In honor of one who has influenced me - John Boonzaaijer on Sanctifying Time - the Book of Common Prayer Perspective

In Honor of those who have Influenced Me:

Rev. John Boonzaaijer

            Father John Boonzaaijer is the rector of Chapel of the Cross Reformed Episcopal Church in Dallas, Texas.  I have known Father Boonzaaijer for more than twenty years.  He was my pastor for a number of years and as a close friend I have always been in admiration of his ability to squeeze the most out of a day’s hours so as to be a priest and servant-leader in the church, a husband to his wife, a father to his children, a neighbor to his neighbors, and to lift all these things up to God.  I was greatly blessed a couple of years ago to hear him speak to my church in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma on how the church calendar used in the Anglican Book of Prayer reflects a view of time that shaped the early Church calendar.  Father Boonzaaijer shows us how the ancient Church calendar reflects a history of God’s appointing of seasons and times from the beginning of creation that is reflected in the Christian calendar.  I believe his work will be edifying to everyone who uses the Christian calendar, and will help believers from other traditions to at least understand if not consider the values of a church calendar.  It is my privilege to present to you Father Boonzaaijer’s article on “Sanctifying Time.”

 

 

SANCTIFYING TIME

 

We may cherish a “holy minute,” but will the minute make us holy? God not only sanctifies time, He uses time to sanctify the Church—and the Christian.  The Book of Common Prayer orders life and worship by refracting the life of Christ onto the Church’s daily, weekly, annual, and lifetime calendars.
 

 At the Creation of the world, God placed the lights in the sky—some to rule the day, and some to rule the night. But they are placed in the sky for a greater reason: for “signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years” (Genesis 1:14). They divide the day from the night and lighten the earth during both. But what else are they for?

 The Book of Numbers explains. God is teaching Israel a “Grammar of Worship” by using time. Taking Israel out of Egypt, God first stops at Mt. Sinai and spends two years to teach the newly redeemed how He wishes to be worshiped. In addition to the moral code of the Ten Commandments Israel becomes schooled into the protocol of approach that God wishes them to use. How, When, Where, and Why are they to come into His presence? Sincerity is not enough.

 Numbers 28 instructs Israel to use the lights of the sky for worship. When should a godly Israelite pray? As the sun comes up and and as it goes down, a lamb is offered, along with the morning and evening prayer. On the seventh day, the sacrifice is doubled. At the first sliver of the new moon, other sacrifices are offered.
 

 After arranging daily, weekly, and monthly worship with the sun’s rising and setting, and the moon’s waxing and waning, God uses the stars to arrange an annual calendar. Three Spring feasts and three Fall feasts move Israel semi-annually through cycles of repentance, redemption, and rejoicing. In the Spring, Passover on the full moon of Nisan (repentance) is followed by the Feast of the First Fruits (redemption), and then the Feast of Weeks (rejoicing). In the Fall, the Feast of Trumpets (repentance) culminates the agricultural season, which is followed by the Day of Atonement (redemption), and the Feast of Tabernacles (rejoicing).

Thus, by God’s design, the celestial creation provides the calendrical mechanics for proper worship. God not only sanctifies time, He uses time to sanctify His people, newly redeemed from slavery in Egypt. The prescribed worship calendar derives order from God’s signs in the sky, and is arranged around agriculture. The Creator of heaven and earth, not the pagan fertility gods, rules all the world: earth, sea, and sky.

What do Jesus and the early Church do with this revelation? Jesus lives under the Law, is shaped by the calendar’s spiritual direction, and completely fulfills the Old Covenant. But destroy them He does not! Moreover, since Jesus promised the eleven that He would be with the Church to the end of the age, and that He would send His Holy Spirit to them to lead them into all truth, the Church does well carefully to observe the calendars developing in the early centuries of Church History. A study of history reveals the Apostles leading the Church to use God’s order of time from the Hebrew calendar as they themselves were led into all truth by the Holy Spirit of Jesus.

Could any forget the Passover, now marked by crucifixion and resurrection? Jesus ascending into heaven? The Gospels keep the life of Jesus at the center of the Church’s worship, and the epistles build all doctrine upon the same. Readers of the New Testament are expected to know that when “the trumpet shall sound,” the last harvest has begun, and the year is now fully “the year of our Lord.” As it took several centuries for God to gift Israel with the Psalms for their daily prayers, so it required several centuries for the Holy Spirit to develop the Church’s annual worship around the life of Christ. But the beginnings are immediate: the Passover is henceforth, and forever, about the Lamb of God.

As a prism refracts one beam of sunshine into the full and glorious spectrum of the rainbow, so the Church quickly began to refract the life of Christ into its annual worship and prayers. Repentance, redemption, and rejoicing were still ordered with days, weeks, seasons, and years, but now circling the life of Christ rather than agriculture. The shape of the Christian calendar continues the Hebrew ellipse with two foci, now Christmas and Easter (incarnation and atonement).
 

 Maintaining these ancient and biblical foundations, the Book of Common Prayer weaves them together into one book for the individuals, families, and parishes of the Church. Advent, Christmas and Epiphany focus spiritual life through the liturgy of the incarnation of the Word made flesh. The Creator God and the Redeemer God are one and the same! Salvation is brought to this world, and is not removed from this world. Creation will be saved.
 

 Next, as Mother, the Church takes her children through (pre) Lent, Holy Week, Easter, Ascension, and Pentecost, again in the order of repentance, redemption, and rejoicing. In Christ, God conquers sin, Satan, evil, and wickedness by way of the cross. The Church prays with Jesus on His way to Jerusalem, weeps and wonders atop Golgotha, believes at the tomb, and bows before His exalted throne at the right hand of the Father, going on to “walk in the Spirit” and “disciple all nations.”

 During the octave of Pentecost, Trinity Sunday, the calendar proceeds to ruminate on what this all means, applying the completed work of Christ to the faithful believer, that he may also “thither ascend” (Ascension Day). The Roman Church counts her remaining Sundays from Pentecost, but Episcopalians (until recently) and Anglicans, have always counted their remaining weeks of the year from Trinity, following the ancient British custom. One advantage of this tradition is further protection from Modalism: Christian pilgrimage is not simply life in the Spirit; rather, life in the Spirit is union with one God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. (And it is interesting that “fresh words from the Spirit” tend to come from those who now count their Sundays from Pentecost.)

 This calendar is an unspeakable gift for Christian discipleship, teaching repentance, redemption, and rejoicing through annual prayer around the life of Christ. But much remains. Sins entangle our confused souls, hearts are divided, lives are broken, and hopes torn.

 Trinitytide begins and ends in heaven. Families must be rebuilt, vocations clarified, chastity cherished, and sins mortified. The seven deadly sins or passions of the soul are indeed deadly!  Again the Trinitytide calendar orders the Christian soul by cycling through the traditional disorders and passions of the soul, in the order of Purgation, Illumination, and Union with God. The sins of the mind (Pride and Vainglory), the heart (Despair, Sloth, and Wrath), and the appetites (Lust and Covetousness), are brought to the throne of grace in heaven through the kindly order of Trinitytide Sunday Propers.

 Around the life of Christ, the Church is sanctified through God’s ordering of her time: a daily calendar, a weekly calendar, and an annual calendar. It is no mere coincidence that the Prayer Book begins Daily Morning and Evening Prayer, continuing to weekly Sundays, arranged by the Propers for Holy Communion, from year to year. Following the daily, weekly, and annual calendars a final calendar appears: Baptism, Confirmation, Marriage, Childbirth, Sickness, and Burial.
 

 Such is the Hebrew year, given to the Church in her early centuries. Do not think of the Christian Year as a new idea; it is the pattern God first gave to Israel, teaching her how to worship Him according to His will, fulfilled by Christ, and cherished by the Church. Loathe to abandon such revelation given her in the Old Testament, the Church transposed this calendar through the finished work of the King of Glory.

 Without a calendar ordering my disordered soul, am I missing out on God’s way to bring His Son to His redeemed people? Could that include my sanctification? What better orders my soul: a cherished book with the complete calendar, or a pamphlet for one slice only, thrown away after service? Could this also be true for my curious pagan neighbor?

Written by Rev. John P. Boonzaaijer; Rector of Chapel of the Cross Reformed Episcopal Church, Dallas, Texas.

In Honor of . . . John Armstrong

In Honor of those who have Influenced Me

John Armstrong

 

            One of the interesting questions we ask in life is “Who am I?”  Ultimately that question from the Christian perspective is probably too complex to answer.  It is too complex, from a Christian perspective, because we are created in God’s image.  So it would seem likely that trying to understand ourselves reflects the difficulty of trying to fully comprehend God who is incomprehensible.  We know in part but are known in full is the perspective that so often drives us along in our journeys of faith.  As a writer, even as a blogger I am learning more and more that part of my obligation as a writer is to give credit to thoughts taken from someone else.  As I write today I am writing with a realization that if my person were a written book I would need to put footnotes all over my person like tattoos.  One footnote would say “this is something my dad contributed me”.  Then another would cite my mother.  Today I am writing an article about how part of my life should have an acknowledgement to John Armstrong for helping me desire to be connected to more of the diversity among Christians found within Christ’s church.

            I have known John Armstrong for slightly over thirty years.  We had lost track of one another, but reconnected through Facebook last year.  I discovered he was into something called missional-ecumenism.  He had written a book on it entitled Your Church is too Small. (Recommended reading)   I wasn’t sure what to make of missional-ecumenism.  The more I read and listened to him the more he made sense.  Christ prayed for church unity, that we would be one in Christ. (John 17:11)  John believed that this was something important enough that Christians should be seeking to bring it about.  He is realistic.  He knows that we can’t just sweep every issue that divides Christians under the rug.  But there is a need for us to be looking to grow together in Christ, and a need to quit easily accepting the multitudes of divisions that exist in the world of Christendom.  I recently read that there are now more than 10,000 Christian denominations in the world.  You don’t need me to list the reasons we have divisions.  You can write your own list.  We shouldn’t be so ready to accept them.  Jesus prayed for our unity and not our disunity.

            Maybe we can’t solve all our divisions in one generation.  I think John has ideas on how we can move towards the eventual goal of Christian unity.  John has worked with numerous church leaders from various denominations to encourage a greater sense of solidarity and shared mission between churches with their share of differences.  As a layman, it is my intent to build relationships with more Christians from a varied and diverse background within the Christian world.  I desire to be growing in my pursuit of Christian unity alongside my other obligations in seeking to grow in grace as I grow in age.

Perhaps if we can’t envision church unity among the tens of thousands of Christian denominations, we can envision reaching out to a Christian with whom we disagree about something.  Perhaps it will mean simply trying to learn why we disagree.  We may be tempted to think the worst of a person, when it might prove helpful to think better of the person.  A woman on Twitter asked in an insightful Tweet, “Can we believe that the person who disagrees with us may not be stupid or evil, but has simply looked at all the same things we have and reached a different conclusion?”  If when Christians argued we would begin with that assumption, instead of believing there must be something wrong with them when they disagree, might that not help us in the way we deal with our differences?  If I understand John, he wants to see us develop healthy responses to our divisions rather than unhelpful responses.  We can’t simply get rid of 10,000 denominations overnight, because in virtually all those denominations someone’s life is being nourished within that expression of Christianity and Jesus is the one who does not wish to break the bruised reed dependent on the care a young or old believer has found in the place where he exists.  But still we yearn for becoming more connected to more of Christ’s church and not to less of it.

            I can happily express that some of the most satisfying relationships I have discovered in the last year have been with people with whom I did not imagine I had much in common.  I thought they were too much my opposite in matters of the Christian faith.  But as I followed them on Twitter, where I have made some friendships with people with whom I probably differed most, I would find for every tweet where we disagreed there would be several where we would agree.  Some of these tweets have proved to be genuine blessings that added something to my life that I would never have known except I was willing to listen for a change to someone I was tempted to think was too different from me for me to have any basis of fellowship.  But if another is attracted to the life and ministry of Jesus Christ, then we share an interest in Jesus Christ which makes discovery of our unity in Christ worth discovering and building upon.

            I close out my honoring of John Armstrong by linking you to a recent blog of his on the subject of dialogue and dogma.  I hope you will read this valuable part of his story where he looks from his Protestant perspective with what we all can learn from Pope Francis about how dialogue and dogma go together.

Please link here to John Armstrong’s blog on dialogue and dogma

 

 

Because Lent is near

Because Lent is near

I will retreat into the Wilderness

and Guests will share their stories here

The last blog written by Dan McDonald until following Easter Sunday

 

            I do not have a balanced soul.  I get sidetracked by desperate moods or preoccupied by latest whims.  Living alone probably magnifies these flaws.  So on occasion I must speak to my unbalanced and undisciplined ways.  I have been blogging for a little over one year.  I have followed the whims of the little feller in my head who says “we could write about this, this, that, and oh this here.  But now I know it is time to tell him, that he must be silent for a while.  It would be better if I listened to a different voice beckoning me and then when the time is right we will write.  But a voice beckons me to come into the wilderness, to be silent and to attend to the Rabbi I am to meet in the Wilderness.  I have been told that I must go to the mountain with him.  The Rabbi, who carries the wood, is beckoning me to make a part of the journey alongside him.  I am to be silent, to be like a child, to be as Isaac in this journey; for the wood the Rabbi carries is to be carried to a mountain where a sacrifice is to be made.  I am to walk, sit, kneel, and pray in silence until the appointed sacrifice on a dark Friday when the sun will shine not during the hour of sacrifice for the appointed lamb.

            I must put aside my pen and leave my keyboard behind, and blog no more.  I understood this without words.  I wondered if this meant that no blogs would appear for these forty days.  I heard no voice but it was as if I understood that it was time I was to treat my offer of a blog as if it were not really about me at all.  It could not be about me if I wished for a visitor to be granted a blessing for having visited the pages of a panhandling philosopher.  I felt hurt, but then it was if a burden was removed that I had carried far too long.  I thought of an icon of one known as John the Forerunner, and I prayed quietly "May I decrease that you may increase", may I be content in the Baptizer's prayer.

            I felt again though he spoke no words how God had blessed me through the lives of others, and intended me to learn from others and intended me to be in some moment a blessing for others.  I have been blessed by others, often the best thing to be seen in me is something written upon my soul by another who has imparted something from his life to mine.  I wish sometimes the good that one could see in me might be hidden for the better to have been able to be seen by him or her who taught it to me.  For so often the good they see in me is I think the better they could see in another whose life taught me.  Then I understood that while I traveled on my Lenten journey, I could ask those who taught me good to share the story of their better to those who come to my page for a small blessing. I began to think of people to ask who would share their story while I was away on my Lenten journey.  I am not sure how many of you might get my call.  Some of you from old and a few from new might get an email, a direct message, asking if you would share something of the story of something I have valued learning from you.  For I am sure that I would love to tell the story, but I am sure that you are the one to tell it better.  Please consider what I will ask of you.

            I want to complete this blog today with words I read expressed long ago by St. Bonaventure.  He said “God is the one whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere.”  Think about those words, “God is the one whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere.”

I admit, as an ignorant Protestant, I don’t know his writings, but I know how these words have spoken to me and that they may be shared with you.  I know that God, infinite and beyond our comprehension so loved the world that he sent His Son into the world that He might bring us to God.  Because God’s center is everywhere, then if the love of God in the life of Jesus Christ has found you, then you are at the very center of God.  He has loved you as if you are the whole world, and he has loved me, and he has loved those for whom he came, and only those who would flee his presence and cry out for the rocks and mountains to fall upon them will not be there in his center, for he has placed each of us in the center in his only begotten son.  I know also that there is no circumference regarding God, no limiting boundary to his love shared with his people.  We fallible human beings draw circles beckoning one person to a special confidence and pushing a soul we do not favor to the fringes.  We know that sin abides in us, who would seek to do good and we draw circles, “O’ mighty God have mercy upon us.”  But with him there is no circumference and if you are his in Christ then you are in the center of his love and never on the fringes.  So I am sure now I can do this.  I can make a Lenten journey, and know that my guests will share a story and that God through our strengths and weaknesses, and they are both alike to him, will have each of you at the center of his love.

As It Was in the Beginning

As it was in the Beginning, is now, and Ever Shall be;

World without End – Amen

Written by Dan McDonald

Dependent upon the insights of too many to count

 

Planetary nebula photographed by Hubble

From an article in Christianity Today

            What will happen to our present creation?  I know of many Christians who view this world as something temporary, something that will simply be burned up by a great fire and then replaced by a permanent new creation.  I viewed creation that way much of my Christian life.  Sometimes in our church services we would sing a chorus that has made its way from the ancient times of the early church.  I had a hard time singing the words, “As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be; world without end.  Amen.”  Do we live in a world without end?  I wasn't sure about this song.  I won't pretend there aren't mysteries about the future that I have no way of understanding.  But I have begun to believe that the ancients who sang the words of the ancient chorus had a sense of what God plans for our creation.

Chicago nestled against Lake Michigan

The city of man connected to creation 

            It is true sometimes that we Christians understand that we cannot get final satisfaction from our relationship to our present creation.  I will interact with a beautiful and wonderful blog by Christie Purifoy who was able to express her thanks that God granted her to have many of the varied desires she pursued in life.  She wanted to live in a big city and was able to.  She wanted to earn a PhD and managed to do so.  She wanted to teach at a university and did so.  She wanted then to leave that to take up living on a farm, raising children with her husband and writing.  She was able to do that.  But the desires she wanted in this life, even as full and wonderful as they were taught her that in bringing her to pursue and enjoy her desires, that there was yet another home in a future creation that was calling her.  She understood that ultimate satisfaction could not be found in this creation.  The Christian knows this sense that we can have so much here, but the all of life cannot be found here.  We do not find ultimate satisfaction in this present creation.

But there is a flip side to our relationship with this creation.  This was expressed in a blog by Natalie Trust.  Natalie is one of my favorite bloggers, as is Christie.  Natalie is sometimes more provocative, and sometimes is more challenging to my perspective.  I say that to say that I have learned to listen to her, and to think about what she says, for whether or not I always agree with her I know that she has thought, felt, and understood things I have never begun to think about.  She wrote a blog about how she went to the ocean shore and felt as though God was offering her peace at the beach as much as he did in the Eucharist.  If you've ever read Natalie's description of her sense of gratitude for the peace she is granted in partaking from the Eucharist, you would readily understand how she does not take the Eucharist lightly or consider its benefits as merely symbolic or trivial. so when Natalie says she felt as if she had received the peace of God at the beach I don't for a moment take her as being flippant about the matters of the grace offered through the sacraments of the church.  But the truth is we have all likely had one of those moments when we've experienced God's grace as we came to appreciate something about creation.  How could any of us ever have read the Psalms without realizing that the Psalmists often found they experienced nearness to God in God's creation.  We have a relationship with this creation that is part of how we meet God, even if we don't find our ultimate satisfaction in merely feeling close to God in creation.  We hear Christ in the Scriptures, have him given to us in the Supper, know him in a brother or a sister, and yes also we know him in the mountains, valleys, and varied life and scenery of creation.  I think this all meets together so that there is something which validates both Christie's and Natalie's experiences from a truth that has been essential to the Christian tradition since the very beginning.

            It was not very long ago I saw a blurb about a book on Genesis One written by John H. Walton.  The blurb written about Walton’s book described how Walton believed that Genesis One shows the creation as being formed as if a temple were being built.  I never thought of the creation as a temple.  Instead of reading John Walton’s book immediately, I tied to think how the Bible might show the creation as if it were a temple.  I decided to test the theory before reading Walton's book.

 

Central Park, New York City

Creation preserved within the city of Man.

 

 

A bald eagle caught in flight above Central Park

Creation yearning for our redemption

The two above photographs from an article

In the Daily Telegraph, UK

 

One indication of the answer I discovered came to me as I thought of Solomon praising God during the dedication of the temple.  Solomon compared the temple in Jerusalem with heaven and the highest heaven.  He prayed: “Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain thee; how much less this house which I have built.”  (II Chronicles 6:18 RSV)  No temple, not even the heavens and the highest heavens, or the heavens and the earth can contain God.  A temple is not a place where God can be confined.  Rather a temple is the place where God bends down to embrace a child or bends down to hear an elderly person's feeble voice.  A temple is where God meets with his people in the midst of the earth.  But when we enter a temple we expect to see icons, paintings, or at least design that seems to make us feel that the God of this temple or cathedral is glorious and majestic.  St. Paul describes how God has given us this sense of the glorious and majestic in creation.  St. Paul writes: “Ever since the creation of the world his invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made.” (Romans 1:20 RSV)  The glory of God, his eternality, his deity, and all has been inscribed into the natural iconography of creation.

This all began coming together for me as I read Christie Purifoy’s blog.  She described how she realized as wonderful as the things she enjoyed were, that ultimately her satisfaction wasn't in this creation.  I wouldn't argue with her conclusion, yes it is true, never is this creation alone enough to satisfy our yearnings and desires for God.  But there was another side to it.  Something almost none of us noticed but St. Paul did.  If we did not find satisfaction in the creation, neither did the Creation experience satisfaction in us.  St. Paul said the creation had been suppressed into futility.  He said creation was in a state of travailing, and that it was groaning hungrily for the day when God reveals his sons and daughters in glory.  For that would be the day when creation found its fullness.  That is when I realized that our redemption has been intertwined with creation’s final restoration.  Our human redemption and the earth's full restoration are forever intertwined.

Do you see the implications?  It means that Christ came into creation to save creation.  He has not only come into humanity to save humanity, but also has come into creation to save all of creation.  It also means little things, like what might happen when this spring Christie is working on the  garden and maybe some frustration sets in that she might be able to laugh at it all and say to her garden “I suppose you are feeling the futility of it all upon you, well we are in this together.”  This creation isn't a disposable towel to throw away at the end of the universe, but is our home and temple wherein God will meet with man and all of his creation.  Natalie can still feel the ocean waves coming against her as if a gift of God speaking peace to her soul.  She will know that this temple, this creation, defiled as it were by sin's presence on this earth, is yet a temple God plans to restore.  So whether one feels as if God has spoken to them in the good things of creation, or if God beckons to us from beyond this creation, we wait for the revealing of the sons and daughters in the day of Christ's glory.

            I can hear an objection to all this, an objection I once voiced.  Someone asks, “Isn’t this all going to be burned up?  But will we believers not also likely be saved as through fire?  What sort of a fire is it that burns wood, hay, and straw but allows gold, silver, and precious stone to pass through the fire?  It is a refiner's fire intended to incinerate dross but to preserve gold.  The dross is burnt away in the fire, while all that is precious is passed into the new vessel.  The old passed away as the dross dropped out of the refining process.  The new is composed wholly of fine precious things.  That is why I can sing with great joy the song, “As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.”  It will be a world where Christ, creation and the redeemed of the Lord rejoice forevermore.  We will hear the “Peace be with you” at the seashore and we will also know that now we have come home, truly home.

 

Molten gold – burning away imperfections

Bringing new out of the old

Are you connected?

Are you connected?

Written by Dan McDonald

            A perceptive Facebook friend, who has known me for probably twenty years (“time keeps on slipping into the future”), said as we were exchanging messages:  “I hope you are connected and complete.  Take care of yourself.”  She was sort of asking a question, but knowing me she was putting it in the form of a sentence.  With the Lenten season approaching her sentence sort of affirms what I have been feeling lately.  I need to focus on my connections.

            Everyone has their own perceptions of what the important things are in life – but I think most of us know that being connected is among the most important.  For a long time I’ve had this theological framework around what it means to be connected to God in Jesus Christ.  If I remember correctly I came to see this theological framework concerning connectedness in the theology of Martin Luther, either as discussed in Roland Bainton’s biography of Luther entitled Here I Stand or in Philip Schaaf’s volume on the German Reformation in his eight-volume set on Church History.  Luther, during the German Reformation came to believe that God reveals Christ to us in three loci (or places of revelation or channels of revelation).  Luther’s concept of “Sola Scriptura” did not mean that he viewed the Scriptures as the only place where we met Christ.  For Luther, “Sola Scriptura” meant that the Scriptures were the highest authority by which Christians and the Church could determine what was doctrinally correct.  He believed the Bible taught that normally speaking God was revealed to His people through the Scriptures, the Sacraments, and the Church.

            His Biblical reasons for these were simple.  Jesus when discussing eternal life with the religious leaders who either failed to understand him or actually opposed Him, said to them “You search the Scriptures for eternal life, and it is they which testify of Me.”  The Scriptures, according to Luther’s understanding, revealed eternal life because they revealed and pointed to Christ.  The Scriptures were the means to an end, not the end of the means.

            The sacraments were also important.  This truth was understood in simple ways.  Christ described the elements of the Supper he was distributing to them as his body and his blood.  Whatever perspective we might use to explain this, our participation in the Supper became a physical way of remembering Christ's death until he comes.  The idea of remembering is not a mental only remembrance, but a physically active reenactment in which Christ offers us his body and blood and we partake.  I am not going to try to figure out in a blog which of the varied traditions of understanding the Lord's Supper and the taking of communion is the most perfect.  I am just pointing out that Christ called upon his disciples to partake of his body and blood in the supper and so we in some manner do that not by forming mental images in our head but by eating and drinking what we are given.  Sacraments are physical acts requiring something even if not a lot in regards to the employment of our bodies.  Sacraments help us to respond bodily to the reality that Christ entered into humanity with a human body to die for our sins and to rise for our eternal life.  He entered the physicality of our world and we receive this gift and the promise of his presence partly by partaking of a supper in which he reaches out to us and says "Take" - "my body" - "my blood".  Baptism is similar.  We have our bodies anointed or immersed in Christ, into his death, burial, and resurrection.  Luther also spoke of “confession and the absolution or forgiveness of sin as a sacrament.  He wasn't always consistent, as he wanted people to feel free to confess to God apart from the sometimes legalistic way the practice was conducted in the late Middle Ages, but he viewed confession and absolution as something Christians could do with one another to encourage one another in the Gospel.  We should be able to smile at some of our differences, for if I have been to Protestant churches where the Roman Catholic practice of confession and penance and absolution are condemned, these same churches often have a counseling ministry where people may talk about their struggles, be given Biblical counsel or directives (not penance mind you) and forgiveness (nah this isn't absolution keep moving, we're Protestants).  The point is Christ is presented to us and us to Christ in baptism, the Lord's Supper, and in confessing and having our sins forgiven through the ministry of the Gospel.

            The final channel, in Luther’s perspective, through which God revealed Christ to his people, is through the Church.  The Church is described as the body of Christ.  But perhaps we think of the Church in an abstract way.  I also think He intended it to be characterized by mystery until it was revealed in the Great Day.  The Church by a minimal definition is the body of Christ, in which those who are being redeemed by the grace of God are being grafted into the body of Christ.  If we define the Church as the body of Christ in which all believers are being grafted, then we discover an amazing truth in the Gospel regarding how you and I will be judged in the final day.  Jesus never described how we would be saved by giving a right answer about how we were saved.  He didn't even tell us that we can't be saved without believing in justification by faith.  He instead told a story about the separating of sheep and goats based very simply on how we treated Christ through the way we treated the "least of these."  That is how much we see Christ in the Church.  We see him in the least of these.  We see him in the brother and sister.  We can have a religion that has all the right answers doctrinally but doesn't have the right response to when we see him in the least of these.  He is there even if we don't see him.

            If you want to understand what a healthy church is, it is the place where “the least of these” is welcome.  It is the place where the least of these are being given a haven in which to reside, to seek, to confess, to be forgiven, to be taught, and to learn to love one another in the Gospel.  It is a place where through the teaching of Holy Scripture sin will be identified, but it is also the place where when sin is identified the weak will be reminded that this is the house where the least of these are welcomed by a Savior who has died for our sins and has risen for our eternal life.  The strong will likewise be reminded that this is where they find salvation by how they show love to Christ in showing love to the least of these.  Let every Church have a cross on it and let every believer seeing the cross think of how this means it is for the least of these.

            I am drawing near to the time of Lent in my church tradition.  I know what my focus needs to be.  It needs to be on making these connections, especially those to my church and those to the least of these people within my church.  One of the things I am tentatively thinking about doing during Lent is not writing on my blog.  I will spend a strictly limited amount of time on Twitter and Facebook, so as to focus on making connections in my local church and in my community.  I will keep reading some of the blogs I read because you have important things to say.  But I have some needs at this time and I will be addressing them during the season of Lent.  May God richly bless every person reading this.

Blogging to you, listening to you, and changes have come

About a Year of Blogging to You,

And some Seasons of Listening to You

Written by Dan McDonald while reflective and a bit dour

 

            I grew up when no one had heard of the Internet.  We imagined that as we read books without pictures we had come to begin reading what was important.  But in the day of the blog, it is always important to have the right pictures.  Today’s blog has no pictures.  I present some thoughts and sentiments after a year of writing blogs and a few months of listening to a whole new group of bloggers and some Facebook friends, and some Twitter friends.  I’ve learned some things, probably forgotten some too, and I think have changed a little and need to change some more.  That is what this blog is all about.

            I am writing this blog with a few different fonts.  I wrote with a sort of whimsical font for my title because this blog is the sort of piece someone writes when still affected by an Ebenezer Scrooge morning after experience.  He pulls his hair out and makes crazy faces because he can’t take himself seriously anymore as if life is all about his business and his interests.  He realizes he is absurd and discovering that we are absurd is sometimes as close as some of us will ever come to being able to see ourselves created in the image of God.  I think that is true in some paradoxical manner.  When I take myself seriously I am almost always far removed from God.  But when I see myself as absurd I am often at that moment nearer to the Kingdom of God than at any other time.  I wrote my introduction in ordinary script because it was ordinary.  I write this paragraph in a sort of friendly cursive manner to say I am trying to write this blog as a heart-felt letter to the friends I have known for a long time, to the new friends I have discovered in recent months, and to say that all of you the old friends and new friends are all a part of me, whether I am so new to you that you don’t know what to make of me or so old to me you don’t know what to make of what has happened to me.  I am writing a heart-felt letter to all of you to tell you what has happened since I started blogging a year ago and listening to an ever growing diverse group of people whom I know perhaps mostly by the internet, but the distance and virtual-ness of the internet doesn’t mean you aren’t true friends. To all of you this blog is a letter from my heart.

 

                Q.  What have I learned in a year of blogging and a few months of listening to others?

                                I am writing of truth I have learned sort of like framing a catechism.

                A.  I have learned to appreciate two things; diversity and Jesus beyond the camp.

1.  I have learned to appreciate diversity.  I have gotten to know people who when I first heard them speak with their different perspective than mine I wondered if they were some sort of crazy.  But then as I listened I realize that sometimes you made some sort of sense.  And sometimes it scared me because sometimes you made a whole lot of crazy sense.

We live in a diverse world, and none of us are ever comfortable with diversity.  I laugh at those who say how much they love diversity and then tell about how they hate the narrow confines of that place from which they have escaped.  The reality is that often the little groups we came from that we have learned to be ashamed of, they too are part of the diversity we somehow imagine we love because we have learned to despise something of a former narrowness.  That is what diversity is, it is living in a massive society composed of all sorts of groups with their narrow perspectives and it is only as we listen to one another sharing our narrowness with another narrowness that little drops of rain fall into mud puddles, run off into creeks, merge with other creeks, enter a river, merge with other rivers, become a mighty river and empty into a vast ocean.  Appreciation of diversity is the journey taken by a drop of rain looking to find its way to a vast ocean.  Beloved this appreciation of diversity usually began for us in the narrowness of our little backgrounds.

2.  The other thing I have been learning is that Jesus is discovered beyond the camp.  I was learning this by getting to know people that weren’t part of my original camp or tribe.  I think of a couple of ladies, one that I almost didn’t follow on my Twitter page because I thought from something she said one day, “wow she is really liberal.”  But as the months have passed I have realized that she is probably to the left of me on some things which doesn’t make me necessarily right on those things, but I have realized that she prays the lectionary and finds Christ probably more consistently than I ever have.  Listening to people from varied camps has changed me.  I’ve learned from people with a passion for social justice that there are injustices that should anger us and break our hearts.

I realized how much all this had changed me the other day when I was writing about some things I had thought about in connection with having watched the German movie “Downfall.”  A year ago I had written a blog about Sophie Scholl.  I had watched the movie “Sophie Scholl: The Final Days” and had read a book entitled Sophie Scholl and the White Rose by Jud Newborn and Annette Dumbach.  Sophie Scholl is one of my heroes from history.  I suppose that part of the reason is that I am an older man that didn’t marry a young woman when I was that age when young men marry young women, and she was a young woman who was executed for standing for justice before she could marry a young man.  Maybe that should or shouldn’t be part of why you find someone to be one of your heroes, but I’m sure that is part of it for me.  I’ve imagined, and though it won’t likely happen for me, that someone who gets the chance to bring a little girl into the world could do worse than naming the little girl “Sophia Magdalena" in honor of Sophia Magdalena Scholl.

I say all that to say that when part of my blog this past week was connected to Sophie Scholl I didn’t link what I had written about her.  I didn’t because I felt that I had too much described her life in relationship to Jesus, as if a way to present Jesus as understood by my tribe.  I realized that is not really how Jesus came into our world or how he remains a part of our world.  He came particularly as a Jewish man, I know that and am not arguing about his coming to a specific time and people.  But he came also as importantly to be part of the whole of humanity who could heal a Syrian woman or declare with great joy how a particular foreigner had more faith than he had seen in any of his countrymen.  He came for the world of humanity and not just for a little camp.  When the Pharisees or Sadducees tried to own him he let them know they did not.  When John and James tried to own him he let them know they did not.  When Simon Peter tried to own him he said “Get thee behind me.”  He comes into the midst of our humanity and we all try to form camps and tribes around him and claim to own him within our camps and tribes but we never get to.

That is what I’ve learned.  So now if I write something about Christ I want you who read it to feel like this Jesus has taken his place right in the middle of our humanity, each of our own expressions of humanity and he is right in the middle of our humanity.  He has come into the middle of humanity to speak to the whole of humanity and yes in that to you and me.  He is speaking in the midst of humanity and to all of humanity whether we are hearing him say to us “O ye of little faith” or “To him who has ears to hear” or “Well done good and faithful servant”.  I want that when I write about him to make you feel whatever camp or tribe it may be in which you reside that he is speaking from the midst of humanity to the whole of humanity, and addressing you as to your whole humanity.

That is my story of a year of blogging.  That is my dream for days ahead.

 

Sincerely yours

Dan McDonald

 

Dialogue with the Movie Downfall - Part 5- Sorrowful Reflections

 

Dialogue with the Movie “Downfall”

Part Five:  Sorrowful Reflections

Written by Dan McDonald

Traudl Junge interviewed a couple of years after World War II in Bavaria.

 

            Trudl Junge spoke of feeling helpless and angry after Hitler committed suicide.  She was angry because he had abandoned them when they most needed leadership.  She remembered frightening images Hitler spoke of when he contemplated a defeat of Germany and National Socialism.  On 1 May 1945 Germans, who had largely ceded their independence of thought to their leader (Fuehrer is the German word for leader) were thrust into the chaos where each person for a few days had the horror of having to think and act without a recognized leader. 

The movie “Downfall” gives us a symbolic but possibly misleading view of what happened next.  In the movie Junge and a boy are seen passing through celebrating victorious Russian soldiers as they make their way outside of Berlin and to open lands in the West.  But this is a symbolic ending.  The intended German audience familiar with Junge's story would understand that she spent a time confined by the Soviets although not charged with any crime.  Eventually she made her way out of the Russian sector to her original home in Bavaria.  People unfamiliar with her story might see this as misleading but those who knew the story would have seen the ending as a way of showing that the Soviets were a temporary hindrance that eventually she overcame in her desire to go home and begin a new life. Where the movie "Downfall" ends the story Junge tells in the documentary "Blind Spot: Hitler's Secretary" continues.  She described how immediately after the war Germans tended not to reflect much about what had happened under Hitler.  They focused on rebuilding.  But things were changing.  She talked of how they had so many fears for the future based on what Hitler said would happen if they lost the war.  But almost everything he had imagined and warned of proved to be another lie.  It was only a short time after the war that Germans in the West, and especially in the American sector felt such a sense of freedom as they had never known it before.  So changes were taking place but it was not until the 1960's that Germany began seriously and as a culture to reflect on what had gone wrong that led to the realities of the Nazi era.

            Trudl Junge described the event that led her to confront her own connection to Nazism.  She tells us of that event in these words:

           [ “I wasn’t able at first to see the connection with my own past.  I still felt somehow content that I had no personal guilt and had known nothing about it.  I had no idea of the extent of what happened.  But then one day I was walking past the memorial in Franz Josef Street to Sophie Scholl, a young girl who opposed Hitler and I realized that she was the same age as me and that she was executed the same year I started working for Hitler.  At that moment I really sensed that it is no excuse to be young and that it might have been possible to find out what was going on.”]

            Junge saw a mirror image of herself in the life of Sophie Scholl.  They were both born the same year, and in the decisive year when Junge went to work for Hitler, Scholl took up actively encouraging Germans to do all in their power, to withhold their cooperation and submission from the Nazi regime.  She and other members of a group calling themselves the White Rose expressed a vision for a replacement government that would respect liberty and human rights.  This led to Scholl’s arrest, as well as others in their group.”  Scholl was executed by guillotine on February 22, 1943.

I have written about Sophie Scholl elsewhere.  I am sure I would write it differently today than I did a year ago.  I wrote a year ago as one who saw the world as divided between Christian and non-Christian.  But now I see the world as this world into which Christ entered into our humanity and spoke to our humanity, so that when we proclaim the truth Christ would have us proclaim then we would speak from within humanity to all of humanity.  So I think I would write the article on Sophie Scholl with a different perspective now.  But that said I must admit that Sophia Magdalena Scholl is one of heroes in the history of humanity.  So I instantly took note when Trudl Junge described the pivotal scene where she saw herself differently by seeing the plaque, the monument with the remembrance of Sophie Scholl.

Trudl Junge came to a different understanding of her relationship to Nazism and the atrocities of Nazism as she stood at the memorial honoring Sophie Scholl.  She saw how weak and unsatisfactory her sense of innocence based on her not knowing anything was.  Junge did not know about the secret atrocities taking place in Germany.  She realized, however, looking at the memorial that Sophie Scholl also hadn’t known much, and their young age meant neither of them could really claim age as an excuse.  The great difference between the two ladies had been that Sophie Scholl refused to accept as the final presentation of reality the thinly veiled veneer of normalcy hiding the ugly truth of what was taking place under the Nazi regime.  Scholl had asked questions and probed into the veneer of normalcy until she opened a tear into that veil and could see evil behind the appearance of normalcy.  Scholl followed her instincts when sensing that something didn't fit and her investigation pierced through the veneer to the truth.  The façade crumbled when she pushed against it.  A world of evil opened up to her eyes and she could no longer be silent.  Sometimes someone might imagine that a young lady like Sophie Scholl was so brave because she didn't imagine what would happen to her if the authorities captured her.  But a woman who knew her told of how Sophie Scholl confided in her that she lived in constant fear and that she often cried herself to sleep.  She was not brave because she was under some illusion that she wouldn't face consequences but she spoke because she had seen what was behind the veil of normalcy to the evil beyond it and she felt that she had to speak.  But it seems to me that Traudl Junge's story needs told just as much as Sophie Scholl's story needs to be told.

There are so many ways Junge’s experience during World War II can be understood in a context outside of war in an ordinary office where there is a façade of normalcy hiding some evil.  There are plenty of staff members who have served with employers who seemed respectable that proved to be hiding an evil secret.  Trudl Junge’s story isn’t confined to a consideration by World War II scholars.

I will speak of just one application because I have known a couple of ladies through the internet who have sought to deal with the tragic evil of child abuse, and especially with the sexual abuse that has taken place quite often within respected Christian ministries, whether they be Catholic or Protestant.  One of the great sorrows, expressed by these ladies is how often when credible accusations are made against abusers, there are staff members who rise instantly to their defense and then try to undermine the victim's willingness to come forth to point out the abuser so that his cycle of abuse might be ended.  Trudl Junge’s relationship to Adolph Hitler helped me see what might be taking place in these situations.  Junge had met Hitler and her perceptions of him included his being a gentleman, a soft-spoken man, and someone who showed genuine respect to his secretaries.  This perception was viewed as if it were the fullness of reality.  We human beings are not omniscient.  We never see the fullness of reality.  But we continually imagine that what we see is reality, and so we take what we see and imagine it to be all there is to reality.  We fail to recognize that always what we see is a limited perception of reality, a façade and not the whole scene.  An insufficient perception of reality made Junge slow to imagine that Hitler could possibly be a monster.  That same sort of phenomenon happens in so many abuse cases.  It may not be for months or years until a staff member wondering why he or she never noticed the evil notices a door and then has an “O my God” moment.  The loyal staff member looks at a door and thinks back upon how often the trusted minister or staff member took a child behind a closed door and described it as counseling.  He assured the rest of the staff that the child had special needs to address.  Somehow all the closed doors seemed strange, but this child had special needs.  Only afterwards does this staff member realize how she had failed to understand the situation, mostly because he or she had assumed this man could not be guilty and yet he/she had seen numerous closed doors but did not question the situation.  This is one of the reasons why I began to believe that Trudl Junge's story was a plausible one.  She spoke like one who believed in her employer only to discover that all along there were those things that could have shown how he was a monster if only she had followed some of those things that did not quite fit.

From a grace perspective I try to imagine an interesting imaginary scene.  Two lives, mirroring each other’s life meet at a memorial.  Trudl Junge looks at the monument and is gripped with the understanding that her not knowing did not make her innocent.  She realizes she could have and should have known more.  She is overcome with grief and guilt and laments, “There were things I saw and heard, and I fear I never wanted to understand those things.  Can I be forgiven?”  An emotion more than words replies as if the memorial has a soul.  The sentiment, deeper than words, conveys, as if saying, "I knew and therefore I had to speak.   But you now in your grief and suffering, you too have a story to tell.  You can tell your story better than I".  A pause to allow those thoughts time to sink in was followed by the sentiment being conveyed again.  The voice from the memorial says, "Some people are afraid they will suffer as I have.  But you who avoided my pain must tell of your pain.  For truth be spoken between you and me we know that whether we stand and speak against the evil or hide from and deny the evil, our confrontation with evil wounds each of us.  So please help me to tell this story.  I will tell of how yes there can be pain in standing against evil, but you will tell the story of how there is pain because you did not."  Then it seemed to me as if when these two witnesses who told their story had finished that I heard another voice speaking not sorrowfully but triumphantly shouting - “I have overcome the world.  Fear not little children.”

Sophie Scholl and members of the White Rose,

She asked questions, investigated and made her stand.

She died by guillotine February 22, 1943 aged 21.

Sophia Magdalena Scholl 1921-1943

 

Traudl Junge 1920-2002