I put our flag out today because I am happy for our country and proud of our work in Iraq. I voted for President Bush, personally. But there is something very great going on here. His actions have a lot to do with how it looks, but he would be the first to point out that God is doing what he wills in Iraq. He is willing to accept that the results of his action will be the will of God, whether they are what he intends or not. The fact that our actions are apparently working for a leap forward for peace in the Middle East is wonderful. I'm very happy for us all. God is good...and things are going to my liking. That's a double.

I'm also very grateful today for the sacrifices given by our service men and women in Iraq. I prayed for them this morning. Our class read the 32nd and 33rd chapters of Genesis which finds Jacob wrestling with God in the dark before his hip is displaced. We all felt that the symbolism of this story was profound. We all wrestle in the dark with a God we cannot see. We are all wounded by it in some way. We are all blessed by it in some way, also.

Oops. Here is the picture referred to in the caption below.  

Frederica did not worship with us because she was out of town, but this is what the front of the sanctuary looks like, Fr. Mathewes-Green officiating.  

The sense I felt as a Roman Catholic, leaving the company of saints to enter a Protestant (Methodist) sanctuary is and was one of stark contrast. Not only was the smell absent of any trace of incense or candle wax or musty ornate vestments, but the visual spareness was off-putting. The saints were absent. The sense of history truncated. The cultural connection to the long history of civilization had vanished. In its place was a single stained glass image of praying hands and a bible.

At Holy Cross on Sunday I felt reconnected to my Catholic past. And, I felt an even deeper connection to the whole body of Christ. The liturgy of Epiphany Church, an Anglican Episcopal church, that of the Missal I read as a boy at All Saints parish in Des Moines and Kansas City are familiar and biblically based, recognizable to any biblically literate Protestant.

I was touched deeply at several points in the worship. In the pre-communion procession through the congregation, children approached the priest, kissing his vestments. I know my grandson Anthony, who lives with me, needs to have this tangible connection to the holy, as do I. I believe I will stay at Epiphany, but I will also seek occasional reconnection to the depth of the Church's past in Orthodox and Anglican high church celebration. It does the soul good.

Here is the link to the essay by Frederica Mathewes-Green on the things you would like to know when you first visit an Orthodox church. They were great to know for me.
Frederica Mathewes-Green

I worshipped today at Holy Cross Orthodox Church in Linthecum, Maryland. This is Frederica Mathewes-Green's church. Her husband is the priest. Frederica was travelling this weekend, but I went after a snow storm, driving from Kensington in a borrowed truck, to have the experience of Orthodox worship. It was a rich experience.

I was raised Roman Catholic before Vatican II. I was an altar boy and I still know the mass responses in Latin. I love the smell of liturgical incense. I am not intimidated by icons or their veneration. The overall experience was of holiness and directed worship and the presence of God among us. I was blessed by it. I was fed by it. I felt close to the worshippers and to Christ there.

Holy Cross is a small, old stone church, perhaps 75 years old. The sanctuary is about 25' x 40', with a large icon-covered screen in the front and other icons visible around and above the sanctuary. The overall color of the worship space is gold. The vestments are gold. There is a large gold chandelier in the middle of the sanctuary. The floor is covered with three large oriental carpets where worshippers stand during the liturgy and singing. A choir of twenty composed of reading children, men and women is led by a young man holding a tuning fork, singing from the back of the church. He intones the pitch of the parts before each sung response or hymn, and thought the choir leads, all sing.

I had read Frederica's essay on the ten things she wished she had known before her first service. I remembered most of it, but was a little confused by receipt of the bread of life, not the Eucharist, which was served by the priest to the Orthodox, but that available to visitors. I shouldn't have worried, though. At the appropriate time, a young teenage boy communicant, leaving the holy meal, just walked up to me and handed me a piece. I felt very included and very blessed.

I will write more about this in my next blog. I want to begin a series on my musings about worship and the beauty of traditional liturgy.

"And forgive us our trespasses."

In Luke 22:54-62 there is a wonderful telling of the betrayal of Jesus by Peter. It is my favorite telling of the story because it captures a dramatic moment in freeze frame. At the moment of Peter's betrayal in the garden of the High Priest Caiaphas, Jesus and Peter lock eyes. We are told that Peter left this moment to go weep bitterly, which he no doubt did. Luke, a companion of Paul, was a contemporary of the family of Jesus. He, with Paul, had visited with those who were eye witnesses, who had heard Peter's story. The "look" that passed between Peter and Jesus has the ring of an eye witness account.

Think a moment of the look that must have been on Jesus' face to prompt Peter's despair. At the Last Supper, Jesus had told Peter that Peter would betray him and Peter had denied it adamantly. But we also know that Peter was one of the Lord's very close friends. The look must have been deeply loving, understanding, pitying, compassionate, firm in His love for Peter. It is the same love and forgiveness he gives us today from the cross. It is the only instruction in the prayer he taught us. It is the strength of the small child, who weeps when we hurt him and then, minutes later, leaps into our lap for a hug. Forgive us Lord, for our pride and our unclean hearts. Give us the strength to forgive all who have hurt us, and help us leap back into relationship and affection with our brothers and sisters.

My "testimony" at worship on Sunday took an interesting turn. Although I had spent some time in the last few weeks journaling biographical details of my spiritual life, twists and turns in my "path" or my "walk", at the end I was uncomfortable with talking about myself. I didn't want to talk about Maharishi, the Jesuits, my doctoral dissertation, my leadership positions and roles in men's organizations. Pride is my favorite sin, and so I sounded too good to myself. As a result, I punted, turning my "talk" into a witness talk about the importance of men's ministry to the church.

Our reredos (the wall behind the altar) is a tableau. Arrayed on both sides of a life-sized Risen Christ statue (King of Kings) are 80% life-sized statues of all twelve apostles. All of them turn toward Christ in deference, six on each side of him in two rows of three, one row above the other. All defer to Christ except Peter and Matthias. Peter holds the keys to the kingdom and looks straight out from the wall at the church his work created. Matthias, Judas' replacement, looks to Peter. To Peter's left is John, the apostle Jesus loved. He defers to both Christ and Peter. The reredos is a drama to me. It shows the men's team that became the church. It shows that Jesus gave the keys, not to the intellect or the artist, but to the passion of Peter. Passionless Christianity is killing the American church. Passion-filled Christianity builds the church worldwide. The passion is not to "good works" but to Christ himself. This is Peter's legacy and our model.

Look at Peter a minute. He was impetuous, but an ardent seeker. As you remember, he was with John the Baptist and present at the baptism of Jesus. He then followed Jesus home, with Andrew, becoming one of the first apostles. What was his invitation? "Follow me". No intellectual discussion. But Peter, a man of the heart, followed his heart and followed Jesus.

Wherever we find Peter in the gospel accounts or even in Acts, we find his deep passion, his concentrated love for Christ. He was the one who when asked, "Who do you say I am?" gushed, "You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God." He is the one who tried to protect Jesus from the cross, attempting to turn him away from Jerusalem. Jesus called him Satan, completely rejecting his suggestion, but still loved him. Remember, Peter is the one who got out of the boat and walked on the water. He was the one who didn't run at first, but after a little swordplay, followed Jesus to the garden of Caiaphas where he betrayed him in great bitterness. Remember also that Peter was the one who delivered the Pentecost sermon that converted thousands and began the church. So, regardless of his weaknesses, he is THE MAN.

Dan Schaffer, my friend from Building Brothers believes strongly that the church's strength must be located in man's passion. In fact, he identifies the Old Testament roots of this concept in the selection of circumcision as the mark of the covenant. Without the passion of masculinity, located in this potent symbolic mark, Abraham's descendants would be few or none. A faith without turgor is nothing to build on. Flaccid faith is actually impotent. It will not grow. Passionless faith is not reproducible.

Creating spiritual fathers who "stand firm" and whose passion for the Lord is tangible requires a different attitude in men's ministry: the attitude of raising the bar when difficulty is encountered. Right now, the church lowers the bar whenever challenged, accomodating the culture and the puny commitment of the faithful, if they can be called faithful at all. This must be reversed.

Epiphany, n. pl. e·piph·a·nies
A Christian feast celebrating the manifestation of the divine nature of Jesus to the Gentiles as represented by the Magi.
January 6, on which this feast is traditionally observed.
A revelatory manifestation of a divine being.
A sudden manifestation of the essence or meaning of something.
A comprehension or perception of reality by means of a sudden intuitive realization: “I experienced an epiphany, a spiritual flash that would change the way I viewed myself” (Frank Maier).

Happy Epiphany, Friends.

http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/remnant/doc.htm

The URL is a wonderful, passionate review of The Passion of the Christ which I bumped into today. The crisis in the Catholic church is peripheral, but the gratitude and praise to God by David Allen White for Mel Gibson's movie is very moving. How deeply he feels Our Lord and Savior! How fully he feels the depth of this masterpiece of art!

Happy New Year, All.

My conversation with a pacifist was wonderful. He was quite articulate and not too dismissive of conservative points of view. I posed for him a deeply mysterious problem. In his world, there is no such thing as an intelligent conservative, I believe. So, I was a curiosity. I think over nine correspondences, we communicated slightly. I was changed by it, because his conversation caused me to be especially attentive to Dennis Prager's show as I drove home for lunch. Dennis had a caller who was BOTH a traditional Christian who would not compromise the scripture and a gay man. Dennis, with his enormous heart and deep spiritual insight, identified the man as a true seeker after truth in a death struggle with God. He saluted him as a "truly great man" because he saw the conflict but rather than reject his religion, his faith, though challenged, was deepened. This was one of the issues I had touched on with Dan Trabue, my Louisville journalist liberal friend. I had always thought that I could identify with this issue, because as a "flaming" heterosexual, I have been tempted by my sexual nature, and I know how difficult it was to avoid succumbing, but this was my cross to bear. I believe that God allows each of us to carry our own cross, and I believe this is one of mine. Similarly, I believe that this is the same for anyone who is attracted to someone of the same sex. It is a difficult cross to bear, and if you bear it well, you used to be called a bachelor or a spinster, if you do not succumb or if you wish to succumb no more. However, now you are encouraged by our culture to pursue "who you really are" and "come out" to the world as a "gay" person. I would have wanted to pursue the conversation with this man to see if that were possible, but the call ended. I do know that consumating a sexual relationship with another person is a volitional act, it is not something you are helpless to resist. But, I was humbled by the depth of commitment this caller's uncompromising commitment to traditional (orthodox) faith. Now what, Dear Lord. Teach me more.