This book review was published in The Living Church in February 2020.

In 2010, I was called to serve St. Joseph of Arimathea in Hendersonville Tennessee. The church sits at the corner of Country Club Drive and East Main Street. But that stretch of Tennessee 31E has another name in Hendersonville: Johnny Cash Parkway. Cash was a storied resident of the community and arguably his fame has spread — or at least deepened — since his death in 2003. By the time I moved to Hendersonville, his grave, which is six tenths of a mile from the church, had become a pilgrimage site for many people, remarkably for some from Germany and Eastern Europe, as well as others.

I’ve been a fan of Cash since I picked up American II: Unchained in my senior year of high school. Over the years it’s been intriguing to see the staying power of his music. I’ve observed younger people find their way to it, as I did, and then work their way backwards in his catalogue. You never know who’ll say “I love Johnny Cash.”

In Trains, Jesus, and Murder: The Gospel According to Johnny Cash Richard Beck reflects on what makes Cash’s music enduring, but more specifically, how his music embodies and furthers a particular understanding of the gospel. Beck, a professor of psychology at Abilene Christian University who also studies and writes theology, finds Cash’s gospel faithful, attractive, and relevant for people today.

{Read it all}

“I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you…” (1 Cor. 11:23).

In the Name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Maundy Thursday is the entry point to the sacred Triduum of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday, the holy days that draw us toward the celebration of the resurrection on Easter Day. It has two main themes: the institution of the Lord’s Supper, emphasized in the reading from First Corinthians, and the obligation of humility, emphasized in the Gospel of John, where the call to humility is exemplified in the washing of feet as a sign-act illustrating the new commandment that we love one another.

“I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

This commandment becomes a core teaching and central aspect of the identity of the early Christian community, and it is illustrated in the practice of foot-washing, which is attested in many places, though not uniformly observed. And, of course, it is a sign of what is supposed to be universally observed, which is not the washing of feet, but the love that Christians are to have for one another. This love for one another fulfills Christ's new commandment. And in doing so, it draws us deeper into the great commandment itself: to love God and our neighbors.

This teaching has to be passed on, and it is a teaching that can only be passed on through a combination of both teaching and instruction in a historical sense, hence the reading of Scripture and the significance of preaching, but it is also a core aspect of identity that has to be lived out through action. The washing of feet is an illustration. But if all we do is wash feet as a liturgical act, and it does not touch our daily lives, and we do not actually live out the new commandment that Christ gave, then it is not serving its purpose.

“For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you,” Paul writes before recounting the institution of the Lord’s Supper and summarizing its significance (1 Cor. 11:23). This line is, and should be, significant for all Christians, because what are we called to, if not to hand on to others what we have received from the Lord? To share with others the forgiveness that we have experienced in Jesus, to share with others the love that we have known in Christ, to share with others the knowledge of God’s love enfleshed in Jesus.

“For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you…”

We are, all of us, as Christians, called to preach the gospel with words and with actions, to share the good news, to be able to give a reason for the joy that is within us, and to imitate our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ in our manner of life and way of being.

“For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you…”

This sentiment should be especially compelling and significant for the ordained. James reminds us in his letter that not many should seek to be teachers, for they will be judged more strictly (cf. James 3:1). James’s warning reminds us of the gravity of this calling. Those whom God calls to teach are charged with handing on what they have received with particular faithfulness — an exemplification of the way all Christians ought to pass on the love received in Jesus, the salvation found in Christ, and the good news of God’s mighty acts, which we recount this week and on Sunday.

But the ordained have a particular calling. For the deacon, the emphasis is on embodying the new commandment to love through service. This emphasis is then carried into the work and life of a priest, who, in our tradition, is first ordained as a deacon and then as a presbyter. To this life of service—which exemplifies adherence to the new commandment by serving others in a loving and faithful way—is added the distinctive characteristic of the priesthood as elder: the guardianship and stewardship of the tradition. This responsibility is both sacramental, which is why we reserve the administration of the Eucharist to priests and bishops, and instructional, as it is the responsibility of the priest, the presbyter of the community, to form Christians in the faith day-to-day and week-to-week.

This role is once again intensified in the life and work of a bishop, for whom guardianship takes a more central place as part of oversight, and the authority to teach and interpret Scripture within the community, and for its well-being, is a particular task to which the bishop is called.

So again, we should all be able to say, “For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you.” We should all be able to say that and look at our lives as Christians, seeing the ways in which we have handed on to others what we have received from the Lord. This is a communal responsibility, and Maundy Thursday reminds us of just how much we have received from Christ, and gives us the opportunity to be reminded through Scripture readings, through the act of washing of feet, where that is observed, what it means to be a follower of Christ and a servant of our fellow human beings and children of God.

Today, I encourage you to consider the commandment that Christ gave, the new commandment: “that you love one another, just as I have loved you” (John 13:34). Just as Christ has loved us, we should love one another.

Have we handed on to others the love we received in Jesus? Have we offered others the acceptance that we found in Christ? Have we, through our life, example, faith, and daily dealings, handed on all the good we’ve received in Christ?

This is something for us to examine. But I would suggest, brothers and sisters, that if this were not at all the case, none of us would be here. If this were not at all the case, if there had not been people faithfully handing these things on to us, and if we had not handed these things on to others, there would be no community that would gather at a Maundy Thursday service or tomorrow’s Good Friday observance.

If no one had handed on what they received, then there would be no celebration of the Easter service on Sunday. But, not to spoil anything—there will be.

So yes, we are called to be more faithful, more diligent—but we will never do that if we neglect the evidence of Christ’s work that has already borne fruit in our lives. We should give thanks for it. For the people who have handed this faith on to us. Think for a moment: Who has shown you the love of God? Remember them. Give thanks for them. When you receive communion today, or at other times, consider that discerning the body, recognizing the presence of Christ, also means recognizing the other members of Christ’s body, the very people that we come to the table with, and those who’ve made it possible for us to gather round the altar, whether they are physically present or not.

For what we have received from the Lord, we also hand on: in bread and wine, in the foot-washing, in kindness and love offered to fellow Christians, to neighbors, even to enemies. This is what it means to follow Jesus tonight, tomorrow, and always. Amen.

Recently, I was asked to select a reading from the tradition for an Evensong service, and I had the opportunity to share it as part of the liturgy. My Latin has always been fairly elementary, and through lack of use, it has become even more rudimentary. Even so, I find myself returning to it from time to time, if only for the quiet discipline of working slowly through a text.

For this occasion, I selected a portion of Augustine of Hippo’s On Catechizing the Uninstructed (Chapter 4.8). Ever since I first encountered this passage, I have been struck by its central image: Christ, the humble God. It is an image that holds together what we naturally seek to separate. Rather than something abstract or distant, God’s love is embodied, enacted, and offered to us collectively and to each of us individually.

In Christ, that love is enfleshed. He moves into the center of our human world, accompanies us, and in the end bears the full weight of our alienation from God and one another. In that climactic moment, what appears to be defeat is revealed as the very means of our salvation and reconciliation: a pathway opened, here and now, and carried forward into the fullness of God’s future, which is now also our future.

I do not know a more fitting image as we enter Holy Week than this—Christ’s humility and love intertwined.

What follows is my own translation of that passage, offered not as an expert rendering, but as an act of attention and gratitude. It is, perhaps, a small way of listening again to a voice that continues to speak with clarity into the life of the Church.

May the love of God, made known in Christ, be revealed to us all in new and deepening ways this Holy Week.

Translation:

Therefore, if Christ came especially for this: that humanity might know how much God loves them, and that, knowing this, they might be set ablaze in love for the One by whom they were first loved, and might love their neighbor as Christ commands and demonstrates—he who, by loving not one who was near but one far off and wandering, became neighbor himself—then all holy Scripture written beforehand announced the coming of the Lord, and whatever has since been written with divine authority proclaims Christ and urges love. It is clear that the whole Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments: the love of God and the love of neighbor; and not only these, but whatever has been written later for our good likewise proclaims Christ and exhorts love.

For, in the Old Testament, the New is hid; in the New Testament, the Old is revealed. According to that hiddenness, those who understand only in a fleshly way are subject to punishing fear. According to this revelation, the spiritual—those who knocked in humility then, and had even what was hidden opened to them, and those now who do not seek in pride, lest even what is open be closed—understanding spiritually, are set free by the gift of love.

For nothing is more opposed to love than envy, and the root of envy is pride. Therefore, the same Lord Jesus Christ, God and man, is both the sign of God’s love for us and the example of human humility among us, so that our great swelling might be healed by a greater and contrary remedy.

For great is the misery of the proud, but greater still the mercy of the humble God.

Therefore, with this love set before you as your end, to which you refer everything you say, whatever you proclaim, speak it in such a way that the one who hears you may, in hearing, believe; in believing, hope; and in hoping, love.1

A few thoughts regarding some parts of the translation. I nearly used a few compound words to try to get at some sense of the Latin that English doesn’t convey well in one word, or because translation loses the word-play. In the sentence “Si ergo maxime propterea Christus advenit, ut cognosceret homo quantum eum diligat Deus” rather than “loves” I considered using the term “lovingly regards” so that it would be “so that humanity might know how much God lovingly regards them.”

The most obvious question was whether to stick with “man” for the translation of homo. Given the context where I will be reading this, I opted to go for humanity and use a singular they (I know, I know). I considered “person” but thought it brought too much theological baggage related to God (divine persons, etc.) as well as humankind or human being. In the end, I thought humanity preserved some simplicity.

For the phrase “For great is the misery of the proud [man/human], but greater still the mercy of the humble God.” in Latin “Magna est enim miseria, superbus homo: sed major misericordia, humilis Deus” there’s wordplay between misery (miseria) and mercy (misericorda). Misery and mercy in English aren’t etymologically related, as mercy comes from the Anglo-Norman merci, deriving from classical Latin’s fee, wages, or price, and in post-classical Latin, “gift” (which may be why it takes on its current meaning and comes to translate misericordia). Despite that, they have a similar sound in English, and I thought that was better than trying to use some sort of compound words to hammer home a relationship that I think readers/listeners can get to just fine without the explicit wordplay. I considered “seeking-misery” and “loving-mercy” but thought they clouded more than they revealed.

From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we know him no longer in that way. So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us. So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

To view the service, check out Trinity’s YouTube channel.

May the words of our mouths and the meditations of our hearts be always acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our strength and our Redeemer. Amen.

It is football season in the South, and it’s a good year for fans of college football in Tennessee—two top-25 ranked teams, Vanderbilt and Tennessee. Vanderbilt beat LSU yesterday, and some people have already celebrated that this morning. Regardless of what happened between Tennessee and Alabama, Tennessee will probably remain a ranked team.

Even though I played football throughout my childhood, I don’t have a team I root for. I like to watch because I enjoy the strategy. My university didn’t have a football team, but when I went to Sewanee—the University of the South and the School of Theology—it didn’t take long for me to hear a story many of you may know: the story of the 1899 Sewanee Tigers, known as the Iron Men.

Sewanee was one of the founding institutions of the predecessor to the Southeastern Conference, and that 1899 football team was famous for a ten-day journey in which they defeated five teams in six days, all by shutout. They beat Texas, Texas A&M, Tulane, Ole Miss, and LSU—and as the story goes, they rested on the seventh day.

It’s been a long time since Sewanee could say anything like that against teams of that size, but back then, the playing field was more even. One of the players on that team was William Sterling Claiborne, who later became Archdeacon of East Tennessee and was instrumental in overseeing and supporting various mission churches—seventeen of them by 1930—supported by what was then Otey Parish, now St. Mark and St. Paul. Many of those congregations still exist in the Sewanee area. He was very much an exemplar of that late-19th- and early-20th-century movement known as muscular Christianity, which also gave us the YMCA and YWCA.

The team was called the Iron Men because they played both offense and defense. They didn’t substitute players. That’s something rarely seen today—usually only when a team has too many injuries to field a full squad or when they’re playing a stronger opponent and want to give themselves a chance by using their best athletes on both sides of the ball. It’s a gamble: can you do enough before you wear out?

You can probably think of times in your life when, if life were a game of football, you felt like you were playing on both offense and defense, with no subs, and maybe even that the refs were out to get you. Imagine then if the referee were not just inept but actually out to get you—odds stacked against you, weary and worn out. In that kind of situation, what a relief it would be to hear another phrase sometimes used about players on a team: “They were all over the field.”

Someone who’s everywhere at once, doing everything.

The hope for us is that God is all over the field in our lives when we face difficulties. And that, I believe, is the message of the parable Jesus tells today.

The Parable of the Widow and the Judge

Luke sets it up for us: Jesus told his disciples a parable “about the need to pray always and not lose heart.” Yet this parable about prayer contains two striking absences. We never hear that the widow prays, and the only reference to God is an unjust judge who “does not fear God.”

So why does Jesus tell us this story about a poor widow under such strain? She’s speaking for herself in the courts—going to the gate of the city. This indicates she has no male relative to stand for her, no brother, son, or nephew. It’s even possible the person she’s seeking justice against is a male relative. She has no advocate, so she goes to the only place she can—the judge—and she goes again and again.

She goes, and he denies her. She goes again, and he denies her.

We know from the start that this is an unjust judge, because he neither fears God nor respects people. That description alone would have told Jesus’ audience that he was a bad judge. In Scripture, the two essential qualifications for a good judge are precisely those: to fear God and to care for people.

Justice, in the biblical sense, requires attention to particular cases and circumstances. There’s even a term from Greek philosophy for this: epieikeia—reasonableness or fittingness. True justice can’t be achieved by applying laws abstractly; it must take account of real people and real situations.

This judge fails completely. Yet the widow persists. She continues to seek what is rightfully hers until she wears him down. Eventually, he relents—not because he’s just, but because she’s relentless.

As Jesus says, the unjust judge relents—she wears him down. In the end, he’s afraid she might come and “give him a black eye.” That’s the literal reading, and just as in English, it has a double meaning. It could mean he’s literally afraid she’ll strike him, or more likely that she’ll damage his reputation. The one thing he cares about—himself—is now at risk because of her persistence, and that’s what finally moves him.

Where God Is Found

Where is God in all this? And where is prayer?

Prayer is found first in the widow’s persistence—the energy and determination that keep her from losing heart. Prayer empowers us in the face of daunting odds. And prayer is not something we generate on our own. It is something God does in us through the power of the Holy Spirit. God inspires prayer—literally breathes it in us. Prayer sustains and directs us, keeps us from despairing, and enables us to do what needs to be done.

Prayer is also present in the parable through the widow’s actions. St. Bonaventure, the medieval theologian, wrote that to “pray always” means prayer of desire in the heart, prayer of petition on the lips, and prayer of disposition in our work and actions. The widow’s desire for justice is prayer in her heart; her appeal to the judge is prayer on her lips; and her persistence in returning again and again is prayer in her actions.

So prayer is there, and God is there.

Sometimes people read this story and wonder where God is in it, but Jesus himself is the one telling the parable—God in the flesh. He sees the plight of people like this widow. He uses her story as an example of faithfulness and persistence. “Look at this widow’s faithfulness,” he’s saying. “She acts despite the odds. You must pray like this if you are not to lose heart.”

This parable comes in response to the disciples’ question about when the Son of Man will come. Jesus’ answer is clear: if you are going to follow me, be faithful. Trust that God is far better than this unjust judge.

It’s what theologians call an argument from lesser to greater: if even the unjust judge eventually relents, how much more will God, who loves us, give what we need?

God is present in the telling of the parable, in the inspiration of the widow’s persistence, and as the ultimate judge who will set things right. While the unjust judge may not fear God, everyone hearing Jesus’ words would know that God will set things right. The Son of Man will return; the question is not if, but when.

And Jesus’ final question lingers: “When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”

Will there be people like this persistent widow—faithful, enduring, acting for what is right?

Jesus promises that when God acts on behalf of God’s people, it will happen swiftly. It may appear that nothing is happening, and then suddenly, God’s justice breaks in. Some translations say “quickly,” but others render it “swiftly” or “suddenly”—a reminder that God’s action may seem delayed and then come all at once.

There is hope for the future, yes—but justice also comes through the persistence of God’s people: thousands of widows seeking justice, thousands more who witness their persistence and join them, who refuse to let the unjust rest. Their faithfulness becomes the instrument of God’s justice.

Faith That Persists

In the end, God is all over the field—in our actions, in our prayers, in our endurance, and in our hope.

So what does this mean for us today? For Trinity Church?

You are in a process of transition. Many of you will be called to new things, to new ministries, to take on new responsibilities. You’ll be doing unfamiliar tasks or engaging familiar ones with renewed purpose. In all of it, prayer must remain central—in your heart through desire, on your lips through petition, and in your work through faithful action.

When Christ returns and asks, “Will I find faith on the earth?”—I trust and believe he will find it here at Trinity. Today, next week, and in the years to come, you will be a faithful people empowered by God.

When we pursue justice, when we act faithfully and prayerfully, we are never alone—because God is all over our lives, and all over the field.

Amen.

Friends,

As we seek to make sense of a world that seems to be both growing in complexity and increasing in instability, I thought it would be helpful to share with you some articles that are helping me to make sense of what I’m seeing. These will range across several disciplines and sources. I hope you find them useful.

I will always begin with the latest post or posts from The Gospel Plow, which I will include in this digest form in order to keep from flooding your inboxes.

God bless,

Jody

you can read part one of this essay here:

An aside about the Episcopal Diocese of Tennessee

A recent assignment for one of my Doctor of Ministry classes involved writing a brief description of our ministry context. Since I serve the diocese and not a single congregation, the description is a little more involved.

Part of the background I shared was a brief reference to the three “Grand Divisions” of Tennessee (East, Middle, and West) as identified in the Tennessee Constitution. Reflecting on the multilplication of dioceses, first in 1982 with the formation of the Diocese of West Tennessee, and then a few year’s later in 1986 with the formation of the Diocese of East Tennessee, it occured to me it would be interesting to compare the Convocations of the single Diocese of Tennessee with the map of the current diocesan boundaries. Using a geojson file I created to show the shape of the dioceses and location of congregations, I was able to map a semi-transparent layer over this old map of the Diocese. I think the outcome is pretty interesting.

From other publications

A selection of articles from news outlets, opinion journals, magazines etc. that I read regularly.

A troubling reflection from The Atlantic: Canada is Killing itself

”When Canada’s Parliament in 2016 legalized the practice of euthanasia—Medical Assistance in Dying, or MAID, as it’s formally called—it launched an open-ended medical experiment. One day, administering a lethal injection to a patient was against the law; the next, it was as legitimate as a tonsillectomy, but often with less of a wait. MAID now accounts for about one in 20 deaths in Canada—more than Alzheimer’s and diabetes combined—surpassing countries where assisted dying has been legal for far longer.

It is too soon to call euthanasia a lifestyle option in Canada, but from the outset it has proved a case study in momentum. MAID began as a practice limited to gravely ill patients who were already at the end of life. The law was then expanded to include people who were suffering from serious medical conditions but not facing imminent death. In two years, MAID will be made available to those suffering only from mental illness. Parliament has also recommended granting access to minors.”

{Gift Link}

David Zahl offers a good word in Plough, “Against Self Optimization:”

There is a meme that makes the rounds every new school year among parents of elementary-school-aged children. I’m pretty sure it originates from the initial Covid lockdown, but the punchline still lands. A middle-aged man stands in a crowd with hands on hips, his facial expression the epitome of Not Amused. Above the picture someone has produced a message from a teacher. “Just log into Zabelzoot, scroll down to the Zork! App, and have the kids work through the assignments sent through Kracklezam.”

The meme’s staying power lies not so much in its spot-on lampooning of the make-learning-fun website names but in the exasperation of parents at the convoluted processes through which they’re expected to guide kids these days. In theory, “Zabelzoot” or its real-life equivalent is supposed to make communication between teachers and students easier. Rather than print out an assignment and hand it to your teacher, you just click to turn it in. And yet I spend as much time troubleshooting the various homework programs on my sons’ computers, updating the software, and filling out endless two-factor authentications as I do helping them with their homework. It is a crazy-making experience that leaves everyone frustrated, tired, and not remotely in the mood for learning.

{Read it all}

Faith and Leadership: Networking: A feature of thriving communities

Our attempts to relate to other churches are often haphazard. Except for an occasional “pulpit exchange” or the joining of hands for a local good cause, many churches leave it up to the individual members to work out when and how people engage with another community of Christians.

It therefore can be quite surprising to discover that the early church was strategic. As the book of Acts shows in detail, the early Christians believed that it was necessary to create a tightly interlocking web of communities. The earliest missionaries would doubtless have taken all comers, but they focused on establishing communities in major urban centers such as Ephesus, Corinth and Rome or in cities that were geographically well-positioned for travel and trade (for example, Thessalonica, Philippi, Antioch). Establishing house churches in these locations allowed easy communication and movement between the various communities.

Because of the speed and ease of our own communication, we often pass much too quickly by the remarkable fact that the churches in Acts were in regular communication with one another.

{Read it all}

When congregations feel the ground shifting beneath them, the first impulse is often to look backward. We reach for what once worked. But this is often filtered and comes to us as a selective memory rather than a truthful narration of past experiences. Nostalgia—though understandable—can prevent us from facing God’s call to deep change and renewed mission in the present. In this essay, I want to examine the temptations of nostalgia, the difference between technical and adaptive leadership, and how our sacred memory can ground us for transformation.

The Temptations of Nostalgia

When society is in flux and resources are stretched thin, it is easy to slip into nostalgia. Gil Rendle describes nostalgia as three temptations woven together: “living a one-sided story, relying on past diagnoses, and avoiding necessary but difficult questions.”1

I often hear these temptations in parochial ministry. When older members lament the absence of young people, the grief is not abstract. It is usually about particular children or grandchildren not being present in their congregation, or in any church at all. That pain is real. But nostalgia can turn it into paralysis, as if repeating the programs of thirty years ago or imitating another congregation’s methods will somehow resolve the loss.

Technical vs. Adaptive Leadership

Ronald Heifetz has shown that leadership often defaults to the technical: applying “known solutions to known problems.”2 When anxious, people seek relief from leaders who will “save us from adjustment.”3

Adaptive leadership, by contrast, insists that the community itself must change. It means shifting away from one-sided stories and taking up the conflictual and systemic work of rethinking habits and assumptions. This is harder because it requires not only action but transformation of values and attitudes. Yet it is also the only faithful way forward in a changed environment.

Sacred Memory and Our Fear of Losing It

Susan Beaumont names another anxiety at the root of our nostalgia: fear that we are the weak link in the memory chain. “One of our agonies related to the current decline in organized religion,” she writes, “is our fear that we are the generation that may fail to pass the sacred stories forward.”4

Citing Miroslav Volf, she reminds us that memory is a key force in constituting community, to the point that the two are inseparable: “Take the community away and sacred memory disappears; take the sacred memory away and the community disintegrates.”5

The fear of losing the past drives some congregations to cling more tightly to the familiar forms. Yet ironically, without adaptation, the memory and the community are both at risk. What is needed is not abandonment of memory but faithful reinterpretation of it.

From Process to Adaptation

In my own ministry, I have often leaned on processes—structured conversations, discernment frameworks, and conflict mediation. These tools can comfort communities because they provide a clear path. But even the best process cannot remove the need for adaptive change.

The next phase of my work, I believe, is to help congregations and our diocese face the deeper questions of identity and mission: not merely how to resolve conflict, but how to reimagine our life together in a divergent and transitional society. This involves saying “no” to some ministries so that our “yes” to others can be stronger, more committed, and more strategic.

Deep Change and Discontinuity

Rendle distinguishes between incremental change and deep change. Deep change is discontinuous with the past, major in scope, and often irreversible.6 Heifetz adds that adaptive work requires changes in “values, attitudes, or habits of behavior.”7

This is daunting. Yet it is also hopeful, because the Church’s deep change is never completely untethered from its past, from our story. The adaptive work before us can align with the values most essential to our identity as the Body of Christ, even as it asks us to relinquish secondary habits that no longer serve our mission.

Here, the past becomes an ally. Reinterpreted rightly, our memories can anchor us while we take the risks needed to grow into the future God desires for us.

Reinterpreting Memory for the Future

Moving forward may feel disrutive, but rupture is not the goal. While Rendle is right that deep change may be expoerienced as discontinuity, at least with the recent past, David Thomas and John Gabarro, writing about corporate transformation, argue that organizations succeed when they align change with their most fundamental ethos.8 In the Church, this means linking adaptation to the core of our story: the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the power of the Holy Spirit, and the mission to proclaim the gospel to all people.

As Beaumont observes, leaders serve by helping communities retell their stories: shaping the telling of memory in ways that elevate core values while augmenting by introducing new ones as needed.9 Effective retelling helps an organization discern what its next steps should be, not as a rupture with the past, but in continuity with specificly highlighted elements of it, as an evolution.

For our congregations, this means drawing courage not from nostalgia for the 1950s but from the deeper memory of God’s faithfulness across a much broader sweep of time.

Conclusion: Reflections for Faithful Decision-Making

I have come to see my call as offering challenging reflections to our congregations about their context, and informed insights in diocesan discussions of ministry priorities. The work is not easy. Yet in articulating our present realities, we open the way for adaptive work that can yield strategies both new and renewed—rooted in memory, but not bound by nostalgia.

“Although people may balk at your interpretation,” Heifetz reminds us, “having one on the table to discuss, revise, and amend is profoundly useful.”10 This is the vocation of leadership in a liminal and divergent age: to put honest interpretations on the table, grounded in faith, so that God’s people can discern the way forward together.

Notes

The Episcopal Church, like the wider world, faces challenges that can’t be solved by technical fixes on their own. They require what Gil Rendle calls “adaptive work”—changes in our habits, assumptions, and practices that allow us to meet a new reality with faith and courage. In this essay, I explore what adaptive challenges mean for our Church, how cultural shifts shape our leadership, and why we must learn to navigate a time that is divergent and liminal.
The following post has been adapted from an essay for my DMin Leadership class, a PDF of which can be found here.

Adaptive Challenges, Not Problems

The most intractable issues facing the Church in the West, including the Episcopal Church, are adaptive challenges rather than problems. An adaptive challenge does not have a solution; instead, it requires adaptation, or change that allows a person or organization to encounter an altered reality in a new way.

As Gil Rendle states in Quietly Courageous: “If technical work is the application of solutions to problems, then adaptive work is needed when one is faced with a situation that is not a problem, but is instead a changed environment.”1

Both the Church and society exist within a changing environment. Individuals or organizations faced with an adaptive reality must change in response, or they will be unable to meet the needs of the moment. The strategies and behaviors of the past may be maladaptive and unsuited to current realities. While some success may be achieved, fully engaging with the present will be impossible without change and adaptation.

Convergence and Divergence

The peculiarities of the changing context can be considered in many ways. As a culture, we have moved out of a peculiarly convergent time in the post-war period when Americans were largely bonded “into a cohesive national group with a shared national and global agenda.”2

This period of convergence strengthened many societal and governmental institutions. Mainline Protestantism benefited, and like many institutions, denominations developed and strengthened their organizational life during this period. In a convergence culture, the commonalities between people are emphasized.

By contrast, ours is a time of divergence, where individuality is emphasized, and individual experience and values are highly prized. In such a context, “In a convergence culture you lead with your sameness. In a divergent culture you lead with your difference.”3

For the Church, this means leadership cannot simply rely on shared assumptions. We must recognize individual and group uniqueness while also building communities capacious enough to hold difference faithfully.

Transition as a Universal Experience

The increased speed and breadth of cultural change highlight the already present reality that communities and individuals are always in transition. In church life, we often use the phrase “in transition” to describe a clergy change. Yet transition, as William and Susan Bridges remind us, is a universal pattern that applies to society, organizations, and individuals alike: an ending, a neutral zone, and a new beginning.4

Susan Beaumont builds on this in How to Lead When You Don’t Know Where You’re Going, describing the phases of separation, the liminal period, and reorientation. The liminal period, like Bridges’ neutral zone, can be summarized as a time of heightened emotion: anxiety and fear coupled with anticipation. (NB: Congregations with whom I have worked in transition will recognize this language).

The old ways of doing things are passing away, and the new ways have not yet emerged. It can be a period of imagination and excitement as new ideas are explored, but also of disaffection, weariness, and anger. The task of leadership in such a time is to ensure that amid exploration and conflict, there remains an engine of encouragement. By addressing simple problems and celebrating well-chosen projects, leaders can help communities move from generalized anxiety to specific urgency.

Leading in Liminal Time

Moving from the firmer footing of modernity, we have now entered a period of “liquid” time in which, as Rendle observes, even massively complex corporations must redo strategic work within eighteen to twenty-four months.5 Plans that extend beyond two or three years can quickly become detached from reality if they lack feedback mechanisms for adjustment.

This reality challenges church leaders accustomed to long-term planning. In a liminal time, strategy must be held lightly. Flexibility and responsiveness matter more than five-year projections.

For our congregations, this means a shift away from thinking that ministry can be scripted in advance. Instead, faithful leadership in this season emphasizes discernment, responsiveness, and experimentation, all grounded in prayer and mission.

Naming the “What Now?”

The difficulty of leadership in such a fluid season lies in articulating the present realities to clergy and lay leaders. Some facts are clear—for example, the rise of religious disaffiliation, especially among younger generations. But the “why” is elusive. There is no single explanation.

The temptation is to fixate on finding the answer to “why,” when in fact the more faithful move is to name “what” is happening and then ask “what now?” This requires interpretation and courage.

In my ministry, I have seen how essential this is during clergy transitions. Many lay leaders are unaware of the wider landscape of the Church: the shortage of clergy, the missing Generation X cohort, the challenges facing pastoral-sized congregations, and the competition for younger clergy among larger parishes.

To ask “what now?” in this environment is to face limitations honestly without despair. It is to resist nostalgia and instead move toward imagination.

In the next essay, I will explore how the Church can resist the temptation of nostalgia and embrace the change necessary for adaptive leadership, rooted in the faithful memory of God’s people.

Notes

Scripture: Acts 9:36-43; Revelation 7:9-17; John 10:22-30

It is good to be with you all here this morning on Good Shepherd Sunday, to be able to reflect on what it means to call Christ the Good Shepherd. I would submit to you, as we begin this reflection, that it means far more than we often consider. That we call Christ the Good Shepherd—that we call Christ the Lord—these titles are bound up together. In fact, Messiah, Lord, Good Shepherd—they all flow into one another. Each of our readings, in their own way, reflects some aspect or lens through which we can come to understand who Jesus is, and who we are because of who Jesus is.

When we look at Acts, we see a witness to what the disciple is to be and how a disciple is to act. When we look to the Gospel of John, we see what Jesus’s Messiahship entails. And when we look to Revelation, we see Jesus’s identity presented clearly and repeatedly through powerful imagery. In all three texts, we find a testimony to the hope that is ours through faith in Christ.

Years ago—more years than I care to count—I was an undergraduate and heard a lecture by Dr. Michael Budde entitled Jesus on the Job: The Corporate Exploitation of Religion.1 His thesis was an interesting one. He argued that advertising companies and others actually benefit from our "post-Christendom" culture: the general disaffiliation of people from the Church. We are far enough removed from the Church that most people no longer have deep formation in it, yet close enough that religious language and imagery still hold resonance.

And here was the key insight: people are familiar enough with the imagery to find it meaningful, but not formed enough in the faith to recognize blasphemy when they see it. So the culture is ripe for the misapplication of Christian imagery, faith language, and symbolism. This matters because many of us, even within the Church, unknowingly absorb these misuses of faith. We may mistake charisma for authority or equate moralism with the Gospel.

Now, Budde was naming something about our culture, but I think what he was really pointing to is a misuse of faith and of God that has always been present, across times and places. Here’s what I mean: whether we're talking about spiritual leaders, political leaders, family leaders, or institutional authorities, there are always people who will presume for themselves the kind of loyalty, authority, and status that rightly belongs only to God.

So I want to lift up two phrases from our readings today—two that I hope you’ll carry with you. First, from Revelation: "Salvation belongs to our God” (Revelation 7:10). And second, from the Gospel: "No one can take them from my hand” (John 10:28). These two declarations—That God alone is Savior, and Jesus never loses what the Father has given him—give us the foundation for understanding faithful leadership and discipleship.

These declarations guide us as we consider leadership in all its forms—spiritual, political, and familial. In each of these situations, people should not present themselves in such a way that they have somehow presumed the place of God. In other words, they should not be saying something that sounds like, “I am your salvation. I am the one that you should listen to.”

Now, that doesn’t mean there aren’t people with authority. Obviously, Scripture tells us we should show respect to our parents and to those in positions of leadership. But here’s the key: if someone is standing in my position and they say something like, “Trust me; I know what’s best,” and they’re not pointing you to Jesus, they’re aggrandizing themselves. They’re lifting themselves up.

If someone is standing in another place of authority and they’re saying you should give them the sort of obedience that belongs rightly only to God, or if they’re saying that their ideology or their perspective is where you’re going to find salvation—in other words, if anyone in any place is telling you that your salvation depends upon obedience to them rather than faithful obedience to God—they’re misleading you. That’s not the voice of a shepherd, but of someone attempting to take the Shepherd’s place.

We are given the gift of discernment to recognize the difference between good shepherds and false ones. Scripture teaches us this. In the Old Testament, “shepherd” is often royal language—kings were meant to be shepherds of the people. Later, this image extends to prophets and priests. But predominantly, “shepherd” means “king.” What’s fascinating in the New Testament is that this kingly image is redefined. The King is also the Servant. The Shepherd is the one who lays down his life.

Christian leadership—whether in the Church or outside of it—must take the form of service. Those who would lead must love. We are called, in every part of our lives, to identify with and imitate Jesus.

We see this in Acts, where Peter visits the grieving community after the death of Tabitha, a beloved disciple. There’s no indication that they expected him to raise her. They just hoped he would come and comfort them. This was a pastoral call. But Peter, imitating Christ, goes into the room and, in a scene that closely echoes Jesus’s raising of Jairus’s daughter, he tells her to arise. In Acts, we're told that Peter says, "Tabitha, get up” (Acts 9:40)—words that closely echo Jesus’s command in Luke: "Talitha koum” (Luke 8:54) ("Little girl, get up"). The resonance is not accidental. “Tabitha, get up…” Tabitha koum. Do you hear it? Tabitha, Talitha? Luke, the author of both accounts, invites us to hear Peter’s ministry as an echo of Christ’s own—right down to the syllables.

This is what it means to follow Jesus: to imitate him. And through that imitation, wonders can happen—not because of our power, but through God’s. People ought to be able to tell where we are taking our direction—from whom we are receiving our voice and values.

In John’s Gospel, we see another dynamic of Messiahship. Jesus is confronted at Solomon’s Portico and asked plainly, “Are you the Messiah?” And he essentially says, “I’ve already told you—but you cannot believe because you are not of my sheep.” It’s a matter not of clarity, but of recognition. For John, faith is not first about intellectual assent; it’s about following. Faith leads to understanding, not the other way around.

Jesus says, “My sheep hear my voice, and they follow me (John 10:27).” To follow Jesus is to live like him, to walk his path. Think of John 14:6: “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life” (John 14:6). Jesus is not just the truth to be believed; he is the way to be walked. Discipleship is about behavior as well as belief.

When people say the Jews of Jesus’s day were expecting a “political” Messiah, they are partly right—but what they mean is a military leader who would overthrow Rome. Jesus is political, but in a radically different way. He fulfills the vision of Isaiah 11, where the Messiah from Jesse’s line will judge not by what he sees or hears, but with righteousness and equity: "He shall not judge by what his eyes see, or decide by what his ears hear; but with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth (Isaiah 11:3–4)."

The hope of Isaiah—and of the entire prophetic tradition—is that God himself will shepherd his people. God will not abandon us to merely human rulers. The critiques of bad shepherds in the prophets all build toward this climax: God will be the Shepherd. And in Jesus, God is the Shepherd. The Good Shepherd.

The Good Shepherd brings the flock together—a great multitude as we see in Revelation. The shepherds condemned by Scripture are precisely those leaders who seek to bolster their own authority by dividing people and alienating us from one another. Jesus, the Good Shepherd, operates differently, and so should we.

Revelation brings this into sharp relief with its layered imagery: God on the throne. Then the Lamb, the Shepherd, at the center of the throne. One throne. One God. And Jesus—fully God—is the Shepherd who saves. He is priest, sacrifice, and Savior.

And so, the message for us today is this: if our leaders lead with humility, if we ourselves act in ways consistent with the behavior of Jesus, we are on the right path. But when someone demands a kind of obedience or allegiance that places themselves at the center, that divides people while aggrandizing themselves, that should be a red flag.

Salvation belongs to our God (Revelation 7:10). That is both a word of warning and a word of hope. Because salvation belongs to God in Christ, it has been given to you and to me. And as Jesus says: "No one can snatch them out of my hand." No one can take us from him.

Amen.

O God, Creator of heaven and earth: Grant that, as the crucified body of your dear Son was laid in the tomb and rested on this holy Sabbath, so we may await with him the coming of the third day, and rise with him to newness of life; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Propers for Holy Saturday
Job 14:1-14 or Lamentations | Psalm 31:1-4, 15-16 | 1 Peter 4:1-8 | Matthew 27:57-66, or John 19:38-42

One of the gifts of my current position is being able to worship regularly with my family at Christ Church Cathedral. From our usual spot in the nave, I often find my gaze drawn to a stained glass window depicting the prophet Amos—a figure whose message has become increasingly resonant for me in recent years, especially as I’ve reflected on the nature of preaching in a divided society—partly out of the same ruminations that gave rise to The Gospel Plow.

Ever since the first Trump administration, I have been pondering with increasing urgency how one can faithfully preach in a divided country in which people's basic presuppositions about reality and facts are sometimes diametrically opposed, to say nothing of their prudential judgements about how to respond to realities they do agree on. In such a context, is preaching that takes seriously the fact that all of our actions and behavior, individually and collectively, stand under the Judgement of Christ, and that a central role of the preacher is to call attention to those areas where practices run afoul of the gospel, possible without having it dismissed as partisan?

What I’ve recognized, reflecting on that window, is this: Jesus Christ is the plumb line in the midst of a crumbling world—and this impacts how we ought to live, preach, and hope.

In the context of the Book of Amos, the vision of the plumb line occurs after various oracles against the nations. Israel and Judah are named, along with their neighbors, such as Damascus, Gaza, Tyre, Edom, Ammon, and Moab (1:3-2:16). Amos then emphasizes the call to the people to hear and heed God’s words. This call and command, as well as the warnings, are grounded in Israel’s covenant with God and their identity as his beloved people. “You only have I known, of all the families of the earth;” God says, “therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities” (Amos 3:2, NRSV). By the time we reach chapter 7, Amos has been hard at work condemning the people’s sins and failures, including, famously, their lack of care or concern for the poor. By the time we reach chapter seven, Amos has shared warnings with the people and he begins to recount five visions, of which the image of the plumb line is one:

This is what he showed me: the Lord was standing beside a wall built with a plumb line, with a plumb line in his hand. And the Lord said to me, “Amos, what do you see?” And I said, “A plumb line.” Then the Lord said,

“See, I am setting a plumb line
in the midst of my people Israel;
I will never again pass them by;
the high places of Isaac shall be made desolate,
and the sanctuaries of Israel shall be laid waste,
and I will rise against the house of Jeroboam with the sword” (Amos 7:7-9).

Before considering the ways in which the plumb line is a foreshadowing of Christ, there is some potential ambiguity in the text that should be addressed. Many scholars argue that the translation “plumb line” is likely somewhat inaccurate. Instead, it is argued, the word should be lead or tin. On the one hand, is an interpretation that sees God standing on the wall of Jerusalem, which is thought to bring safety, and he tears off a portion of the wall, dropping it to the ground as a sign to the people that they have put their trust in the wrong thing. As commentator Anthony Gelston notes, “The image would be that of [God] standing on a tin wall, tearing off a piece, and throwing it into their midst. The implication is that the metallic wall, which from a distance seems strong, is actually weak. All their pretense is vain; their defense will come down.”1 Other commentators note that if the word is lead, then it may well refer to a plummet and line (plumb line)—and has usually been taken as an image of testing. Here, there’s a key observation, that “plummet and line were also used in the demolition that preceded repairs.”2 While the commentator notes that this means it could be a symbol of destruction rather than testing, I find it interesting that it is also points to the demolition that precedes repairs.

Consider the purpose of a plumb line—it provides an external reference to tell you whether the walls of a building are square, or whether they are leaning to one side or another. Attaching the line to anything on the wall would defeat the purpose: it must be a reference that is independent of that which is measures. And this is, I believe, the way that Christians must faithfully live, and preachers must faithfully preach, in any time, but particularly in fraught and ideologically tumultuous times. We have to redouble our efforts to look toward Jesus, and to judge our actions and our commitments first and foremost by him.

Christ is the plumb line. In Jesus, God became human in order to show humans what true humanity entails. When we veer to the one side, or the other, and away from Jesus, and the way he taught us to be and to live, we necessarily veer away from the plumb line. I am not the only one to make this association. Early Christian scriptural interpreter, Origen, and the great hymn writer Ephrem the Syrian, both make the connection between Jesus and the hardness of lead (adamant Origen calls it). Both articulate the ways in which the forces of wickedness will break themselves upon the firmness of Jesus. Ephrem makes the connection with the plumb line itself explicit, while connecting it also to the imagery of Jesus as the cornerstone:

Jesus would lead his detractors to the point of judging themselves, saying, “What do the vinedressers deserve?” [Mt 21:40]. They decided concerning themselves, saying, “Let him destroy the evil ones with evil” [Mt 21:41]. Then he explained this, saying, “Have you not read that ‘the stone which the builders rejected has become the head of the corner?’” [Ps 118:22 (117:22 LXX); 1 Pet 2:7.]. What stone? That which is known to be lead. For see, he has said, “I am setting a plumb line in the midst of the sons of Israel.” To show that he himself was this stone, he said concerning it, “Whoever knocks against that stone will be broken to pieces, but it will crush and destroy whomever it falls upon” [Lk 20:18]. The leaders of the people were gathered together against him and wanted his downfall because his teaching did not please them. But he said, “It will crush and destroy whomever it falls upon,” because he had resisted idolatry, among other things. For “the stone that struck the image has become a great mountain, and the entire earth has been filled with it” [Dan 2:35].3

In Amos, the plumb line is set in the midst of the people—a visible marker of judgment. On Holy Saturday, Christ becomes that plumb line set in the very midst of death. Where the prophet saw ruin ahead, the Church sees redemption begun, because the one who judges also forgives, and the one who created, restores and rebuilds.

Yesterday was Good Friday, and those who attended services in the Episcopal Church likely participated in the veneration of the Cross. If so, you may have heard the following anthem from the Book of Common Prayer:

We glory in your cross, O Lord,
and praise and glorify your holy resurrection;
for by virtue of your cross
joy has come to the whole world.4

The Christian faith turns on reversal, but every reversal hinges upon one primary act—the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, which takes place in the context of Christ’s solidarity with humanity. We know the promise that the powerful and the powerless change places, the last become first and the first become last. This can happen because God provides the space and the template for this type of reversal and setting right through the incarnation, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

Now we come to Holy Saturday, a day often overlooked in Christian imagination, yet one of profound theological weight. In the silence of this day, when no Eucharist is celebrated and the tomb remains sealed, Hans Urs von Balthasar invites us to contemplate the utter self-abandonment of the Son of God. In Mysterium Paschale, he writes that Christ’s descent into the dead is not merely a moment between crucifixion and resurrection, but the culmination of his obedience—a plunge into the dereliction of sin and death. By descending to the furthest edge of abandonment, to judge and transfigure it, Christ demonstrates his total identification and solidarity with us as finite human beings, “In that same way that, upon earth, he was in solidarity with the living, so, in the tomb, he is in solidarity with the dead.”5 On this day, he is the plumb line dropped to the depths of hell itself, revealing there is no place beyond the reach of redemption.

Rowan Williams in his book Resurrection: Interpreting the Easter Gospel notes how the “The exaltation of the condemned Jesus is presented by the disciples not as threat but as promise and hope. The condemning court, the murderous ‘city’, is indeed judged as resisting the saving will of God; but that does not mean that the will of God ceases to be saving.”6 This is why we can call the Friday when we commemorate the death of Jesus, “Good” and why we can say or sing an anthem in which way claim that “…by virtue of your cross joy has come to the whole world.” The plumb line of Jesus has been held up to the structures of this world and has found them lacking and harmful, but while there is judgment there, it is judgment that leads to redemption, destruction that will lead to renewal.

To my fellow preachers, I say, be ready to follow where scripture and your contemplation of Jesus’ ministry and teaching take you in regard to the messages you deliver. As always, consider your particular congregation: you will know their strengths, their weaknesses, the things at which they excel and the things that they find challenging in the Christian life. Demonstrate your care for them in the midst of your shared work and life, and trust that you will find the words to offer appropriate challenges to them so that they might see the dangers inherent in actions and practices they might otherwise accept without question. If we who proclaim the gospel are to be accused of partisanship, let it be as partisans for Christ who are unafraid to challenge the actions of anyone or any party who happens to be in power when their behavior runs counter to the gospel we proclaim and the Lord we serve. We must be willing to speak directly to issues of right and wrong without playing favorites or accepting excuses.

This is not a new idea. American Baptist and proponent of the Social Gospel Samuel Zane Batten argued in 1903 that “in every Christian Church there ought to be an atmosphere so intense, a sentiment so strong, a passion for righteousness so deep, that the political corruptionist and commercial sharper [i.e. swindler] should be compelled to reform or surrender [their] membership.”7 In the 1960’s Jesuit Gustave Wiegel wrote in the Atlantic that “The idea of salvation includes a way of life on earth, here and now. A way of life produces a visible comportment affecting others, and that must be a concern of the directors of the visible order of the commonwealth.”8 Speaking even more broadly, theologian and Archbishop of Canterbury William Temple, in his book The Hope of a New World states that “To worship is to quicken the conscience by the holiness of God, to feed the mind with the truth of God, to purge the imagination by the beauty of God, to open the heart to the love of God, to devote the will to the purpose of God.”9

It is, in other words, impossible to either worship or preach truthfully and faithfully without coming into conflict with many of the accepted ways of the world. This is a situation that could easily lead us to become judgmental and to replace the way of Jesus with our own way, to counter one person’s idolatry with our own. The only means to combat it is a combination of humility, faithfulness, and community—constantly looking toward Jesus not only on our own, but in solidarity with other Christians. Seeing things distinctively as individuals, and sharing them together as a community, while each centering ourselves on Christ, is one way to avoid going to extremes based on our own inclinations.

On this day, when Jesus’ body lay in the tomb while he proclaimed the message of salvation even to the spirits in prison, i.e. the dead (cf. 1 Peter 4:6 and look up “Harrowing of Hell”), we can be hopeful about the meaning of Christ with us, Christ as the plumb line, the moral measure of God’s people, the cornerstone of the Kingdom, the Judge—and also the strength and hope who empowers us to interrogate our own bias, tear down our own idols, and then speak truthfully to the world around us, saying what must be said in the name of Jesus.

As we sit in the quiet of Holy Saturday, may we allow the plumb line of Christ to drop in the midst of our lives—revealing what leans, what crumbles, and what, by God’s grace, might yet be renewed or rebuilt.

Paul tells Timothy to “proclaim the message; be persistent whether the time is favorable or unfavorable; convince, rebuke, and encourage, with the utmost patience in teaching” (2 Timothy 4:2). When I think of this verse however, it comes to mind in the words of the Authorized/King James version of my youth: “Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine (2 Timothy 4:2, KJV).

In many ways the time of the virus Covid-19 is, without a doubt, “unfavorable.” But for all that it has sent us into varied levels of seclusion and sequestration, and taking into the account the horrible impact on people’s lives, families, and yes, the economy, it is nevertheless a good season for the proclamation of the Good News.

When the Apostle wrote these words about an unfavorable time, I’m not sure he had in view a time when people wouldn’t need to hear the Gospel. Instead, I think it has to do with the potential consequences for the one proclaiming Christ’s resurrection and defeat of Hell, Death, and the Devil. There have certainly been unfavorable times in the history of the Church. The Soviet era. China today under President XI, whose plan for solidifying authority has seemed to include intensified restrictions and persecution of religious groups, especially Christians. The Second World War (Terrence Malick’s latest film, A Hidden Life explores that one).

Our time and place is not unfavorable in such overt ways to the proclamation of the Gospel. There are challenges–some of the questions raised in Malick’s film attest to that in their applicability to our present moment. And yet, as it relates to the Coronavirus, I wonder if we are indeed in a favorable time.

I don’t mean that the virus was a “good” thing. Far from it. What I mean is that this is a “good” time for the proclamation of the Good News. This is not because of the peculiarity of our current situation in which people are lonely, anxious, grief stricken, confused, and sometimes without a clear sense that anyone cares about their struggles. It’s not because of the peculiarity of this time, because precisely what makes this time a good one for the proclamation is that it is even now stripping away a facade that has allowed us to imagine that these sorts of challenges aren’t barely under the surface in the best of times.

In this context the message that you are beloved of God, that God became one of us so that through him we might be with God, is sorely needed. At a time when people might be questioning their worth, reminding them that they are not worthless but priceless in the sight of God–purchased at the unfathomable price of the Son–can provide necessary perspective and fortitude to make it through.

Making it through such a time with its heavy doses of reality is a challenge. Making it through in a way that might allow for thriving takes all our resources: Spiritual, relational, intellectual, physical. One sort of resource that comes to mind for me quite often in stressful times is literature. Scripture, of course, is its own category here. After years of doing the daily office, some scripture has gotten into my bones–particularly portions of the Psalms, which I will read even when I can’t do the entire office. But in addition to scripture, poetry is often an important emotional bulwark for me.

John Donne (1572 – 1631) one of the great metaphysical poets (and, along with George Herbert, one of my favorite poets overall), has come to mind quite a bit for me over these past few weeks. In particular, lines from Donne’s poem “Hymn to God, My God, In my Sickness” have pushed themselves to the forefront of my consciousness several times.

Per fretum febris. Donne inserts this Latin phrase in his poem, and it was among the first to come floating back to mind as I read about the effects of Covid-19. I recall reading it the first time and stumbling over the exact translation with my rusty Latin. “By the straight of a fever?” It took me a few moments, but I got the gist, if not the underlying reference. Donne was writing about a sickness that entailed a dangerous fever. Literary anthologies usually translate the phrase as “through the straights of fever.”

Donne makes evocative use of references to cartography and exploration in his poem and his later reference to Magellan’s straits makes it all the more fitting that he’s calling to mind the death of the explorer Magellan who, while giving his names to straits, himself died before circumnavigating the globe–not reaching his intended destination. I believe Donne wants his readers to understand life–and death–as a journey. Not only in the general, but the particular sense. Sickness and dying are themselves journeys. And I think, unlike some contemporary commenters, Donne would be quick to both affirm the importance of the journey and the destination, as he focuses so closely on his “west,” i.e. both his impending death and his end/telos in union with Christ.

So it is that Magellan who navigated the globe and lent his name to the straits, died before reaching his goal, and now Donne, struck down by fever, navigating his life and what he believes to be his impending death, believes he may die by these straits–but his journey is will not be cut short. He will achieve his promised end. The destination not only matters, but is assured.

I’ve gotten ahead of myself. Per fretum febris. This phrase came to mind as I read descriptions of the symptomatology of the Coronavirus. Out of curiosity, I decided to do some reading about the historical context of Donne’s composition. When had he written “Hymn to God, My God, in My Sickness?” How close to Donne’s own death had it been? I remembered that Donne had died of what we now assume to have been stomach cancer. I also remember reading about his last sermon, “Death’s Duel,” delivered at the beginning of Lent in 1630–but when had he written this moving poem the lines of which were brought to mind by our current societal predicament?

After a little digging I discovered that while some earlier commenters believed the poem to have been written shortly before Donne’s death in 1631, most commenters today believe it was written around 1623 (roughly the same time Donne is supposed to have written “A Hymn to God the Father”). John Donne: The Complete English Poems, in the outline of Donne’s life, says this of the year 1623: “Donne seriously ill.”

The sickness that Donne endured in 1623 is believed to have been either Typhus or relapsing fever–though he believed himself to have the plague (the last round of which hit England in 1666, after being endemic since the late 1300s and striking regularly with periodic peaks). This served as the background for the experience that prompted his famous words in Devotions upon Emergent Occasions: “…never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”

Donne’s words and our current predicament has led me to think long about what it must have been like for our forebears to live in a world that was perceived to be so much more precarious than our own. I say perceived not because I want to deny the advancements in technology, science, and public health that have been made over these few hundred years, but because of the fact that just because we have not recognized the fragility or precariousness of our situation, it does not mean it was not so. And I believe a recognition of that fact is actually necessary–perhaps paradoxically so–to build the sort of certainty we are comforted by.

The first sort of (albeit limited) certainty comes from taking seriously the threats that are simply of a piece with being part of the natural world. This may be especially true when we are under stress, and even more, when we have put our world under, and the creatures with whom we share it, under stress. As the Pope said recently in his Urbi et orbi address:

“We did not stop at your reproach to us, we were not shaken awake by wars or injustice across the world, nor did we listen to the cry of the poor or of our ailing planet. We carried on regardless, thinking we would stay healthy in a world that was sick. Now that we are in a stormy sea, we implore you: “Wake up, Lord!”.

Pope Francis, March 27, 2020

The second sort of certainty testified to by Donne’s poem is likewise in evidence in the Pope’s words, and in his reference to the imploring words of the disciples: “Wake up, Lord!” This cry is one that may seem to come from desperation, but as Pope Francis pointed out, even their cry is a witness to a particular faith. They have faith in Jesus, but they wonder: does he care?

“Let us try to understand. In what does the lack of the disciples’ faith consist, as contrasted with Jesus’ trust? They had not stopped believing in him; in fact, they called on him. But we see how they call on him: “Teacher, do you not care if we perish?” (v. 38). Do you not care: they think that Jesus is not interested in them, does not care about them. One of the things that hurts us and our families most when we hear it said is: “Do you not care about me?” It is a phrase that wounds and unleashes storms in our hearts. It would have shaken Jesus too. Because he, more than anyone, cares about us. Indeed, once they have called on him, he saves his disciples from their discouragement.”

Pope Francis, March 27, 2020

Donne’s Hymn to God, My God, in My Sickness is in a sense Donne’s answer to the question: does God care? This question of whether or not God cares about what happens to humanity is an important one. The Christian response is fundamentally that God does care–we do not believe in a divine and sublimely distracted clockmaker, but in the God who became human in Jesus Christ. Because of this, someone like George MacDonald might warn that doubting God’s goodness (a species of which might be doubting whether or not God cares) could be worse that doubting God’s very existence:

“To deny the existence of God may, paradoxical as the statement will at first seem to some, involve less unbelief than the smallest yielding to doubt of his goodness. I say yielding; for a man may be haunted with doubts, and only grow thereby in faith. Doubts are the messengers of the Living One to rouse the honest. They are the first knock at our door of things that are not yet, but have to be, understood…”

George MacDonald, Sermon on Job, Unspoken Sermons

I take comfort in the fact that, as MacDonald says, there is a difference between having doubts or asking questions and in yielding to such doubts. Certainly, believing in a capricious or monstrous deity is worse than believing in no deity at all–for while the latter may lead in some cases to an insidious or evil nihilism, the former may lead to a nihilism that boasts divine approval.

So it is significant that, when confronted with the possibility of his death, Donne reflects on the way his body has become its own cosmography, a type of map for his physicians to read. He despairs of their finding a means of his cure–rather than the straits of health, he believes that they are simply showing him the reality of his situation and that the straits of his fever will likely mean his death. Imagining what his end might be, he describes a holy room, where–in a beautiful image–he writes, “with thy choir of saints for evermore, I shall be made thy music…”

For Donne, his end is Christ. Jesus is his destination because Jesus is essential to his present. “Shall my west [death] hurt me?” he asks, then answers,

As west and east
In all flat maps (and I am one) are one,
So death doth touch the resurrection.

This unity of apparent opposites gets even more pointed as he invokes the tradition that Christ was crucified on the site of the fall, and imagines what it means to be united with humanity’s natural head (Adam, who fell) and with the head of renewed and redeemed humanity and restored creation, Jesus:

We think that Paradise and Calvary,
Christ's cross, and Adam's tree, stood in one place;
Look, Lord, and find both Adams met in me;
As the first Adam's sweat surrounds my face,
May the last Adam's blood my soul embrace.

Ultimately it is Christ’s union with humanity upon which Donne places his trust. The solidarity of God with us, first in the incarnation and lifted up on the cross is an essential aspect of the way Donne works out the specific uncertainty around what he believes to be his impending death. I believe it is also the core of his ability to live with the uncertainty and fickleness of nature that was so much more in evidence in his day than in ours. “Coronatide” as some on the so-called Weird Anglican Twitter have dubbed it, is a time when we get a glimpse of what normal life was like for our forebears. Frailty was more difficult to deny and uncertainty drew close–but closer still was the Good News of God’s love.

This is why Donne could write/pray with such awareness in Holy Sonnet 14 “Batter my heart, three-personed God…” and why he could close this hymn of his sickness with a strong affirmation of ultimate union with Christ–it was a union already real, set to be revealed:

So, in his purple wrapp'd, receive me, Lord;
By these his thorns, give me his other crown;
And as to others' souls I preach'd thy word,
Be this my own text, my sermon to mine own:
"Therefore that he may raise, the Lord throws down."

While the entire poem is a favorite, perhaps my favorite line in the whole is the final one: “Therefore that he may raise, the Lord throws down.” One could get into a deep theological discussion about the nature of providence and of God’s active vs. God’s permissive will. Here though, I believe the background of this line is a type of the question posed by the Disciples, and highlighted by Pope Francis: “Do you not care?” At some point we all have to come to terms with the fact of our own mortality. Whether that is experienced per fretum febris, in a singular event or as part of some wider calamity. In doing so, we have to ask, if we believe in a loving God, “do you not care that we are perishing?” (Mark 4:38). Donne’s answer, I believe, is summarized in this final line: “Therefore that he may raise, the Lord throws down.”

We do not know why such evils are allowed–and let’s be honest, God’s allowance as all powerful is only finely distinguished from God’s activity, therefore we may feel that the natural trials we face are in some way God throwing us down. But Donne’s answer, if I can call that, reminds me of Jesus’ answer to the disciples when they ask why the man had been born blind. “Who sinned?” they asked, “this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus’ response is revealing: “Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him” (John 9:4).

Donne’s answer, and its reflection on our current situation may be summarized this way: we do not know why evils befall us, whether exceptional, as with this virus (at least in our own day) or more common–death itself. But we do know that God loves us (Jesus is exhibit alpha through omega of that). And because of Christ, we know that God is with us even in the most dire and challenging circumstances. And because God–specifically, because Jesus–has been with us, we know that Jesus will not abandon us. We know that we have been made one with him and that his crown of thorns, adorning his brow as he united himself with us in death, becomes a crown of glory as we are united to him in resurrected life. Why does God allow evil to befall us despite the ability to prevent it? Because we do not yield to the doubting of God’s goodness, we must believe something good for us is ultimately purposed, turning even the bad to those good ends.

“Therefore that he may raise, the Lord throws down.” The tragedy, the falls we endure, can in the end, only be redeemed if there is an even greater lifting up awaiting us. And if we are not left alone to endure in the present moment.

We are in a season where the saccharine claims of a false and comfortable piety will be revealed for the weightless fantasies they are. Where the ultimate nihilism of a consumeristic materialism will be unmasked as mute and powerless idols. So this is indeed a season when the proclamation of the Good News is needed. The Good News of God in Christ, of Christ’s love for us, of his death, resurrection, and ascension–and ultimately his coming again. A gospel message that can lead us all to echo the words of Donne, “Look, Lord, and find both Adams met in me…”

Look on your people, Lord, who know you love us because you came to be with us, and find not only our failures and hatreds, but our striving after goodness and our love for each other. Look on us and find your Son, Jesus, working in our hearts.

Some of you may know that I started a Doctor of Ministry Program at Duke Divinity School in August. I’ve enjoyed the program a great deal, but the reading and writing required for it, along with my regular work and family life, have kept me quite busy.

One of my courses is The Old Testament and Christian Leadership, co-taught by Doctors Ellen Davis and Sarah Musser. As with all of our classes, we write reading journals, and this is adapted from one of mine. I plan to share a number of these as time goes on, because much of my energy and time for writing will be going into these—so I might as well share them.

Some recent readings included the book of Leviticus, which is often eschewed by Christians. The reasons for this are complicated, but I think that Dr. Davis’ point about Christian ambivalence for Leviticus being entangled with Christian anti-Judaism is accurate and worth unpacking. It is also the case that Leviticus is an intriguing book, and that our failure to consider it impoverishes our faith and knowledge.

Two interrelated themes stood out to me as we reflected on Leviticus with the select commentators: limits and humility. Appropriate limits can foster right action, ethical behavior, and kindness; all facets of the holiness which Leviticus is concerned with. Each of these ultimately depend on humility (as does the fullness of our humanity).

The theme of limits is part of the character of Leviticus as practical and concerned with what I would describe as hereness. That is, Leviticus has as a central concern that we would be appropriately present to God, one another, ourselves, and creation: “[Leviticus] stands at the heart of Torah as a hedge against a faith abstracted from physical, material, social, and economic practices.”1 Any faith that is not abstract, but rooted in the reality of life and of being human, must necessarily deal in some way with limits. While we often focus on the peculiar gifts of humanity as the qualities that make us who we are, the things we cannot do, or do on our own, are at least as significant.

One example from the selected readings was the understanding that scripture seemingly presents the ideal of vegetarianism as a standard or measure for human interaction with other creatures. This is a significant limit, one that was amended, scripture tells us, after the flood. But even in concession, restricting the consumption of meat to herbivores keeps humanity closer to the central role of the earth and its produce, one step less entangled in the logic of predation than if we consume animals that prey on others.2

The sacrificial system highlighted human limitation by emphasizing life's dependence upon God and set a practical limit on meat consumption because of the necessity of bringing all animals to be slaughtered to the temple (Davis).

Overall, the practices of Leviticus reveal that "the central concern is maintaining the life-giving relationship between YHWH and Israel, and repairing it when that relationship inevitably falters and threatens to collapse."3 In this context, sacrifice is seen as the appropriate role of a priestly kingdom, in maintaining right relationship between themselves, the land, and God. More broadly, and applicable to the Church, is the sense in which preserving right relationship on behalf of all creation with God is a responsibility of the people of God that continues as we offer our sacrifices of praise and thanksgiving, "giving voice to every creature under heaven,"4 fulfilling the role of Homo laudans, the praising human.5

Humility emerged as a theme for me primarily in the observation that Christian perspectives of Leviticus have often shaped Christian anti-Judaism, and the insight Dr. Davis wrote of receiving from discussing Leviticus with a group of Sudanese people. Embracing humility is necessary to recognize that we need, in fundamental ways, to learn and re-learn how to read scripture, whether through insights from our Jewish neighbors, or fellow Christians in other parts of the world. It is also imperative that we learn to embrace humility, because our recognition of limits may be precisely the thing that keeps us acting humanely to one another.

1     O Lord, you have formed all that is;
       With your gracious and generous hand, *
           You shaped the land and all that depends upon it.

2     More ancient than the oldest mountains,
       More vibrant than the newest star; *
           Your creation recounts your story
           As the earth’s forever-maker.(1)

3      You laughed, and the mountains rose up like ripples.
           Because of your timeless mirth,*
           the streams found their courses,
               And rivulets a path.

4      As the fish leap at mosquitos above the waters,
        And the bear-cub bats a branch, *
           You delight in the stuff of creation;
           Its expanse and variety.

5      You teach the joy found in purpose,
           The delight of fellowship,
           With people and with all creation; *
               Matins with Wood Thrush and Warbler,
               Summer Evensong and night-talks to the sound of chirping frogs.(2)

6       I am among your creatures, Lord.
         When I am lost to myself, *
            You know exactly where I am found.
            You are never far,
               Though my distance is uncountable.(3)

7        Teach me to take account of your goodness
          Like the birds greet the morning *
          Remind me to take your offered blessing
                Like a cat jumps on a lizard’s tail,
                a puppy on the legs of a child.(4)

Notes

1. While this Psalm is not structured via an alphabet, in keeping with Dr. Davis’ sermon “The Alphabet of Adoration,” I was attempting to follow a sort of mental progression from the general (all things) to the more specific, the place where I started my life, the mountains (I was born and raised in Asheville, NC). I had memories of the Appalachians (I’m told, among the oldest mountains in the world) in my mind as I wrote, and I added verses as memories and images unfolded.

2. The second half of this verse has a double meaning for me–memories of praying the daily office on my porch, or other porches, and listening to the dawn chorus, or alternately, the crickets and frogs in the evening. On the other hand, the sounds of the woods, pond, or lake strike me as being like Morning or Evening prayer. This seems to me to be a reminder of something that Howard Thurman talks about, when he says that the idea that all of our lives are lived under the scrutiny of God is not necessarily a religious idea, that “if we examine our lives in detail, we will discover at the level of the personal history of the individual this fundamental idea has meaning and significance” Thurman, Thou Hast Searched Me, available from thurman.pitts.emory.edu.

3. Psalm 139 is a favorite of mine. I have read it in the midst of numerous pastoral situations. While I had not yet read all of today’s assigned readings when I wrote the psalm, I know 139 was in my mind–at least thematically–as I wrote these verses. “Where can I go then from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence?”

4. Murrell, Shannon, and Adamo indicate that the Psalms were not written in a systematic way and that they “arose impromptu from a variety of individuals’ situations in life…as they lived, encountered, and negotiated both life’s traumas and life’s pleasantries. This psalm fits that categorization, in that I did not set out to write a particular kind of psalm, but instead let my mind flow prayerfully as I reflected on what came most immediately to mind to give God praise for.

Bibliography

Murrell, Nathaniel Samuel, David T. Shannon, and David T. Adamo. “PSALMS.” In The Africana Bible: Reading Israel’s Scriptures from Africa and the African Diaspora, edited by Nathaniel Samuel Murrell, Hugh R. Page, Randall C. Bailey, Valerie Bridgeman, Stacy Davis, Cheryl Kirk-Duggan, Madipoane Masenya (ngwan’a Mphahlele), and Rodney S. Sadler, 220–36. 1517 Media, 2010. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv19cwbj9.43.

“Alphabet of Adoration”, Sunday Morning Worship Service - 8/6/23 - Dr. Ellen Davis, accessed October 19, 2024,

The Proper Liturgies for Special Days is a section of the Book of Common Prayer that receives too little attention in my opinion. This is true not only in the sense that people may not actually experience all of the liturgies (for Ash Wednesday, Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and the Easter Vigil), but also because we don’t reflect upon the aspects of our theology that they highlight.

Take Holy Saturday for example, perhaps the simplest liturgy in the Book of Common Prayer. There is no celebration of the Eucharist, to commemorate Christ’s body being laid in the tomb. There is provision for the use of a Collect of the Day, readings, and potentially a homily, an anthem, and a closing with the Lord’s Prayer.

It’s a deceptively simple liturgy, however, because underlying it is a wealth of reflection on the nature of Jesus’ death. Consider the one page layout below:

Holy Saturday

There is no celebration of the Eucharist on this day. 

When there is a Liturgy of the Word, the Celebrant begins with
the Collect of the Day 

O God, Creator of heaven and earth: Grant that, as the
crucified body of your dear Son was laid in the tomb and
rested on this holy Sabbath, so we may await with him the
coming of the third day, and rise with him to newness of
life; who now lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever. Amen. 

Old Testament     Job 14:1-14, or Lamentations 3:1-9,19-24
Psalm      31:1-4,15-16
Epistle    1 Peter 4:1-8
Gospel    Matthew 27:57-66, or John 19:38-42 

After the Gospel (and homily), in place of the Prayers of the People, the
Anthem “In the midst of life” (page 484 or 492) is sung or said.

The service then concludes with the Lord’s Prayer and the Grace. 

I would like to focus on the epistle lesson assigned for the day, 1 Peter 4:1-8, which says:

Since therefore Christ suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves also with the same intention (for whoever has suffered in the flesh has finished with sin), so as to live for the rest of your earthly life no longer by human desires but by the will of God. You have already spent enough time in doing what the Gentiles like to do, living in licentiousness, passions, drunkenness, revels, carousing, and lawless idolatry. They are surprised that you no longer join them in the same excesses of dissipation, and so they blaspheme. But they will have to give an account to him who stands ready to judge the living and the dead. For this is the reason the gospel was proclaimed even to the dead, so that, though they had been judged in the flesh as everyone is judged, they might live in the spirit as God does.

The end of all things is near; therefore be serious and discipline yourselves for the sake of your prayers. Above all, maintain constant love for one another, for love covers a multitude of sins (1 Peter 4:1-8)

Specifically, I want to highlight a tradition of interpretation that attached to verse six, “For this is the reason the gospel was proclaimed even to the dead, so that, though they had been judged in the flesh as everyone is judged, they might live in the spirit as God does.”

Before getting into a little of the history of interpretation that attaches to this verse, I want to suggest that there is a link between this and the words Jesus says to Peter after his confession of faith, as recorded in Matthew’s Gospel:

[Jesus] said to them, ‘But who do you say that I am?’ Simon Peter answered, ‘You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.’ And Jesus answered him, ‘Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven’ (Matthew 16:15-19).

What does it mean to say that the Gates of Hades (earlier translations used the term Hell) will not prevail against the Church?

The first thing to consider what is intended by this verse. The old translation of “hell” while not completely inaccurate could sow confusion. What is intended here is the abode of the dead, what in Hebrew was called “sheol” and in Greek, Hades. Obviously there were different nuances to the understanding of the afterlife between the Jewish people and the Greeks. Indeed, there were differences among Jewish people of the first century, just as there are some disagreements between Christians today.

But it would be most helpful to realize that this place of the dead was seen as the place where all the dead went, good or bad. There was some sense that there might be punishment awaiting the wicked, something depicted in Jesus’ story of Lazarus and the Rich man, where the rich man, traditionally called Dives, is in a place of torment where he can see Lazarus, who suffered in life, being comforted in “Abraham’s bosom,” from which Dives was separated by a great chasm. It is this idea of there being a place of torment that makes the translation of Hell not completely inaccurate, but incomplete and misleading—what is being spoken of here is not Hell solely as place of torment—eternal or otherwise—but quite simply the place where all the dead go.

It is also important to note that in many modern translations of the Bible, including the New Revised Standard Version above, the word translated “hell” by older versions translating Jesus’ promise that the gates of hell shall not prevail against the Church, is likewise translated Hades.

This is a case where the diversity of translations can give us some stepping stones to interpretation. For example, the Revised Standard Version translates the phrase as “you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the powers of death shall not prevail against it” (Matt. 16:18, RSV).

So what is happening here? Often, when there are multiple overlapping methods of translating something into English, it means there are varied or intricate meanings that are in play. In other words, it may be that one needs to consider all of these different possibilities to get at the heart of the matter, and the inspiration of the traditions of the Church that arise, sometimes very early on.

What I would propose to you is that Holy Saturday is the day when we commemorate a distinctive aspect of Christ’s defeat of the powers of Sin, Hell, Death, and the Devil. We can only commemorate it in such a way because we are commemorating it as an anniversary of an event in light of what comes after, namely the Resurrection. Try as we might in some of our morose observances, Christians can never fully get away from the light and the power of Easter, and thank God for it.

A key element of Christ’s defeat of the ancient powers arrayed against humanity and human flourishing, is the doctrine known as the Harrowing of Hell. This is a doctrine explicitly taught in Roman Catholic, Orthodox, and Lutheran Traditions, and it is a doctrine widely held among Anglicans. The distinction between Anglicans and the other traditions is that Anglicans, consistent with our conviction that no one be compelled to believe something which cannot be proven from Holy Scripture, do not teach it as a necessary conviction, but instead remain open to other interpretations.

The divergence on this question arises from what exactly is intended b the creedal phrase “he descended to the dead” or “he descended into hell.” Traditionally, the church interpreted Peter’s tantalizing comment about the gospel being proclaimed to the spirits in prison (1 Peter 4:6) as describing the work that Christ was doing in a spiritual sense while his body was in the tomb on Holy Saturday. The image above from Fra Angelico depicts the outworking of this idea, where you see Christ having kicked down the door to the Hell & Hades, and you see demons cowering in fear as Christ grabs the spirits of the departed and leads them away—breaking the power of Sin (by dying on the cross and restoring us to right relationship with God), Hell (by releasing its captives, consigned to their prior lot by sin), death (by not being limited or contained by it, and ultimately rising from death to new life), and the Devil (who awaits his ultimate defeat, but in the meantime exists no longer as the lord of this world, but as a stateless and powerless monarch, now that the Son of David has taken his rightful place on the throne).

In this vision of the Harrowing, Christ descended to the (abode of the) dead and preached the Good News of salvation to them.

The alternative vision of what this passage means is that the Spirit of Christ, as the Word of God, was active in earlier times through the preaching of the prophets, for example, and that those who heard experienced the same freedom as those who lived after the days of Jesus. This was the preferred understanding of John Calvin and his reformed followers.

Given that the Church of England was a Reformed Catholic Church with strong influences from, for example, the Lutherans, as well, it shouldn’t be a surprise that there was some disagreement about this particular doctrine. In Thomas Cranmer’s original 42 Articles of Religion (1553), the doctrine of the Harrowing of Hell was spelled out in Article 3:

¶ Of the goyng doune of Christe into Helle.

[ 3] AS Christ died, and was buried for vs: so al∣so it is to be beleued, that he went downe in to hell. For the bodie laie in the Sepulchre, vntill the resurrection: but his Ghoste departing from him, was with the Ghostes that were in prison, or in Helle, and didde preache to thesame, as the place of. S. Peter dooeth testifie.

When the Articles were revised under Elizabeth into the 39 Articles, Article 3 was simplified to allow a wider degree of latitude in interpretation:

3. Of the going down of Christ into Hell.

As Christ died for us, and was buried, so also is it to be believed, that he went down into Hell.

All of this, is interesting (at least it is to me) but it ultimately amounts to discussions about the means of something that everyone agrees occurred: Christ’s defeat of Sin, Hell, Death, and the Devil. And on Holy Saturday we commemorate the fact that Jesus fought and won a battle for us that we could not fight and win ourselves. And whether one prefers to use the language of Hell or Hades, or the Powers of Death—they are all defeated in Christ, and his promise to the Church remains true today: all of these forces are on the defensive against God’s Church, and their gates will not stand, and will not protect them. Amen.

As the spiritual says, “The Lord will fight my battles for me, and he has given the victory.”

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Quotes, Books & Resources Referenced

The story from E. Stanley Jones was recounted in Demaray, Donald E.., Johnson, Reginald. Spiritual Formation for Christian Leaders. United Kingdom: Abingdon Press, 2007.

Letter of St. Catherine of Sienna

Jesus "has climbed into the professorial chair of the cross, and teaches us doctrine, having written it on his body and made of himself a book, with initial letters so large that there is no man who is so illiterate or of little sight that he is not able to read it perfectly and easily. Read, then, read, our soul; in order to read more carefully, let the feet of our affection climb up to the affection of Christ crucified. Nothing else will allow you to read him so well."1

From the St. Augustine’s Prayer Book:

Devotions on the Passion

The cross is the abyss of wonders, the center of desires, the school of virtues, the house of wisdom, the throne of love, the theater of joys, and the place of sorrows. It is the root of happiness and the gate of heaven. There we may see a man loving all the world and a God dying for humanity...there we may see the most distant things in eternity united... It is the well of life beneath which we may see the face of heaven above and the only mirror wherein all things appear in their proper colors: that is, sprinkled in the blood of our Lord and Savior.

—Thomas Traherene, Centuries2

Crucifying3
By John Donne

By miracles exceeding power of man,
Hee faith in some, envie in some begat,
For, what weake spirits admire, ambitious, hate;
In both affections many to him ran,
But Oh! the worst are most, they will and can,
Alas, and do, unto the immaculate,
Whose creature Fate is, now prescribe a Fate,
Measuring selfe-lifes infinity to'a span,
Nay to an inch. Loe, where condemned hee
Beares his owne crosse, with paine, yet by and by
When it beares him, he must beare more and die:
Now thou art lifted up, draw mee to thee,
And at thy death giving such liberall dole,
Moyst, with one drop of thy blood, my dry soul.

Digest

In his letter to the Romans, Paul addresses the importance of preaching to the Christian community when he writes:

But how are they to call on one in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in one of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone to proclaim him? And how are they to proclaim him unless they are sent? As it is written, ‘How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!’ But not all have obeyed the good news; for Isaiah says, ‘Lord, who has believed our message?’ So faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes through the word of Christ (Romans 10:14-17)

Interpreting and expounding on the word of God is an essential task of the Priest/Presbyter in the Church. I firmly believe that one of the primary characteristics of priests as elders is to serve as a living conduit within the community to the traditions that define it and shape its character.

So then the arc of responsibility in proclaiming the gospel, runs from an ability to present the truth of Christ to those who have never heard, and to those who have heard but need to be motivated, inspired, or comforted.

And while Episcopalians aren’t often identified with preaching these days, we do have a tradition of emphasizing its importance, a tradition I hope to tap into when I work with clergy in our Diocese. This year, as I work with our Ministry, Leadership, and Mission group (a monthly gathering of clergy new to the diocese—and occasionally other leaders in the diocese, lay or religious) I’ve revamped the section on preaching.

I start our Ministry, Leadership, and Mission year by asking people to listen to one of my favorite sermons, “When the roll is called down here,” by the late Fred Craddock. I ask folks to listen to it because it is a great example of two things I think are essential for clergy: the significance of preaching, and the fact that preaching well in a community requires a love for the people, eccentricities, warts and all.

The section on preaching is titled “Preaching: Pastoral, Prophetic, and Mission Oriented.” before we begin, I ask everyone to read the following:

• “The Life of Study” from Preaching by Fred Craddock

As the gathering is discussion oriented, I ask the attendees to “Pick one of the following to read and bring an essay, article or book to share that has inspired you in your preaching:”

I have handouts of the chapters, but I can’t share them online—and encourage folks to buy the books from which they come.

• “The Preacher as Reconciler” from The Preaching Event by John Claypool

• John Donne’s Strategies for Discreet Preaching

I can think of no greater tool for improving one’s preaching than listening to other preachers. It’s a pity then, that so many clergy rarely hear anyone other than themselves preach!

I wanted to gather a selection of different preaching styles and voices, as well as include some examples from special services, such as weddings or funerals. I ask participants to listen to one of more of the following. The goal is to help people identify that there are as many different potential styles of preaching as there are preachers—and to help them realize that they can take inspiration from others in finding their voices. A good preacher won’t imitate, but I think our styles eventually evolve to incorporate elements of what we’ve experienced elsewhere.

Below are the sermons I’ve chosen for this year’s session:

“Parables of Jesus, Part 2: Salvation, What is God Like?” by Howard Thurman

“By Any Means Necessary” by Otis Moss III 

“Alone in the Dark” by Fleming Rutledge

“Jesus Saves” by Dr. Fred Craddock

“While it was still dark” from the funeral of Rachel Held Evans by Nadia Bolz-Webber

“Love is the Way” from the wedding of Prince Harry & Meghan Markle, by Presiding Bishop Michael Curry

Finally, as a representative sermon from a contemporary Anglican, I ask folks to read the sermon “Hearts of Flesh” from A Ray of Darkness by Rowan Williams.

What sermons or preachers have inspired you over the years? Feel free to email me.

“Within ten years, Henry had stopped using the n-word…” So said Anthony Ray Hinton in an interview I stumbled upon last week. My older son and I where going on a quick errand, and I happened to have left he radio on in the truck, so when we got in, NPR started to play. Specifically, the show No Small Endeavor. Hosted by Lee C. Camp, theology professor at Lipscomb University, No Small Endeavor is a podcast and show that I’d recently become aware of and come to enjoy, so I recognized Camp’s voice. I didn’t recognize the voice of his interviewee, but I was gripped by what I was hearing. I ended up sitting in the parking lot of the store we were going to so that I could listen to what turned out to be the end of the show. I joined in at approximately the starting point marked below in the unabridged interview with Hinton.

As I listened to the unfolding story Hinton was telling regarding his slow-growing friendship with Henry, I was struck by the grace and possibility of friendship extended by him, a black man, to an initially unrepentant racist. And yet, it was precisely the patience and openness with which Hinton approached Henry Hays, a Ku Klux Klan member on Alabama’s death row for the murder of a black man, that allowed him the space he needed to change. By the time Hinton recounted Henry’s last words, it was impossible for my eyes to remain dry—for multiple reasons: Hinton’s magnanimity toward Hays, the fact of Hays’ transformation. The fact that Hinton bestowed the word “friend” on Hays. The fact that the state was executing Henry Hays in what seemed a counter-example to the possibility of redemption. The sense that redemption had taken place in what to appearances might seem such an unlikely context—but which might bespeak a necessary uniqueness that allowed redemption to occur.

Ultimately, what moved me most was the patience that Hinton showed. I think that was the defining characteristic of the charity he showed Henry. He gave him the time and the space to change, precisely because he wasn’t in a hurry. Hinton was willing to wait to see what time, grace, and the Holy Spirit might do in Hays’ life. This strikes me as an essentially counter-cultural act, one that was essential to the equally counter-cultural act of not writing off Hays as a lost cause. Just an evil human being. Not worth the effort. You can add your own summary of the assessments our society might make.

And Hinton exhibited such patience in spite of the fact that he was there, on death row with Hays, for a crime he had not committed, and for which he would be exonerated only after serving thirty years. This was a powerful testimony to Hinton’s faith. It’s an example of and testimony to what I might call enduring grace. This intentionally points to a multi-layered meaning. The enduring grace of God in all circumstances, perhaps especially the most challenging and those where it seems least likely. The enduring grace that allows the believer to have patience. And finally, the fact that acting as we ought as followers of Jesus, sometimes mean bearing up and enduring a circumstance that we would most definitely rather not be in the midst of, but which will nevertheless—or perhaps even because of the difficulty—be an occasion for the revealing of God’s grace.

If you’re interested in Hinton’s story, you can check out his book, The Sun Does Shine: How I Found Life and Freedom on Death Row. To listen to the interview below (set to start where I first started listening last week), just click play.

Another example of the idea of enduring grace came to me a few days before. I had heard of Alexei Navalny, and I was aware of his tragic death while imprisoned in Russia. What I was unaware of, is that Navalny was a Christian. It wasn’t until I saw the post below from Fr. James Martin, that I discovered that Navalny’s faith had an impact on his actions. But discovering that made his actions, and his ability to defy Putin, make more sense:

Inspired by Fr. Martin’s comments, I searched “Navalny, Chrsitian” and it eventually led me to his closing remarks at his 2021 trial, where I found that he said this:

But, nevertheless, closing remarks means you have to say your closing remarks. I don’t know what to talk about anymore, your honour. If you want I’ll talk to you about God and salvation. I’ll turn up the volume of heartbreak to the maximum, so to speak. The fact is that I am a Christian, which usually rather sets me up as an example for constant ridicule in the Anti-Corruption Foundation, because mostly our people are atheists and I was once  quite a  militant atheist myself. But now I am a believer, and  that helps me a lot in my activities, because everything becomes much, much easier. I think about things less.  There are fewer dilemmas in my life, because there is a book in which, in general, it is more or less clearly written what action to take in every situation. It’s not always easy to follow this book, of course, but I am actually trying. And so, as I said, it’s easier for me, probably, than for many others, to engage in politics. 

A man recently wrote to me, ‘Navalny, why does everyone write to you, “Hold on, don’t give up, be patient, grit your teeth?” What do you have to tolerate? You kind of said in the interview that you believe in God. The Bible says, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied. Well, that’s just great for you, isn’t it!”  And I thought, how well this man understands me! Because it’s not that I’m fine, but I’ve always thought that this particular commandment is more or less an instruction to activity. And so, while certainly not really enjoying the place where I am, I have no regrets about coming back, or about what I’m doing. It’s fine, because I did the right thing. On the contrary, I feel a real kind of satisfaction. Because at some difficult moment I did as required by the instructions, and did not betray the commandment. {Read them all}

I found this to be a powerful testimony to the sort of patient endurance of God’s grace—that is, the patient endurance enabled by the grace of God, which is also therefore evidence of the grace of God, but which also requires endurance on the part of the faithful. Navalny goes on to testify to a hope that I believe only faith can animate:

There are many other things I would like to happen in this country. And that’s why we need to fight not so much against Russia being unfree, but against her being, overall, in all respects unhappy. Russia is always…we have everything, but nevertheless, we’re an unhappy country. Open any work of Russian literature, and God, you’ll be amazed – description after description of unhappiness and suffering. We are a very unhappy country. We’re in a vicious circle of unhappiness that we can’t escape from. But of course, it would be good to, and I am therefore proposing to change our slogan. It’s not enough for Russia to be free, Russia should also be happy. Russia will be happy. That is all from me.

The thing is, I wonder if this hope, this assurance, is a particular example of the ways in which the eschatological hope—often derided in our time as justice delayed and therefore denied, an opiate to satisfy the masses who suffer under the heel of oppressors—actually demonstrates its inherent power to break into the present. Because things shall be well, shall be made well, in the future, we are freed from the weight of achieving such things on our own, actually enables us to work to make things better here and now. This comes into focus in a letter Navalny wrote to another Russian dissident, Natan Sharansky, which I became aware of through Pastor Jason Micheli’s sermon (which I commend to you):

Immediately after his murder, the Free Press published letters Alexei Navalny had exchanged with the former Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky.

Sharansky, a Jewish journalist, had been a prisoner in the same Gulag during the 1970’s about which Sharansky wrote a memoir entitled Fear No Evil. After reading the Fear No Evil, Navalny wrote to Sharansky, and Sharansky replied with two letters of his own. What’s striking about their correspondence is how replete it is with scripture and the moral clarity the Bible demands.

In his final letter to Sharansky, dated April 11, 2023, Navalny concludes with this confession of faith:

“In your alma mater— that is, this Gulag— everything is as it was. Traditions are honored. On Friday evening, they let me out of solitary, today on Monday—I got another 15 days. Everything according to the Book of Ecclesiastes: what was, will be. But I continue to believe that God will correct it and one day there will be what was not. And will not be what was.

Hugs,

A”

Read or listen to it all here:

Tamed Cynic

The Justification of God

Tamed Cynic is a reader-supported publication. If you appreciate the work, pay it forward by becoming a paid subscriber! Second Sunday of Lent — 1 Kings 21 On September 1, 1939, his covetous gaze having landed upon his neighbor’s land to the east, the…

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2 years ago · 1 like · 1 comment · Jason Micheli

A consistent theme in my sermons—one that comes up in the homily I posted earlier this week, in fact—is the theme of how God empowers us to do things that we would be incapable of doing on our own. The order is always important—actions the go beyond the normal human capacity, are not moralistic calls to heroic virtue, but are instead illustrations of the ways in which the Holy Spirit stretches us to do more than we are naturally or intrinsically capable of. These are things we cannot be harangued into such things—it is only by the recognition of God’s enduring grace with us that we can be at peace and embody the sort of enduring grace that challenges injustice and changes things—beginning with us.

Additions to Esther (Apocrypha) 14:1-14

Psalm 138

Matthew 7:7-12

In the name of God: Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Amen.

I've been thinking a lot recently, about love of neighbor, and about love of enemy. As one commentator put it, the two are often the same. Love of enemy, is actually an expansion and commentary on love of neighbor. And in looking at our Gospel texts today, Jesus here is making a traditional argument from lesser to greater: if you who are evil, if you who are imperfect, if you who are sinful, desire good things for your children then how much more will the good Lord, how much more does God, how much more will God, deliver good things to God's children?

And then we come to this golden rule. Jesus' summary of ethical teaching: in everything, do to others, as you would have them do to you, for this is the law and the prophets. So of course, this is Jesus summing up his own summary of the law, to love God and to love one's neighbor. And then now he's summing it up, again, an even shorter, more concise way to do unto others as you would have them do unto you. And I would argue that that positive statement also includes within itself, the negative portion, or the corollary of that, which is, do not do to others that which you would not want done to you.

I think we're living in a time right now, where we look around the world, there are a lot of things happening--There's a lot of cruelty being exhibited. There's a lot of inhumanity and plain evil being visited upon others by people. And in this time, it seems that we all need to be reminded of both aspects of each of these things: that love of neighbor includes love of enemies, and that doing unto others as we would have them do unto us, also implies not doing the other foot we would not want done to ourselves. Jesus empowers us, I believe, to become able to keep these teachings. Sometimes I think our preaching can slip into a sort of moralism that says, go forth and do these things that are righteous, you who are righteous. And yet it is only through Christ, that we're righteous and it's only through Christ, that we're able to do these things. And I know in myself, the times where I have felt myself stretched to love another. I pray that we would be a people that is open to that sort of stretching, and is open to following Christ. And that we would challenge one another and our leaders to be stretched in loving others. Amen.

Southern trees bear strange fruit
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root
Black bodies swinging in the Southern breeze
Strange fruit hanging from the Poplar trees

Pastoral scene of the gallant South
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth
Scent of magnolia, sweet and fresh
Then the sudden smell of burning flesh

 Here’s a fruit for the crows to pluck,
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck
For the sun to rot, for the tree to drop
Here is a strange and bitter crop

—Strange Fruit, as sung by Billie Holiday, (1956)

It hangs above my altar
Like they hung him from a cross
I keep one in my wallet
For the times that I feel lost

In a wooden frame with splinters
Where my family kneels to pray
And if you listen close
You’ll hear the words he used to say

I’ve got a picture of Jesus
In his arms so many prayers rest
We’ve got a picture of Jesus
And with him we shall be forever blessed

 Now it has been spoken
He would come again
But would we recognize
This king among men

There was a man in our time
His words shine bright like the sun
He tried to lift the masses
And was crucified by gun 

He was a picture of Jesus
With him so many prayers rest
He is a picture of Jesus
In his arms so many prayers rest
With him we shall be forever blessed 

Some days have no beginning
And some days have no end
Some roads are straight and narrow
And some roads only bend

So let us say a prayer
For every living thing
Walking towards a light
From the cross of a king

We long to be a picture of Jesus
In his arms so many prayers rest
I long to be a picture of Jesus
With him we shall be forever blessed 

--Ben Harper, Picture of Jesus

Power in the Blood is an intriguing and well constructed look at the intersections between the theology of the atonement (the imagination of the cross) and the “peculiar institution” of slavery, as well as the subsequent class and ethnic stratification resulting from it.  Terrell’s writing reveals someone examining identity and history in an effort to discern the ways in which these have been shaped by the Cross, and in turn, how such an identity and history, i.e the specific history of African-Americans, has contributed in ways positive and negative to the experience of African-American women.  From the introduction onward the use of various devices, including bits of Negro spirituals, biblical text and other writings convey the sense of continuity and critique.

Terrell lays the groundwork for her book through a combination of personal narrative, historical overview and technical explanation.  The introduction gives us an overview of the ways in which feminist and black theology has approached the issue of the atonement and the cross, as well as the place of African American women within these perspectives.  Womanist theology is influenced by both movements but feels each is inadequate to address the particular issues facing African American women.  One area where womanist theology seems to differ from feminist theology possibly derives from the fact that womanist theology necessarily reflects on itself as a movement within the larger African American community.  Womanism clearly sees itself as needing to take into account the experiences, needs and history of the African American community and to understand their relationship to women’s issues—indeed, the very identification of womanist was inspired by Alice Walker’s use of the African American folk-term “womanish,” indicates an understanding of identity as shaped within and through the particularities of history rather than apart from them.

The Womanist critique shares common ground with the feminist in that each identify the ideal of Christ’s surrogacy “as problematic in the confession of faith,” yet womanist thinkers perceive it as such “not only because of its utility in sanctioning women’s oppression but also because of its similarity to the historical circumscription of black women in surrogate roles in relationship to white men, white women and their children.”1

This surrogacy has extended even further, to a surrogacy for black men as well, whether in the field during slavery, becoming provider in the post Christian society and, finally being left in the role of single parent “perhaps singularly owing to the targeting, censuring and scapegoating of young black men through the criminal justice system.”

The problematic nature of the iconography of surrogacy has given Terrell her task; to discover whether “the image of Jesus as a surrogate figure have salvific power for black women, or does it reinforce the exploitation that accompanies their experiences of surrogacy?  [. . .] In other words, is the profession of faith in the cross inimical to black women’s self-interests? Or, is there power in the blood?”2

Before questions surrounding the particular experience of African American women in relation to the cross can be properly addressed, and reflection on what future imagings may look like can begin, Terrell must address the broader narrative of the African American community, its formation during and since the time of slavery as well as its overall view of the cross and Christ.

Beginning with her own remembrance of a crucifixion scene from childhood, Terrell skillfully crafts her observations, pieces from selected slave narratives and other miscellaneous sources, bringing them together with analysis and discussion of the early Church.  Her description of the mandala is full and its details are evocative of the dissonance that exists between the image of the Crucified One whose suffering prevents identification, the iconography of the spirit-Christ which she was not so much drawn as driven toward, and her own identity as an African American:

The triumphalist, incorporeal Christ was only mildly frightening, if somewhat recognizable as an imperious-looking white man!3

She links her own experience with that of the character Celie in The Color Purple, with the description of God echoing her own:

He big and old and gray-bearded and white.  He wear white robes and go barefooted.4

Here exposed is one of the primary spectacles attacked in later civil rights and black radical movements: the equation of white with purity and the divine and the equation of black or brown with inferiority, ugliness or sin.  Such imagery of God created and creates undue distance between the African American and the divinity.

Beginning her historiographical survey and analysis, Terrell concludes that the “ideation of the cross as the central motif in past and current African American religious expressions is traceable to enslavement and the process of Christianization.”5 This process of Christianization took place in the midst of slavery and social instability; “despite their compassionate embrace of one who so identified with them, both cross and croker sack were thrust upon these latter-day ‘black Simons.’”6 The nature of slavery prevented the formation of lasting bonds between slave families and denied male slaves the opportunity to “protect or provide for their families [. . .]” further attacking any sort of normative social cohesion which might begin to form.  Indeed, as in modern totalitarian systems, the institutionalization of rape, systematic control of sexuality and reproduction, as well as the pervasive instability caused by particular forms of disappearance and the cultivation of absurdity, was used to inculcate a sense of powerlessness, “Rape was thus an effective tool for the humiliation of the entire slave community, children, wives and husbands.”7

The denial of marriage to slaves—preventing the formation of basic societal units which might lead to further cohesion and increased resistance and rebellion—further demonstrates of the imposition of an ontological inferiority.  Such an imposition was of fundamental importance to the structure of the slave economy and its importance as societal unit and symbol is clearly attested in the response of former slaves during the reconstruction era.  One black soldier exhorted his fellows, in line with the image Terrell has presented:

Fellow Soldiers:–

I Praise God for this day! I have long been praying for it.  The Marriage Covenant is at the foundation of all our rights.  In slavery we could not have legalized marriage: now we have it.  Let us conduct ourselves worthy of such a blessing—and all people will respect us—God will bless us, and we shall be established as a people.8

Unfortunately, history demonstrates that the end of the war did not bring even the most basic changes often assumed by contemporary people.  Here I might paint an even darker picture than Terrell, for, while slavery de jure was abolished, it often continued in a de facto manner through contract and bond-servanthood throughout the South even under the martial law of Reconstruction.  Indeed, one could argue that the slave economy simply evolved, loosing to some extent a distinctly ethnic and agrarian character and developed into the share-cropping system, textile mills and corvee labor on railroads and other public works into the 20^th century.  Because of such institutionalization, former slaves working with the freedmen’s bureau and the military courts found it extremely difficult to reassemble families, thus exacerbating and prolonging the troubles faced by the black community, so that Terrell is able to see her step-father as constrained in his role as provider in similar—if not always as violent—respects as his slave progenitors.9

Terrell ably demonstrates that her statement regarding the early church’s development of atonement doctrine: “Thus, the early church’s own cross had a profound impact on its development of atonement doctrine” can be applied to the African American community’s experience of faith under persecution in an equally justified manner.10  Indeed, Terrell demonstrates great skillfulness in blurring the lines between the slave experience and the martyrdom of the early church.  The prime example of this occurs when, after quoting David Walker, she states that “Some martyrs ‘were obligated to pass, with their already wounded feet, over thorns, nails, sharp shells, etc., upon their points, others were scourged until their sinews and skins lay bare.”11 After this, in a wonderfully crafted manner, Terrell succeeds in completely erasing the line that separates the early martyrs from the slaves by quoting ex-slave Mary Reynolds in a place that would normally be structured to contain contemporary support of the martyrs’ experiences:

Shoes was the worstest trouble.  We weared rough russets when it got cold, and it seem powerful strange they’d never git them to fit . . . We prays for the end of tribulation and the end of beatings and for shoes that fit our feet.12

After affecting this blurring, Terrell effectively turns the table by demonstrating that while renunciation was not frequent among the early martyrs, it provided a way out—alternatively, slaves and later African Americans had no route to escape from their skin color.

While Terrell is clear that Christianity was used as a tool in the oppression of African Americans, she is equally clear that it provided positive things to the community as well.  While in some instances it seems that it underpinned a resignation, she is clear that just as the martyrs went to their fates differently, so did slaves react to their oppression in different ways which weren’t always predictable or predicated only by what form of Christianity they were exposed to.  Indeed, Terrell demonstrates that, just as the outward appearance of the Brer Rabbit stories is benign, they contain a wonderfully adept critique of the power structure, so too did slave religion and the Black Church develop as a critique of the Churches which colluded with slavery and later oppression, just as the faithfulness of black Christians often served as a living criticism of white Christians—from the slave who was able to say to her mistress You no’ holy.  We be holy.  You in no state of salvation,” to the marches in Birmingham and elsewhere, the violence of institutional oppression and the cruelty of the world testified against itself just as it had at the crucifixion.  Terrell puts it this way:

In fairness, sacrificial may not be the right nomenclature for the slaves accommodating words and actions that, on the surface cannot be deemed critical.  Yet, as the conservatism of the Black Church suggests, it is clear that many of their descendants (1) do not acknowledge that Christianity is subject to a history of interpretation that perpetuates their subjugation, and (2) have internalized hermeneutics of sacrifice in a manner devoid of reference to their social, political and economic locations.  What appears accomodationist in the context of slavery often portended survival and enabled self-expression, both of which are part of the black liberation project and even foundational to it.13

Questions:

1. Reflecting upon the selection of Feminist theology we’ve discussed and the current example of Womanist theology, what differences—if any—do the works display in their approaches to history or identity and how might such differences be at play in disagreements such as that between Rosemary Radford Reuther and Delores Williams?

2. How are feminist and womanist analyses of the atonement—as portrayed in our selected texts—similar to or distinct from one another?  In what particular areas do they have the most agreement and/or disagreement?

3. How has the “leveling” aspect of Evangelicalism harmed and helped the African American community?

4. There seem to be multiple connections between the experience of African Americans and other oppressed groups in latin-American countries—down to the gradation of social class by skin tone—what similarities do you see between Womanist theology and Liberation theology?  What would or does womanist theology find attractive about liberationist understandings and what might be problematic?  How does this compare with any feminist relationships to liberation theology you are aware of?

5. In her discussion of slave religion Terrell highlights the importance of the Cross as a means of identification between the black community and God.  Does the identification of the slaves with the Crucified God and their subsequent ability to say to their oppressors “You no’ holy.  We be holy.  You in no state of salvation” belie the idea that traditional notions of Jesus as paschal lamb and God as omnipotent, inculcate a “theology of quietude” and a faith of the victim which associates worldly authority with divine favor and resistance to such authority with sin?

6. Terrell devotes her first chapter to demonstrating the similarity between the African-American slave experience and the persecution experienced by the early church.  Is her characterization of each experience a fair one and if so, what might Terrell’s argument gain from demonstrating their commonality?  Is there a possibility that such a demonstration could actually harm her arguments?

7. Sociologist John Shelton Reed, formerly of UNC, has argued that Southerners represent a distinct ethnicity; in her second chapter, “There is a Fountain” Terrell speaks of the beginnings of “southern (as distinct from northern) American culture.”  Given the importance of the African-American historical narrative to the trajectory of Black and Womanist theology, how might these theologies be affected by the additional third layer of socio-historical analysis necessitated by the distinction between a Southern and a Northern American culture?  Would Womanist or Black theology be intrigued by or hostile to Reed’s proposal?

Works Cited

Paul D. Escott, David R. Goldfield, Sally G. McMillen, and Elizabeth Hayes Turner, ed. Major Problems in the History of the American South. second ed. Vol. II: The New South, 1999.

Terrell, JoAnne Marie. Power in the Blood?  The Cross in the African American Experience. Edited by Dwight N. Hopkins, The Bishop Henry Mcneal Turner/Sojourner Truth Series in Black Religion. New York: Orbis Books, 2003.