent-mindedly fling some seed.

Well, of course, once you fling the seed, you do have to tend it, water it, throw some fertilizer on it, keep the weeds and the insects away, and all that, right?

Wrong. “The kingdom of God is as if someone would throw some seed upon the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head.”

The guy – who didn’t really mean to sow, as far as we can tell – does nothing at all to make the seed grow. Instead, the earth produces of itself – the expression in Greek is αὐτομάτη, related to our word ‘automatically’. It’s used in Scripture for things that have no visible cause – “he does not know how” – and points to God’s power lying behind the growth.

The growth of the kingdom of God does not depend on our efforts. At best, we scatter the seed – and then God goes to work, sending sunlight and rain, making the seed sprout and grow, producing first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. We don’t even know how it grows; we may not even notice that it’s growing.

This is good news. Well, it’s bad news if we can’t stand not being in control of things – but do you really want to growth of the kingdom to depend on your efforts? It’s good news that God takes the responsibility for the kingdom.

It’s also good news that the kingdom is growing – we know not how – even when it doesn’t appear to be. It may have been that Mark recorded this parable in part to reassure those who were disheartened because they weren’t seeing the conspicuous success that they had hoped for, in part also, perhaps, to rebuke those who thought that the only time for the manifestation of the kingdom is now, and since now is not looking so hot . . .

But Mark says here, as both reassurance and rebuke, that we have to understand that we are caught in between the now and the not yet. The kingdom is now: the seed has been sown, the growth is happening, God is at work. But the kingdom is not yet: you may not see the growth, and you definitely can’t control it, and the abundant harvest is not yet visible, not yet ready for you to go in with your sickle.

And while all this is going on – not seen, not understood, the seed growing secretly – what is our absent-minded sower doing? Since he’s not responsible for the growth of the seed – not tending it or fertilizing it or watering it – what is he doing?

“The kingdom of God is as if someone would throw some seed upon the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day.” He sleeps and rises night and day – night and day, not day and night, because we’re talking liturgical time here, ritual time, and the Jews reckoned time beginning with sunset. This goes back to the creation story: “And there was evening, and there was morning, the first day. . . . And there was evening, and there was morning, the second day. . . .”

He would sleep and rise night and day. I’m going way out on a limb here, and I wouldn’t dare do this if there were any New Testament scholars in the congregation, but the invocation of liturgical time, ritual time, creation time, speaks to me of regular and disciplined prayer.

One of the great treasures of Anglicanism, which we talk about far too little, is Morning and Evening Prayer. It’s right there in the Prayer Book, meant for everybody – not just the clergy or some super-spiritual elite class, but for everybody. It’s a great frame for confessing your sins, reading the Bible, praising God, bringing your needs before him, and interceding for others.

And the steady rhythm of Morning and Evening Prayer, sleeping and rising, night and day, is not related in any obvious way to the growing of the kingdom. It doesn’t put money in the church budget or people in the pews, it doesn’t get us on the 11 o’clock news for our conspicuous acts of Christian witness – but sleeping and rising, night and day, we are connected to the larger prayer of the Church.

And that discipline, that faithfulness – because, as the Rector likes to say, if you don’t pray sometimes, you won’t pray always – doesn’t depend on how we feel, or how high our level of spiritual energy is – its very monotony, steadiness – sleeping and rising, night and day – enables us to keep going, while the seed grows, we know not how.

And steadily, undramatically, the Daily Office, Morning and Evening Prayer, is like sandpaper that grinds us into some useful shape – so that when the grain is ripe, we will be prepared to go in with the sickle, because the harvest has come.

Harvest always means judgment. But this is a weird sort of harvest. This is not harvest as condemnation, with weeds to be separated from the fruit and burned; this is harvest as fulfillment. The man who absent-mindedly threw the seed on the ground, and did nothing to make it grow, but merely persevered in quiet faithfulness, sleeping and rising, night and day, gets the privilege of reaping an abundant harvest. In some parables it’s the angels who are the reapers, and in some parables it’s God; but here we are the ones who get to harvest the produce, even though the growth is God’s doing and not ours.

The kingdom of God, Mark emphasizes again and again, comes through the ministry of Jesus. But it’s not always evident that that’s the case. Church budgets are strained; the people of God are by schisms rent asunder, by heresies distressed; and it doesn’t always look as if the old has passed away and, behold, the new has come. But we walk by faith, not by sight. To those who have been let into the secret comes the assurance that God is at work, the seed is growing, we know not how. In the meantime, we are not called upon to make the seed grow – that’s God’s doing, not ours – only to sleep and rise, night and day, steadily, faithfully, continuing in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and – especially – in the prayers.

It’s not always evident when and how the kingdom is coming. The Cross looked like the end, all those years ago. But the seed that was casually thrown into a borrowed tomb brought forth a glorious harvest, and we are the ones who get to enjoy its fruit. He died for all, so that we who live might live no longer for ourselves, but for him who died and was raised for us. To him, to the Father, and to the Holy Spirit, be ascribed, as is most justly due, all might, dominion, majesty, and glory, world without end. Amen.