Servants No-longer but Friends Part 1.

In early February of this year I was invited to preach at St Mark’s Cathedral, Minneapolis. My visit also coincided with a seminar day being given my Diana Butler-Bass a well known writer on contemporary  matters affecting the present day Church and the future of Christianity.

Ms Butler-Basse referred to the Gallup Poles on religious observance. The of the decade from 1999-2009 reveal over this 10 year period from 1999-2009 a marked shift in the way Christians identify themselves in terms of their self description as religious or spiritual.

In 1999 60% of those polled identified themselves as religious but not spiritual.  Whereas only  around 20% of people  identified as spiritual but not religious. A smaller number  under 10% identified as religious and spiritual.

By 2009 only around 10% identified as religious but not spiritual. Around the same proportion as in 1999 identified as spiritual but not religious. The biggest change was the those identifying as spiritual and religious which rose from 10% to 50%.

What is implied by this shift? In John15 Jesus says: I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father.

Prevalent among main-line Christians even as late as 1999  was the self image of being good servants of the Church.  They identified as members of the institution and served it generously through talents, time, and money. Yet, ask them if they felt a personal relationship with God, were they spiritual, they generally answered no. Spirituality was something best left to the clergy.

Looking around the community I serve at Trinity Cathedral I can clearly see the nature of this shift. While older members continue to serve the institution of the Church with dedication to tasks that need to be done, newer members are cautious about becoming what one X’er referred to as the $ sign in the pew.  At Trinity we are currently experiencing a blossoming of growth. On this coming Sunday, the Sunday after the Ascension no less, the Bishop will confirm, or receive, or reaffirm some 62 people into communion with the catholic faith. A good number of these are young people. Yet, well over half are adults, some 40 or so having recently passed through our Episcopal 101 preparation.

Many of these relative newcomers are not like our traditional Episcopal Church people profile. They tend to be younger than the average age of Episcopalians. They are not our traditional good servant material. They are not religious and are wary of becoming religious. They are predominantly spiritual seekers. Some are new to Christianity. Some escaping other traditions that no longer serve them well. All are seeking an encounter with Historic Christianity. A Christianity characterized by a depth of liturgical expression, a faithfulness to the historic diversity of Catholic Christianity exemplified in the Anglican Tradition, and a generous Christianity seeking to bring the deep wells of Christian spirituality into informed dialogue with the confusions and uncertainties of life in 21st century America.

Other more convicted Christians call the Episcopal Church ‘that easy religion’. A more acurate description is that we are a Church that refuses to offer easy answers to complex questions. And so those who are seeking, yet, not wanting to be mollified with easy answers that either fail to justice to the integrity of their search or actually do violence to that search, continue to come.

Back to John15 and Jesus’ reference to servants no-longer but friends. More in my next post.

To use one of Jesus’ favorite preaching techniques, i.e. hyperbole, the art of overstatement, I feel that if all we had was John 15 then we would have enough to form the basis of Christian Community. THis is community based on the powerful images of the vine and its branches and the commandment to love one another.

Our society is blighted by the demise of community centered upon the doctrine and experience of the common good. The image of the vine and its branches offered by Jesus is a powerful reminder that communities do not fare well when they lose contact with  complexity theory notions of interdependence and interconnection. The recent success of  book and now the film The Hunger Games bears directly on this point. The horror of the society of Panem is speaking to us about our own society.

In the central section of John 15, Jesus offers us a succession of images beginning with: as the father as loved me so I love you, abide in my love. The image here is that of the mirror. The love expressed by God for Jesus is mirrored in the expression of Jesus’  love for us.  The Divine interplay of loving and being loved is likewise mirrored among us through God’s invitation announced by Jesus.

The most profound human experience of mirroring is that which takes place between mother and infant. Maybe it is for this reason that the central verses of John 15 are appointed for Mother’s Day, the second Sunday in May.

My first training in psychotherapy was in the school of Object Relations Theory. This most British branch of Psychoanalysis replaces the classical Freudian concept that human beings are driven by their instinct for gratification with a belief that human beings are fundamentally object seeking. Object seeking is a particular psychological way of saying we are driven by a need to express and receive love.

The first object for the infant is the mother. This is an experience for the infant of resting-in, or of being loved. The infant rests-in the experience of the softness of mother’s touch, the sound of her voice, the way she smells. However, principally the infant rests-in the gaze of the mother’s eyes. In mother’s eyes the infant experiences itself in the state of abiding or resting-in in  love.

Abiding in love is a passive experience of just being loved. It is not an active experience of seeking love or loving. Abiding – resting-in being loved must come before the act of loving. Loving only becomes possible when we have first experienced abiding, or resting-in, love. Only then are we formed enough by being loved to express love in loving others. As Jesus is loved so he loves and this then extends into the human community.

The celebration of Mother’s Day needs to be more than a Hallmark sentimentality or a patriotic reference to motherhood and apple pie. Gendered mother’s are the conventional symbol of mothering.  But mothering is not confined to gendered mothers. Mothering is essentially an offering of love through the way we behold one another in love. This applies as much to lovers of any kind as it does to mother and child.

Our lives have been enriched by many experiences of resting-in being loved. I am suggesting that mothering transcends gendered mothers. Mothering is inherent to all human beings and is present in many different kinds of human relationships. What links the different contexts within which mothering occurs is that all mothering is an expression of God’s way of loving.

God is best imaged as the Trinitarian Community of lovers loving and being loved. Jesus’ words haunt us: as the father as loved me so I love you, abide in my love. Mothering is an expression of Divine love. So let’s abide, i.e. rest-in the experience of being loved. This is the gift we not only celebrate on Mother’s Day but which is given and received everyday.

Since the invention of the printing press words have overtaken images as the coinage for understanding our relationship with God. As we move further into the digital age once again words are giving way to images. It is no longer enough for the preacher to offer his or her listeners an exegeses of text based on a study of the meaning of the words. In the digital age as our modes of communication become increasingly image based preachers need to construct mental images from the words of the text. This is how Jesus taught and how spirituality communicated prior to the dominance of text.

John 15 has formed the content for the proclamation of the Gospel over the previous two Sundays. It is image rich and  this blog entry is the first of several entries in which I will be imaging the text of John 15.

On Thursday the 26th of April, my youngest sister Lisa passed from this physical life into the embrace of the love of God. This is my language and what Lisa would have understood a phrase like the love of God to mean is something that I don’t think I know. Always practical, my memories of Lisa are that she didn’t have a lot of use for conventional religious notions of an afterlife. Her energies were firmly focused on the life lived here and now, her children, her family, her job, and her beloved women’s hockey. I remember on a visit home some years ago Lisa turning to me and asking in all seriousness how many sports channels did I watch in England. The fact that I watched none spoke volumes about the difference between us.

Lisa was diagnosed at a relatively young age with breast cancer. The age of first onset seems to be a prime indicator of the likely reoccurrence of the disease. People marvel when I tell them that all three of my sisters have been diagnosed with breast cancer and that there seems not to be a family genetic explanation for this. I have reflected many times on how each of them, Lynette, Lisa, and finally Ali, came to terms with their cancer. Each did so in their own remarkably individual way. The way each has responded speaks to the depth of their character and dare I say the qualities of  their soul.

When we human beings are thrown into a life crisis, the walls which we build to protect ourselves from the storms of life begin to crack. It is only then that the quality of soul emerges. Through the cracks in the walls we are invited to change, to grow and to renew ourselves. In my experience it is soul-quality that connects me to the reality of life being lived-out against a backdrop of something bigger than what I can immediately touch, see, or know. The quality of Lisa’s soul revealed in her a deep commitment to life sustained by her enormous reserves of courage and love.

Stubborn, willful, bloody-minded are terms that come readily to my mind when thinking of Lisa. Yet, these are simply the qualities of her determined life-force that would brook no thought of easy defeat.  Over these last months as Lisa fought to delay the approach of her inevitable death, my mind has turned again and again to the Dylan Thomas poem that opens with:

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Lisa bargained hard and won a space in which to prepare those she loved most for the time of her dying. For her, relationships were what mattered most. For me, the embrace of the love of God is simply a way of saying that in death the truth about what is most important in this life deepens. What is universally true is that relationships, be they good relationships or difficult relationships, are what most matter.  For me, God is not a solitary being. God is a community within which the interplay of relationships bring joy and delight. God is a Trinity – a Divine Community defined by relationships that share themselves with the life of the Creation and become the model for the way we are invited to live our own lives.

I am not sure what it is I should, or even am, feeling at the passing of my little sister. The distances of time, she was only 12 when I left home, and of location, my thirty years living in the UK, in many ways separated us from each other. At the end of her life in this world I remain separated, this time by immigration processes which currently restrict my ability to travel outside of my current home in the US.

Yet, these limitations of time and space cannot seriously inhibit the exercise of love. For the distances of time and the separations of location no longer inhibit Lisa and I. Lisa’s death acts only to strengthen and deepen my sense of  being in relationship with her. Despite my separation from others who mourn Lisa, I nevertheless rededicate myself to life lived motivated by the primacy of relationship. In this way I incorporate into my own life the priorities that Lisa expressed through her own living, loving, and gifting of love and friendship.

Life raises the question for many: can work be a holy task? For work to become a holy task in the sense that St Benedict intends we require purpose in our work. Purpose begs a further question: do we feel called in our lives? In Friend of the Soul: A Benedictine Spirituality of Work Norvene Vest notes that work has the potential to become a holy task when each of us takes to heart a desire to respond to God and a willingness to see life as the place where that response is formed and acted upon. Is it possible we can experience ourselves not as being limited by lack of control but as able to interact with things beyond our control in a manner that enhances our deeper sense of being called into relationship with purpose and value in our lives?

One of the themes for me this Lent is the notion of wilderness (see my earlier blog on) as a place where we come to terms with the space in which our lives are actually lived. I call this space a wilderness not in the sense that it is empty or barren, although at times it certainly can feel like this, but because it is boundaried by an experience of limitation beyond which we have little if any control over things. So much of the fantasy in life is to equate purpose, meaning, safety, fulfillment in life with having  control over life. I am suggesting that its not being in control so much as being able to interact with things that are essentially beyond our control that matters to us. We do this from the space of wilderness where like in the Sonoran Desert that surrounds our life here in Phoenix, life flourishes in astonishing abundance and variety through skillful adaptation to environmental limitation. Its within this space, this wilderness where we experience our vocation- our call to purpose and meaning.

So much of my own drive in life has been to achieve mastery over tasks and events. No matter how successful I become at this I am always afraid that the next turn of events will finally be the other shoe that drops and life will disintegrate around me. The problem here is that my life is all about me. I fill the whole frame that boundaries the picture of my life. There is no room for a necessary sense of being called, because I am the one always doing the calling. In short there is no room for a sense of being called by that greater than myself. Benedict understood that it is God who does the calling. God’s call is not only to the special, those singled out for purpose, but to all human beings. We experience that call in the context of the space where our lives are actually lived. Because this is the space where God  is already waiting for us with an invitation to live life. That invitation awaits only our acceptance of being called. Vest quotes Frederick Beuchner’s description of vocation as where our deep gladness and the world’s hunger meet. I would reframe that to vocation is also the place where our deep gladness and our own hunger meet. We need to experience the dynamic tension between gladness and hunger, gratitude and frustration. In this tension like the life of the desert we adapt skillfully to life’s joys and demands. Principally those demands come to us as the need to learn how to more skillfully interact with those things that are beyond our control.

In 587 BC the residents of Judah including the royal family, the aristocracy, and the priests and scribes of the temple were transported to Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar.

While this amounted to a catastrophic event for the Jewish nation the period of the captivity proved to be a fruitful opportunity. Its important to remember that within every crisis lies an opportunity. With the destruction of the temple and its priestly rituals Judaism faced having to reinvent itself. It’s during this period that the synagogues and the rabbis replaced the temple and its priests as the centre of Jewish religious practice. This movement was part of a complete overhaul of Judaism and for the first time completely purged Judaism of the old Canaanite religion with its Gods and deities. So its not until a relatively late stage that a truly monotheistic practice emerged in conformity with what had hitherto largely been only a monotheistic theology.

During the period of the captivity the rise of the Persians displaced the Babylonians and the new King Darius 1^st allowed the Jews to return home. The first wave of exiles arrived in a ruined Jerusalem in 538BC. The prophecies of Haggai relate to this period and he is speaking probably around 520. There were two successive waves of returnees, in 457 and the prophecies of Ezra relate to this time and in 445 and the prophecies of Nehemiah relate to this period.

Haggai spoke 3 times to the people:

• On 29 August 520 *B.C. It is in Haggai 1:2-11.

•On 17 October 520 *B.C. It is in Haggai 2:3-9.

On 18 December 520 *B.C. It is in Haggai 2:11-23.

Haggai seems concerned with a continued delay in the rebuilding of the Temple and the discouragement of the populace. The foundations had been laid and an altar for sacrifice set up, but not temple building constructed. Instead Zerubbabel, and note who is a this time only the High Commissioner ruling under Persian oversight and the ruling class had turned their attention to their own prosperity and comfort. Haggai’s complain is that they were feathering their own nests and neglecting the needs of Yahweh. As a consequence poverty, unemployment, and chronic inflation kept the economy in a state of zero growth and productivity.

In chapter  7  Yahweh says through Haggai

Reflect carefully how things have gone for you. The abundance you expected proved to be little. When you brought the harvest in my breath spoilt it. And why? Because while my house lies in ruins you are busy with your own, each one of you.

 Foreground  

I awaken each morning to the World Service of the BBC. Recently I have chanced upon two lively discussions. The first explored the genius of the West for innovation that will result in a range of new technologies that will forever change our world. The other concerned a recent book: The Great Reset: How the Post Crash economy Will change the way we live and work by Richard Florida.

Societies experience periods of stress. They generally recover and the status quo ante is restored. However, there are moments when crisis envelops and existing social and economic structures collapse and or evolve. Richard Florida’s concept of reset describes such periods well. The period of the Babylonian Captivity and the return of the Exiles is an example of reset.

In 2008 the international banking system collapsed revealing it to be the house of cards it had become following two decades of repealing regulatory measures enacted after the Great Depression to prevent such things ever happening again. The Great Depression and World War II offer us the most recent example of cultural reset. The current crisis results from the resurgence the values of avarice blinding us to the lessons of our history. By now there is evidence to suggest that this is not a recession from which we will soon recover. This is a reset moment when everything is changing and the future will not look like the past.

Three great challenges face us.

In all countries of the West a much deeper problem underlies our economic woes, this is the collapse in public confidence in all political institutions.

The breakdown of the Post War social contract and an absence of any real vision of the way forward other than to conjure a picture of hastening erosion of the middle classes and increasing social polarization resulting from the growth of gross inequalities.

The erosion of common wellbeing- that my wellbeing depends on that of my neighbor and vice versa. We have increasingly come to accept a narrow view of self-interest as the defining characteristic of human personhood. Self-interest is fundamental to the maintenance of cohesive social contracts. But its a wider view of self interest that states that my self interest is best served in an environment where the capacity for altruism -to encompass concern for another- defines human personhood.

In European countries there is a wide consensus of agreement about a vision for the social contract. There is disagreement over how to sustain the social contract in a way that does not stifle economic growth and entrepreneurship.

By contrast in the US there is profound disagreement about the vision for the social contract. As the battle lines have become increasingly ideological the ground upon which common sense solutions offer themselves is shrinking alarmingly.

With every crisis comes an opportunity. The trick is to be able to see the outlines of the opportunity amidst the chaotic din of the crisis. This is one of the guiding principles that I have used again and again in my ministry with individuals in crisis and I believe history supports my contention that this insight applies also to communities nations and increasingly today to a global world.

Two key factors led to the rise of the West: scarcity, and a penchant for innovation as a response to scarcity. Both the discussion on innovation I referred to and Florida’s book fundamentally identify these two factors as currently leading to a laying of new foundations for resurgence. In contrast to the prevailing pessimism that hangs like a dark cloud over us all there is good reason to see the current crisis as a reset that will forever change the way our society will look and function into the future.

I would like to return to this theme as a series of sermons exploring this claim in greater detail. But for now I can only confine myself to a brief reference to the 3^rd  of the challenges I identified above.

 A recapitulation of the theme

The jubilation of the returning exiles seemed to have been short lived. The struggles to reestablish the nation seems to have resulted in a period of despondency characterized by a brief upsurge of narrow self interest. When human beings feel overwhelmed by the task facing them one reaction is to hunker down and simply look after oneself. This seems to be a good description of the situation that  evokes God to use Haggai as his spokesman. The gist of the prophecy has God saying:

look at the consequences of your actions and wake up to how badly these seem to be serving you. For I have a promise to keep with you. The only thing that stands between you and the fulfillment of my promise for you is your fear-motivated narrow survival-selfishness.

A development of the theme

God has a promise to keep with us. But like the exiles we must return to keeping faith with God. We must put allegiance to God at the centre of our lives. We must become more aware of the siren calls of avarice promising us the illusion that power and pleasure will protect us from our deepest fears.

The crowning glory of our Western Civilization has been the emergence of individualism. Now the cult of autonomous individualism comes in for serious criticism. In a number of sermons over the last year I have railed against it. However, I am aware of the danger of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Because what I and others rail against is a narrow individualism shaped by the enjoyment of an abundance of resources in the Post War period. Autonomous individualism thrives best in the rich soil of America because the US has exercised control over and enjoyed the lions share of global resources for the last 60 years. Narrow self interest is not such a problem for a society characterized by abundance.

I want to contend that individualism is one of the crowning achievements of Western Culture. Individualism emerged through the process we call the Enlightenment during the 17^th Century. For the first time in the history of human civilization the human individual emerges from the collective identity of tribe, race, caste, and family systems. 

What we have forgotten in the regression to a self centered form of individualism is a true individualism shaped by our Christian culture. Individualism shaped and held in check by Christian culture – heir to the message of the Hebrew prophets completed in the Gospel of Jesus Christ –  results in the human individual being freed to unleash their God given energies in the forms of creativity, ingenuity, and entrepreneurship in the service of the common good.

It is to be hoped and prayed for that a consequence of the current process of fundamental cultural reset will be a recapturing of the spirit of individualism committed to the common good. Altruism is really the recognition that my good is best served in serving yours. Narrow individualism, is the product of a false abundance. It now rigidifies as abundance turns to scarcity and fear divides us one from another. Let us reclaim a concept of Individualism shaped by the privileging of community and an over-riding sense of the common good. Is this not the very thing we need once more to unleash in us the energy to make a new world? A world that is our baptismal response to God’s age-old invitation to join him in a covenant. God’s call to covenant is an invitation for us to join God in becoming nothing less than co-creators. This is a state marked by individuals living out the qualities of gratitude, generosity and service in the name of the common good of all.