Child’s Play

 St Peter’s Old Ellicott City • Advent 2a 2025 • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG  

The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them.

Advent is the season in which we prepare our minds and hearts for the coming of Jesus, not only the commemoration of his birth in Bethlehem, but in preparation for his coming in glory. So we find ourselves, in Advent’s in the meantime in between-time, also between two images: the sweet Child in the manger, and the transfigured, majestic, everlasting Judge and King, whose coming that wild prophet,  John the Baptist, foretold.

Today the prophet Isaiah brings the two images together; first, the one coming forth from the root of Jesse sounds like the same mighty judge John the Baptist will promise. Here is one upon whom the Spirit rests, whose voice strikes the earth like a rod, whose breath slays the wicked.

But then the imagery shifts. Suddenly all is peaceful: wild beasts of forest and field no longer prey on the domesticated animals of pasture and barnyard, but graze and nestle beside them. And, wonder of wonders, this harmony is orchestrated, and led not by lion-tamers with pistols and whips, or Australian alligator wrestlers with cages and anesthetic darts — but by a little child. Even more surprising, infants still nursing, and others just starting solid food, can play with snakes in perfect safety in this new peaceful world. 

The serpent, the archetype of human enmity with the natural world from our infancy in Eden — even the serpent has lost it’s poison, and become a plaything for the children of Adam and Eve. This peaceable kingdom established on God’s holy mountain is, simply put, child’s play.

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Now, this is neither trivial nor frivolous. Few things are more serious than child’s play. I really mean that. Have you ever watched children playing — when they don’t know you’re watching? Children take their play very seriously, and the more deeply at play, the more intense their concentration. 

Where else but in play do you see actual wrinkles form on the foreheads of children? Where else but in play do you see little tongues appear at the edges of tiny mouths, as tiny hands struggle to color with cumbersome crayons, or style a doll’s hair in high fashion, or hammer a plastic peg just so with a plastic hammer into a plastic hole? No, children at play are never more serious than when playing!

Children in a snowball fight are as focused on their battle as any general. And dare I even mention the child glued to a PlayStation or Nintendo Switch! And a five-year-old hosting a tea party for dolls and teddy bears will —should you be honored with an invitation— hold you to a protocol as rigorous as that of a state banquet. The Labubu twins must always be served first, in recognition of their youthful ferocity, while Barbie, being a mature young lady, must be patient. Pooh Bear has to be watched lest he sneak a cookie before his turn. 

As you balance the tiny saucer and teacup, savoring the invisible tea and make-believe cake, you are apt to marvel at the child’s seriousness, and their stern resolve to enforce the rules.

Yes, the prophet was right in describing the kingdom of God as child’s play, for child’s play is not frivolous. 

It’s just that we tend to forget as we grow older. As we age out of the pure, clear world of childhood, we begin to accept less than what we know is right, to move from the clarity of black and white into those fifty — or a hundred thousand — shades of grey. 

And we tend to see this as maturity. We gain peace at the cost of principle. We weigh profit and loss, and we deal and we compromise. We settle. And we often end up with far less than justice for the sake of an imaginary peace that turns out not to be very peaceful at all.

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But the judge eternal described by Isaiah, comes upon us with the ferocity of a child: a single-minded child who can look straight through our adult compromises to the burning truth of our failures. He does not judge by what he sees or hears, this eternal judge whose coming we await. Whaaa? A judge who pays no attention to evidence? What kind of justice is that? Who wants a judge who passes sentence before he hears our excuses and explanations?

But my friends, this is the justice of a child, of the Child. The child who knows what’s fair and what’s not, and from whose ringing sentence, “It isn’t fair!” there is no appeal. The child who knows her parents have been arguing, however much they pretend it’s all O.K. The child who knows when he’s being lied to, however good our intentions, and his piercing eyes see through us as if our souls were wrapped in cellophane. The child who knows the rules for snowball fights and tea-parties, and dispenses the firm justice of the playground. The child who knows how to tame animals more real than the ones of flesh and blood, the animals of the playroom, where Pooh Bear and the Lion King take tea together, and dinosaurs eat cookies from a plate. 

And all the while, the child oversees the Feast with serious attention, and a sense of what is fair and right that puts our adult tribunals to shame.

This is what the Justice and Lordship of Jesus is, the clear, focused reign of the Son of God. Under the watchful eye of this Child all our excuses and compromises are laid bare. Our efforts to bend the rules are exposed. Our lording it over one another, preying on each other like lions and tigers and bears — Oh, my! — is shown up for what it is.

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But the good news is that this Child who comes as judge is merciful as well as just. Though he sees right through us, perhaps because he sees right through us, he will also save us, for he knows we are worth saving. And his loving justice will begin to transform us, and redeem our corrupted nature as surely as it undoes the curse of Adam. The old curse is done away with, serpents become playthings, the ancient war between the wild and the domestic comes to an end. Under the miraculous rule of this divine child-king even our own rough nature is transformed, our rough coats of wolf-grey fur soften and turn to velveteen. Our shaggy lions’ manes are trimmed and turn bright gold, festive with bows and ribbons. Our leopard spots turn into polka-dots. Rough grizzly bears grow plump and soft and dip their blunted claws into a jar of honey. 

And all of us together gather around the table, colorful bows around our necks and ribbons in our hair, as the Child pours into our cup, and feeds us tiny morsels of bread, and we partake of the sacrament of peace — thus, and only thus, we come into God’s kingdom, at long last, precisely and exactly as he said we would have to come: as children.

May we then, dear sisters and brothers in Christ, be ready to enter the heavenly child’s-play of this miracle Child, the just and righteous rule of the Son of God, whose infant hands possess all might, majesty, power and dominion, henceforth and forever more.

On Original Mortality

The following is my more considered reflection on some issues raised by my friend Bosco at his Liturgy blog.

One of the things that divides Eastern from Western Christian theology concerns how they regard the concept of Original Sin. The Western concept, largely developed by Saint Augustine of Hippo, is that the Fall led to a kind of contamination of human nature and humanity, robbing humans of the immortality they possessed by nature (as made in the image of God) and so rendering them subject to death, and stained with an inheritance of guilt that is passed along to each person born, a stain of guilt that has to be washed away in Baptism.

The Eastern church never adopted this view. It accepts that the Fall brought sin into the world, and that the effect of the sin is death; but it regards this as a consequence of the Fall without any inherited actual guilt. So the East doesn't think of it as transmission of something (like some kind of fluid passed along), but as an event with the logical after-effect of becoming subject to death

Both East and West (the West more explicitly) appear to accept that the original humans were immortal, and lost that quality with the Fall. It is doubtful whether this stands up to a close reading of the Scriptural text, nor is it necessary in order to preserve a doctrine of Original Sin, Western or Eastern, and the equally Pauline testimony that through that sin death entered the world, and that, in Adam, all die.

Looking at the mythological portrayal in the text of the creation accounts, Adam and Eve are denied access to the Tree of Life, and so lose immortality. Immortality, then, is not portrayed as something they had by nature, but because they had access to the Tree of Life. Every other human since, who never had access to the Tree, shares in the consequence of Adam's Fall. Nothing is portrayed as being "transmitted" because this is not about passing something along but about losing something.

In spite of the Scripture's mythological portrayal, the Western church (at a council in Carthage in 418 — with Augustine present, pressing his theology of original sin, a distinctly Western view later reaffirmed and codified by the Council of Trent) anathematized the notion I presented above, instead alleging an original inherent or natural human immortality that was lost due to the Fall, as the removal of, or alteration in, some aspect of human nature. I prefer the Scriptural view that the only entity immortal by nature is God, and that human immortality was (and will be again) a gift from God, a gift that could be lost, as indeed it was (in Adam) but which can also be restored (in Christ). This also makes good typological sense of immortality restored in Christ through the “tree of the cross.”

One way of looking at this involves thinking about the nature of God as the uniquely self-subsistent entity, the only One totally independent of all other entities. Immortality is an aspect of this independence, as the East sings in the Kontakion of the Departed, "only thou art immortal, the creator and maker of mankind." The Fall consisted in large part of Adam and Eve seeking that same independence — in their case, independence from God — in order, as the text says, to "become like God." The true human theosis cannot be achieved in such a bold, aggressive move, but rather involves — in the course of salvation history — the eventual jointure of our human nature with the divine. This union is a work already completed in Christ, who through the kenotic abandonment of what was his by right, became — in union with humanity and human nature — dependent and subject to death, "even death on the cross." And as Christ shares in our humanity in this way, we also come to participate in the divine life through our union with Christ.

The notion of original mortality is also coherent with the Genesis 1 commandment to the primeval couple, "be fruitful and multiply" — identical to the commandment given the non-human creatures, about whom no suggestion of immortality was ever made, nor does the Genesis 2-4 account offer any explanation for a "Fall" for the non-human world. The reason this commandment reflects mortality rests on the fact that progeny would not be needed if the couple were immortal; indeed, fertility and immortality combined would lead to eventual massive overpopulation of any finite space. Moreover, this is also coherent with the teaching of Jesus in Luke 20:35-36, where he explains that those who attain the resurrection to eternal life do not marry, exactly because they are immortal — no one will die, so no one will need to be replaced by a descendent.

All of this seems to mesh with a notion that the primal Fall lost something that the original humans had by grace, not by innate nature; and that the effect of that loss falls on their heirs and assigns not as a substantial inheritance — the presence of an inherited sinfulness distilled into their nature — but as the absence of something. If you think of it as a possession an ancestor had and then lost — say, a deed to a silver mine — it is easier to understand that the current poverty of their heirs is due not to something passed along, but precisely to something not passed along, as a consequence of that original loss. It is, effectively, about disinheritance.

None of this is to fall into the Pelagian view that Augustine was combatting at Carthage, and in which I think he went too far in his effort to find a mechanism for the workings of original sin as a substantial inheritance. I think ordinary life, and again the Scriptural text, reveal that human beings tend to sin by nature. The myth tells us that the primal couple commit the original sin while they are in Paradise. The sin is in their heart before it is in their hands. If they were naturally incapable of sin, they could not have done so; so there must have been in them a natural drive to the self (a theme beloved of Augustine, and surprising that he missed in his effort to pin all this down) is there from the beginning. It was the assertion of the human self, in its drive to become self-sufficient and independent of all else ("like God"), that it lost the likeness it already had, and the fellowship with God that allowed it access to immortal life in God's presence.

— Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Early Christian Socialism?

There's a meme going around the net quoting the 13th chapter of C S Lewis’ Mere Christianity, in which he observes that by economic standards and practice one would call the early Christian movement “Leftist.” The meme itself raised some suspicion as to accuracy, but Lewis did indeed make that observation.

And it is a trivial observation for anyone whose hackles are not immediately raised by anything even remotely pink, let alone red. Because by any objective standard, the Christian community described early in the Book of Acts resembles nothing so much as a religiously inspired commune, living with all goods in common, and shared ideology concerning wealth and community.

And like all communes, it didn't last. Due to the human desire for self-preservation, and the tendency for even egalitarian systems to come to rely on volunteers who edge into being professional leaders, almost all communes eventually evolve into capitalist oligarchies or corrupt dictatorships, or simply decline to the point of extinction as they try to remain faithful to their original idealistic vision.

That being said, I remain a committed Christian Socialist, not because I believe such a regime will come to pass, but because I believe even the tentative approach to it is better than the capitalist vision, and far better than the fascist alternatives.

— Tobias Stanislas Haller

Love and Envy

Proper 7b 2024 • Church of the Advent, Baltimore • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG 

Saul was afraid of David ...

Today’s reading from First Samuel shows us the stark difference between two human emotions: love and envy. Two weeks ago we heard Samuel’s warning that having a king was a bad idea; last week we saw Saul turning bad, and Samuel sent to find a new king, David. And today we see what happened after David’s defeat of Goliath.

Saul can’t help but admire David, who becomes one of his trusted warriors. He sends him out to battle over and over, and David always returns victorious — so much so that people honor him over Saul — and their cheers are sour in Saul’s ears. Even the music of David’s harp becomes an annoyance to Saul. Even his presence arouses Saul to mayhem, trying to spear him as he plays.

Here we see green-eyed envy at its worst, its most bitter and soul-destroying. Pride is often classed as the worst sin, but isn’t envy just a form of wounded pride? And like wild animals, it is dangerous when wounded. As God’s favor drains from Saul to rest on David, his envious anger grows.

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So there’s your envy! what about love? We see love in Saul’s family too — in his son Jonathan, who, as soon as he sets eyes on David, feels his heart melt as if — as Scripture puts it — his own soul is bound to David, and he loves him as his own soul and makes a covenant with him. That is powerful language, perhaps embarrassingly so for the Greeks who left these verse out when they translated the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek. Yet there it stands, the beginning of what some have called the greatest love story in the Bible. As one of the earliest Rabbinic texts (Mishnah Pirke Avot, 5:16) proclaims, “When a love depends on something, when that thing passes away, the love passes away; but when a love does not depend on anything, it lasts for ever. What is the love that passes away? The love of Amnon and Tamar. And the love that does not pass away? The love of David and Jonathan.” 

And envy comes into this, too — for Saul knows that his son has taken a liking to David — to put it mildly. In succeeding chapters Saul will curse Jonathan on account of David, and even try to kill him. Saul and Jonathan have become rivals (at least in Saul’s mind) for David’s love and loyalty.

Of course, it starts before David kills Goliath — though we didn’t hear that part of the account — but it tells us a bit about what bothers Saul. When David first volunteered to fight Goliath, Saul tried to dress him up in his own armor, and gave him his sword. But they don’t fit — Scripture tells us Saul is a big guy, head and shoulders above everyone else, but David is probably no more than sixteen. So he rejects Saul’s oversize armor — and the sword too big for him to swing.

But after David kills Goliath with his slingshot, Jonathan — also about David’s age — is so taken with David that he strips off his robe and armor, and gives them to David, along with his sword, his bow, and his belt. Imagine how Saul felt at that moment: David rejected him, and chose his son instead — and his son chooses David! And green-eyed envy stirs up and Saul begins to give in to the Dark Side, even against his own son. (Aren’t you glad Fathers’ Day was last week!)

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Such is the force of envy. But while envy is a powerful force it cannot do what love can do. For even in the midst of this envious struggle, love is there, conquering all, as the Roman poet said.

Think for a moment, about how much the world is driven by these two engines, love and envy. Think how much they resemble so many of the other pairs of joys and pains, of what builds up and what tears down; and how the building-up always seems to triumph in the end. The Apostle Paul writes to the Corinthians about these conflicting forces, and how love manages to triumph. Envy may raise obstacles, but love will knock them down, or pass right through them: for all the forces of affliction, hardship, calamity, beating, imprisonment, riot, labor, sleepless nights and hunger — all of these are overcome by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, holiness, love, truth, and the power of God. All of this is better armor than a mere sword, bow and belt. These are the triumphant weapons of righteousness for those inspired with the love of God. All it takes is opening the doors of the heart — turning away from the dark side of envy and embracing the light of love.

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For with God, and through the love of God, even the seemingly impossible is possible. With God, as the Apostle testifies, the one treated as an imposter is the one who tells the truth; the one undocumented and unknown is the chief witness; the one threatened with death and dying is revealed to be alive and well; the sorrowful one is lifted up with joy; the one with nothing is able to provide everything. And, as the Gospel reminds us, the one asleep in the stern of the boat can quell the storm of wind and sea.

We will hear more of Saul and Jonathan and David in coming weeks — it ends sadly for all three — though David becomes a great king; — not perfect, by any means — we’ll hear about that as well — but devoted to God even when he fails, even when he himself gives in to envy, to have what another possesses; even when he stoops to a criminal conspiracy worthy of punishment.

But for now, we have three witnesses before us: we have young David — this teenager fresh from his victories, clothed in the kit of another young soldier — one who loves him as he loves his own soul — envied by Saul, yet adored by the people. We have the Apostle, shaming the haughty Corinthians by his own humility and open-handed forgiveness. And we have Jesus himself, as he triumphs over sea and wind, calming the storm and strife — not with a shout — but with a gentle word of peace. ✠ 

Maybe Two (or more) Churches of England?

General Synod of rhe Church of England is meeing this week, and it is forcing them finally to begin to address the fact that there have been two Churches of England for a while now. It is a bit like acknowledging that a couple have been pretending their marriage isn't at an end. This is understandable because the awfulness of admitting to the death of a marriage may be as awful as trying to keep up appearances. Much depends upon the reason for maintaining the appearance: is it for the sake of the public, or of the children? 

This might be a way to look at the current woe in the Church of England. The real "communion" of the Church, both internally and in its wider connections (Anglican and otherwise) — in the terms one uses for determining communion between differing church traditions: mutual recognition of ministers — was severed over the ordination of women (particularly to the episcopate) and an arrangement with what amounts to separate bedrooms (to extend the marital analogy) has kept up appearances of unity to some degree; though the joins begin to show at consecrations of bishops with various combinations of people participating — or not — in laying on of hands.

But it was only and ever an appearance; communion was and is severed; and now, it seems, we are talking about acknowledging the breach with a real divorce, and deciding the terms of who gets the silverware — perhaps literally. It is time for those on both sides of the divide to sit down and take this seriously. It is a pity that optimistic progressives failed to take full note of the conservative position that these were church-dividing issues. So they were, and are.

— Tobias Stanislas Haller

There will always be an England [, Church of?]

Reading the Church of England’s bishops’ half-hearted outreach to same-sex couples (many of whom have already bypassed the church and are married according the civil law): they are over-anxious about reaffirming their allegiance to the current definition of Holy Matrimony, and trying to distinguish it as much as they can from civil marriage — even though the tradition of marriage ascribes (where and when it does) the "sacrament" to the couple, who administer it to each other; the church imparts a blessing and its witness, but it does not "make" the marriage a marriage. This effort to shore up the tradition is, of course, a largely self-referential and circular exercise — affirming that the institution of marriage cannot change because it hasn't changed. This is axiomatic or definitional thinking; and it doesn't hold up too well if you look at the history of marriage theology and law, in which all sorts of things once forbidden become tolerated and then common. I sympathize to a degree with the English situation, made all the more difficult by a number of factors largely involving the status of the established church: people who in the US would be Southern Baptist or Assembly of God members are well within the fold of the Church of England, and many serve on the governing body and will never support a change in the marriage law; and Parliament carved out an exception for the established church that prevents it from marrying anyone. This makes it very messy and hard to make changes even when there is a desire so to do; and the majorities needed simply do not seem to be there. But my sympathy for their situation does not extend to the ham-handed way the bishops apologize, and yet continue to offend.

What will this mean for the future? Some will be satisfied with the offer of prayers of blessing and thanksgiving for civil marriages, and see it as a small step forward. Others will not; some will see it as an outrage and apostasy. There will be leavers and remainers on all sides. I suspect the larger public will continue its bemusement with the institution.

Lambeth Resolutions Come and Go

In response to claims that Lambeth resolutions "hold" until expressly repealed, and citing Lambeth 1958's rejection of the former "ban" on contraception from 1908, I noted the following:

It might be better to say that the Lambeth 1998 statement was a reflection of the majority at the Conference. There is no foundation for assigning Lambeth the capacity to speak the "mind" of the Communion. It is not a synod, but a conference. It does not issue canons, but it does make statements. Some are allowed to pass away in desuetude, while others are revisited. Three facts need to be noted:

• The 1958 resolution (115) on contraception ("family planning") simply ignores the existence of the pungent denunciations of 1908. Moreover, the real change came in 1930 (Resolution 15) again with no mention of the 1908 position.
• In many resolutions down the years, it is frequent practice to "reaffirm Resolution ____ of the ____ Lambeth Conference."
• If resolutions held, some would not be so eager to reaffirm.

Taken together, I think this supports the notion that Lambeth Resolutions speak for the majority of the Conference at the time of adoption.

All that being said, I think the current revision of the Call reflects neither a reaffirmation nor a denial; it is a simple statement that Lambeth 1998 1.10 said what it said. Some like to attribute authority to it; but there is no foundation for such authority, beyond the authority of those who originated it.

—TSH

The Widow Walks

The hallway retained the scent of lilies and hyacinth, mixed with the faint edge of mothballs. The funeral had been a few days earlier; I was calling on the widow to see how she was doing. It was the neighborly thing, and we had been neighbors, her husband and I colleagues of a sort, he the minister of the Reformed church, I the rector of the Episcopal. In our small town all of the major, and a few of the minor denominations had church buildings neatly arranged around the town square, along with the courthouse and the post office. It was a testimony to fellowship and distinction all at once.

The widow and I were alone in the large Victorian manse, and had been chatting for a while, when one of those silences that punctuate such conversations settled in. Suddenly the widow started, as if she had just remembered an unfinished errand. “Thank you so much for calling, Mr. Halliwell, but I must be going. It was so kind of you.”

We rose together and went into the hall, where I helped her with the bright red woolen coat she selected from the hall closet. I was surprised at the color, but she seemed not to be concerned. The aroma of mothballs clung about it; the season had just recently turned, and a chill was in the air. “Thanks so much,” she said. She took up her purse from the hall table and slipped the strap over her arm, and we went out onto the wide porch. There was no need to lock the door; such were the times. We paused for a moment looking out over the square, standing at the edge of the porch-steps down to the walkway; the sky was overcast and grey, and seemed to drain much of the color from the scene. “May I walk with you?” I asked.

The widow looked at me with a sly smile and said, “Oh, I don’t walk.” With that, she rose a few inches into the air and floated off down the walk, slowly rising as she went. By the time she reached the center of the square it was clear she would pass several feet above the steeple of the Methodist church directly opposite. I watched as she continued, further and further away, until she became little more than a tiny red dot no larger than a pinpricked finger’s mark upon a neatly folded white linen handkerchief.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Author’s note: This story came to me in a dream this morning. After I wrote it, I remembered I had take (and then manipulated in the darkroom) the street photo to the left, sometime in the early 70s. So here they are together.

I saw heaven

 I saw heaven in a dream the other night.

In heaven, everyone is 22,

and they all wear Hawaiian shirts

and Bermuda shorts

and go barefoot.

They are very happy,

standing and chatting

like guests at a massive cocktail party.

There is only one bathroom in heaven,

but that alright

because no one needs to go,

and if they did,

they'd always let someone else go in ahead of them.

I saw that everyone was in heaven,

even Hitler and Jack the Ripper,

because when they arrived

at the throne of judgment,

and saw what they had done,

and Jesus turned to them and said,

“I forgive you,”

they were so overcome

that they were completely transformed.

I heard the Hitler spends most of his time

washing the feet of twenty-somethings

who in this life were killed at Auschwitz at his orders

— not that their feet need washing

but because they enjoy it so much,

and when he tickles their feet —

— what laughter!

A woman turned to me and said,

“I saw Satan the other day;

he keeps going up to everyone

and saying, 

‘Can I get you anything?’”

—Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Infrastructure Plan

John went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, as it is written in the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah, "The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: 

'Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. 

• Every valley shall be filled,
• and every mountain and hill shall be made low,
• and the crooked shall be made straight,
• and the rough ways made smooth;

and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.'" (Luke 3:2-6)

Earlier this week I was reflecting on this reading (part of this coming Sunday’s Gospel) and for the first time ever I saw the verses about valleys, mountains and hills, and rough ways, not as prophetic predictions about what will happen, but imperative commands — continuing on in the directive mode from “Prepare the way” and “make his paths straight” — about what shall be done. So I format them here as a to-do bullet list.

In short, this is a divine infrastructure plan spelling out exactly what repentance entails; a detailed list of instructions for preparing a way for the Lord, a straight path for God to enter our hearts. 

Every valley of despondency and depression, of neediness or greed, is to be filled in. Every mountain or hill of pride or self-importance is to be brought down, every twisted self-righteous self-defense for past wrongs straightened out and untangled, every rough or brutal thought put aside. Only then, only when repentance has made a way, will the eyes of the heart see salvation standing clear and bright and unobstructed.

The good news is that this is not our work alone: God has made this massive repair to the human infrastructure possible through the grace of God’s enlightening instruction, the Word of command and of comfort; for as Isaiah also reports, God’s Word shall accomplish God’s purpose, and succeed in those things for which God has sent it. (55:11) In this case, the Word is God coming to be in the very flesh that shall not only see the salvation of God, but know it inwardly, incarnate in each human heart by the grace that plants itself within us.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

A Future for the Church

I had some serious thoughts about the future of the church this afternoon, after reading about a diocese deciding to close a parish that was only able to support a half-time priest shared with another congregation. I get a sense that many in diocesan leadership are still hoping for the future church to take the same shape as the church of the past: that each parish would have a full-time priest, and be able to fund its own operation and maintain its facility, perhaps supported by some endowment funds but largely from the contributions of its own active membership. 

I don't want to sound too pessimistic, but I'm not sure that this is a reasonable expectation for the future of the church except in a few cases. I'm old enough to recall that the "norm" for the church was just that: a full-time rector, and in many cases one or more full-time paid curates, except in the smallest parishes. It should come as no surprise that many of those salaried curates have been replaced by non-stipendiary associates, often retired clergy; and not a few "rectors" are actually less-than-full-time, and retain the title without the old meaning.

I think the truth is that the church of the 50s died in the 60s, or at least fell seriously ill, and we are seeing the long-term results, not just in the small churches, but in all others apart from those heavily-endowed, or fortunate enough to subsist in urban centers where a ministry or cultural outreach supports the program, or in the few parts of the country where church-going is still considered a social duty; and I don't know how long any of these are  going to last. As someone opined recently, "they're not coming back." Once people discover they can do without the church, they do without the church — or at least the model of the church as "full-time priest and congregation."

It may be that the church of the future in much of the US will be the small parish with a part-time or chaplaincy-model (regular supply) priest and a cadre of lay leaders who carry out most of the responsibility of maintaining the church property and ministry in their community. If the church has the financial resources to do that (pay its bills, including whatever assessment is required, support a cleric at a level less than the old "rector", maintain its property and engage in meaningful ministry of some sort) I would strongly suggest that diocesan authorities should allow it to continue to exist and function at that level; not in the hope that it will bounce back to what it may have been in the 1950s but as a recognition that this may well be the future of the church for the next generation or two, if not longer. 

Taking the option of closing such a church down, selling off the property or otherwise alienating it robs not only the possible future for growth, but the present, immediate and actual future of a continued presence and ministry at a smaller, but still meaningful, scale. 

Part of my concern is that the current metrics for judging the "success" of the church revolve around both the meaning of metrics and of success. I'm also thinking about the mismatch between a focus on the cleric and her salary (and housing and pension) as the normative deal-breaker as opposed to the liveliness of the ministry of the laity — not just in worship attendance (which seems relatively passive) but in what they do in their weekday lives: which supposedly is the mission of the church. In short, are we supporting a model of the church that is still largely clerical and "within the walls" at the expense of possible new models?

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Naked Need

 Proper 22 • Advent 2021 • TSH 

Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.”

What does it mean to receive the kingdom “as a little child” in order to enter it? This is a different saying about children, from the one a few weeks back, which was about welcoming children, in Christ’s name. Today is about receiving the kingdom as little children ourselves. So, what does it mean to receive the kingdom “as a little child” in order to enter it? If “little” is the rule, I guess I’m in, no taller than when I was 14, as I never did get the “growth spurt” they promised would come along. But surely Jesus isn’t talking about height. Short people like me have no advantage when it comes to heaven. We don’t even know what’s on top of the refrigerator.

So what is it about children Jesus wants us to copy? Is it their innocence? Well, some children behave as badly as any adult. St Augustine said, if you want proof of original sin, just spend an hour with a crying infant: that child reveals the root of human sin — a constant cry of “I need” and “I want” content only so long as its needs or wants are met.

So, again I ask, what is it about a child that Jesus wants us to copy? Wait a minute — could it be that very neediness and dependency? Could it be that St Augustine missed the point of a child’s needing and wanting — not as signs of sin, but of what it means to be human? One reason human families, across many cultures, are structured as they are is due to the fact that infant humans need lots of care for a long time: human childhood lasts for years. A young horse or cow is up on its feet within minutes of being born; but a human child will take months even to crawl, and many more to toddle or walk. Human children are dependent, and this dependency — this need for care — has shaped human families from the beginning, with not just parents, but often grandparents, aunts, and uncles; as the saying goes, “It takes a village to raise a child.” The long human childhood is intimately connected with human civilization itself. Perhaps Jesus’ teaching here is like his teaching concerning “the poor” — those in need who are always with you so that you can supply their need, as a good civilization should.

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Not that human civilization is always so civilized. How much over the last few years have we been treated to human inhumanity to fellow humans — to drowning boatloads of refugees seeking escape from the war-torn middle east; children separated from their parents as they seek refuge from murderous threats; children killed in drug-fueled crossfire on our own Baltimore streets? I would like to hope this suffering will not be in vain, and that the hearts of enough people will be moved to do all in their power 

to end these tragedies. But I also know that while people’s hearts are sometimes moved to sympathy, they are rarely moved to action.

Still, I refuse to give up hope. I know that while we all have that needy, self-centered infant deep within us, we also have within us the capacity to transform our need, not by losing it, but by presenting it to the one who can and will supply all of our needs. And this, perhaps, this is what Jesus means when he says we need to receive the kingdom as a child — to receive it as a child receives a gift, for heaven is a gift that none of us deserves, but which God is prepared to give to any who hold out their hands to receive it, as easily as the Bread of communion is placed upon the palms of our hands.

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Seven hundred ninety-five years ago tomorrow, a little man from the town of Assisi, Italy died. His name was Francis. He came from a wealthy family — his father sold fine fabrics, even more a luxury then than now. Francis was a trendy young man with a taste for the finer things in life; but he experienced a powerful conversion. He did a complete turnaround and rejected all that he had, all that his family wanted for him, all that they had given him; even some they hadn’t given him — for he took several bolts of expensive fabric from his father’s warehouse and gave them to the poor. His father hauled him up before the authorities and complained he was ungrateful. He reminded his son, “You owe me everything!” In a dramatic gesture, Francis called his father’s bluff and said, “You want everything? It’s yours!” and he stripped himself bare naked right there in the town square.

Francis went on to embrace a life of complete need: he refused to own anything, and lived as a beggar the rest of his life. He had learned the crucial difference between “I need” and “I want” — that what people need to live is far less than what they want to have. He learned how to receive everything as a gift, to receive as children do — children who receive care and nurture not because they earn it, but purely as a gift, because their family and society provide it.

Francis lived like this all the way to the end. Even as he was dying, frail and sick, he asked a hard thing of his grieving brothers: to strip him naked, and place him on the cold floor of his monastery cell. He wanted to die in complete need, without owning anything at all, not even the clothes on his back: naked as the day he was born, as naked as a new-born child. His Franciscan brothers could not bear this for long, seeing that miserable, shrunken body — marked as it was in hands and feet and side with the miraculous wounds that Francis had received when he begged God to let him share in Christ’s suffering. His brothers finally convinced him, to let them clothe him in a robe 

they insisted was only on loan, and didn’t belong to him. And so he died, in borrowed clothes, receiving Sister Death as he had received life — not as his own, but as one last gift from God.

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The New English Bible translates one of Jesus’ beatitudes as “Blessed are those who know their need of God.” Is this what it means to receive the kingdom as a child — a child who needs everything, and who can do nothing for itself; being able to be in need, to depend on God in the way we depended on others when we were infants? Perhaps it is the family of humanity that needs better to learn how to care for children, so that all can learn what it means to be a child — a child of God and of humanity — as Jesus himself is Son of God and Son of Man.

It is said that a society can be judged on the way it treats its children. I will go further and say not only its own children, but the children of others. Those two sayings of Jesus are tied together after all: we dare not expect to receive the gifts of God as children, if we fail to welcome the needy children of this world, recalling that as we welcome them, we welcome Jesus — all of those many children living in need: the ones towards whom we who have stand in the position of being able to give. +

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG