Fathers Day
June 17, 2001
© 2001 Grant M. Gallup
+Book of Common Prayer lectionary:
2 Samuel 11:26-12:10,13-15 Prophet Nathan rebukes King David
Psalm 32 Beati quorum
Galatians 2:11-21 No longer I, but it is Christ who lives in me
Luke 7:36-50 A footwashing from a floozie
+Revised Common Lectionary - Trial Use
1 Kings 21:1-10, (11-14), 15-21a King Ahab and Jezebel murder
Naboth for a garden; Elijah proposes capital punishment,but God
disposes differently
Psalm 5:1-8 Verba mea auribus
or
2 Samuel 11:26-12:10, 13-15 (BCP above)
Psalm 32 (BCP above)
Galatians 2:15-21 (BCP above)
Luke 7:36-8:3(BCP above)
Forty-two years ago, on an Ember Day in mid-June, I was ordained in a class of eighteen deacons at St. James's Cathedral by the laying on of hands of the apostle Charles Larrabee Street, bishop suffragan of Chicago. It was a bright Spring day, with wonderful music, a thrilling outdoor procession, moderately decent preaching, and we all looked so upright, so sacred and so boyish, our heads of hair (yes, we had hair!) blowing in the breeze on the cathedral steps, for photos afterwards --well, a few of us looked girlish, but there were no women in the class. "Bliss was it at that dawn to be alive, But to be young was very heaven!" We all had the Bishop's assignments to curacies in hand, and none of us much worried about stipends, which were modest: I got $3000 a year--we were an idealistic lot of youngsters, and were sure and certain of our Anglo-Catholic heritage in the diocese. I was an Oblate of Mount Calvary, and for a while tried ardently to keep the vows. What mattered to many of us was our common stedfast devotion to "Mass, Mary, and Confession." We went every week to Penance, and to Holy Hour and Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament at St. Luke's, Evanston. We all genuflected to our bishop and kissed his amethyst signet ring. We had silent retreats, and wore academic gowns to all our classes and to chapel twice a day. And young men flocked from the wars to the seminaries all over the country. The degree I got at SWTS was "B.D." -- Bachelor of Divinity, although the requirements for it were higher than the current requirements for its replacement, the M.Div. But even increasing the length of the academic hood has not helped.
The New York Times reports that although nationally, the number of students in masters of divinity programs has remained steady, denominational officials say fewer people with those degrees are going into parish ministry. Graduates find other work to do with their educations. In both the Conservative and Reform movements of Judaism there's a lack of enough rabbis to go around. The siren song of the booming market has lured young people into other professions.
Added to that, the Church has hung so many hoops--not academic, but personal qualifications--so much higher for candidates to jump through that it wears them down and out before they begin. We were all vested in gold brocade dalmatics--the deacon's vestment that has survived from the church's oldest wardrobes, when deacons had greater dignity among us than they do now, as we served only six months as apprentices before the "real" ordination as presbyter ("old priest writ large").
Times change. When I was ordained, we each got a New Testament from the bishop--symbolic of our role as those who would read or sing the gospel lesson at the eucharist. Nowadays it's a whole Bible with the Apocrypha. The envelope is slightly pushed to show now that deacons are a full and equal order and not a stair step to the priesthood. It's probably some time coming before we ordain per saltum (by a jump) directly to the priesthood and ordain to the diaconate only "vocational" or lifetime deacons. When I was ordained a deacon, we stood around after the service in our elegant vestments and were waited on by old grey haired ladies who served us finger food and punch and wiggly summer salads. They were the real deacons there that day.
The "tradition of the instruments" it is called when things like a Bible, the chalice, vestments, are handed over to the newly ordained. For Episcopalians, it should probably include a copy of Amy Vanderbilt's Complete Book of Etiquette--halfway between the impossibly old fashioned Emily Post and the outrageously iconclastic Miss Manners. You ought to know abut oyster forks and what "chiff" means when talking pipe organs, and not to use the word "recessional" for the last hymn. It's too bad Nathan the prophet hadn't had some lessons in good behavior before he went to have dinner with the King. It's too bad that Jesus, when he went to the house of Simon the Pharisee to have a smart little Sunday supper, didn't have a brush up from Miss Manners beforehand. Amy Vanderbilt says under "Table Conversation" that almost anything is deemed proper table talk today except highly controversial topics like religion or politics, or squeamish subjects like accidents, illnesses, surgical operations, or real scandal. "Holding the shell steady with the left hand, use the oyster fork, lift whole oyster from its shell and eat it in one mouthful."
Both Jesus and Nathan the Prophet, as well as Paul the Apostle, flunked etiquette One-O-One in today's pericopes. Anyways, they were all Jews and wouldn't have been eating shellfish, except maybe Paul after his giving up kosher table. They failed to avoid highly controversial topics and real scandal. But they were in their way diplomatic. Jesus does something Amy would never approve of--he underlines, in a deftly told parable, his pious host's egregious rudeness. At Simon's house, while all are seated at the table, somehow a woman of the city crashes the party. Everyone knows who she is--not least the pious host who disapproves of her slobbering all over the rabbi's feet, washing with tears, drying with her hair, massaging them with her prostitute's flask of perfumed oil. It is not said that Simon voices his objection--doubtless Simon does what any of us would do--he ignores the intrusion, as a social gaffe, and thinks perhaps it will resolve itself and she'll go away and not come near himself to ritually contaminate him. He looks away. It seems Jesus "divined" Simon's discomfort in his table manners. There was no whispered "No No" nor an indignant harrumph, but Jesus notices his anguish, pulls his coat and says, "Simon, I'd like a word with you." Jesus says in effect, Simon, she's a better host than you are! She's not the one whose manners have failed here. Her etiquette is divine, her hospitality thoroughly human. You failed to greet me with the embrace and Kiss of Shalom when I came in, but here she is kissing peace to my feet. "SIMON, TAKE A LOOK AT THIS WOMAN." Don't avert your glance from the prophetic rebuke she offers! You failed to have a servant offer (as any good host would do in those days)a basin and pitcher to wash feet and hands before the meal. But he's diplomatic for all that. Both Nathan and Jesus tell little parables before they confront their hosts with their breaches of Shalom. These are both rebukes, not just to Simon the Host and David the King, but to all the centuries of churchcraft and statecraft that need to be told: "TAKE A LOOK AT THIS WOMAN" and "IT'S YOUR MOVE."
Jesus tells the story of the creditor with two debtors--one who owed a fortune, the other a pittance, and prompts Simon to see that he can indeed judge rightly in the hypothetical situation, but flunks the lab test there in the dining room. And Nathan tells the King about a venture capitalist who has guests for dinner but instead of serving up from his own larder for dinner, steals a poor man's only lamb, a pet he had raised with affection, as you might raise a daughter. His Majesty is angry with the hypothetical rascal, and vows he'll have him hanged! And Nathan says, You're the one. You stole Uriah the Hittite's lamb, Bathsheba, and sent him off to die--you, with a housefull of wives, you stole this woman.
We churchmammals really do tend to avoid confrontation, and we talk so much about reconciliation as the purpose of the gospel, and look upon anyone disagreeble as somehow sick or wacko. But in fact there can be no reconciliation unless there is first confrontation. In a passage of Scripture notorious for its name-calling, Paul today writes all the names on the blackboard for the whole class to see. Of Cephas (Simon Peter) he says "I opposed him to his face," for his hypocrisy. Hypo = under, and crisis = judgment. A hypo-crite is under his own judgment, for his acts are judged by his own pretensions to doing right. Peter ate with Gentiles until the Inquisition arrived from James the Lord's brother in Jerusalem, and then Peter wimped out and kept kosher for appearance's sake: the bishop was coming to supper, in Colorado you must keep your lover out of sight. Even Barnabas, the kindly man whose name means "son of encouragement" even he got his head turned to an insincere conformity with restrictive exclusions. And there they are, the foremost leaders of the apostolic band--Peter, James and Barnabas, all called out of their names as we would say, by Saulos-Paulus who didn't let them get away with double faces. Paul reminds us even today that the gospel of God puts a new light on everything. For it is not David's hypocrisy or Peter's two-facedness that are the points of these acted parables, but God's forgiveness. But at least in these cases, there isn't much chance of forgiveness without confrontation, exposing their bad praxis in the light of their own better selves. The Table etiquette of yesterday, the repressive ways of relating with women, even street women, with foreigners, with gays and lesbians, and with all the poor and oppressed, have been changed forever by the confrontation which the gospel brings.
The rules of manners which allow the rich to steal from the poor--as they always do (that's how they GET rich), to give billions of dollars in taxes back to rich folk, and tell the sick poor to have an aspirin and don't call back. The rich are even welcome at the Lord's supper of sharing, so long as they set a good table themselves (even if it's stolen lamb) at home, there is no need to offer a minimal nutritional standard to the starving people of the earth. And the whole scheme in which the meticulous observance of form becomes more important than justice doing--this kind of thing is at an end as Nathan comes to confront the King and all of us, as Paul names and preaches Christ and faith, as Jesus comes to forgive sins with the boldness of a prophet, the boldness of God. No prophet--indeed no preacher, no televangelist, ever got into trouble by condemning sinners. Your neighbors won't shun you for condemning sinners; they'll esteem you, and maybe fear you, lest your condemnation come round to them one day, but they will go along to get along.
No U.S. church or sect ever got into trouble for condemning anything or anybody. And nobody excommunicates President Bush for the judicial murders of nearly two hundred people, slaughtered by capitalist punishment, like madman Timothy McVeigh. Bush's record is nearly as bad as McVeigh's! The bishop of Colorado is on safe ground in refusing ordination to gays--most strait people of the diocese won't depose him for bigotry. And they'll stay "in communion" with him. But you will sure as purgatory get into trouble if you forgive sins, or call for compassion for nonconformists. "Who can forgive sins but God alone?" you will be asked, as in our names they turn the killers over to the hangman, the lethal injector, the pious poisoner. But Jesus showed us how to forgive sins, and would say "fiddlesticks, bunk, and nonsense" to those who say we can't forgive. Jesus says of the loving woman with the ointment "Her sins which were many are forgiven--so it is she can show great love." And then he said to her, "Your sins are forgiven." He got into trouble because he forgave sins, and often pointed them out before he did that. Even now, our very first calling is to forgive sins--indeed that's why we baptize and anoint and share eucharist and lay on hands, and shake hands, and give the kiss of peace--they are all about forgiveness--and to accept the subsequent grace of having our own sins forgiven. He says to all of us, "Your faith has saved you. Go in peace."
GRANT GALLUP
CASA AVE MARIA
MANAGUA, NICARAGUA C.A.
gallup@tmx.com.ni
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