Et in Albania Ego

I will be in the Diocese of Albany this weekend, speaking at the Annual Meeting of Albany Via Media on Saturday afternoon and celebrating the eucharist and preaching on Sunday (9 and 11:15 am): all events to take place at the historic St. George’s Church, Schenectady.

The talk will be about “Anglican Disunion” — which is to say, about the realities of Anglicanism, and how to live with them! I hope friends in the area of upstate NY might make it to one or more of the events.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Elegy for a Past that Never Was

a short review of Never Let Me Go, a film based on a novel by Kazuo Ishiguro

I came across this little film last night while scrolling through the offerings on HBO and thought it sounded interesting. It was more than that — it was riveting and disturbing and moving. Some have apparently found the formal element of its being “alternative reality” — or science fiction set not in the future but the past — confusing, but it added to its haunting quality. It would make an interesting double feature with the more spectacular Children of Men.

Some have wondered how people could treat other people in the manner they are treated in this film, but I think the evidence from the not so distant past is overwhelming, and the evidence from the somewhat more distant past (say the antebellum era in the American South) conclusive. People can and do treat other people as if they were not people. Q.E.D.

However, it would be a mistake simply to see it as a story about medical ethics or even the larger issue of how society “commodifies” everything. Rather, the situation and the story provide a matrix for a meditation on impermanence and what the poets call “intimations of mortality.” The title, ironically, says it all: ultimately letting go is part of the human condition. As the film's last line observes, using its own peculiar jargon, "We all complete."

This is a relatively “quiet” film — its emotional impact is cumulative rather than sharply punctuated. Like the author’s earlier Remains of the Day this film dwells in the subtle, muted world of restrained emotions and conformity to values and structures that seem irrational and oppressive, and yet which people seem willingly to embrace. And that is its terror.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

ps An interview with the author on some of the themes in his work. Thanks to Paul Halsall for the link.

The Wedding Banquet

Saint James Fordham • All Saints Sunday 2011
a sermon by Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
The angel said to me, Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.

There is an old tradition that on the night before a marriage, the future bride and groom are separately wined and dined by their friends at bachelor or bachelorette parties — with perhaps more emphasis on the wining than the dining! Well, All Saints Day is the day on which the church celebrates the marriage supper of the Lamb. And since the marriage supper is yet to begin — we’ve received the invitation but it isn’t dated; we’ve just been told to be ready and alert — in one sense the church’s whole vigil here on earth is like a long bachelor or bachelorette party as we anticipate the great day to come. We who have yet to cross over to the life of the world to come, we in what is called the Church Militant (as opposed to the Church Triumphant), we who feebly struggle while they in glory shine, we, Christ’s body still at work, remember and give thanks for those who rest from their labors.

+ + +

Now one of the things about the parties surrounding weddings, is that the guests usually bring gifts for the new bride and groom. But what can we possibly bring as a gift for someone who has everything already! For the wedding we are talking about is the wedding of Christ and the Church, the wedding supper of the Lamb! And if anyone ever deserved the title The Man Who Has Everything, it is Jesus Christ, the one who draws the whole world to himself.

The answer is that Jesus wants one other gift, one thing we possess but which we can hold back if we will, or choose to let go of and give to him. And that is ourselves. We can choose to keep to ourselves, or we can choose to give ourselves to the one who gave us everything; we can give our selves, our souls and bodies, as a reasonable and holy sacrifice.

The Saints in glory, both the big famous saints with churches named after them, whose likenesses are enshrined in stained glass and icons, (or on the wall outside the parish office!), and the less well-known saints with likenesses preserved on our own little remembrance board there under the altar, the saints are those who gave themselves to God. And their example can help us to be as generous with ourselves as they were with themselves. The wonderful thing about the communion of saints — and I mean all of the saints, living and dead, including us here as much as the saints in glory — the wonderful thing about the communion of saints is that we help each other become gifts to God. We bear each other up when we are tempted to slide back and away from our best efforts to serve our Lord.

Ultimately all of us come to the wedding banquet carrying some of our brothers and sisters and being carried by others of them. No one gets in empty-handed! We are called and invited to the wedding, and we are to come bearing love for one another, which ofttimes means literally bearing each other up. The only wedding invitation we will have to show at the door to heaven is each other. No one gets in unaccompanied.

Remember the stern question that God asked the first murderer, and his cavalier response: Where is your brother? and Am I my brother’s keeper? Think of the sadness that pierced the heart of God when he heard those words in answer to the question, and left unsaid the response, “Of course you are." We are responsible to and for each other, connected through the bond of our common humanity. That bond is stronger than mere nationality or culture, and is fundamental and basic to our very being as human beings.

The weight of each other, as we bear each other and each other’s burden — as indeed Christ bears us — is the gentle and easy yoke of Christ. All of us are brothers and sisters in him, because it is through him that we become children of God.

What form that family will take, what we will become when we arrive, remains to be seen — it is not yet revealed. All of the blessedness that Jesus describes in the beatitudes is sometimes only perceived in that retrospective glance. In the present, most of those things are not pleasant while they are being endured! The road of sainthood is hard, no doubt about it. Being persecuted for righteousness sake is no bed of roses. It is only once we have arrived at the goal of the heavenly call — only when we look back to see our lives laid out in testimony, that we will see what a journey we have taken.

And more importantly, who has been with us and bearing us up along the way. What unknown hands lift burdens from our backs? What unknown saints walk at our sides and help us over obstacles of which we may not even be aware? Only when we’ve reached the goal will we be able to look back and see.

And what we will see will be worthy of the vision of Saint John the Divine. All the church through time and space, all the prophets and apostles and martyrs, all the saints in their festal company, and all the holy people of God will be displayed as a huge inverted wedge of souls and saints carrying and being carried by one another, an inverted pyramid that focuses its sharp, heavy point on a man nailed to a cross outside the walls of Jerusalem — who bears it all, with arms outstretched.

Though that weight pushed him down to the very depths when he descended to the dead, yet the power of God working in him raised him up again, and the power of God working through him can and will push that whole great pyramid of charity right on up and out of time and space and into eternity. And the first shall be last: the first fruits of the resurrection, Jesus the Bridegroom, is behind us urging us on, bearing us forward, ushering us into the banqueting hall.

+ + +

God is full of surprises. We thought we were coming to the wedding banquet as servants, then found we were no longer servants, but friends. Then we were surprised to find that the bridegroom would act as usher. But a far greater surprise awaits us. We had just settled into the notion that we were to be guests at the banquet, friends of the bridegroom. But it turns out that we are much more even than wedding guests. All this blessed company — ironically blessed in poverty, meekness, thirst for righteousness, hunger for mercy and peace, and even under persecution — all this company of blessedness will gather at the banquet, as more than guests: we are the Bride herself.

We, in company with all those who have gone before, the apostles, prophets, and martyrs, all the holy people of God, the blessed company of all faithful people, the saints militant and triumphant are the Bride!

This is the mystery we celebrate today. We and all our beloved ones, together with the unnumbered saints who have gone before us, participate in God’s great saving act in Jesus Christ our Lord. We as the Church in the communion of saints are eternally united to him by his gracious gift of himself once offered for us all — for what God has joined together shall never be put asunder. And so, to our Lord and God — and loving Spouse — let us with grateful hearts ascribe all might, majesty, power and dominion, henceforth and forevermore.+

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With You Anon.

I saw Anonymous on my day off, in an almost empty but palatial new movie theater in Yonkers.

Let me say from the start I am no fan of the “WS didn’t write the plays” theories. My major objection is to the Main Premise, with which the film starts off in its Prologue (and with which it doesn’t advance much further): the poorly educated son of a middle-class suburban glove-maker could not have had the mental or experiential bounty to bring forth the richness of these plays and poems. This accusation, reeking as it does of Good Old English Classism, reminds me of the thesis that the Egyptians couldn’t have built the pyramids because such backward people were incapable of doing so; it must have been aliens.

I utterly reject this premise because I was, in my former career, an actor. Actors with whom I have worked are among the most well-rounded and culturally well-informed people I know, as are not a few of the directors and playwrights. The upper-class English twits I’ve encountered over the years couldn’t hold a literary candle to some of my actor friends. I’ve sat backstage in dressing rooms with actors wiling away their off-stage moments doing the London Times crossword, or working on a monumental thesis on Finnegans Wake. In my undergraduate school, actors were treated to a superb course on “Theater in the Humanities” where faculty from across the college were brought in to lecture on the history, culture, science, literature, art and religion of the various eras in which plays were written and set — producing an enviably well-rounded liberal arts education that would put the specialists in other of those fields to shame. So don’t get me started on the impossibilist assertion in re WS’s capacity for brilliance. Oxford himself gives the verdict, of course, when he tells Jonson, “People like me don’t write plays.” Aristocrats are often the most boring and ill-informed people.

What about the film as film? Well, the underpinning “theory” and the attendant revisionist history aside, it was diverting and beautifully produced. Someone got the “secretary’s hand” down pat, and the costumes and CGI scenery were impressive. The use of the theatrical Prologue in the manner of Larry O’s Henry V was clever. The snippets of the Bard’s own words are inspiring and rather well spoken (Henry more than Hamlet, but I digress...). Vanessa Redgrave is as quirky and brilliant as ever, and there are other creditable performances.

But it is in how the film failed to make use of the ample possibilities of WS’s architectonic genius that it was most profoundly disappointing. One of the things WS was so brilliant at was the layering of multiple stories in parallel and counterpoint. Here we had two stories, both reflecting the issue of anonymity, running side by side: the authorship of the plays, and the “authorship” of the progeny of ER I. Yet this rich material just sits there, never truly woven together in the delightful way that WS could do, so that the great “A ha!” moment of revelation is more of a “Huh? Oh...” The things that ought to have clicked into place didn’t. There is little or no humor in the film, none of that brilliant interplay of “conceptual rhyme and rhythm” that carries you through scene upon scene. The time-shifting was not well handled (again, providing the audience with too few of the kinds of visual and verbal cues that would enable them immediately to know when was when and what, what — the very thing the Prologue of Henry V knows must take place in the viewers’ minds — and of course this lack is fatal to the story as the author intended it to be understood.

In short, it goes to show that not everyone can write with the genius of a Shakespeare — or perhaps even be aware of the technical aspects of what make Shakespeare’s plays so enduring: it isn’t just the stories, for goodness’ sake, or even the poetry, but the resonances and braided layers of a highly refined narrative art.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

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Thought for 11.04.11

One problem with the Anglican Covenant Process is not so much that it is a case of closing the barn doors after the horses have bolted. Rather, it is like proposing to engage in a process to consider building a barn after the horses have bolted.

We have never had a barn. We don't need a barn. We have the field and hills before us, ripe for the galloping mission of God.

Tobias Stanislas Haller

Hidden in (Not So) Plain Sight

One of the more interesting discussions at the recent conference I attended in South Africa concerned the nature of homosexuality in those parts of Africa where its presence is most vehemently denied or persecuted. Several of the lay and clergy leaders from those areas indicated that “homosexuality” was widely seen as some kind of alien import. They allowed, however, that as long as a man was married and had children, a concurrent sexual relationship with another man could — while still being viewed with opprobrium — likely be given a pass. Such a man would not be labeled as “homosexual.”

This reminds me, of course, of the situation in many communities even in the United States — thinking in particular of some Latino and African-American communities — based on their cultural construction of homosexuality. That is, a “man who sleeps with men” might well not be seen as “homosexual,” while an effeminate man or sissy-boy might be described as such even if he is a virgin and completely heterosexual in his orientation.

This is in part due to the confusion of the many variable axes that combine in human personality to define one’s identity. It isn’t just a matter of male and female (biological sex, and allowing for the reality of intersexuality), but of feminine and masculine (cultural or societal gender), attracted to one’s own sex or the other (sexual orientation), and so on. The simple fact, put simply, is that many gay men are not effeminate, and many effeminate men are not gay.

More importantly, the African situation reminds me of how it is that David and Jonathan’s relationship (with the emphasis on Jonathan’s attraction and attachment to David) can also be covered from perception as a same-sex relationship (which it no doubt is, regardless of whether acted upon erotically). The fact that both are “manly men” and warriors, both married (in David’s case we have quite a bit of evidence along that line), shields them — in cultures that cannot distinguish sexual orientation from notions of gender — from any suggestion of being what C.S. Lewis so revealingly called pansies. (The Four Loves, 62) While it is questionable to attempt to craft a psychological profile at such a remove, it is fair to say that David’s relationships with women all seem to be based either on the desire to possess and control or some kind of political or dynastic interest (as indeed may be true of his relationship with Jonathan in taking advantage of the latter’s attraction to him), while the relationship of Jonathan to David appears to be one of deep and lasting love. At least that is the language of the text. “Pansies”? No. Oriented towards a romantic relationship towards each other?” Very likely yes. At least David is not reported to have shed any tears over his female partners, and Jonathan’s testimony of complete dedication and what the text reveals as “love at first sight” is amply clear.

The role of choice

The question, “Is homosexuality natural or a choice?” also came up at the Conference in South Africa. The implication is that if it is a choice, it is a wrong choice, or at the least a choice that need not have been made, or could have been made otherwise. In earlier times it was assumed that the choice was a conscious act to choose wrongly — a perversity: doing deliberately and willfully what is known to be wrong.

Most gay and lesbian persons do not feel their orientation to be a choice, but something about which they become aware at some point in their life — just as do heterosexual persons of their sexual orientation. Most people, it seems, do not have much of a conscious awareness of sexual attraction in very early childhood, and begin to become aware of sexual attraction later in childhood or in early adolescence.

At this point the question of choice arises: do I choose to accept my inclinations? to act on them? to suppress them? Some people choose celibacy, while others choose relationship.

This leads me to reflect on the question, “Is choice a bad thing?” Aren’t we blessed to be chosen by the one who chooses us for life? The language of choosing and taking to oneself is intimately (!) connected with both salvation history and the life of human relationships; so much so that marriage is held to be an image of God’s relation to God’s Chosen.

Can this apply to same-sex relationships? Let me take another look at the relationship from Scripture that is often held up (and at the same time denied) as being homosexual, to which I alluded above: the story of the love of David and Jonathan. This is clearly a relationship between two men, but some do not see it as sexual in nature. It is true that sexual acts are not clearly recorded (though in a few places suggested) in the text — but this is true in large part of the Scriptural attitude towards descriptions of sex, which are usually veiled in metaphor or euphemism.

But let me start with a strongly negative view of the relationship between David and Jonathan from the text of Scripture itself. Jonathan’s father Saul verbally assails his son, when he says, “You son of a perverse, rebellious woman, do I not know that you have chosen the son of Jesse to your confusion, and the confusion of your mother’s nakedness.” (1 Samuel 20:30) Jonathan’s choice, is of course a choice, but it does not come from perversity. He has no wish to see the kingdom of his father fall to confusion, and to see the swift end of that dynasty. But Jonathan knows that he had little power not to chose the one whom he has chosen; the one to whom he knew his whole being to be bound when he first laid eyes on him, the one whom he loved as his own soul. (1 Samuel 18:1) This covenanted love (1 Samuel 18:3; 20:8,16,41-42; 23:18) was the greatest love he would ever know, the love for which he would eventually risk everything (1 Samuel 20:33) and lose his life; this wonderful love surpassing the love of women. (2 Samuel 1:26)

Was Jonathan wrong so to choose? I don’t think so.

Tobias Stanislas Haller

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Two Thoughts for 11.01.11

Due to travel and the press of other work, blogging has been light. There will follow a series of relatively short posts about things that have been on my mind. Here is the first.

The May 2011 issue of Scientific American (yes, my magazine reading is backlogged, too) had two interesting articles. The first was a short piece on Bayes’ Rule by Sharon Bertsch McGrayne, author of a book on the subject, The Theory That Would Not Die. The rule (or theorem) has a more complicated definition in probability theory, having to do with linking the uncertainty concerning the likelihood of an event prior to collecting evidence with the uncertainty after trial evidence has been collected. As McGrayne puts it in plain English, “the formula is a simple one-liner: Initial Beliefs + Recent Objective Data = A New and Improved Belief.”

It struck me that this is the way all systems of human knowledge should work, but that in the real world objective data often seems not to have much impact on people’s beliefs.

The second and more interesting article, “The Hidden Organ In Our Eyes,” by Ignacio Provencio, dealt with the discovery that certain special neurons in the eye are responsible for sensing light — not for the purpose of vision but in relation to the circadian cycle — the internal clock by which we adjust to day and night. Thus the eye serves two purposes. This reminded me of something I cited in my Reasonable and Holy (7):

The difficulties with ends-based natural law arguments in this regard, which are advanced against birth control as much as against same-sexuality, in particular those that focus narrowly on the mechanics of sexual intercourse, are well summarized by Gerard J. Hughes in The Westminster Dictionary of Christian Ethics.

It is one thing to say that the natural function of the eye is to see. But even bodily organs can and do serve several functions. And if one asks of the body as a whole what its function is, the answer is much less clear. Even less clear is the answer to questions such as “What is the function of a human life?” or “What is the function of sexuality in a human life?” The way one might try to answer these questions seems quite unlike the way one might try to answer questions about the function(s) of the endocrine glands or the heart in the human body. The notion of “function” at this point becomes much more a matter of moral assessment than a scientific inquiry. (“Natural Law,” 413)

I reflected on this issue in parabolic fashion with the short fable, On the Island of Silence. I am fascinated by the extent to which some people insist that anatomy — or their understanding of the nature of anatomy and biology — must be determinative of moral values. Fidelity is a moral value. Gender isn’t. Those who insist that only heterosexual relationships are capable of moral value are in fact insisting that there is a moral value to “male and female,” and ultimately, therefore, to the Y chromosome.

The fact is that we are more than our bodies. What we do with them is important, but just as the eye is not only for seeing, so too the body is not only for reproduction. Morality does not lie in our chromosomes, but in how we treat each other as complete human beings.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

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DIscordance

A thing that bemuses me about Communion without Baptism [CWOB] is that it is often favored by some who make the most fuss about the Baptismal Covenant. It is deeply ironic to me that some who advance the slogan "All the sacraments for all the baptized" don't seem to realize the implication of that slogan for CWOB. One of the reasons I do not favor CWOB is my strong support for the Baptismal Covenant and all it requires, including the promise to remain faithful in "the breaking of the bread." Yes, all the sacraments for all the baptized.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

A Prayer

We have been slumbering while we should have been watching; come, let us rise to go with Jesus, even to the cross and to the grave, and in him to the risen life. Amen.

based on Mark 14:41-42

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

The Place and the Power

My experience at the conference I've been attending in Durban, South Africa, has been incredibly rewarding. To sit and share in scripture, worship, reflection and dialogue with so many wonderful people from many parts of Africa and the US (and New Zealand and Sweden!) was a rich banquet which it will take some time to digest. This was, in part, my job, as I was a member of the "listening team" charged with collecting and distilling some of the wealth. An official report will be available in due coure, but I wanted to share something of the Bible study, to which I was also able to contribute some observations. Even though a "listener" I was instructed to operate under the "no muzzling the threshing ox" rule and was encouraged to participate fully even while taking notes!

The two major Bible studies were on the woman with the ointment in the house at Bethany (Mark 14:3-9) and the stilling of the storm on the lake (Mark 4:3541). What struck me in both stories was the location. The house of Simon the Leper in Bethany is a key place, as is the house of Mary, Martha and Lazarus (if indeed these are two different houses). Jesus expends a significant portion of his ministry in Bethany -- one meaning of which is "House of the afflicted." And it struck me that all of the really important things in Christ's ministry happen not within Jerusalem, but outside it -- at the margins with the poor and the outcast, not just spiritually and economically, but physically. Bethany is a place of lepers and irregular households, yet Jesus is at home there. The great crescendo of saving acts performed by this marginal man (uneducated and of questionable birth) -- the Crucifixion, Burial, Resurrection and Ascension -- all take place in the liminal and marginal world surrounding, but not within, the "Holy City."

And yet the church it seems so often wants to see itself as trhe Temple, the place of security and pomp and circumstance, rather than to be in the place where Jesus is -- on the margins in the home of the afflicted. As one of the presenters at the Conference, Sathi Clarke, put it, it is the bonds of affliction, not of affection, that truly bind up the church in the paschal mystery. Anglicans in particular seem to want to be -- and to be seen to be -- safe and secure, content in the Temple, rather than risking all on the edges.

And this brings me to the second study. We are so accustomed to reading the story of the calming of the storm as if that was what Jesus wanted to do. In fact it is what the disciples wanted done for them. Jesus' goal was to reach the other side. Perhaps Jesus wanted them to make use of the storm and their skill to reach that other shore. I can imagine Jesus saying, implicitly responding to their lack of faith, "I gave you the storm; I gave you myself. Was that not enough for you." Jesus was with them, though asleep, in the midst of that tossing sea and blowing wind, and he taught them a hard lesson by brining a calm which would give no wind to their sails.

Again, the church so often wants to be "safe and secure from all alarms" rather than to make use of the energy available and the skills at hand. Jesus says to us as well, "I give you the storm; I give you myself; what more do you need, you of fear and not faith?" Perhaps in the end, God has given us the gifts we need, the challenging two edged sword of his Word rather than an earthly peace that would diminish or constrain the powerful wind of the Spirit.

Tobias Stanislas Haller

On a journey

or, Where I'll be next week...

In mid-October, the Chicago Consultation and the Ujamaa Centre of the University of KwaZulu-Natal will convene a gathering in South Africa to strengthen mission and advocacy connections among Anglicans who are interested in the theology of human sexuality and justice. We believe that deeper connections with each other will make it easier for us to work together in mission and to communicate productively when challenging Communion-wide issues arise. The co-conveners of the consultation are Professor Gerald West, director of the Ujamaa Centre, and Professor Esther Mombo of St. Paul's University in Limuru, Kenya.
The consultation, which will involve about 55 people and last for three days, will be grounded in the Indaba process, prayer and Bible study and will explore theological perspectives on human sexuality and justice. Participants will include theologians, bishops, church leaders, grassroots advocates for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people and other people willing to engage in intensive conversations across cultural boundaries.
The participants in the consultation will share their experiences with the wider church through stories and video reflections and through the report of a listening team led by the Rev. Janet Trisk, a representative to the Anglican Consultative Council from the Church of Southern Africa.

from the pre-event release

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

The Wheel Goes Round

One aspect of the sexuality debates is the extent to which those opposed to same-sex marriage ground their arguments in circular reasoning. Most of them are aware enough to see how empty it sounds to say, “Same-sex couples cannot marry because marriage is only for men and women.” So their thesis usually takes a more nuanced, but no less circular, form. “Only a man and a woman can marry because only a man and a woman are capable of procreation.” When it is noted that men and women who cannot procreate are still permitted to marry, and that marriages do not end with the end of the ability to procreate, the language shifts to, “Only men and women can marry because only a man and woman are capable of performing a procreative act.” By “procreative act” they mean an act that could be procreative if the couple were procreative.

It is very easy to become caught in the linguistic and logical thicket such thinking is based on, but in the long run it is of the form, “A procreative act is an act which, if the couple were capable of procreation, would be capable of procreation.” This strange thesis entirely begs the question, in part because “acts” aren’t procreative — people are. Procreation is not a matter of form, but of substance and capacity. If the couple aren’t capable of procreation, no act they perform can be “procreative.” In the long run this is just another way of framing the assertion that only men and women can marry.

To get a bit technical, this is the assertion of a counterfactual conditional as if it were an indicative conditional. (The difference is between “X would be if Y were though it isn’t” and “X is if Y is and it is.”) Saying something “is” when it “isn’t” — though “it would be if it were” — is at the heart of this logical fallacy.

One of the exponents of this view declared that it is analogous to angling: even when a fisher fails to catch fish he is still fishing. This is a misleading analogy. The proper analogy, from the traditionalist perspective, is “sex is to procreation as angling is to catching fish” (i.e., sex and angling being the activity and procreation and catching fish the particular and assumed desired result of that activity). Sex without the possibility of procreation is sex, but it is not procreative. It is nonprocreative sex — whether whatever makes it incapable of leading to procreation is artificial (birth control) or natural (temporary or permanent infertility, or the sex of the members of the couple).

The traditionalists simply want to restrict sex to those who formally embody the capacity for procreation, whether they are actually capable of procreation or not. And that is just another way of limiting sex, and marriage, to a man and a woman: the very premise that needs to be proven. And so the wheel spins another round.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

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Thought for 09.29.11

In sorting through a pile of old rubber stamps at the parish office today, it struck me that when we say a child is “marked as Christ’s own” in baptism that it is not unlike marking them with the rubber stamp that reads, “Property of Jesus; Do Not Remove From Church.”

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Scriptural Exhaustion or Inclusion

There are two primary ways to read Scripture. Both are “literal” in that they focus on the text itself, but they differ in how they attribute meaning to the text. The exhaustive view believes that a single correct reading excludes any other and exhausts the possibilities of meaning; the inclusive acknowledges that a given text may be capable of many meanings, including that discerned by the exhaustive school, but remaining open to meanings not yet discerned. The exhaustive view asserts clarity, often assumes perspecuity, and a univocal certainty. The inclusive accepts a degree of ambiguity, recognizes that texts convey meaning, that the meanings can be manifold, and the readings provisional.

The inclusive manner of reading is that of the rabbinic and the Patristic eras, of the Catholic tradition and (ironically) also of liberal protestantism; the exhaustive is represented in several strands of protestant conservatism. The inclusive manner allows the church to hold a number of interpretations, and part with those that science or reason eventually show to be untenable. The exhaustive, in the long run, often finds itself unable to navigate the waters of reality, having run aground, not on the text, but on the inflexibility and failure of their own interpretations to offer a credible word to a skeptical world.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Quick Reviews 09.17.11

My reactions to some things I've seen recently — in condensed form.

The Debt — The BBC’s “MI-5” (aka “Spooks”) with falafel. Slow-starting but builds nicely towards the end. Some fine performances could have done without the mixed efforts at Israeli accents.

Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark — visually stunning (in del Toro fashion) but otherwise toothless allegory about old house with IBS. Kudos to the housekeeper and the handyman who seem to bring some emotion to the situation. Stepmom with cell phone and midlife crisis Dad... not so much.

“Torchwood: Miracle Day” — far too long mix of insightful political morality and "Huh?"-inducing SF non sequitur of the most Torchwooden sort. John Barrowman, I had no idea Max Factor had started a line in polyurethane. And career note to Lauren Ambrose: find a script about something other than death.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Word of the Circus

Word is circulating on the English semaphore and heliograph system that the Archbishop of Canterbury is thinking of taking an early retirement.

This has, quite naturally, brought about the commencement of the delicate ballet of succession, much of which happens offstage, of course. Offstage ballet is not nearly so interesting as offstage brass (á la Mahler or Wagner) — but come to think of it there has been a bit of onstage brass by a few of the bishops thought possible to succeed. There has been some furtive edging of mitres ever slightly so much closer to the invisible fairy ring which will ultimately appear, as if by magic, on the day of the announcement, to circle the Chosen One. Would it not come as a surprise to all if Harry Potter were, after all, to be the youngest Archbishop in recent history!

On a more balletic front, it is also rumored that in an effort to portray the drama of this offstage action, Cirque du Soleil is working up their next extravaganza, titled Cantuar. It will be their usual mix of humorous clowning, stellar acrobatics and above all contortionists in rochets. The show is to open with a spectacular example of dexterity called, "Qui? Moi? Mais non!" in which the bulk of the ensemble represent their eagerness to climb a slender rope while pretending they just happen to be hanging around in its vicinity. The buffo humorists will join in a chorus of "J'n'suis pas digne!" as a bevy of tightly clad androgynes (portraying the Crown Commissioners), huddle to one side in a tight-knit circle. Oh, what a show it will be!

With tongue in cheek,
Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Hard to Forgive

There is no debt ceiling on forgiveness. A sermon for 9/11/11, Proper 19a.

SJF • Proper 19a 2011 • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall give praise to God. So then, each of us will be accountable to God.

It is timely that the Scripture readings appointed for this day should deal with judgment and forgiveness. As you are no doubt keenly aware, this Sunday marks the tenth anniversary of the terrorist attacks on America, the day that will for ever live in infamy by its numeric nickname Nine-Eleven.

It is abundantly clear that much was done on that terrible day that cries out for forgiveness. America was viciously attacked; thousands of innocent people met death in its most terrifying and capricious form, doomed to die by horrible means, suddenly and unprepared. Many were vaporized in an instant, unaware what was happening to them. Others were forced to make that agonized and desperate choice between being burned alive or hurtling to their deaths on the street below. Many more were crushed under the weight of those buildings, suffocated and snuffed out in darkness. None of us who witnessed that horrible day will ever forget it, and the TV news shows will not let us forget even if we wanted to, as they run those video clips again and again, and endlessly analyze.

What makes forgiveness all the harder in this case is that those who carried out these crimes knew what they were doing. They wanted their acts to be as terrorizing as indeed they were — that’s why they are called terrorists: they did not mean only to bring destruction, but to instill fear, horror, and anguish; and this not only in those they directly harmed, but in our society and nation as a whole.

How can we forgive such wrong? How can we forgive such terrible crimes? We know how hard it is to forgive someone even when they say they are sorry — how much harder to forgive those who do not ask for forgiveness, who think that what they did was right and justified, and even think they were doing a religious duty!

If somebody steps on my foot in the subway, and then apologizes, it’s fairly easy for me to forgive, although I may still feel the pain in my foot. If someone steps on my foot by accident and then looks at me like it was my fault, I will not be in such a forgiving mood. But if someone looks me in the eye, and then deliberately stomps on my foot, with a “so there” thrown in — well, what am I to do?

My natural impulse is to feel that only the repentant deserve forgiveness; that forgiveness is something that must be earned and asked for. It is only logical, this calculus of tit-for-tat: only those who acknowledge their faults deserve to be forgiven. This seems fair and square.

Unfortunately, God does not make things so easy for me. God does not say to me, Forgive those who say they are sorry. God does not say to me, Forgive others in proportion to their repentance for the harm they have done to you. God does not give me the option of measuring how much I forgive against how much someone else repents — or doesn’t. I am not told to balance my forgiveness against another’s apology; instead I am told to balance how much I forgive against how much I have been and expect to be forgiven. The wicked slave in Jesus’ parable is punished in the end not for his failure to pay his master what he owed, but for not forgiving the debt that was owed to him.

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This is a hard teaching, no doubt about it. How much easier to keep it to myself; to treat forgiveness as if it were simply earthly coin of the realm: to balance the books of grace as if grace were a commodity that I could control, so much forgiveness doled out for so much apology; no forgiveness given unless asked for, and certainly not given to those who do not ask for it or to my mind deserve it.

What does God think? That forgiveness should be free? Do I want grace to abound when I am the wounded party and no one says they’re sorry? Does that make sense to you? Don’t we want forgiveness to be costly, to be won from us, purchased from us, earned from us by those who have done us wrong? Like the worst of the medieval bishops who sold indulgences and offered the church’s absolution in exchange for gold, dare we fall into the corrupted tit-for-tat that puts a price on grace?

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And of course, there was a price for grace — it’s just that we did not pay it. For all the while we quibble and bargain, bartering forgiveness as if it were ours to dole out, a quiet figure hangs before us on a cross. He is the one who committed no wrong, earned no just punishment. He is the one who suffered so much at the hands of those who meant to do him ill, and even thought it was a religious duty to do so, who they were right and weren’t in the least bit sorry for what they did. As that innocent man was dying, after having been unjustly tried and tortured, as he hung up there to die, they did not look with sorrow or pity upon the one whom they hated. They cursed and mocked him as he died, spitting in his direction, putting out their tongues and treating him as the greatest fool who had ever born. All the weight of the world’s wrong gathered there and pressed down upon the crucified Christ: all of the hatred, all of the sin and ignorance and pride that had been stored up or would yet come to be. The sin of the whole world pressed down upon that dying man as he hung upon the hard wood of the cross.

And what did he do? He begged God to forgive them. He stretched out his arms of love. He did not cry out to his Father, “See what they do, O Lord my God. Punish them as they deserve!” No, he cried out, “Father forgive them, they know not what they do.”

Christ is our example and our Lord. He to whom the greatest wrong was ever done, forgave in full, forgave it all. No wrong, however bad, however painful, done to us can match what was done to Christ, yet he called out to God to forgive in full, without being asked by those who most needed the forgiveness, without the repentance of those who sinned against him.

And he challenges us to do the same: to find the strength to forgive those who sin against us, recalling how, in him, our debts have been forgiven. In order to do so, we will need to fight against our natural human impulse for revenge. We will need to quell our anger and our wrath, to recall that God has said, “Vengeance is mine,” and to echo the words of Joseph in the Old Testament passage this morning, and say, “Are we in the place of God?”

After we have quieted our anger, we will also need to go further, to quiet our need to hear the apologies of those who have done us wrong, and what is worse, who continue to wish to do us wrong. This will not be easy. It is not easy to forgive when you have been badly wronged, seriously injured, terribly assaulted. Do you think Jesus found it easy — dying there on the cross? It won’t be any easier for us to forgive. It is not easy to forgive when you know that the hand stretched out to forgive may receive another bite worse than the first. It is not easy to forgive — but it is the only way to be forgiven. The wise man spoke truly, “We will all stand before the judgment seat of God.”

God challenges us to stretch our little fabric of forgiveness until it covers a multitude of sins. Not seven times, but seventy-seven — which is to say, there is no debt ceiling on forgiveness. God reminds us that he is judge, he is the one before whom every knee will bow, every tongue confess, the one to whom we will all be required to render our account: the account of how much forgiveness we have freely given away.

Let us pray. Eternal Father, help us to find the strength to forgive those who have injured us, to pardon those who have assaulted and wounded us, that when we come to the last day to stand as we must before your judgment seat, we may find the wells of your compassion and forgiveness overflowing for us, through Jesus Christ our Lord.

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A Poem for the Extraordinary Day

From 2008, but especially on this anniversary.

Prophecy in Stone and Mist

This prophetic image was carved in stone at the base of one of the niches in the primary portal of the Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine some time in the late 80s or early 90s. I was always struck by this small carving only a few inches across, with its portrayal of the great deluge washing over the towers of human industry and commerce.

The prophecy in stone rang true. However, little were we to know that the waves would also be of human origin.

Some years before the assault, I snapped this picture of Saint Paul's Chapel and the Towers, disappearing as if by an apotheosis into the heavens. These are the Towers of Memory and of dedication of those lost that day, and since, to the need to dominate and control others.

Stone and mist, both speaking towards what was to come, neither heeded quite for what they said.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Thought on Marriage 09.07.11

The church's role in marriage is essentially decorative. That is what solemnization means — to "dress up" with "solemn" ceremony. The church does not "make" the marriage; that is the work of the couple, whose vowed consent is the crucial element in the matrimonial confection, much as some hold the words of institution to be in the Eucharist. But the church's witness and blessing do not constitute the marriage. Rather they add a level of decorum and ceremonial gravitas. It is a matter of style rather than content, and the Episcopal Church (at least) holds that a couple is just as married in the city hall as in the cathedral.

In all of this the church follows the lead of its Lord, who didn't, as far as we know, ever do more in this regard than "adorn" a wedding feast at Cana of Galilee.

This is what makes the decision to allow clergy to bless same-sex unions or marriages, but not to officiate at the exchange of vows so very odd. The officiant over the vow exchange literally adds nothing to the vows other than the decorous and solemn ceremonial; the blessing, we hope, does add some real substance to the mix, and is surely the properly ecclesiastical share in the event. To allow clergy, in these cases, the exercise of the churchly ministry and bar them from the essentially civil functions of prompter and recorder appears to give more weight to the latter role than it warrants. One might well say that the blessing is as much of a "solemnization" as the assistance given in the exchange of vows and the pronunciation that what everyone has just witnessed has in fact taken place.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG