palmer

our vacation has been marked with a moment of sadness as we have learned that mark palmer has passed away. i didn't know mark personally. we share mutual friends and were commrades in the Kingdom. i know his story & feel sadness for his wife, amy, and son, micah. he is now experiencing what no eye has seen or ear has heard. he is now in the loving comforting presence of God where there is no mourning or weeping or cancer. please pray for his family & faith community as they deal with the reality of being left behind.

May the Angels lead you into paradise;
may the martyrs greet you at your arrival
and lead you into the holy city, Jerusalem.

May the choir of Angels greet you
and like Lazarus, who once was a poor man,
may you have eternal rest.

Eternal rest grant unto him O Lord,
and may perpetual light shine upon him.
May his soul, and all the souls of the faithful departed,
through the mercy of God rest in peace.
(from the Catholic funeral rite)

hanging

just got into lexington to spend the weekend with father creech and friends. i'm sitting in casa creech right now taking advantage of his wireless network while listening to ""rock lobster" by the b-52's. really looking forward to this weekend, should be an excellent time. then the road trip will continue to my parents near pittsburgh for the rest of the week.

being incarnational

we had our community gathering tonight, the 3rd sunday of lent. we had a discussion about what it means to be incarnational in our spiritual journal. i think this is something missed by many of the protestant persuasion who tend to fall prey to pseudo-gnostic views of the world. what i mean by that is that many people i know practice an unconscious belief that Christianity is primarily about spiritual things and physical, material things are of lesser value or importance. some take this to the extreme that any physical pleasure must have some inherent sinfulness attached to it so they don't dance, don't go to movies, don't drink, etc. their spirituality is likewise devoid of any valued physical components. that's not the way it's supposed to be.

we weren't created to be disembodied spirits. God purposefully created us to be flesh, blood and spirit. one day we will die and experience the separation of our spirit from our bodies, but this is not the original plan for us. it is the fruit & residue of original sin, and one day that will be reversed. we recite in the apostle's creed that we believe "in the resurrection of the body." on that final day we will be reunited with a new resurrected, glorified body and we will experience eternity in flesh, blood & spirit as God intended.

the early church struggled against the gnostics, a hodgepodge of various heresies all sharing in common a dualistic worldview that declared the spiritual good and the physical evil. the gnostic legacy lives on in much of christendom in the form of warped views about sexuality, iconoclasm, devaluation of the arts, or passionless expressions of the faith. the scriptures are full of examples of our incarnate God redeeming and valuing the physical as a means of experiencing and entering into the spiritual. Jesus used spit (mk 7:33) and mud (jn 9:6) to heal. people touched handkerchiefs to paul & then used them to heal loved ones (acts 19:12). God commanded moses to lift a bronze serpent on a staff so the israelites could see it and be healed (numbers 21:9). of course the old testament is full of the use of physical signs & symbols as given and commanded by God in temple worship. ultimately God himself became Incarnate, becoming flesh & blood--and he still is in flesh & blood human form in heaven.

so how do we become intentionally incarnational in our spirituality? there are plenty of examples, but here are a few. the sacraments are a great example of incarnational spirituality, physical outward signs of an inward spiritual reality. the bread & wine of Eucharist and water of baptism are very concrete physical realities redeemed by God's action. we use a liturgical calendar and colors to mark the seasons of the year to remind us of the ebb & flow of life, the sacred rhythm placed in us & creation by God. candles call us to remember Christ, Light of the world. incense is a visual image of our prayers rising up before God. i use an anglican rosary in prayer as a way to involve my body in entering into meditation. some where crosses as jewelry, but it can also be a powerful reminder throughout the day of our Savior. although most associate making the sign of the cross with catholicism its practice can be traced back to the 4th century as a means of marking oneself for Christ.

this is my body

There's bee a bit of discussion lately in the blogsphere about Eucharist, also known as communion or the Lord's Supper. More specifically, much has been said about coming to a deeper understanding of the bread & wine as Christ's body & blood. You can see what I'm talking about here and here and here and finally here. I lead a discussion on this topic with our community last week.

This can be a touchy subject. Those of us raised in Catholic, Anglican or Orthodox backgrounds have a much different take than those raised in Fundamentalist, Evangelical, Anabaptist or Reformed backgrounds. As I shared with our community, and some of my blogging compatriots have pointed out, somewhere along the line in history we lost the ability to accept as mystery certain elements of our Christian faith that go beyond rational understanding. Too often this has resulted in us trying to codify and define things that are beyond our ability to comprehend let alone explain. Naturally this results in a war of words and meanings and we lose the forest for the trees. This is precisely the case with the Eucharist--literally "Thanksgiving".

There can be little serious doubt that the earliest Christians understood that Christ was truly and really present in the bread & wine as his Body & Blood. Any honest reading of early Christian writings reveals this to be true. What is not so clear, and this is more to the point, is how the bread & wine become and are the Body & Blood of Jesus. There was no formal philosophical or doctrinal statement or explanation to describe the process. It was taken on faith as a mystery, just as the Trinity or the Incarnation of Christ was understood as a mystery. In fact many early Christians saw a parallel between the Incarnation, God becoming flesh, and the Eucharist, flesh becoming bread or more properly bread becoming God's flesh.

I think a key to understanding the Eucharist is to keep it within its original context of Passover. The first Eucharist, the Last Supper, was Jesus' final Passover meal with his disiples. For the Jews Passover is a memorial--a re-living--of the original Passover when God delivered the Israelites from captivity in Egypt. To receive deliverance the Jews had to take a spotless lamb, shed its blood, cover their doorways with the blood, and finally eat the lamb. It is clear from the Gospels that Jesus's death on the cross was the fulfillment of what was foreshadowed in the orginal Passover event. He was the sinless Lamb of God. His blood was shed. We are covered by that blood through relationship with him. Finally, he gave us his flesh--the Lamb--to eat as spiritual nourishment.

Do I understand how Jesus is present? No. Do I need to understand it? No. I do believe he is really present, that the bread & wine are somehow his Body & Blood, because he said so, and because the witness of scripture and the testimony of the early church attest to it. It is a mystery to me, but that doesn't make it any less real. It is an avenue, some would say the avenue, of grace. It gives me strength, I don't know how, but I know it does.

marked

Today is Ash Wedneday, the first day of Lent. It is a day when many Christians, particularly Catholics, have their foreheads marked with ashes in the sign of the cross. The minister says the words: "Remember, man, that thou art dust and unto dust thou shalt return." (Latin: Memento homo, quia pulvis es, et in pulverem reverteris.) Lent is the season of spiritual preparation leading to Easter. It is a time for repentance, introspection and spiritual exercises.

There's something mysteriously beautiful about receiving that mark, being publicly marked and set apart as belonging to Christ. And there is something truly humbling about those words, quia pulvis es--you are dust. That mark and those words do not distinguish between race, sex, or social standing. They transcend politics and opinions. In the end, when all is said and done and everything else stripped away we all stand naked, poor, and helpless before God. We are little clumps of clay without life unless he breathes it into us.

There's another Latin saying that I also remember to keep myself in check. Tempus fugit, memento mori--Time flies, remember your death. All that I can accumulate, all the stature I can gain, all the wealth & toys I can store up will turn to dust just like this shell of a mortal body I inhabit. The only things that truly last are relationships; my relationship with God, with my wife, my children, my friends, my neighbors and my coworkers. Those are the only lasting legacy any of us can lay claim to, and they have eternal impact, but how much of my day is devoted to developing and deepening those bonds? Not nearly enough.

That is what Lent is for, to give us the opportunity to take stock & evaluate things. The practice of giving something up for Lent was & is supposed to be a means of fasting for the purpose of making changes. Giving up chocolate is nice & might help my waistline, but it does little for those things that have eternal remifications. That's why I'm taking advantage of this season of Lent and the grace that is present from God for change--metanoia, translated from Greek as repent means to change direction. I'm going to seek hard after God and the people close to me in order to build something that will last and stand when my ashes are scattered to the winds.