A Provocation on Irony and Cynicism

Novelist David Foster Wallace once observed: “Few artists dare to try to talk about ways of working toward redeeming what’s wrong, because they’ll look sentimental and naive to all the weary ironists. Irony’s gone from liberating to enslaving. There’s some great essay somewhere that has a line about irony being the song of the prisoner who’s come to love his cage.” From newscaster comedians to blockbuster movies to social media, we are drenched in irony and sarcasm and cynicism that pretends to complain about the way things are. But secretly many don’t want to change anything about it. They get too much profit and popularity from the dysfunctional and destructive system we live in. Irony has become the song of the caged bird who is secretly scared to death of leaving its cage. Irony is merely ersatz resistance: It makes us feel like we are rejecting the system and rebelling against injustice, when in fact constant irony imprisons our imaginations to “what is possible” and adjusts our behavior to the “the way things are”. Using irony, we complain as we obey. But we still obey nonetheless. And when irony and cynicism become orthodoxy, then sincerity and hope become subversion of what is “realistic”. So let’s really become realists and demand the impossible with sincerity and hope. 

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:

Remember This

A reminder for myself. 

Maybe it will help you too. 

Be compassionate to everyone,

For we are all struggling 

In ways that are not apparent to others. 

Most of us are far better

Than our worst ideas and ideals, 

And we are far worse

Than our best ideas and ideals. 

None of us is perfect

None of us is whole

All of us rely on a Grace

Bigger than our worst failures

Better than our greatest hopes

To heal us and make us whole. 

So may we strive

To be embodiments of that Divine Grace

To one another. 

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?

God as Father or Mother or Parent or what?

Once again, I was reading through the letter to the Ephesians. At the end of chapter 3, one of my favorite prayers occurs. And so, since I have never made a public translation of it, I decided to translate it and post it on social media as "A Prayer for us all". Here it is:

Because of this gift, I bow my knees before The Parent [of us all], from whom all parenthood in the heavens and on the earth is named: I pray,  according to the riches of his Glory, that God would give to you all the power to be strengthened through his Spirit within the depths of your personhood, so that The Chosen One may dwell in your hearts, through his faithful [promise], [that you may] be rooted and grounded in Divine Love, so you are empowered to grasp, with all those set apart [by God], what is the width and length and height and depth [of Divine Love], and also to know the Divine Love of the Chosen One which surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled up fully with all the fullness of God! (St. Paul’s prayer in Ephesians 3.14-19, my translation from Greek)

Very soon after posting, a good friend of mine asked why I used "Parent" in verse 14 rather than "Father", since Father is the common translation and most direct rendering of the Greek πατήρ (Pater, from which we get words like paternal, patriarchy, patriotism, and by a long derivation, Father). This is a really good question, which cuts right to the heart of the nature of how we use language about God, as well as how we understand God in relation to gender. And so, what started as a quick explanation turned into 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.

The Most Damnable Reason

The most damnable reason for existing 

Is to be liked. 

Mirrors and Mimics

We are mirrors and mimics: 

What has been done to us, 

We will do to others. 

What we do to others, 

Will be done to us. 

Personally. 

Relationally. 

Socially. 

Politically. 

Globally. 

So to create the kind of world we want to live in, 

It becomes imperative 

We heed the ancient mundane ethical truism: 

Always do to others 

What you would have them do to you: 

Personally. 

Relationally. 

Socially. 

Politically. 

Globally. 

Worship is God's Love embodied

I encourage you, brothers and sisters, through the deep compassion of God, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God, which is the worship that harmonizes us with the Divine Purpose. (Romans 12:1, my translation)

The best worship is embodied. Praise God's beauty by creating beautiful things. Praise God's goodness by doing good. Praise God's Truth by being truthful.

I have often pondered the function of our language of praise. I am sure that such language makes our Lord glad (when done sincerely!). And yet, we are not telling God anything God did not know already. And in fact our liturgical acts of praise can only be a faint glimmer of the participatory worship which is the dynamic interpenetrating life of the Trinity (termed the perichoresis, or Divine Dance, in Orthodoxy). 

If anything, our language of praise does more for us than for God. It orients us- aims us- toward the beauty, truth, and goodness of the Trinity. Our real worship - Romans 12.1 style - is to embody and participate in the Triune God, instead of just talking about it. Or rather: Our talking about God's greatness in worship provides us a language to imitate God with. And when we worship a God who IS Love, it should rightfully lead us to embody that Love as we live in a creation which is God's Great Artwork, and relate to people who are God's children. This is God's purpose for all of creation.

A Prayer for LGBTQ+ Pride Month

The Rainbow we display in June to celebrate the diversity and beauty of humans made in God’s image reflects the diversity and beauty of the Triune God who is our Creator. As it says in Scripture: 

“Just like the appearance of the rainbow in the clouds on a rainy day so was the appearance of brilliance that surrounded him. Such was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the LORD.” (Ezekiel 1.28)