Oops. I've let things slide blog-wise for two and a half weeks. I realize this doesn't affect the balance of power in the Middle East or cure cancer or anything important, but I suppose it does represent a dereliction of duty of sorts.
After a late-morning/early-afternoon visit to a urologist for an ultrasound (of the non-invasive type, thankfully) followed by time playing with old Excel files and trying to put them together into one file (I'm discovering that I'm not a fan of spreadsheets), I'm in my impromptu home office looking at one bookshelf, one among many in this house, and letting them remind me of the variety of bumps and bruises and twists and turns my strange little life has taken. The nostalgia (some positive, some less so) is less about the books themselves or the contents thereof than about the places in life that caused me to add those books to my library. Some of them should probably have been given away or traded in to the local library or moved in some manner. Some of them I'll hold forever whether I ever read them again or not. Some of them I'd love to get rid of, but then somebody else might read them, and I really don't want to be party to that.
There are non-book items on the shelf, to be sure: a plush Snoopy that plays some winter/Christmas tune if you squeeze the snowflake he's holding, a baseball decorated with images from a drawing at the Dali Museum in St. Petersburg (a souvenir from my wife's trip there), a stray pencil sharpener, three composer "action figures" -- Bach, Mozart, Beethoven -- still in original packaging. But the books themselves are a varied lot that would have told me things about myself I wasn't always sharp enough to notice, if only I'd been paying more attention.
This is a bit of a miscellaneous shelf. Others are more tightly organized; old musicological volumes on one, hymnals and books on worship on another, texts from theology or biblical classes or church history on another. This shelf holds stuff that doesn't really fit anywhere else and doesn't really go together.
There are a few books dating from my first trip around as a seminarian: a couple of old handbook/companion volumes to the '75 and 91 Baptist Hymnals, The Church Anthem Book, McElrath and Eskew's Sing With Understanding. A handful of books on this shelf date from this second turn as seminarian; texts from classes I've taken in Christian Education and Celtic Spirituality, other books acquired not as textbooks but in relation to subjects covered in courses I've taken or that simply have forced themselves upon my mind since starting here -- a couple of volumes on Paul, for example, as well as a Wendell Berry book and a pair by Sara Miles.
As noted above, most of the textbooks I've acquired here are on bookshelves elsewhere in the house, as are most of the old musicological books I didn't give away. A number of the books on this bookshelf do date back to my teaching years, though. Not the KU years, but at my previous stop, a small evangelical school in south Florida. Some of them were books I used in attempting to teach courses in the small church music program the school offered. That was a strange experience. I was actually happy for the chance to put that old church music degree to use, but the experience only taught me that, barely more than a decade after acquiring it, my knowledge of the field was hopelessly out of date. I could no longer avoid the whole "contemporary" worship phenomenon, for example, as I had successfully done while living in Tallahassee. The end result probably was that I had more to learn in the class than I was able to teach.
Other books on the shelf dating from that period are more general, philosophical volumes on the subject of "Christian higher education" or on evangelicalism more generally. These were generally an attempt to understand more fully the environment in which I found myself at this particular school. I can't say the attempt was totally successful, but it did lead to my figuring out that I really wasn't an evangelical anymore, if I had ever been a "real" evangelical in the first place. At the time the experience seemed a signal and confirmation that I was indeed on the right track, moving away from that seminary experience and into academia. Perhaps in hindsight, the experience was less of an end and more of a beginning of, or at least a preliminary to the fool's errand on which I now find myself. A few others date from the period for different reasons; one represents a faculty book club gone horribly awry, a couple of others relate to conferences attended while on the faculty there, and a couple I know date from the period, but for the life of me I can't remember why I acquired them.
There are several books by N.T. Wright on this shelf. These were in fact mostly acquired before officially setting off on this fool's errand, but have been useful along the way. Again, perhaps if I'd paid more attention at the time I'd have picked up on the fact that something was going on in my soul to which I wasn't paying sufficient attention.
A few of the books were picked up in the preparation for coming to Union. One was for the preparatory "communities of learning" program Union offers, and a couple of the others, including Pastor by Will Willimon, were acquired just because they seemed relevant to the experience. Others are more individual in their purpose in my collection: one by a former college professor of mine, a couple acquired solely because of their provocative titles (such as Jesus Was a Liberal), a couple purchased just to read on long plane trips, a couple from a visit to Colonial Williamsburg recently, and a few here and there that I can't even remember when or why I picked up.
It's a bit of a jumble, which is a fairly accurate description of my life. It would not make for a good biography -- too jumbled, rather incoherent in too many places. Life, of course, does not obey literary rules or Hollywood scripts. At times it feels less like one life than two or three or four. How many more are yet to come, who knows?
The books have their own merit, of course, as written word does, but they also live in a context, my context, and in some cases that context has overwhelmed the content and given to those books meanings that their authors could not or would not have intended. They have become markers of a life strangely lived, rather like a jigsaw puzzle with broken pieces; hard to piece together but still revealing a picture when nudged together carefully. In this case, though, the puzzle is unfinished, and I don't even have all the pieces necessary to complete it yet.
Thursday, September 26, 2013
Monday, September 9, 2013
Clearing up some things: the latest health issues
Bodies, wonderful creations that they are, can be strange. They are adaptive things. They react when their natural processes are interfered with.
Over the course of the last year, I've been targeted with radiation, cut into (and some stuff removed), and pumped with nasty and sometimes poisonous chemicals. I shouldn't be surprised, I suppose, that my body has reacted in strange ways.
Right now I have two issues going on, both possibly (but not definitely) related to cancer treatment.
Issue one: excess tissue buildup, or something like that -- possibly scar tissue? -- that is possibly impinging a part of my urinary tract, causing one kidney to become a bit dilated. Also (related or not?) a buildup of gas where gas cannot, technically, happen under normal circumstances (no, not that kind of gas), in the general area.
Issue two: fingertips that are, well, feeling strange. Not numb -- definitely not that. Not hurting, really. But...sensitive? Tight? Feeling as if they're swollen even though they're not?
Saw a urologist today. I appreciate a doctor who takes a go-slow approach. I'll have an ultrasound in that general region in a couple of weeks to see if the antibiotics I'm on actually help things return to normal. If not, I may have to have a stent placed in that tube.
See a neurologist at the end of the month about the fingertips, in search of neuropathy or some similar.
The tissue buildup issue may be related to radiation, surgery, or both. The finger issue may be a late-blooming side effect of chemo. Cancer: the gift that keeps on giving, even when you'd rather it not.
The bizarre thing is that, unlike when diagnosed with cancer (I didn't expect that diagnosis but I knew something was up), I'm actually feeling fairly good these days. Finally with some distance from chemo and the bacterial infection that followed, I could actually say I wasn't feeling sick or draggy. We were able to go down to North Carolina for a wedding and I didn't actually feel a whole lot of fatigue, no more than one normally might expect. If there's an infection in there it has a funny way of (not) showing it. Yet that PET-CT scan last week showed something was off, and a new round of visits to new doctors is the result.
So that's what's what at the moment. This is not so much the "omg!" kind of news that cancer diagnosis was; these are more "wtf??" results, notable for strangeness and incomprehensibility than immediate threat. To be sure, if the ureter is blocked that has to be fixed -- I don't need a failed kidney. Still, this doesn't have the same shock value as that news of a little over a year ago.
Meanwhile I start an internship (non-parish version) tomorrow and started a church choir singing gig yesterday. Life goes on until it doesn't, and ideally that will be some time from now.
Over the course of the last year, I've been targeted with radiation, cut into (and some stuff removed), and pumped with nasty and sometimes poisonous chemicals. I shouldn't be surprised, I suppose, that my body has reacted in strange ways.
Right now I have two issues going on, both possibly (but not definitely) related to cancer treatment.
Issue one: excess tissue buildup, or something like that -- possibly scar tissue? -- that is possibly impinging a part of my urinary tract, causing one kidney to become a bit dilated. Also (related or not?) a buildup of gas where gas cannot, technically, happen under normal circumstances (no, not that kind of gas), in the general area.
Issue two: fingertips that are, well, feeling strange. Not numb -- definitely not that. Not hurting, really. But...sensitive? Tight? Feeling as if they're swollen even though they're not?
Saw a urologist today. I appreciate a doctor who takes a go-slow approach. I'll have an ultrasound in that general region in a couple of weeks to see if the antibiotics I'm on actually help things return to normal. If not, I may have to have a stent placed in that tube.
See a neurologist at the end of the month about the fingertips, in search of neuropathy or some similar.
The tissue buildup issue may be related to radiation, surgery, or both. The finger issue may be a late-blooming side effect of chemo. Cancer: the gift that keeps on giving, even when you'd rather it not.
The bizarre thing is that, unlike when diagnosed with cancer (I didn't expect that diagnosis but I knew something was up), I'm actually feeling fairly good these days. Finally with some distance from chemo and the bacterial infection that followed, I could actually say I wasn't feeling sick or draggy. We were able to go down to North Carolina for a wedding and I didn't actually feel a whole lot of fatigue, no more than one normally might expect. If there's an infection in there it has a funny way of (not) showing it. Yet that PET-CT scan last week showed something was off, and a new round of visits to new doctors is the result.
So that's what's what at the moment. This is not so much the "omg!" kind of news that cancer diagnosis was; these are more "wtf??" results, notable for strangeness and incomprehensibility than immediate threat. To be sure, if the ureter is blocked that has to be fixed -- I don't need a failed kidney. Still, this doesn't have the same shock value as that news of a little over a year ago.
Meanwhile I start an internship (non-parish version) tomorrow and started a church choir singing gig yesterday. Life goes on until it doesn't, and ideally that will be some time from now.
Sunday, September 8, 2013
Missed opportunity!
What a bummer. I ended up going to two services today, and in neither case did the preacher take advantage of the rare lectionary opportunity to preach on a whole book of the Bible in one sermon.
Well, okay, virtually a whole book. A few verses get left off at the end. But still.
OK, so the book in question is Philemon, one of the one-chapter wonders of the New Testament. But still.
Apparently for some it is a troublesome passage. Apparently for some Paul is not explicit enough. Apparently for some the only appropriate thing for Paul to do was to come out with trumpets blaring, demanding of Philemon in ALL CAPS that Philemon MUST free his slave Onesimus or Paul personally would guarantee Philemon's eternity in some bad place.
Yes, I suppose Paul could have done that. In the Roman Empire of his time that was a good way to get executed. But, hey, Paul was already in prison at that point, what's a mere execution?
Thing is, short of such a direct order, Paul does a pretty fascinating job of backing Philemon into a corner. There are a few things you need to remember about this letter, things that often don't seem to be noticed by the more fretful or condemnatory commentators out there.
One: the letter is not just addressed to Philemon. Besides the title character, Paul also addresses the letter to "Apphia our sister, Archippus our fellow soldier, and to the church in your house" (2). As a result, this letter, like the other letters of Paul with place names attached (Galatians, Philippians, etc.), this letter would have been read not just by Philemon, but to that entire church meeting in his house. Paul isn't just asking this thing of Philemon, he's asking in front of everybody. The whole congregation is going to be watching to see how Philemon responds to this. (Perhaps the whole congregation, or those who hold slaves, might also be challenged about how they treat their slaves too. Who knows?)
Two: Paul isn't just asking Philemon to set Onesimus free or to just be nicer to him. He wants (hint, hint) Philemon to release Onesimus to return to Paul. Note verses 13 and 14: "I wanted to keep him with me...but I preferred to do nothing without your consent." Hint, hint. Now Paul does keep the door open for Onesimus to stay with Philemon, "no longer as a slave, but more than a slave, a beloved brother" (16). But really, the way Paul frames his letter, those are really the only two options he is imagining.
Three: Paul isn't above reminding Philemon who's the apostle and who's the convert. "I say nothing about your owing me even your own self" (19b) ... except, well, you just did, Paul. Even though Philemon owes Paul, in Paul's view, Paul is willing to guarantee anything that Onesimus may have filched from his master (even going so far as to take the pen from his secretary and write that part himself -- "I will repay it" (19a). Every excuse is being pulled out from under Philemon -- in front of the whole congregation, remember.
Intermingled with appropriate levels of flattery at beginning and end, thus Paul puts Philemon on the spot. "If you're the man I think you are, you'll do this...for me." Really, it's a pretty slick bit of maneuvering Paul puts on Philemon. If followed through, it blows up the whole system; how do you enslave your brother or sister in Christ?
Well, obviously, some people have managed to do so. I'm going to guess that not a whole lot of antebellum Southern preachers, among others, ever preached from Philemon that often. People will rationalize, any way they can, when they don't want to follow. Is it the letter's fault?
C'mon, preachers, you have three years. Get your Philemon sermons ready.
Well, okay, virtually a whole book. A few verses get left off at the end. But still.
OK, so the book in question is Philemon, one of the one-chapter wonders of the New Testament. But still.
Apparently for some it is a troublesome passage. Apparently for some Paul is not explicit enough. Apparently for some the only appropriate thing for Paul to do was to come out with trumpets blaring, demanding of Philemon in ALL CAPS that Philemon MUST free his slave Onesimus or Paul personally would guarantee Philemon's eternity in some bad place.
Yes, I suppose Paul could have done that. In the Roman Empire of his time that was a good way to get executed. But, hey, Paul was already in prison at that point, what's a mere execution?
Thing is, short of such a direct order, Paul does a pretty fascinating job of backing Philemon into a corner. There are a few things you need to remember about this letter, things that often don't seem to be noticed by the more fretful or condemnatory commentators out there.
One: the letter is not just addressed to Philemon. Besides the title character, Paul also addresses the letter to "Apphia our sister, Archippus our fellow soldier, and to the church in your house" (2). As a result, this letter, like the other letters of Paul with place names attached (Galatians, Philippians, etc.), this letter would have been read not just by Philemon, but to that entire church meeting in his house. Paul isn't just asking this thing of Philemon, he's asking in front of everybody. The whole congregation is going to be watching to see how Philemon responds to this. (Perhaps the whole congregation, or those who hold slaves, might also be challenged about how they treat their slaves too. Who knows?)
Two: Paul isn't just asking Philemon to set Onesimus free or to just be nicer to him. He wants (hint, hint) Philemon to release Onesimus to return to Paul. Note verses 13 and 14: "I wanted to keep him with me...but I preferred to do nothing without your consent." Hint, hint. Now Paul does keep the door open for Onesimus to stay with Philemon, "no longer as a slave, but more than a slave, a beloved brother" (16). But really, the way Paul frames his letter, those are really the only two options he is imagining.
Three: Paul isn't above reminding Philemon who's the apostle and who's the convert. "I say nothing about your owing me even your own self" (19b) ... except, well, you just did, Paul. Even though Philemon owes Paul, in Paul's view, Paul is willing to guarantee anything that Onesimus may have filched from his master (even going so far as to take the pen from his secretary and write that part himself -- "I will repay it" (19a). Every excuse is being pulled out from under Philemon -- in front of the whole congregation, remember.
Intermingled with appropriate levels of flattery at beginning and end, thus Paul puts Philemon on the spot. "If you're the man I think you are, you'll do this...for me." Really, it's a pretty slick bit of maneuvering Paul puts on Philemon. If followed through, it blows up the whole system; how do you enslave your brother or sister in Christ?
Well, obviously, some people have managed to do so. I'm going to guess that not a whole lot of antebellum Southern preachers, among others, ever preached from Philemon that often. People will rationalize, any way they can, when they don't want to follow. Is it the letter's fault?
C'mon, preachers, you have three years. Get your Philemon sermons ready.
Sunday, August 25, 2013
One year
One year ago today I posted a blog entry that began with the following: "No point in beating around the bush. That colonoscopy yesterday led to a diagnosis of cancer of the rectum."
In the intervening year I have been bombarded with radiation, cut open and mutilated, and poisoned. I don't really know yet whether the cancer is still there or not. I have a PET-CT scan scheduled for September 3 in aid of answering that question. I'm supposed to have a colonoscopy as well, but that hasn't been scheduled yet because of the infection referenced in the last blog post. In fits and starts, the effects of that infection seem to be fading at last, though I still have to be extra-cautious about what I eat, apparently.
In the intervening year I have ranted and screamed and pouted; made strange jokes and indulged in bits of gallows humor; suppressed even more humor that would inevitably, given the nature and location of the cancer and treatment, descended to "bathroom humor" level; been surprised not to wake up with a bag attached to a hole in my side; taken enough Imodium that I should own stock in the company by now; had legs that would not let me rest at all; been unable to leave the house and gone anyway; preached a sermon while totally hopped up on painkillers; and gone through all manner of other health traumas and indignities that I have not described in this blog, and probably will not. You can't handle the truth.
In the intervening year I have staggered through Old Testament as one wandering in the wilderness; practice-baptized a baby; broken bread; been on the giving and receiving end of pastoral care; attended my first classes via video hookup; made the rookie mistake I always warned students against, biting off more subject than I could possibly chew in the given paper assignment; led a worship ritual in a park; gotten to know A Brief Statement of Faith well enough to hack my way through teaching a class on it; preached five times and chanted a psalm in worship, for internship credit; tried and failed to be a polity wonk; become a candidate for ordination; completed three of my four senior ordination exams and have the fourth in progress (results not to be known for a few weeks); and somehow managed not to wash out of seminary.
In the intervening year I have gone to Disney World and walked, very slowly and with lots of stops, "around the world" at Epcot; gone to spring training for the first time since moving out of Florida; gone back to Lawrence for the first time since moving and, to be honest, kinda wished I could've stayed; stood on the edge of the Konza Prairie and let the wind nudge me about like tallgrass; finally taken a bite of the Little Apple; been to the Vietnam memorial in D.C. for the first time in years; been to George Washington's birthplace, James Monroe's birthplace (or the empty spot on the ground where scholars think it is), Thomas Jefferson's famous house, and James Madison's not-so-famous house (but no Civil War sites); been to Flying Squirrels baseball games and Spiders basketball games in Richmond and Nationals baseball games in D.C.; spent a tremendous summer working in the soon-to-be-trendy town of Ashland, VA; gone to three of four weddings in a summer of more-weddings-than-I've-been-to-in-my-married-life-so-far-combined, all for outstanding people, classmates, and friends half my age or less; and somehow managed to stay awake for some of it.
I've been alive, wondered if I was dead, sorta wished I was dead, was glad to be alive, didn't want to get out of bed, couldn't go to sleep, gotten up a dozen times in the middle of the night, and am still here for whatever reason. And here comes another year of it.
So August 24 is going to be one of those days. Diagnosis Day? Your Life Is Now Hell Day? Your Body Is Against You Day? Whatever. I guess I'm still here. And that exegesis exam doesn't give a rip about any of this. So, hopefully some sleep, and hopefully fresh for a new day of whatever the heck this life is.
In the intervening year I have been bombarded with radiation, cut open and mutilated, and poisoned. I don't really know yet whether the cancer is still there or not. I have a PET-CT scan scheduled for September 3 in aid of answering that question. I'm supposed to have a colonoscopy as well, but that hasn't been scheduled yet because of the infection referenced in the last blog post. In fits and starts, the effects of that infection seem to be fading at last, though I still have to be extra-cautious about what I eat, apparently.
In the intervening year I have ranted and screamed and pouted; made strange jokes and indulged in bits of gallows humor; suppressed even more humor that would inevitably, given the nature and location of the cancer and treatment, descended to "bathroom humor" level; been surprised not to wake up with a bag attached to a hole in my side; taken enough Imodium that I should own stock in the company by now; had legs that would not let me rest at all; been unable to leave the house and gone anyway; preached a sermon while totally hopped up on painkillers; and gone through all manner of other health traumas and indignities that I have not described in this blog, and probably will not. You can't handle the truth.
In the intervening year I have staggered through Old Testament as one wandering in the wilderness; practice-baptized a baby; broken bread; been on the giving and receiving end of pastoral care; attended my first classes via video hookup; made the rookie mistake I always warned students against, biting off more subject than I could possibly chew in the given paper assignment; led a worship ritual in a park; gotten to know A Brief Statement of Faith well enough to hack my way through teaching a class on it; preached five times and chanted a psalm in worship, for internship credit; tried and failed to be a polity wonk; become a candidate for ordination; completed three of my four senior ordination exams and have the fourth in progress (results not to be known for a few weeks); and somehow managed not to wash out of seminary.
In the intervening year I have gone to Disney World and walked, very slowly and with lots of stops, "around the world" at Epcot; gone to spring training for the first time since moving out of Florida; gone back to Lawrence for the first time since moving and, to be honest, kinda wished I could've stayed; stood on the edge of the Konza Prairie and let the wind nudge me about like tallgrass; finally taken a bite of the Little Apple; been to the Vietnam memorial in D.C. for the first time in years; been to George Washington's birthplace, James Monroe's birthplace (or the empty spot on the ground where scholars think it is), Thomas Jefferson's famous house, and James Madison's not-so-famous house (but no Civil War sites); been to Flying Squirrels baseball games and Spiders basketball games in Richmond and Nationals baseball games in D.C.; spent a tremendous summer working in the soon-to-be-trendy town of Ashland, VA; gone to three of four weddings in a summer of more-weddings-than-I've-been-to-in-my-married-life-so-far-combined, all for outstanding people, classmates, and friends half my age or less; and somehow managed to stay awake for some of it.
I've been alive, wondered if I was dead, sorta wished I was dead, was glad to be alive, didn't want to get out of bed, couldn't go to sleep, gotten up a dozen times in the middle of the night, and am still here for whatever reason. And here comes another year of it.
So August 24 is going to be one of those days. Diagnosis Day? Your Life Is Now Hell Day? Your Body Is Against You Day? Whatever. I guess I'm still here. And that exegesis exam doesn't give a rip about any of this. So, hopefully some sleep, and hopefully fresh for a new day of whatever the heck this life is.
Monday, August 19, 2013
Health blahs again
I'm beginning to hate my body.
No, not in the body-image sense (I more or less made peace with that some time ago). I mean I hate my body, and the way it seems intent on betraying me. Certain old heresies in the church are starting to sound appealing.
The latest is some sort of intestinal infection that is being highly resistant to treatment. I won't discuss the effects; you really don't want to hear it. Suffice to say I'm more or less constantly on edge, not to mention (again) tired a lot, in ways that defeat efforts to start rebuilding my stamina. One doesn't want to be dozing off while trying to work with weights.
It's just strange to be fighting to stay awake at 8:00 p.m. And it's not helpful with ordination exams this weekend.
Anyway, more tests are now on order. Perhaps the infection was not as simple as previously diagnosed. I have trouble caring any more. I'd just like to get through the day and night without disaster.
Of course this kicked in just a little after chemotherapy ended. Naturally, just when I was looking forward to starting to recover a bit. So much of the summer has been spent fighting this instead of getting my strength back.
I have ordination exams to take. I have classes and such for the fall to get ready for. I have blog entries I'd much rather be writing than another health whine. Instead I'm just trying not to doze off in the middle of an ords review.
I cannot suck it up and put on a happy face at the moment. I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired. And that's about as much as I have energy to say tonight.
No, not in the body-image sense (I more or less made peace with that some time ago). I mean I hate my body, and the way it seems intent on betraying me. Certain old heresies in the church are starting to sound appealing.
The latest is some sort of intestinal infection that is being highly resistant to treatment. I won't discuss the effects; you really don't want to hear it. Suffice to say I'm more or less constantly on edge, not to mention (again) tired a lot, in ways that defeat efforts to start rebuilding my stamina. One doesn't want to be dozing off while trying to work with weights.
It's just strange to be fighting to stay awake at 8:00 p.m. And it's not helpful with ordination exams this weekend.
Anyway, more tests are now on order. Perhaps the infection was not as simple as previously diagnosed. I have trouble caring any more. I'd just like to get through the day and night without disaster.
Of course this kicked in just a little after chemotherapy ended. Naturally, just when I was looking forward to starting to recover a bit. So much of the summer has been spent fighting this instead of getting my strength back.
I have ordination exams to take. I have classes and such for the fall to get ready for. I have blog entries I'd much rather be writing than another health whine. Instead I'm just trying not to doze off in the middle of an ords review.
I cannot suck it up and put on a happy face at the moment. I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired. And that's about as much as I have energy to say tonight.
Tuesday, August 13, 2013
So hymnals matter after all!
As it happens, my denomination got ever-so-briefly into the heat (if not always light) of cultural conversation of late, this time over the non-inclusion of a popular recent praise song in its forthcoming new hymnal. (In lieu of rehashing the controversy, I'll just indulge in a linkfest to blog posts and articles here, here, here, here, and here, among others available out there. It's not comprehensive; under no circumstances will this blog ever link to anything having to do with Glenn Beck.)
I have no intention of addressing the controversy directly. For one thing I don't even know the song. I don't particularly have an itch to do so. I have no doubt you can find plenty of folks using the kerfuffle to sharpen their already pointed knives to draw some more blood from what the consider a corrupt and fallen denomination, and I'll be damned if I contribute anything to that. It's my denomination, dammit, and if you have a problem with that you should probably move on.
My intent here is to go to what I hope is an obvious point, one that is often disputed or dismissed in other circumstances: hymnals still matter.
What I want to insist is that hymnals matter not primarily because they reflect a church's or a denomination's theology. They do that to some degree, but that is not necessarily the most important thing they do. I'm more concerned (much more concerned) with how hymnals shape a church's or a denomination's theology.
One project I did for an independent study this past spring semester put me in the task (one which quickly proved much larger than a spring semester could handle) of reviewing the hymns associated with the Lord's Supper (or Communion, or Eucharist, for readers of other denominational persuasions). It was a pretty sad affair. While collections ranging from the mid-1800s to, the mid- to late-1900s would offer a listing in the index titled "Lord's Supper," almost every hymn in such an index listing was at most a Maundy Thursday hymn or, even more likely, a Good Friday/Crucifixion hymn. With very few exceptions (as often individual lines in hymns as hymns themselves), there was nothing in what the congregation sang that spoke of being at the table; nothing to guide any sort of reflection or theological consideration about the table itself as an act of faith, welcome, hospitality, humility; nothing about the life of a Jesus who broke bread over and over again with all sorts of unseemly people, to the point that Pharisees sneered at him as someone who eats with sinners; it was all crucifixion all the time.
For a church that probably didn't observe the Lord's Supper more than four times a year, perhaps such a lack was less glaring. But as the twentieth century advanced and Presbyterians started figuring out that such infrequent communion may not be the best thing for the spiritual health of the church, there was very little available to those who might wish to have a hymn or two to turn attention to the act of communion itself in the congregation. The 1940 Hymnbook (the infamous "red book" to which some churches still cling) introduced a handful of table- or communion-focused hymns, including the spiritual "Let us break bread together." Even if an awareness and broadening of sacramental theology was at work in what might be called the "theological elites" of the denomination, one can say without too much stretching that even now such ideas have barely to make a dent in the larger body of the denomination, I would contend at least in part because it has taken quite a while for a body of hymns to emerge that can help to lead pastors and congregations in that direction where sermon after sermon will only go so far. What we sing matters, and what we collect to sing matters, even in an age where you can get a license and pop almost anything up on a screen.
Even a hymn borrowed from a distinct theological tradition will, given time, start to affect the way people think about their faith. The new Presbyterian book will include "Gather us in," a song born of the post-Vatican II overhaul of music in the Catholic tradition. While most of the text is fairly innocuous in terms of inter-denominational theological exchange, it does contain the phrase "give us to eat the bread that is You," which is fairly clearly tied to the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation (the bread and wine actually become the body and blood of Christ, in oversimplified summary). Presbyterians don't hold that belief. Nonetheless, give that song (which is already pretty popular in some corners of the denomination) twenty or thirty years of use and you'll have at least a few people in the pews at least wondering about how that works, no matter how much they got instructed on What Presbyterians Believe.
What we sing shapes what we believe and how we do theology (hint: everybody does theology, whether they know it or not). I'm not particularly campaigning to yank "Gather us in" out of the new book, before anybody goes there, but I am insisting that hymns matter, that what we collect into hymnals (no matter what media form those "hymnals" may take) matters, and that paying attention to what the hymns we sing actually say (as opposed to enslavement to the "old favorites" or the hottest new praise choruses) is a bare minimum responsibility of any pastor, church musician, worship committee, or denominational hymnal committee.
What we sing matters.
And I haven't even gotten into how the music to which we sing those songs matters. But that's a whole other blog post, or bunch of posts, or a book or two.
I have no intention of addressing the controversy directly. For one thing I don't even know the song. I don't particularly have an itch to do so. I have no doubt you can find plenty of folks using the kerfuffle to sharpen their already pointed knives to draw some more blood from what the consider a corrupt and fallen denomination, and I'll be damned if I contribute anything to that. It's my denomination, dammit, and if you have a problem with that you should probably move on.
My intent here is to go to what I hope is an obvious point, one that is often disputed or dismissed in other circumstances: hymnals still matter.
What I want to insist is that hymnals matter not primarily because they reflect a church's or a denomination's theology. They do that to some degree, but that is not necessarily the most important thing they do. I'm more concerned (much more concerned) with how hymnals shape a church's or a denomination's theology.
One project I did for an independent study this past spring semester put me in the task (one which quickly proved much larger than a spring semester could handle) of reviewing the hymns associated with the Lord's Supper (or Communion, or Eucharist, for readers of other denominational persuasions). It was a pretty sad affair. While collections ranging from the mid-1800s to, the mid- to late-1900s would offer a listing in the index titled "Lord's Supper," almost every hymn in such an index listing was at most a Maundy Thursday hymn or, even more likely, a Good Friday/Crucifixion hymn. With very few exceptions (as often individual lines in hymns as hymns themselves), there was nothing in what the congregation sang that spoke of being at the table; nothing to guide any sort of reflection or theological consideration about the table itself as an act of faith, welcome, hospitality, humility; nothing about the life of a Jesus who broke bread over and over again with all sorts of unseemly people, to the point that Pharisees sneered at him as someone who eats with sinners; it was all crucifixion all the time.
For a church that probably didn't observe the Lord's Supper more than four times a year, perhaps such a lack was less glaring. But as the twentieth century advanced and Presbyterians started figuring out that such infrequent communion may not be the best thing for the spiritual health of the church, there was very little available to those who might wish to have a hymn or two to turn attention to the act of communion itself in the congregation. The 1940 Hymnbook (the infamous "red book" to which some churches still cling) introduced a handful of table- or communion-focused hymns, including the spiritual "Let us break bread together." Even if an awareness and broadening of sacramental theology was at work in what might be called the "theological elites" of the denomination, one can say without too much stretching that even now such ideas have barely to make a dent in the larger body of the denomination, I would contend at least in part because it has taken quite a while for a body of hymns to emerge that can help to lead pastors and congregations in that direction where sermon after sermon will only go so far. What we sing matters, and what we collect to sing matters, even in an age where you can get a license and pop almost anything up on a screen.
Even a hymn borrowed from a distinct theological tradition will, given time, start to affect the way people think about their faith. The new Presbyterian book will include "Gather us in," a song born of the post-Vatican II overhaul of music in the Catholic tradition. While most of the text is fairly innocuous in terms of inter-denominational theological exchange, it does contain the phrase "give us to eat the bread that is You," which is fairly clearly tied to the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation (the bread and wine actually become the body and blood of Christ, in oversimplified summary). Presbyterians don't hold that belief. Nonetheless, give that song (which is already pretty popular in some corners of the denomination) twenty or thirty years of use and you'll have at least a few people in the pews at least wondering about how that works, no matter how much they got instructed on What Presbyterians Believe.
What we sing shapes what we believe and how we do theology (hint: everybody does theology, whether they know it or not). I'm not particularly campaigning to yank "Gather us in" out of the new book, before anybody goes there, but I am insisting that hymns matter, that what we collect into hymnals (no matter what media form those "hymnals" may take) matters, and that paying attention to what the hymns we sing actually say (as opposed to enslavement to the "old favorites" or the hottest new praise choruses) is a bare minimum responsibility of any pastor, church musician, worship committee, or denominational hymnal committee.
What we sing matters.
And I haven't even gotten into how the music to which we sing those songs matters. But that's a whole other blog post, or bunch of posts, or a book or two.
Sunday, August 4, 2013
Communion meditation: The Medium Is the Message
The final sermon of my summer internship is done. And it was not quite a full sermon: a "communion meditation" is probably a more accurate description. Pathetically, I am rather sad that this will probably not happen again for a while.
Charles Freeman
4 August 2013
(Communion)
Ashland Presbyterian
Church
Luke 24:13-35; John
2:1-12
Communion Meditation:
The Medium Is the Message
It was in 1964
that an obscure communications theorist from Toronto, Marshall McLuhan,
introduced in his book Understanding
Media the phrase “the medium is the message.” Despite its seeming simplicity, the phrase would, over the
years, assume a dizzying complex of meanings, but at its core was the basic
idea that such emerging and increasingly dominant media of communication such
as radio, film, and television were anything but neutral conveyors of
information; instead, the medium shaped, configured, and even altered the
“message” its users might have intended to convey. Nearly fifty years later one might well wonder what McLuhan,
who died in 1980, might make of more recent communications media such as email,
the Internet, or Twitter.
One thing about
McLuhan that was not well-known at the time was that he was a devout
Catholic. He would in later years
acknowledge that his theories on communication and media – including the famous
idea that “the medium is the message” – were influenced by his
Catholicism.
He did not say
specifically what part of his Catholicism might have influenced his thought,
but I wonder if he might have been reacting to his experience of the Mass,
particularly that part of the Mass known as the Eucharist, or as we Protestants
would say, Communion, or the Lord’s Supper.
It seems a very
simple observance: bread is broken, juice (in our case) is poured, the bread
and juice are distributed among the congregation. But there is, particularly in the story from Luke’s gospel
today, something much stronger and deeper at work.
We are of course
familiar from this story at or immediately after Easter. Two disciples, identified as
“disciples” even though not among the numbered twelve, are walking from
Jerusalem to the nearby town of Emmaus on Easter evening, their world
shattered. There was that strange
report from the women in their group about the tomb being empty and angels
being there, but no one else saw that (the angels at least). The stranger appears and enters into
conversation between the two; they tell their story, and the stranger responds
with a staggering knowledge of the scripture, arguing that the events of
crucifixion they described were exactly what had to happen, which they’d have
known if they weren’t so foolish and slow of heart. With day fading, the two stop and entreat the stranger to
stay and be their guest, which he does.
The stranger then, surprisingly, takes the role of host: he takes the
bread for the meal, blesses it, breaks it and gives it to them. Then – and only then – did they recognize that the stranger was none other
than Jesus himself. When he
disappears, the two disciples rush back to Jerusalem to report to the others,
and to describe how, as verse 35 puts it, “he
had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.”
Throughout all the
gospels, and particularly in the Gospel of Luke, one of the most frequently
recurring themes is one of hospitality, often signaled in the breaking of
bread. It is seen in miracles,
like the feeding of the five thousand; it is seen in teaching moments, such as
the incident in the home of the Pharisee, where the host’s lack of hospitality
is contrasted with the overriding concern of the woman who washes Jesus’s feet;
it is seen in surprising announcements such as Jesus’s shocker that he must go
to the home of that sinful tax collector Zacchaeus; it is seen in a pattern of
hospitality and fellowship so strong and so pronounced that the Pharisees scorn
Jesus as a “fellow [who] welcomes sinners and eats with them.”
(Luke 15:2)
Finally there was
that event just a few days before, the Last Supper as we call it, in which
Jesus breaks bread, pours a cup, and commands his disciples to do so, as often
as they do it, “in remembrance of me“
(Luke 22:19). Even here, Jesus is
not throwing some new practice at the disciples; instead, he is taking a
gesture, an action they have seen him perform again and again in their time
with him, and commanding them to do likewise—not as some stiff memorial, but as
a remembrance, a way of living that
echoes and demonstrates to the world the way that Jesus lived.
But what is
fascinating about this Emmaus Road story, as well as a bit depressing for
preachers, is that it is this gesture, this breaking of bread, that opens the
eyes of the two disciples to see Jesus for who he is. All of that amazing expository preaching that Jesus did? Nope. If you felt like reading the story tongue-in-cheek, you
could even say that all it did was give the disciples heartburn. But the act of breaking bread was one
so characteristic, so typical of
Jesus that their fogged and shrouded eyes could no longer conceal from them
their Lord.
The message came
to these two disciples, not in a barrage of words and scriptural exegesis, but
in the rather simple medium of bread.
Stuff of the earth, harvested, ground into flour, mixed and kneaded and
baked into the most basic staple of the disciples’ diet. But in that medium indeed was a message
that had been witnessed and lived so many times by Jesus that it was one the
disciples knew by heart; a message of welcome, of hospitality, not just to the
good folks but to the worst sinners society could dredge up, even sinners like
us. And this medium of bread,
being broken, still shapes and forms that message even today, whenever we come
to the table.
On that Maundy
Thursday Jesus paired the breaking of bread, a token of humanity’s most basic
needs, with a cup of wine poured.
If bread represented the basics of life, wine no doubt served as a token
of celebration. The reading from
the Gospel of John reminds us that the very first sign Jesus performed in the
presence of his disciples was one of turning ordinary water into wine, a sign
that became the rescue and continuation of a wedding feast, one of the most
joyous celebrations that culture knew.
Bread broken, a
cup filled. These are still signs
of welcome and celebration to us today.
They still point us to a Life of welcoming and making welcome, a Life
that celebrated and rejoiced even as it grieved and mourned and got angry a time
or two. They point us to a Life
that was so dedicated, so insistent on bringing us in and ministering to us,
that it poured itself out in death rather than suffer any one of us not to be
guests at his table for eternity.
Perhaps the bread
and cup seem a curious choice of medium, but the message that bread and cup
shape for us in this sacrament is still one we need to hear, as many times as
possible. Christ calls us to come;
he welcomes us to the table; he bids us be his guest. Let us not be blinded to the message in this humble, yet
exalted medium.
The table is made
ready; Jesus our host bids us come and eat.
In the name of the
Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen.
Hymns:
God is Here! (PH #461); Psalm 107 (from The
Psalter: Psalms & Canticles for Singing); Be Known to Us in Breaking
Bread (PH #505); Draw Us In the Spirit’s Tether (PH #504)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)