Praying with Stanley Hauerwas Pt. 4

This is the fourth of the four prayers I wanted to share with you. One thing I love about how Stanley Hauerwas prays is that he always seems to be able punch through the sentimental crap and fluff with the stuff of real life in reflection of truthful grace. I invite you to pray this with me.

Gracious God, humble us through the violence of your love so we are able to know and confess our sins. We want our sins to be interesting, but, God forgive us, they are so ordinary: envy, hatred, meanness, pride, self-centeredness, laziness, boredom, lying, lust, stinginess and so on. You have saved us from “and so on” to be a royal people able to witness to the world that the powers that make us such ordinary sinners have been defeated. So capture our attention with the beauty of your life that the ugliness of sin may be seen as just that—ugly. God, how wonderful it is to be captivated by you. Amen.

Praying with Stanley Hauerwas Pt. 3

It’s been hard selecting which ones of these to share. This one is one of the longest in the book and perhaps my favorite.

Lord of the Waters, you have set us adrift in a trackless ocean, in a leaky boat with no oars or rudder. “Rudderless” nicely describes our situation, but matters are worse. Even if we had a rudder, we would  not know which direction to go. We are not even sure if there are any directions—or if there are any directions, we so distrust our wants that we do not know which way we really want to go. In short, we feel lost and, so feeling, think it is probably your fault. Yet you refuse to let us drown us in self-pity and blame. Instead your drown us in your good kingdom, the death and resurrection of Jesus our Lord, making us part of that great ark, your church. The winds of love blow that ark out to sea, away from shores we think might provide safety, so that we might take on board the drowning. How wonderful it is that the more that are taken on board, the less your ark is crowded and the safer we are. Thank you for making us steady sailors who have no reason to fear the unknown, having learned you would have us be at sea. Amen.

May that wind indeed blow us away from those shores we think safe. Oh how they are not.

Praying with Stanley Hauerwas Pt. 2

Here’s a second of four prayers I want to share with you from Hauerwas’ Prayers Plainly Spoken.

Blessed Trinity, you gather us so that we will not be alone. You will us to enjoy one another, to rejoice in one another’s existence. Just as you can be three, perfectly sharing but without loss of difference, so you make us capable of love without fear that in our love we will be lost. Yet we do find ways to be alone, to be in hell. Caught up in fantasies that we can create ourselves, we become frozen in our self-imposed smiles of self-satisfaction. Because we can fool others into believing we are in control, we even come to believe it ourselves. Great and powerful Lord, shake us free of such loneliness that we may cry for help and be surprised by the willingness of your people to share. How happy we are to be your people. Amen.

This one connected with me very deeply. I think many know what it’s like to be in such a hell. Hell, which is the perfect word for it, is exactly what it is outside of the flowing cycle of love that is the Triune God. In such a hell all I end up with is darkness, a crippling, numbing, darkness. I can’t see my own reflection, who I am, nor can I see the one in the room with me. I ignore him. He is pushed away in favor of what is called relaxation, sleep without rest. The hours tick away but he’s still there. Sometimes he’s quiet, others he overwhelms with violent grace.

Where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there. If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me fast. If I say, ‘Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light around me become night’, even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is as bright as the day, for darkness is as light to you. (Psalm 139:8-12 NRSV)

Thank you God for the surprise of receptive and tender people and that you won’t seem to leave me alone.

Praying with Stanley Hauerwas Pt. 1

This is from Hauerwas’ book Prayers Plainly Spoken. Sometimes the most destructive lies are the one’s we tell ourselves. We need to pray prayers like the following because it is in telling the truth that brings together the fractured self that runs from God, the self he’s calling into himself and into the world.

TRUE GOD OF TRUE GOD, create in us a passion for truth. Make us lust for, long for, taste, feel, roll in the grass of your love, your truth. Free us from the fear of truth by making us God-fearers. May we hate all that which would tempt us to settle for the greatest of all lies, the half-truth. So formed, give us simple speech, graceful speech, lovely speech, so that we might truthfully speak to one another, that we might love one another in truth. Honor us with honesty that we might be honorable and, thus, trustworthy people. Oh! We so long to be capable of trust. We are so tired, so bored, by our cynicism. So yes, dear Lord, we pray that you will make us truthful servants so that we may say to ourselves and one another, “You can trust me.” Amen.

Confessions

Something weird happens when you try to write things to impress people; you come off as sounding fake and contrived with little of anything of substance following. I have tried to construct or maybe narrate something from the last four months, months that still need unpacking and expounding. Every time I’ve tried it fizzles out after a paragraph or two. If we are to attempt, like Augustine, to narrate our lives as confession, I realize there’s much to confess. Part of the way my church tells their story is told in two ways, an outer story and an inner one. Usually the more interesting stories are always the ones that tell something beyond the facts of people, places, dates, and events. Very rarely is my heart captured by merely someone’s “people, places, dates, and events.” It gets boring, especially when the facts look nothing like mine. It’s the inner story that my heart always connects to and where mine and others’ can intersect, were things like joy and pain call home.

For confession to mean anything it requires memory, truthful and honest memory. It means letting your arms go limp and giving up the defenses that keep others out. It seems that for many like me, remembering the truth is a struggle. As a certain Texan brick layer and theologian has confessed before God, “We refuse to remember because memory is just another name for pain—dull, meaningless pain that makes us numb. But you would have us be a passionate people, filled with the Spirit, possessed by memory. We fear that if we remember, the pain will return and kill our present. ” I’ve come to see how much of my life and energy is spent on running from and avoiding any form of discomfort or pain. Weeks, it seems, are wasted wandering through the woods so those feelings are never felt. If I’ve been shown anything from the last four months, wading through both cancer and heartbreak, I’ve known for the first time what it’s like to be inducted into suffering, a suffering you can’t avoid.

I feel guilty for calling my pain suffering when there are so many in the world who know a suffering that I will never know being born white, wealthy, and American, but to say otherwise would be dishonest. I fear it might be impossible to describe it unless you yourself have been through it. But it’s also dishonest if I leave this part out. When asked before how I felt when I first got the diagnosis I expressed how I was in shock, afraid, like time had slowed and my future had taken a hard left. But I remember as I was leaving slowly through the white sterile halls, before I even got to the elevator, I felt three sets of arms crowding around me. I knew I wasn’t alone. I was surrounded. As a piercing love flowed into my heart, I knew someone immensely larger than both myself and cancer was with me. Soon I felt those arms reaching out through panicked phone conversations, weeping embraces, a continuously filled hospital chair rocking through the night, and behind a quiet curtain accompanied with whispers saying that “I’ve got you. I know the way home.”

I know it may sound cliché but I felt it, Christ was with me in it.  Just has he is with those now suffering in Haiti and with anyone else in the world who knows what it is to suffer, he was with me. That somehow this part of being human in this world right now is one of the things he’s setting right. But now, as I continue to heal and move forward, I can see that Christ doesn’t want me to continue to run from emptiness and suffering. It creates its own problems and usually prolongs it. No, His desire is not for us to carve out our own shelters to keep us from feeling. Suffering stretched arms on a cross are the only form of genuine peace there is.

I pray now with St. Brendan of Clonfert,

Lord, I will trust You, help me to journey beyond the familiar and into the unknown.

Give me the faith to leave old ways and break fresh ground with You.

Christ of the mysteries, can I trust You to be stronger than each storm in me?

Do I still yearn for your glory to lighten on me?

I will show others the care You’ve given me.

I determine amidst all uncertainty always to trust.

I choose to live beyond regret, and let you recreate my life.

I believe You will make a way for me and provide for me, if only I trust You and obey.

I will trust in the darkness and know that my times are still in Your hand.

I will believe You for my future, chapter by chapter, until all the story is written.

Focus my mind and my heart upon You, my attention always on You without alteration.

Strengthen me with your blessing and appoint me the task. Teach me to live with eternity in view.

Tune my spirit to the music of heaven.

Feed me,

and, somehow,

make my obedience count for You.

Loneliness

“That you can be lonely in a crowd, maybe especially there, is readily observable. You can also be lonely with your oldest friends, or your family, even with the person you love most in the world. To be lonely is to be aware of an emptiness which it takes more than people to fill. It is to sense that something is missing which you cannot name.

‘By the waters of Babylon, there we sat down and wept, when we remembered Zion,’ sings the Psalmist (137:1). Maybe in the end it is Zion that we’re lonely for, the place we know best by longing for it, where at last we become who we are, where finally we find home.” – Frederick Buechner from Whistling in the Dark

Who Should Be The First President of Europe?

As you may have seen in the news lately, Europe looks to be getting close to electing its first ever President. If the current Treaty of Lisbon is ratified by the last few remaining countries then there might soon be a unified President of Europe.

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair has been unofficially campaigning for the position since he left office a few years ago and is currently seen as the only serious front-runner. While Blair may be a suitable candidate for the job their is another European leader who is, in my opinion, far more qualified and deserving to be the continent’s first president.

Who am I referring to you ask? Humor me for a moment and let’s just pretend that you did. Is it French President Nicholas Sarkozy or perhaps German Chancellor Angela Merkel? No. Out of all of the nations of Europe, only one woman is qualified to hold this high honor. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you Tarja Halonen (pronounced Tar-ya). Not only is she the current and two-term President of Finland, she looks exactly like Conan O’Brien.

How fitting would it be, as Conan has been recently promoted as the new host of the Tonight Show for Tarja to be promoted as Europe’s first ever President. Join me in the campaign to elect the right candidate to lead America’s greatest ally. We can’t afford to have this new important office held by someone who doesn’t look exactly like Conan. For Conan’s opinions of Tarja watch this. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpBGCoWfZlI

The Glass Man: A Prayer

Lord, I’m amazed at and by your love, your Euangelion. Lord, not only do I feel the evil and crap from my sin, but I’ve seen light expose the surface and have begun to get an idea of just how huge and deep it is. Like a big muddy rock at the center of my abdominal cavity. I don’t know if I can even guess how far down it goes, for the light only shows so much. God, how you’ve sought me out, pursued me, found me, grabbed a hold of me, knowing full well who I truly am, what I do, and what I don’t. How is it that you’ve never left? I look nothing like you and retreat from this thing you’ve called life. I cling to this old muddy rock instead of this new One that shines in front of me.

I don’t have the faith of the Roman Centurion, the blind man, or the leper of the gospels. I don’t have the trust that you can do what you say you can do. I take a few steps down into the pool and get a taste of life only to panic, stepping back up onto the hot but familiar concrete. I don’t have the answers nor am I the man I’d wish to project: a glass man, an image I’d like to be. It’s synthesized out of what I perceive what others would want. But this is not your way. We can’t pretend, trying to manipulate our brothers and sisters into liking or accepting us. Whatever image I construct will be false and hollow. No, this image is not your image. My image can’t last. It’s rooted in fear instead of love. God, my image tries to get others to look at me; Your image is solid, like an ancient Roman image of the king, announcing  and reflecting the king’s glory and reminding the world who’s really in charge. Lord, may I genuinely be. May my glass man fall and smash into pieces. Clean up my debris and mess, for I can only seem to hide it and it’s too exhausting to hide it. Continue to remake me into your image, genuinely human and whole. Help me know the truth that You’ve got me.

Our Lamb Has Conquered, Let Us Follow

 This summer, after a gruling month in Spanish, I took a Christian Ethics class here at Lee with Dr. Searcy. At the end of the class I delivered a presentation on Christian Nonviolence. While I had been exposed to some of this work in the past, largly thanks to my Pastor and the hooligans he hung around with in Durham, I was deeply gripped and amazed by this vision unfolded in my own research that painted such a beautiful and attractive picture of the King and his cross. There’s alot more I really want to post in the next week or so. I don’t think I can keep this stuff to myself. But here is my project as I delivered it. I don’t pretend to have figured all of this out, but if you have ever wrestled with the issues of politics, war and peace, and what these things mean in the context of following Jesus, I think you find something here to think about.

In a topic as complicated and emotional as war and peace, I need to express first that the terms Christian Pacifism, Christian nonviolence, or Christian Peace-making are not really good at describing the kind disavowal of violence that being a disciple of Jesus asks of us. Secondly, there’s more on the plate here that I have time to bring to you today. Let me begin by stressing what Christian Non-Violence is not.

While I am a huge fan of music from the 1960s & 1970s, especially the music created by those such as John Lennon and the Beatles, Christian non-violence is not merely founded in some sentimental call to just “give peace a chance” nor in the flowery love espoused by those of that era. It is not merely a plea that “if we could just get to know one another better we wouldn’t want to kill each other.” To realize the stupidity of that appeal, as a great theologian has pointed out, one has to look no further than one’s own family. Christian non-violence is also not simply about ridding the world of war, a point I will return to. Pacifists are often confronted with a quote attributed to Edmund Burke stating that “the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” I want to suggest that the Non-violence as derived from the work of the tradition of John Howard Yoder is not about doing nothing, but says, that a very good man has done something and that we are called to follow him in the kind of life rooted in that very same kind of something, that is the hard wood of the cross.

Then what is Christian Non-Violence? John Howard Yoder has said in his book The Politics of Jesus that, “To be a disciple [of Jesus] is to share in that style of life of which the cross is the culmination.” To understand this approach, I draw attention to the vocation of Jesus. Rooted in the story of Israel, Jesus was given the task of fulfilling the role Israel had miserably failed, that is, of saving and redeeming all of creation from its degeneration into evil or sin; to use the language of N.T. Wright, he was sent “to put the world to rights.” Jesus speaks of the Kingdom of God as finally being within our grasps. Since the Babylonians had driven Israel into exile in 588 B.C., Israel had been under the dominion of pagan rule. Caesar’s face was on the money, and Israel was fervently waiting for someone to deliver them out of oppression, to give Rome the justice that she had coming to her, and for an anointed son of David to reestablish the Kingdom of God’s people.

This Kingdom, spoken of by Jesus, to be established was not meant to simply be a spiritual reality, off somewhere above the clouds, but to be as in the Lord’s Prayer found in Matt. 6:10, “on earth as it is in heaven.” But what we find time and time again in the Gospel narratives is that Jesus refuses the multiple temptations to take his world through violence. Continually, Jesus is presented with the option to rouse up the crowds around him, storm the Roman fortresses and reclaim the City of God. Yoder makes a convincing argument that what Jesus rejects in the temptations in both the wilderness and the garden is of both quietism and the attractive option of crusade. Jesus takes on a heavy mantle of love and becomes a servant.

Central to Christian Non-Violence is the unity of what Jesus said and who he actually was. In both the Sermon on the Mount and the Sermon on the Plain, Jesus lays out his radical alternative for life in God’s Kingdom that turns on its head the wisdom of the world. Jesus announces that who God considers to be blessed are not those the world does.

There are six antitheses where he tells us that you have heard it was said such and such, but then goes on to say something very different. Many cases, he goes beyond what’s written in the law, appealing to the dispositions of our hearts. Ethicist and theologian Stanley Hauerwas is known for making the claim that the Sermon on the Mount is not Jesus’ ethic, but that it is Jesus. His teachings are not separate from the grace giving suffering love that is displayed in his death on the cross. Yoder notes on page 61 in The Politics of Jesus that,

“Here at the cross is the man who loves his enemies, the man whose righteousness is greater than that of the Pharisees, who being rich became poor, who gives his robe to those who took his cloak, who prays for those who spitefully use him. The cross is not a detour or a hurdle on the way to the kingdom, not is it even the way to the Kingdom; it is the Kingdom come.”

Sometimes advocates of war will point to the numerous times in the Old Testament where it seems that God has no problems with violent military actions by his people Israel. I don’t have time to articulate completely a pacifist understanding of the Old Testament. But I must quickly point out that the theme, again and again, of God’s attitude towards Israel in the Old Testament is for her to trust in God for her defense and victory over her enemies against trust in her ability to make war and kill.

As New Testament scholar Richard B. Hays points out in his book The Moral Vision of the New Testament, “If irreconcilable tensions exist between the moral vision of the New Testament and that of particular Old Testament texts, the New Testament vision trumps the Old Testament.” He points to circumcision and the dietary laws, and the New Testament’s superseding the Old’s permission of divorce. “So also,” he continues, “Jesus’ explicit teaching and example of nonviolence reshapes our understanding of God and of the covenant community in such a way that killing enemies is no longer a justifiable option.” In Matthew 6:43-48 Jesus says,
‘You have heard that it was said, “You shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy.” But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.’
Hays notes, “that once those words are spoken to us, we cannot appeal back to Samuel as a counterexample to Jesus.”

The question that inevitably comes to us is what about World War II? Should Christians fight against Hitler? Hays responds with the question, “What if Christians had refused to fight for Hitler?” Advocates for Just-War often cite Romans 13 as a source for an understanding in being subordinate to the governing authorities, as Christians, including military service. Lest we forget, the good Lutherans of Germany used exactly these texts in fighting in the Gestapo, participating in the Holocaust, and killing for Hitler. What Just-War theorists often neglect is that Caesar is also among those who are called to repent. They also leave out of the discussion the verses immediately preceding Romans 13. In Romans 12:14-21, Paul instructs us,

“Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly;* do not claim to be wiser than you are. Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God;* for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.’ No, ‘if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink; for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads.’ Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”

I quickly want to draw attention to Father George Zabelka, the Catholic Chaplin who administered mass to the squadron of men who bombed Hiroshima & Nagasaki. Repenting of his complacency he said,

“To fail to speak to the utter moral corruption of the mass destruction of civilians was to fail as a Christian and as a priest as I see it…I was there, and I’ll tell you that the operational moral atmosphere in the church in relation to mass bombing of enemy civilians was totally indifferent, silent, and corrupt at best—at worst it was religiously supportive of these activities by blessing those who did them…Catholics dropped the A-bomb on top of the largest and first Catholic city in Japan. One would have thought that I, as a Catholic priest, would have spoken out against the atomic bombing of nuns. (Three orders of Catholic sisters were destroyed in Nagasaki that day.) One would have thought that I would have suggested that as a minimal standard of Catholic morality, Catholics shouldn’t bomb Catholic children. I didn’t. I, like the Catholic pilot of the Nagasaki plane, “The Great Artiste,” was an heir to a Christianity that had for seventeen hundred years engaged in revenge, murder, torture, the pursuit of power, and prerogative violence, all in the name of our Lord….I was the Catholic chaplin who was there when this grotesque process that began with Constantine reached its lowest point—so far.”

As Christians, we must look at our enemies through the eyes of Jesus when he weeps over Jerusalem because “the things that make for peace” where hidden from their eyes. As Stanley Hauerwas has said numerous times, “the greatest sacrifice of war is not the sacrifice of life, great as such a sacrifice may be, but rather the sacrifice of our unwillingness to kill. That sacrifice, that is, the sacrifice of our unwillingness to kill, is why war is at once so morally compelling and morally perverse.”

As I know personally, in addition to returning from Korea with the scars and wounds represented in a purple medal that sits in my grandfather’s living room, men like my grandfather, who have seen the horrible reality of war, with friends blown to pieces at their side, know what it is to kill. It is a commonly attested experience that veterans rarely want to speak of their experience in battle. The silence that war creates in our fathers and grandfathers is an illustration that life is not ours to take; life, for Christians, is a gift. Please remember that Christian nonviolence is not about ridding the world of war, for we believe that when God the Father sent his only son to die a bloody death on the cross, that once and forever, war has already been abolished.

Making Mud Pies

I’m a liar. I think I’ve come to a place in my life where the substance of my deepest beliefs look like a man approaching from a distance upon a majestic mountain, only to move in close enough and see nothing to the right or the left but a heap of well packed trash. The covert ways I’ve use to protect myself from things such as fear of disappointment or fear of failure do nothing but cripple me. I see my own pantheon of gods, I worship so many things.

Bowing down with the rest of our country, I drudge on as a slave to the tyrant that we’ve ironically called freedom. Whatever direction my heart begins to wander is given more trust than I’ve ever placed in anything. Our Constitution mentions a right to pursue happiness, but what passes for happiness many times today feels hopelessly unfulfilling. If you’ve ever sat in a parking lot of a Krystal Burger at 1:30 in the morning you will witness a strange sight, a herd of unhealthily obese persons emerging from the darkness in search of crappy processed food. It’s kind of sad. They don’t need it. I certainly don’t either, but for a host of reasons we feel compelled to indulge in things we hope we will make us happy, satisfy us. Afraid of something new and risky, I settle for what is easy, quick. But the more and more I detach and escape the more I feel miserable, engulfed under the weight of crashing disappointment. The truth is we generally don’t know what we really want, certainly not what is best for us.

In these months up here at Lee, God has confronted me. Like the pagan god Dagon faced with the presence of the world’s true Lord, exposed as the false pretender he is, falls flat on his golden face smashing into pieces. When I see how helpless and broken I am with my own self as the central most thing I adore, I fall apart. I feel his longing embrace waiting for me. A voice tells me to trust in him, to do good, and befriend faithfulness. I see an exciting adventure awaiting me, full of life, love, risk, and most certainly suffering. Here’s a kingdom full of purpose, hope, and calling, the kind of life experienced by people like Martin Luther King, Jr.

But I’m afraid of being disappointed. I’ve been running from it. It’s like being asked to reach your arm into a black whole in the wall with no promise as to what’s in there will do you a bit of good. “…like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea.” (C.S. Lewis). But here he is, saying “I will provide for you,” that delight in him will bring all the desires of my heart. He says to trust in him and he will act. I confess that my corruption runs deep; pray with me that trust and peace would run deeper.