Evil and things that go Bump in the Night

A Sermon for Halloween based on Ephesians 6.10-18

[10] Be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. [11] Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. [12] For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the forces of evil in the spiritual realms. 

[13] Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. [14] Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of justice in place, [15] and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the good news of peace. 

[16] In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. [17] Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. [18] And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the Lord’s people. 

Rejecting the Reconquista for Christ's Mission of Inclusion

Earlier this week I found the Reconquista movement, with its Episcopal version, which details a plan to "re-conquer" historic denominations and take over their property, resources, and reputation with a form of exclusionary Christian faith. In these pages, we find "95 Theses" which are a syncretistic mixture of three strands of incompatible ideas: 

First, there are ancient Creedal beliefs about the Triune God, incarnate in the Lord Jesus Christ, who works through the Holy Spirit to extend the mission and incarnation of Christ through the sacramental community of the Church. 

Second, there are explicitly Reformed or Calvinist or "Evangelical" framings of the Nature of God and of salvation which are historically rejected by most non-Reformed Christians (such as Catholics, Orthodox, and non-Reformed Protestants). 

Third, there are modernist exclusionary stances to reject certain social/racial critiques, political-economic ideas, and gender/sexual identities, while at the same time implicitly or explicitly affirming other modern categories of race, social structure, politics, economics, gender, and sexuality. 

This is to say they do precisely what they accuse others of doing: They use reformed and modern categories to view and mold the Ancient Creedal Faith, rather than interpreting theology and culture through the lens of the Ancient Creeds. 

The Particular Exclusiveness of Generic Deism

As a chaplain, there is a view I often run across among non-religious, college-educated folks in postmodern western culture that Christianity is scandalous in its particularity, and particularly offensive to non-Christian people. In particular, the Name of Jesus, the idea of the Trinity, and especially the cross and blood of Jesus are all stumbling blocks. Instead, it is often suggested that we omit or underplay language that includes Jesus, or the Trinity, or the cross, or other uniquely particular expressions of access to God through distinctly Christian means (such as the Eucharistic Prayer or the Lord's Prayer). 

Instead it is often preferred to substitute generic addresses to "The Divine", or simply "God", or even Western philosophical concepts such as "Ground of Being". This may be suggested with the idea that a more Generic Deist language will make God more "accessible": A general prayer to a general God or Divine, who has no particular story, nor any particular name or way of access, but which is accessible in a generic way by all methods and all names, as well as no methods and no names.

Should Holy Communion be open or closed?

One of the hottest debates of the Episcopal General Convention this year is the subject of “Open” versus “Closed” Communion. The battle lines have been drawn. On one side are those who want communion open to “all people” as “God’s people”. They feel that closed communion is “theological insider baseball” used as an excuse for “gatekeeping” by a hierarchy which implicitly denies God’s Love for all. On the other side are those who fear lack of adequate preparation for reception of the sacrament for those who are not baptized into the Covenant People of the Church. For these people, it isn’t gatekeeping, but maintaining the vital link between the “sacrament of new birth” into the Covenant Family in Baptism, and the “family meal” which is served in the Eucharist. 

Let's explore this issue, shall we...

A Prayer for Juneteenth

I wrote this as a private devotion as I reflected on Juneteenth. Perhaps it might help you or your faith community. 

Another Prayer for Pride Month

A Prayer for my friends and family who celebrate Pride Month:

Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Scripture

At the school I serve as chaplain, I was recently asked to provide some Scriptural reflections on our commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion. Earlier, I did an essay for my previous school on how these values are rooted in Episcopal Identity and the foundational beliefs and prayers of the Episcopal Church. Not only that, but the Christian vision of God leads us to these values, because the very idea of God as the Trinity leads us to embrace diversity, and the Incarnation of God in Christ leads us to embrace inclusion. These ideas of God are, in turn, rooted in the self-revelation of God which is recorded in Scripture. So now it is time to dig into the foundational texts of the whole Christian Faith, and the founding stories of Jesus and his Apostles, to understand how they inspire us to create communities of diversity, inclusion, equity, and justice. 

Resurrecting the Matrix: An Ideological Review

I just saw Matrix Resurrections. Here are my responses in no particular order:

Diversity, Inclusion, Equity, and Episcopal Identity

In the media and in education it seems we hear a great deal lately about words such as "diversity", "inclusion", "equity", and "social justice". These are often conflicted and politicized terms, but they are also terms which are deeply rooted in the Christian Story and Episcopal Identity. I would like to offer a brief reflection on diversity, inclusion, equity, and justice as a chaplain dealing with diverse groups and cultures in the context of Episcopal schools and churches. But I must begin by saying I am not an expert by any means, and there is a vast literature to help our understanding from pastors and prophets, practitioners and professors, and many others who speak to equity and inclusion issues that affect different cultures, ethnicities, identities, and abilities.

Since I cannot effectively speak directly to all these experiences and concerns, due to my lived experience, I feel that the best way I can help move this conversation forward is by talking about how these issues are expressed in Scripture, in the history of the Episcopal and Anglican traditions, and in how we pray and worship together. Because, at the heart of Episcopal identity is the idea of "Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi, Lex Agendi", which means that "How we pray shapes how we believe and how we live". And it turns out that Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Justice have been at the heart of how we believe and pray and worship for decades and even centuries. With this in mind, what I want to do is take the everyday definitions for these terms as found in Merriam-Webster, and look at how they unfold in the Bible and in the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer [BCP].

Is Social Justice merely a Leftist Talking Point?

We've heard a lot about Social Justice lately. When used in a positive way, it is often connected with the move toward public recognition and equal treatment for historically disenfranchised peoples, including Blacks, Latinx, and Queer persons. When used in a negative way, Social Justice is portrayed as a kind of Leftist "trojan horse" to inflict good hearted people with guilt and shame and even debt because of historic policies and events they had nothing directly to do with. So, is "social justice" just some kind of newly devised left-wing catch phrase designed to browbeat Americans into policies which are at odds with the foundational principles of our civilization?

Sam Harris’ Monstrous Moral Landscape

I recently picked up Michael Brooks’ book about the “Intellectual Dark Web” in which he critiques the views of several “renegade” intellectuals, including the famous secular crusader Sam Harris. This was one of those instances where I was reminded of something I intended to write, but never got around to. In particular, around 2013 I read through Harris’ 2010 book entitled “The Moral Landscape”. In it, Harris advocates the idea that Moral Values can be derived from empirical observation alone. While this thesis is problematic on its own, what makes it especially problematic for Harris is an incendiary moral claim that he made six years prior in an earlier book: 

Social Collapse and Divine Judgment

The LORD says: Are you not like the Ethiopians to me, O children of Israel? Did I not bring Israel up from the land of Egypt, and the Philistines from Caphtor and the Arameans from Kir? (Amos 9:7)

The history of Israel is given as a Pattern of how God works with all people groups through all time. From the oppression and enslavement that led to the liberation of God’s people in the the Exodus, to the idolatry and injustice that led to the discipline of God’s people in the Exile: It reveals the Pattern God follows in dealing with peoples and nations. What God has done in the history of Israel, God has also done in the history of the Ethiopians and the Egyptians and the Philistines and the Arameans. And what God has done in those nations, God also does in all other nations and peoples and cultures. 

Here's how that works out...

Flawed Biblical Heroes and Racist Monuments

Recently the WSJ published a deeply flawed argument for keeping racist monuments in public spaces. Basically, the argument is that since churches celebrate flawed saints, then public land should be used to celebrate racist heroes of a racist rebel cause (and if we don't, we are forsaking our "history"). Some points of contradiction:

Privatize Racist Monuments: A Modest Proposal

In the wake of the George Floyd protests, we are seeing protesters around the world, from every tribe and tongue, rise up and dismantle monuments to human oppression. Monuments to slave holders are being defaced and beheaded, toppled onto the ground, and thrown into the water. Just as we cheered when the Berlin Wall came down, and when statues of Fascists and Dictators around the world have been torn down, so now people are cheering the forcible removal of racist monuments from public lands. What should we do about this?

Twin Pandemics

The Twin Pandemics of 

Silent Disease and Systemic Inequity 

Have laid bare 

The emptiness of our cultural values

The incessant jangling of our moral superiority

The hollow clang of our promises 

Of liberty and justice for all.

We are witnessing the implosion of a culture 

Whose moral imagination is 

So atrophied 

So impoverished 

It cannot hold together any more. 

The Trinity Matters So Black Lives Matter

Pictured: An Icon of the Trinity from the Ethiopian Orthodox Church.

The following is a sermon that was given for Trinity Sunday at Grace Episcopal Church in San Antonio, and online during the COVID Pandemic. Another version of this sermon was preached for Black History Month at TMI - The Episcopal School of Texas (as is linked below). It was an attempt to help our diverse and divided community steer a path beyond the destructive conflict that has occurred in the wake of the George Floyd Murder, toward a more constructive dialogue in light of the fact that we are all made in the image of a God of Love, and beloved as God's children. 

Welcome to Trinity Sunday, where we get to talk about one of the most abstract ideas that Christian History has ever developed, in the midst of one of the most concrete social crises many of us have faced in our lifetime. On one hand, we need to talk about the transcendent, ineffable, infinite nature of the Source of the Universe, who we know as one God in the three Persons of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. You don't get much more abstract than that.

On the other hand, we need to connect this concept of God to the real life, concrete struggles people are facing right here, right now. And we are not just undergoing one major crisis. Or even two. We are hemorrhaging crises! We have a pandemic which lurks around every corner, which can easily make some people sick enough to be hospitalized or even die, while it has absolutely no effect on other people.

On top of this we have a looming economic crisis which has affected about one in four Americans in a major way, from lost jobs to lost businesses. People are struggling from paycheck to paycheck, and worried about keeping a roof over their family's head. And to top all of it off, to use a Biblical phrase, it seems that in matters of racism and violence, the "sins of the fathers" are being visited on the next generations.

A Litany for Protests

Since I cannot make it to any of the vigils or protests this weekend that are seeking justice for George Floyd and other black men and women who have been murdered lately, I decided to do the only other thing I am good at: Write and pray. The following is a Litany to pray for the protests across the country. I would humbly as you to pray with me if you feel comfortable, using these words or words of your own.

Racial Questions from a Suburban Kid

The following is a personal reflection intended to spur public discussion. It is the result of several conversations, online and in person, I had with other adults about the issue of racism in America after the George Floyd murder and the protests that followed. This should not be read as an academic or normative assessment of American culture (I do not have the credentials to begin to offer such an assessment). It is also not a commentary on ethnicity or race or "whiteness" or "blackness" as a monolithic phenomena. I don't think there are such monoliths, and every person's identity and experience is different, even from those in their own category or cohort or group. Rather, this is a personal reflection. To the extent my personal experience resonates with you, I would be happy to talk about it. But if this does not resonate with you, that's fine too.

I’m from the part of Gen X that went through childhood during the Reagan Era. I lived in the North Dallas suburbs, where the majority were WASPy folks like me, but there were also significant populations of African American and Latinx folks, as well as a smattering of South and East Asian families. It was not utopia by any stretch of the imagination, but we all played together on the playground, and went to each other’s houses after school, and competed together in sports. 

And at school we watched “Free to be You and Me” together, and learned that the racial divide had been largely “solved” by Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement of the 1960’s, so that we now lived in a diverse multi-racial culture. When we got into high school, race became a little more of an issue, but I don’t ever remember it stopping us from partying together, or even from dating across racial lines. Then Rodney King happened my junior year and the L.A. riots followed. But that was still far away from me, and different from my experience of race where I lived in the North Dallas suburbs. 

But in the last decade it seems like Rodney King happens every month. Sometimes more. And it happens to young black men and old black men and black men walking and black men jogging and black men standing and even black men sleeping in their own homes. And it happens even in places where I have lived and worked. And it is heart breaking and maddening and disorienting. And I wonder how I could have been so blind to such systemic exclusion and oppression for so much of my life. 

I know the short answer is my privilege: Since it wasn’t me or my class that was experiencing the effects of racism, I was not attuned to see it unless there was a blatant display right in front of me. Which is rarely the case, because most racists will not admit to being racist. Even to themselves. And, if I am really honest, even to myself. Because as I grow older I find these remnants of racism and sexism and prejudice that emerge like festering splinters needing to be taken out. 

But still, I wonder...

Where there's smoke...

I often feel like we are in a culture where most people have been systematically desensitized to smelling smoke or seeing fire. And we are in the precarious position of either (a) screaming “Hey! Your house is on fire! Escape now!” Which almost certainly will get ignored as the ravings of insane people. Or (b) being put in the absurd position of saying “Perhaps you might consider that your house *could* be on fire. I mean, I’m no expert on house fires of course. But here are ten common warning signs of being in a house on fire. Oh? You don’t like those because they come from an anti-fire fake news source? Ok. I understand. Here’s a news source that you like which gives five indicators of house fire. Perhaps you might think about it. And, um, if it’s not too much trouble, I dunno, kinda think about leaving your house. Just for a little while. Nothing too drastic of course.” (cf. Buddha’s parable of the children in the burning house)

Divine Justice, Quarantine, and Healing

During this time of pandemic, social distancing, and quarantine, my sacred reading today was from the First letter of John (read it all here). One text in particular deals with Divine Justice, and can really reframe how with think of Justice in an age of global contagion:

"If we confess our sins, [Christ] is faithful and just, and will forgive us our sins, and purify us from all injustice." (1 John 1.9)