Not of the Book

Christianity is not, properly speaking, a religion of the “book.” The distinctively Christian part of the Bible (what most people mean by “the book”) is a product of Christianity in its earliest days. The Christian faith is actually a religion of the Spirit of God, who, yes, infuses the text the writers of the early church were inspired to produce, and who continues to enlighten the minds of Christians as they read and hear that text. But God is not the text. God is God, and it is the Spirit of God that gives life, not the letter. The Scripture is testimony, a pointer and a witness; Jesus is the Truth to whom this witness points.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Thought for 1.20.11

The Holy Spirit is not that kind of “comforter.” She has wings and feathers, but not that much down.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

The Church as Empire — Not!

From today's sermon

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We heard [Ezekiel] in today’s reading with his advice and warning to Egypt based on the example of Assyria, which the prophet compares to a cedar of Lebanon — a great tree with its branches reaching up into the clouds, which nonetheless ends up being chopped down. Empires, be they never so mighty, come to an end. The line of dominoes tumbles along: Assyria was felled by Babylon, Babylon by Persia, Persia by the Greeks (who also took down Egypt while they were at it.) But then the Greek empire built by Alexander the Great was divided at his death, and eventually fell to the power of Rome. Rome too divided, and was battled by barbarians at one end, and after it became Christianized, by the rise of Islam at the other end. And Christianity itself? Well, that brings us up to the present day — and more importantly — us!

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Because ultimately the question isn’t, “Will the church survive?” but rather, “In what form will it survive?” I think it will survive — we have God’s promise on that; but I don’t think it will do so by being a great empire. Great empires don’t seem to be too successful in maintaining themselves, perhaps due to the sin of pride that causes them to lose sight of the words on that ring: “This too shall pass.” It seems the more empires try to resist change, the sooner they fall — intolerance and clamping down on people brings about even greater resistance, division, and internal weakness. Empires may be big, but they are brittle. The great tyrannies of the last century, and those that have survived into this one, do not seem long for this world: the higher they seek to rise, the bigger they strive to get, the more viciously they suppress those who dissent, the sooner their fall seems secure.

Just as the little mammals were somehow able to survive while the giant dinosaurs were collapsing all around them, so too the church managed to survive, the church managed to make it through the collapses of Greek and Roman and European civilizations, not by being big and powerful, but by slipping through the cracks of history — squirreled away in the catacombs underground, or out in the monasteries or out in the deserts. And when the medieval church tried to seize secular power, and insist on central control of all of Christendom, it only served to hasten the Reformation. So it seems to me likely that the church will survive in this our time, and as time passes, not because it is big and powerful, or centrally controlled, but because it remains true to its faith in Christ; by placing its hope not in an everlasting earthly empire, but an eternal heavenly dwelling. It will, in the meantime, do its best work here and now in its own small way, not as a giant agribusiness, but more as a cooperative of small family farms — as the church in each place is a family.

For it isn’t about how big the tree is, or how expansive the fields — but about the fruit and the grain that comes at gathering and harvest-time. When the bough breaks and the tree falls, when the crop is harvested with a sickle, what do we have to show for it?. . . . . . .

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Listen to it all:

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Come, Holy Ghost

In honor of Hildegard of Bingen, I wrote this composition some years ago, and it was used at the profession liturgy for some of the Sisters of Saint Gregory. No recording was made at the time, and it hasn't been performed since. So this is a synthesized choir (The East/West Quantum Leap Symphonic Choir program) which sounds a bit like a group of (perhaps) Bulgarians for whom English is a second language. Nonetheless, I hope you enjoy...
Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

MP3 File

On the Inspiration of Scripture

Scripture is the inspired Word of God, but it is always written in a human tongue. People do not speak God’s language, or have God’s knowledge, so God, when speaking to people through inspiration, must employ the human language of the culture and time of the one inspired, in order to impart any knowledge at all. God always “talks down” to us, and our finite human capacity always limits how well we understand the infinite God, and express that understanding. One cannot put the ocean in a bottle; and new wineskins must be used for new wine. As Jesus himself would later say, “I have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. But when the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth.” (John 16:12-13)

The inspired recipients of God’s word in Genesis believed the sky to consist of a dome, in which the sun, moon, and stars were set, and which had windows to admit the rain stored in the pool of waters above. God, of course, knew that this was not true, literally or in any other sense, but the minds of those God inspired could have no place to hold such concepts as gravity and freely floating planets, stars and moons — or that the earth was not stationary at the center of a revolving universe. They had the evidence of their senses to the contrary, and would not, as Jesus would later say, have been able to “bear” the truth. So God communicated to them in a language that did not seem outrageous to them, that met their expectations, and explained and ratified what they perceived. The primary truth God intended to convey, after all, was not a literal account of the composition of the cosmos, but the theological principle that God is the creator of all that is.

In the same way, the accounts in Genesis 2 through 4 do not present a literal history of the first human beings, but a theologically relevant account, God’s word designed to explain truths to people in keeping with what they perceived, within their time and place — to address the really big questions to which the account provides the answers: primarily, why is it that people do wrong things; why do they die; why do they marry; and why should a perfectly natural thing like childbirth be so painful.

Tobias Haller BSG

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A Social Gospel

When I look to the Gospels, I find significant support for what is called "the social gospel." I find nothing at all, one way or the other, about faithful, life-long, same-sex relationships, those who live in them, and whether they should be ordained or not. Those who elevate concerns over the latter to the level of "gospel" are the ones who have some explaining to do, not those who feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and give cups of cold water to the thirsty.

Jesus appears, in the Samaritan woman, to have been quite capable of making use of one living in an out-of-wedlock relationship to spread the real Gospel -- the Gospel that points to Messiah. Even broken vessels can still hold their share of living water, and spread it to other thirsty people.

Tobias Haller BSG

The Gospel via Chicago

They came from as far as the antipodes: primates and bishops, laity and clergy, theologians, journalists and politicians, gathering in Chicago at Seabury-Western Theological Seminary for three days of intense discussion, planning, and strategizing. Theologians and canonists read papers (which will be available on the web in relatively short order), the assembly divided into small groups and regathered into plenary, and much newsprint was marked. Why? A modest goal — To help the church recover its soul, as a community of neighbors, a fellowship of diverse members unified by the love which called them together, through the power of the Holy Spirit.

The Chicago Consultation, as it is being called for short, addressed the prevailing boundary issue that has beset our church and our Communion over the last decades, and most irritably over the last six years: the place of GLBT people in the church’s life and ministry.

In plenary sessions and small groups, we challenged ourselves to find a way forward that would be grounded in the powerful message of Jesus’ call and care. We focused on the the full inclusion of those whom some have determined to be inappropriate minsters of the Gospel, embracing the mandate and charge which comes with the highest authority, and in response to the question, “Who is my neighbor?”

Lambeth is coming, little more than half a year away; and it too will be a forum which will provide the bishops, albeit non-legislatively, an opportunity to consider and reconsider their own past actions, and to recognize that the so-called consensus of 1998 was far from complete even then, and has demonstrably revealed itself no longer to exist, having led to increasing conflict, dissent, and in some cases, division.

Further away on the time-line is the next session of the General Convention. This will provide us with the opportunity to reevaluate the usefulness of resolution B033, and address the underlying issue of the appropriateness of moving forward in our growing recognition that same-sex couples, particularly in those parts of our country where the civil authority already recognizes the value of their relationships, deserve the church’s full support in ordering their lives in consistency with the Gospel principle: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

This is the only “agenda” guiding the Chicago Consultation: to call and help the church to live the Gospel it proclaims.

Tobias Haller BSG

For more information, see Inch at a Time, Preludium, and keep an eye on Episcopal Café.

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The Bridge Spider

Crossing the pond’s bridge in the breezy morning
I saw a glint of sunlight suspended in
the air — a single strand of spider’s silk
tethered at my end to the bridge’s base
but pointing off towards the trees across
the windblown pond, as straight as any sunbeam.

I could not see the other end on which
the spider drifted on the shifting wind,
though moving on the bridge I tried to catch
the sun’s reflection on that silken beam.

The wind was fresh and as it shifted course
it blew the unseen spider side to side
above the pond — the only sign of this
the shifting angle of the shining silk
tethered at my end to the bridge’s base.

The spider did not know where it was going —
only the opportunity of the wind,
the tether of its silk, the chance of landfall
on the farther shore — or of watery
failure. But it trusted in the wind.

Envoi
Help me, Lord, to trust your Spirit, which
has borne me up thus far, to thank you for
the gift of skill to spin my course. I know
not where you send me, but I trust the wind.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

2006

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